By Johnny Jackson
jjackson@henryherald.com

Three Henry County high schools have been listed among the state’s 327 top-performing schools for the 2008-09 school year.

“We are very pleased and grateful to be acknowledged in this way,” said Dwala Nobles, principal at Dutchtown High, one of the school’s recognized in the 2009 Single Statewide Accountability System Awards (SSAS).

Ola and Union Grove high schools also came up winners in the SSAS Awards, said Kathleen Mathers, executive director in the Governors Office of Student Achievement.

News of the awards was released along with the 2008-09, K-12 Public Schools Scoreboard and Report Card. The recognition is based on student achievement on state standardized tests. Mathers said the schools being cited were awarded on four levels — platinum, gold, silver or bronze — for “Highest Performance” and “Greatest Gain” on the state’s standards-based Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, and the Georgia High School Graduation Tests.

For Highest Performance, Union Grove received the Gold Award, Ola received the Silver Award, and Dutchtown received the Bronze Award. Dutchtown is also one of only three schools state-wide to receive the Silver Award for Greatest Gain.

“Dutchtown High School’s faculty is committed to ensuring that our students are well prepared,” said Principal Dwala Nobles.

Nobles credits Dutchtown’s school improvement team, known as the “Better Seeking Team,” whose function is to establish and monitor the school’s annual student achievement goals.

“Our ultimate goal,” Nobles said, “is to provide our students with the knowledge and skills needed to graduate from high school, and successfully pursue post-secondary opportunities.”

Union Grove is one of only 15 high schools in the state to receive the Gold Award for Highest Performance, according to Cindy George, the school’s instructional assistant principal. “We attribute a lot of that to what we call our instructional focus period during the day,” George said.

The school conducts an instructional tutoring program four days a week, and 30-minutes per day for students needing additional assistance, explained George. She said student involvement in the program is based on assessments that evaluate students’ progress on the state’s curriculum.

Teachers at the school use the assessments to tailor instruction within the tutoring program to suit individual student needs, and make sure they are on track to master the state’s curriculum standards. “We believe that has contributed greatly to our success,” added George.

Ross Iddings, principal at Ola High, said the recognition was “evidence of the continued hard work that our teachers do and our students do to try to get better every year.” He said Ola, which was one of 23 high schools state-wide to receive the Silver Award for Highest Performance, attempts to “get more of our students in the ‘exceeds’ category on state standardized tests” by making classes more rigorous and relevant to students.

He said the school’s recent accomplishment is the result of a more challenging curriculum, and day-to-day instruction and remediation. “We identify students that need assistance, and work time in our daily lives to work with those students,” Iddings said.

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox congratulated the state’s 327 top-performing schools last week. “Even in these very difficult economic times, the schools we are awarding continue to have a no-excuses attitude, and are more focused than ever on the goal of providing a world-class education to every student,” she said.