For their efforts to improve instruction and raise student achievement, 29 schools were honored today at the annual SREB Making Schools Work Conference in Orlando, Florida.  

The Gene Bottoms Pacesetter Awards recognize schools that implement SREB school improvement frameworks and bold goals for students to graduate ready for college, careers and credentials.  

For award details and photos, contact SREB News Manager Janita Poe, (404) 879-5516.

Athens High School
The Plains, Ohio
Through a commitment to creating systems of support for students, Athens High School’s team helped students turn in 3,245 missing or late assignments.

Austin High School
Decatur, Alabama
With a focus on student engagement and use of the strategic teaching model, Austin High School increased its graduation rate by 10% and its college and career readiness by 29%.

Austin Junior High School
Decatur, Alabama
The teachers at Austin Junior High School created a student-focused initiative while also working on increasing “backwards teaching” to focus on the outcome they wanted from the lesson and then creating a lesson to reach that goal.

Boaz Middle School
Boaz, Alabama
Boaz Middle School increased its focus on teacher collaboration, planning together based on data and creating pacing guides and assessments. This led to the school being recognized for significant learning gains in math.

Boonslick Technical Education Center
Boonville, Missouri
Using industry surveys to recognize skills leading to employability, BTEC created a series of events, such as business breakfasts and industry interviews, to help students understand business needs and make networking connections in the community.

Champlain Valley Educational Services – Career and Technical Education
Plattsburgh, New York
CV-TEC has increased its focus on career awareness through initiatives such as granting students work-based learning hours when they attend events like career fairs, job shadowing or co-ops.

Clermont Northeastern Middle School
Batavia, Ohio
Clermont Northeastern Middle School created a positive behavior intervention system in order to reach at-risk students, which helped improve achievement between 3% and 10% across all content areas.

Decatur High School
Decatur, Alabama
Decatur High School’s leadership team created a way to identify a school problem of practice, then took steps to understand and address having students struggle with active participation and long-term mastery.

Decatur Middle School
Decatur, Alabama
The focus at Decatur Middle School has been on making sure every student is reached, including problem-solving teams and data meetings to identify students who need more help and initiatives to get them the help they need.

Dekalb County Technology Center
Rainsville, Alabama
Dekalb County Technology Center has created efforts to increase industry partnerships, with one such initiative, an annual STEM camp, leading to a 200% enrollment increase in STEM in the district.

Green High School
Uniontown, Ohio
Through high expectations and a focus on student engagement, Green High School was able to increase the school’s performance index from 51% to 75% while also scoring five stars in the areas of progress and gap closing.

Hundred High School
Hundred, West Virginia
Through student surveys and a dedication to student engagement, Hundred High School was able to create Simulated Workplace opportunities that allowed students to offer services to their community.

Jefferson Middle School: A STEAM Academy
Columbia, Missouri
The faculty at Jefferson Middle School: A STEAM Academy has increased their focus on hands-on, project-based learning. Students now have more than 20 elective choices to increase creative thinking and ultimately help them with their eighth-grade capstone project.

Leavelle McCampbell Middle School
Graniteville, South Carolina
Leavelle McCampbell Middle School’s focus on student engagement and support has led it to create six houses. Students are grouped to create a problem-solving approach and also provide all students with action plans to help them achieve their unique goals.

Lewis County High School
Weston, West Virginia
To address a growing number of dropouts, Lewis County High School created an “On-Track Contract” that led to a dramatically reduced failure rate, increased skill mastery and more.  

McKinley STEM Academy
Stubenville, Ohio
McKinley STEM Academy students spend at least 90 minutes each week participating in authentic STEM learning.

Mid-America Technology Center
Wayne, Oklahoma
Mid-America Technology Center created a check-in program that lets teachers meet with three to seven students each week to make sure all students receive the support they need.

Northland Career Center
Platte City, Missouri
Northland Career Center has developed a process and tool to track and report the level of students who are attaining market value asset skills. They have also increased their efforts in creating authentic projects.  

Penta Career Center
Perrysburg, Ohio
Penta Career Center has increased its focus on creating authentic, work-based learning opportunities, which the school manages by having academic and career teachers work together.

Pioneer Technology Center
Ponca City, Oklahoma
With help from district leadership, the Pioneer Technology Center created a customized data-driven, decision-making tool, the Instructional Area Planning Instrument, to help find program strengths. This process led to increased student placement data.

Pearl River Central Endeavor School
Carriere, Mississippi
A school offering programs to help students with challenges in traditional settings, Endeavor School set out to enrich students’ educations and provide them with life skills. The school was named an Energy Bus Certified Campus.

Southern Hills Career Center
Georgetown, Ohio
Southern Hills Career Center’s effort to work with the local business community has led to over 40% of last years’ senior class being placed in jobs, with this year’s class expected to exceed 50% placement.

Sumter Career and Technology Center
Sumter, South Carolina
SCTC became the first CTE center in South Carolina to become Cognia STEM certified and to implement the SREB Advanced Career program in manufacturing and automation. It was the first of five in the state to implement the AC aerospace engineering program, including drone pilot certification, and offers Project Lead the Way cyber security and law enforcement forensics programs.

Waccamaw High School
Pawleys Island, South Carolina
Waccamaw High School set out to reach all students by creating a Multitiered Systems of Support data wall to identify students who needed more help, allowing teachers to “adopt” students to provide support, and initiating “smart lunches” to give students more time to learn.

Warrensville Heights Elementary
Warrensville Heights, Ohio
Warrensville Heights Elementary created a formal K-12 local literacy plan, which helped the school increase its literacy block to 120 minutes to better incorporate all five major components of literacy.

Wellston Middle School
Wellston, Ohio
Wellston Middle School created a focus on reaching all students, creating an intervention process and offering more help for students as they need it.

West Clermont High School
Batavia, Ohio
West Clermont High School increased its focus on teacher collaboration, specifically among Algebra I teachers, which led to Algebra I results increasing by three times from previous years.

Westmoore High School
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Westmoore High School worked to create vertical collaboration among grade levels and the nearby feeder junior highs so that classroom instruction, specifically in math, not only matched state standards but also previous years’ learning.

SREB media contact: Janita Poe, SREB News Manager, (404) 879-5516.