By By Sherry Digmon
Advance Staff Writer
Results of the Stanford Achievement Test were good for one Atmore school, but not so good for another.
The state-wide results were released by the Department of Education Thursday and discussed at the Escambia County Board of Education meeting that afternoon.
One of those was Escambia County High School which was in academic caution at the beginning of the year. While the school did not get an academic clear rating, it did meet the state's criteria for caution improvement.
ECHS has made steady progress over the last couple of years. In 1998, the school was on academic alert and moved up to caution in 1999.
On the heels of the good news about ECHS came the announcement that Escambia County Middle School was not able to go from academic caution to clear and had in fact dropped to alert status.
However, as Dr. Bradley explained, ECMS did not drop significantly, but the scores did not show enough improvement to avoid the school's being put on alert.
A school is classified as academic caution if a majority of its students score between the 23rd and 39th percentile.
A school is classified as academic alert if a majority of its students score below the 23rd percentile, or if the school previously scored in academic caution but failed to meet the required improvements.
A school is classified as academic clear if a majority of the students scores at the 40th percentile or above.
Dr. Bradley said she will recommend a number of measures at ECMS, such as a mentoring program, reading specialists and Alabama Reading Initiative, a reading program currently in place at Huxford and Flomaton elementary schools.
Both those schools had high test scores, with Huxford taking the top honors in the county.
Listed are the percentage of students who scored in the academic clear status at each school:
A.C. Moore Elementary – 53.47
Escambia County High School – 46.39, an improvement from 42.89 last year and 33.90 the previous year.
Escambia County Middle School – 46.96, a drop from 49.35 in 1999. The percentage was 51.74 in 1998.
Flomaton Elementary – 72.22
Flomaton High – 66.47
Huxford Elementary – 82.16
McCall Junior High – 74.80
W.S. Neal Elementary – 65.69
W.S. Neal Middle – 59.25
W.S. Neal High – 60.82
In the county overall, 58.86 percent of students scored in academic clear.
Across the state, for the first time, every grade level examined scored at or above the national average on the SAT.