Illinois Valley High School honored as one of best in U.S.
From our weekly issue dated December 12, 2007
Out of 18,790 U.S. public schools, Illinois Valley High School has received a national award recognizing it as among the top for its educational services to diverse groups of students and the school’s record of measurable academic outcomes.
IVHS -- the only school in Josephine County to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report in its Best High Schools in the United States rating -- received a bronze award. It is one of only 39 in Oregon to be recognized with silver or bronze awards.
Nationally, gold awards went to 100 schools; 405 got silver awards; and 1,086 were honored with bronze awards.
“This is wonderful and great,” said IVHS Principal JoAnn Bethany. “It’s quite exciting,” she stated, noting that the school did well in the rating criteria because of dedicated staff and hard-working students.
According to the award, “IVHS rated high on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes that show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.”
The criteria were developed by School Evaluation Services, a data research business run by Standard & Poor’s, the world’s foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research, data, and valuations.
The examining group used data from the 2005-06 school year to study three steps. The first two ensured that the schools serve all students well, using state proficiency standards as the measuring benchmarks. For schools that made it past the first two benchmarks, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepared students for college-level work.
Reading and math tests were viewed, and then the percentage of economically disadvantaged students, who tend to score lower, was factored in.
Based on the provided data, 60.8 percent of IVHS students passed Oregon reading assessments, and 50.9 percent passed the math tests.
Bethany noted that the school has a high number of disadvantaged pupils. The study used a figure of 73.7 percent of the 2005-06 student body of 468.
She added that IVHS staff place much of their focus on college-bound students, or post-secondary education. She further noted that the school has one of the highest rates of pupils who earn their Certificates of Initial Mastery.
“We have an awesome school,” stated the principal, “with one of our major goals being to show the kids that they can be in control of their futures. We work to show them the benefits of higher education.”
In Curry County, Gold Beach High School and Port Orford’s Pacific High School each received a bronze award. In Jackson County, Ashland High School received a silver.
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