ice job of reporting in the Sept. 10 front-page article on school accountability levels here in the Vicksburg Warren School District, I must point out what I am sure was an unintentional omission from the article: Sherman Avenue Elementary.

Since Sherman Avenue and Dana Road elementaries are pre-K through third grade, we are not assigned levels like the other schools in the district, specifically because we have only one grade participating in state testing, so there is no way to measure the growth component that is one of two parts of the accountability designation.

Our entire school, however, worked exceedingly hard this past year. We had after-school tutors from all grade levels. Every non-third-grade class in the school adopted one of the third-grade classes and encouraged them throughout second semester with hallway signs and cheers and songs and treats. We purchased Study Island and Essential Skills for online tutoring and skills reinforcement at home as well as at school. We recognized our third-graders’ success each week on benchmark tests with verbal praise and prizes. We had a brown bag lunch with third-grade parents to familiarize them with the test and test-taking strategies. Most importantly, we conveyed to our third- grade students and to our third- grade teachers and their assistants that we believed in them unequivocably.

For the first time in my administrative career, I witnessed a very special group of students take a state test without a single slacker. These Sherman Avenue third graders truly did their absolute best. They remembered to eliminate obvious wrong answers, took their time and they worked their way through challenging passages and wording.

And the result: Sherman Avenue’s QDI was 141, which would translate to “successful” if we were assigned a level. Our QDI growth over the previous year was 44 percent, far and away the largest increase in the Vicksburg Warren School District!

Each day our children repeat our student pledge with considerable feeling. The last lines are, “I was not born a winner. I was not born a loser. I WAS born a chooser. Today I choose to be the BEST I can be.” This past year all of Sherman Avenue Elementary, children, parents, faculty, and staff, lived up to that pledge.

Because I am so very proud of the efforts made and successes achieved, I want to make sure all of your readers are aware of it, too.

Ray Hume

Principal

Sherman Avenue Elementary