Baker-Butler: State of the School

The past few weeks have featured some of our favorite community events at Baker-Butler: our annual Back to School Nights. These are the nights when parents come to meet their children's teachers as well as to hear what is going on at school, which we cover in our State of the School address. Wendy Eckerle and I always enjoy talking with and meeting so many of our great families.

We held Back to School Nights on September 8th for grades 3-5 and on September 15th for Kindergarten-2nd grade, and we had large crowds for both evenings.

During our State of the School address we shared the exciting news that Baker-Butler is fully accredited and we met our federal AMO benchmarks!

Let's explain what that means on a practical level.

Every year our students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades take the Virginia Standards of Learning end of course exams in Reading and Math (and Social Studies and Science in 5th grade). Our students' achievement on these exams, while certainly not the only significant measurement of their progress in school, count towards both our state and federal accountability benchmarks.

The Commonwealth of Virginia sets benchmarks for overall achievement levels for a school to be accredited by the state. As an example, your school's overall Reading achievement average for grades 3-5 must meet or exceed 75%. We are pleased to announce that we exceeded these benchmarks this year, and we are Fully Accredited. 

The Federal government uses a different achievement calculation for its accountability designation of Annual Measurable Objectives. In this case for both Reading and Math there are 9 separate categories (18 total) of achievement that include an overall average, subgroup scores (e.g., Hispanic students' scores), as well as Gap Groups (e.g., students with disabilities). In order for a school to meet AMO, it needs to meet AMO benchmarks in all 18 areas (if you make it in 17 categories but miss it in 1 area, you do not make AMO).

We are pleased to announce that we met or exceeded these federal benchmarks, and Baker-Butler met AMO!

We are really proud of how hard our teachers and students worked last year. We're also proud of the growth that we've seen our students make across all of the contents in just one year.

Most of all, we're proud and excited to see what they're accomplish next.

Sharing good news like this is just one of the many reasons we enjoy our annual Back to School Nights at Baker-Butler. Thank you all for your continued partnership and support of our school and our students.

Sincerely,
Steve Saunders, Principal

We're sharing some of our achievement data below in case you were unable to attend our State of the School addresses.

SOCIAL STUDIES & SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT

	2013-2014	2014-2015	Change
Social Studies	87	89	+2
Science	68	75	+7

 READING SOL ACHIEVEMENT

	2013-2014	2014-2015	Change
3rd grade	75	82	+7
4th grade	78	78	0
5th grade	75	84	+9
All students	76	82	+6

 MATH SOL ACHIEVEMENT

	2013-2014	2014-2015	Change
3rd grade	60	82	+22
4th grade	87	87	0
5th grade	69	79	+10
All students	73	83	+10