Hoover Makes The Grade The Hard Way

This year, the Hoover School System scored 100% for every group in every category on the Adequate Yearly Progress test. It’s quite an accomplishment - considering just three years ago - Hoover failed to meet AYP requirements.

Hoover schools are known for high standardized test scores, strong graduation rates and lots of college-bound students. So in 2004 and 2005, school system leaders were shocked to learn Hoover schools failed to meet adequate yearly progress goals.

“We were very comfortable behind those averages, but we’ve had to step from behind those average and really take account of these high risk groups,“ says Ron Dodson, Curriculum Director for the Hoover School System.

The No Child Left Behind Law doesn’t combine test scores for every child in a school. Instead it breaks students down into categories..including low income students, special ed students and those who speak english as a second language.

“By having to be accountable to these individual groups that’s a much higher bar that we’ve got to cross. We can’t just rest on the average population of kids,“  explains Dodson.

Since then, Hoover has been focusing on helping these at risk sub groups of students improve academically. It wasn’t easy.

“It takes some soul bearing. We had to open the closet and get some skeletons out and really deal with that,“ says Dodson.

Hoover started academic after school and summer programs. Good extra steps, but Dodson says the real transformation starts at the head of the classroom.

“You make this kind of goal by changing the way teachers teach. When teachers take ownership for those individual kids and they truly don’t leave a child behind, you can make it, you can do it,“ says Dodson. 

Now Hoover schools are earning perfect marks, and Dodson says the students - all the students - are better prepared for future academic successes and life.