Maple Elementary Great Model for High Performing School

You'll see this story later under the "Success Stories" portion of the Web site (look for it next week!), but for now, here are a few good snaps when I was out at Maple Elementary in the Seattle School District earlier this week.

The 425-student school in South Seattle, statistically, already has some strikes against it. Sixty-five percent of the students are free and reduced lunch. There are at least 17 languages spoken at the school, with Chinese, or some dialect thereof, being predominant.

Yet, despite this, the WASL scores are through the roof. The school placed 11th last year out of all the 69 elementary schools in the Seattle School District for WASL scores, with 81.5 percent of the fourth graders passing the mathematics portion, 90.8 percent passing the reading portion and 80 percent passing the writing portion of the 2006 WASL test.

The state standard was 58.9 (math), 81.1 (reading) and 60.3 (writing).

Principal Pat Hunter, who has been at the school for about seven years, credits her staff, great parent volunteers, use of technology to help kids learn to read and a pta that sends notes home in the top languages of the school. The school won the 2006 NCLB Blue Ribbon Award for schools. NCLB also sent out a group to study the school in March.

Hunter considers herself the conductor guiding the musicians (teachers and staff) and for stressing reading, reading, reading, since that is the way that students learning another language can navigate other topics, such as math and writing.