CAMDEN — By TAMMY FRAZIER
Manging editor
Camden Fairview Elementary and Ivory Primary have been recognized by the Office for Educational Policy at the University of Arkansas as schools where students are “Beating the Odds,” according to a news release.
Students at Fairview Elementary and Ivory Primary demonstrated high growth on the ACT Aspire even though the school serves a high-poverty population.
The release states:
“The Office for Educational Policy creates an annual report entitled the ‘Outstanding Educational Policy Awards’ and recognizes schools with high student growth which OEP believes is the best indicator of the positive impact that your school is having on students. This report is based on the 2017 growth score calculated by the Arkansas Department of Education.
“These growth scores reflect how much students at the school improved from 2016 compared to how much they were expected to grow considering prior achievement. CFES and Ivory are tied at number 4 among schools in the Southwest Region of Arkansas.”
Camden Fairview School District Superintendent Mark Keith spoke to the Camden News today about the report.
“How about that?” Keith said. “Things are changing. It (the information about the report) came out last night on your website or something, and we got a lot of responses - and somebody even tagged it in Magnolia...A lot of positive things were said. I’m tickled to death.”
He said it has been a “slow process,” but that more things good things “are coming.”
“Some of the things - you can’t see the immediate results. It takes a little while to get it going,” said Keith. “But it’s just started. You’re going to see it coming up the ladder now into the middle and high school. That’s coming.”
Keith praised staff members for their hard work in getting results on the ACT Aspire.
“We hired - and re-hired - good people, and I’ve got a good administration,” he said. “The people we have in place are doing an outstanding job. When you work this hard, good things happen.”