CLEVELAND, TN (WDEF) – Cleveland City Schools is extra proud of their latest TCAP testing results Students across the district reached five-year highs in math, science, English language arts and more. That kind of achievement is a solid example of “What’s Right With Our Schools.”
“Cleveland City Schools is doing a great job that, as we look at our T-cap scores and see what the work our students and our teachers and our staff have done in recent years. And especially last year. We’re all the work. Elementary world, that early literacy that we’ve really focused on is starting to pay off. And we’re seeing the tremendous growth there. And the proficiency score is going up. And so we’re excited about that,” said Jeff Elliot, said the superintendent of Cleveland City Schools.
“I love Cleveland High School. I love being the principal here. Everything we do is about getting kids ready for the next level. Whether that be college, whether that be workforce, whether that be industry, whatever that is. Like we feel strongly about getting them ready for the next level,” said Bob Pritchard, the principal at Cleveland High School.
“I’m not surprised at all. Like our school system is a great school system. Again we’re you know, we’re at the high school level. We’re just getting them ready for the next level. And so we have great community partnerships with Lee University with Cleveland State. We’ve more than doubled our amount of students over the last few years who are getting a dual enrollment credits for college. We’ve got industry certifications that are happening like crazy. And we also have, have AP scores that some of our classes have AP scores that are not above the state average, not above the national average, but above the global average, like above the world. And so we’re working hard here. And our teachers are working hard here and our teachers are pouring into our kids. And our kids are taking it. They’re working hard too and…and it’s showing. I think the secret to getting kids to the next level is just truly showing them that you care about them. When I first got into education, I heard a very cliche phrase, “that kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. And I know that’s very cliche, and I know I’ve heard that a lot and a lot of people have heard that. But it is so true. Like they’ve got to know you care about them. They’ve got to know you love them. You got to show that care to them and the sky is the limit when you can do that,” said Pritchard.
“So, we have a very diverse student population here. So I think just by learning your students and getting to know your students, getting to know their strengths, helping them work together and just speaking life into them, then I think that we do great and we succeed. We have some great teachers here at the school and we collaborate very well together. I think we have some great admin here at the school as well. And they work with us really well and they support us really well. And we just all work together to best help our kids succeed,” said Megan Salsbury, a geometry teacher at Cleveland High School.
“I’ve challenged every teacher here to speak life into our students. And so, you know, when they speak life and kids pick up on that. You know, we have a phrase, “Work hard, get smart, be nice”. And we really focus on the be nice part. And so when teachers, when teachers speak life into kids, I feel like it’s going to matriculate down. And so kids can speak life into each other. So that’s our main goal. That’s one of our main goals here, is to show that they care for each other,” said Pritchard.
