Middle School excels

PEA RIDGE — Once again, Pea Ridge Middle School has received honors.

The Arkansas Department of Education announced that Pea Ridge Middle School is one of 19 schools across the state identified as “exemplary” under the new school status process recently approved by the federal government, according to Bonnie Fullmer, curriculum coordinator.

“This is an incredible honor for our district. It reflects all the hard work that has been done throughout the district by all of our staff, teachers, students, parents, board members, administrators, and community,” Fullmer said.

Pea Ridge Middle School has been recognized for the past three years for high test scores. Last year, the school was recognizedas one of the top 10 middle schools in the state by the National Center for Education Achievement, a think tank out of Texas, according to Sue Terry, middle school principal.

“We’re really tickled about it,” Terry, attributing teachers, parents, community, administration and students to the success.

“They say it takes a village. Well, it really does.

All my teachers are really good and cross curricular,” Terry said. “They’re verysupportive.

“I’m very competitive.

I like to win,” Terry said.

This is her seventh year as been principal of Pea Ridge Middle School.

2011 Exemplary Schools

Four categories of performance were identified by stakeholders as notable performance for Exemplary School designation. These were schools demonstrating high performance, schools with large populations of at risk students with high performance,schools with high progress;

and schools with large populations of at risk students with high progress.

To determine Exemplary Schools for high performance, high progress, high-TAGG performance and high-TAGG progress three years of Arkansas Benchmark and End of Course Exam results were used to calculate a three-year average percentage of students Proficient/Advanced for math and literacy combined for 2009 through 2011.