St. John Students Continue to Shine: Local Catholic School Ranks in Top 10 Percent Nationally for Third Straight Year

By Donna Vavala, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.

Jan. 25–PANAMA CITY — St. John Catholic School recently learned its students scored in the top 10 percent of all U.S. schools, public and private, on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or ITBS, for the third consecutive year. St. John students averaged 30 points higher than the national norm on the test, which is administered to second- through eighthgraders at government and private schools. These schools do not offer the FCAT tests mandated by the state for public schools, so the U.S. Department of Education sets the standards for testing private and government schools. The department determined the Iowa test is comparable to the FCAT. The U.S. Department of Education pores through the test scores and selects the top 10 percent. “Students must average 80 percent in reading and math to get into the top 10,” said Tom Collins, principal at St. John, adding he believes the school may have ranked much higher than 80 percent in math and language arts. “All the Department of Education does is tell you what the cutoff score is. They don’t tell you what schools are in the top 5 percent.” Collins said four years ago, St. John school officials determined math scores were just below the 80-percentile range, so the school set out to bring them up. “We looked at our curriculum, and we decided to stress things in our less strong areas, fine-tune them,” he said. The extra work paid off, so what reward can the students expect? “We just tell them how good they are and tell them to keep up the good work,” said Collins, hastily correcting himself. “Actually, we’ll probably give them some ice cream or pizza.” Founded about 50 years ago by the Roman Catholic Church, St. John is home to 215 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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