2:05pm | Nine Long Beach schools have been named to the statewide honor roll list of the California Business for Education Excellence Foundation for the 2009-10 school year. Schools receiving this distinction from California’s business community have demonstrated consistently high academic achievement and have made significant progress toward closing achievement gaps among all of their students, according to information provided by Long Beach Unified School District spokesman Chris Eftychiou. A total of 1,221 public elementary, middle and high schools made the list for 2010.
“These schools are the bright spots of excellence in efforts to raise student academic achievement and close persistent achievement gaps,” said Kirk Clark, president of CBEE, in a statement. “By highlighting them, recognizing their achievement and giving them a voice we hope other schools can learn from these proven practices and we can begin to duplicate their success to scale throughout the state.”
The honor roll is divided into two different awards, the Star Schools Award (477 schools) and Scholar Schools Award (744 schools). Eftychiou said four of the Long Beach schools were named Star Schools and five were named Scholar Schools.
Star Schools are those with significant populations of socio-economically disadvantaged students that have shown a significant increase in grade-level proficiency over four years and are outperforming expectations for every subgroup of students, according to CBEE. Burnett, Lafayette, Longfellow and Mann elementary schools were named to this category on the honor roll. Scholar Schools are those that show significant levels of academic achievement but do not have a significant socio-economically disadvantaged student population, according to CBEE. Fremont, Gant, Lowell and Naples elementary schools, along ;with Newcomb K-8 Academy, were named to this category on the honor roll.
Numerous businesses and organizations support the honor roll, including State Farm, Macy’s, Edison International, Wells Fargo, Southern California Auto Club, the California Business Roundtable and United Way of the Bay Area.
Individual school and student subgroup performance data provided by the state Department of Education via its standardized testing system is used to evaluate school academic performance over time in determining which schools are named to the honor roll.
“We must change the conversation in public education from being about failure and sanctions to one that focuses on schools and school systems that are getting the kinds of results that Honor Roll schools are achieving,” said Greg Jones, CBEE chairman, in a statement. “These schools are overcoming challenges every day.”
CBEE was founded in 1999 by major corporations and business organizations to represent the business community relative to state education policy-making. It aims to raise academic achievement and close achievement gaps in California public schools by making certain that every student tests as proficient in his or her grade level.