Tiger Academy shows improvement in third-grade FCAT scores
Jade Hardwick sat in the back of a limousine last month for the first time in her 9-year-old life.
For performing well on the 2013 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Jade and some of her classmates at Tiger Academy Charter School went on a plush limo ride across Jacksonville. The school’s principal paid and arranged for the top-performing students to experience the ride.
In this year’s results, the YMCA charter school on the city’s Northwest side dramatically increased the percentage of third-grade students who scored proficient in math and reading. The school also substantially decreased the percentage of third-graders below proficiency.
The dual improvement came as happy news for a school that had shown poor results in its first two years.
Tiger Academy Principal Charles McWhite said change happened, in part, because teachers challenged students to discuss with one another how they learned math and reading.
Some students said they were able to understand the lesson when a fellow classmate was doing the explaining.
Teachers also stopped asking students yes-or-no questions and began asking how or why they arrived at an answer.
Tiger Academy opened in 2009-10 and coined itself as the school for building character and integrity in elementary students.
Because the school opened with grades K-2, it took one year for Tiger Academy to post its first FCAT scores.
When the data arrived in 2011, it showed 61 percent of third-graders scoring proficient in reading and 47 percent proficient in math. The charter school did not receive a letter grade because the state doesn’t calculate a letter grade when a school only has one grade taking the FCAT, as Tiger Academy had that year.
In 2012, those numbers dropped to 50 in reading and 39 in math — and the school received a D.
When the scores came out, McWhite said it left him disappointed.
To turn those scores around, McWhite said the process began with him creating a schoolwide culture in which teachers and parents expected high achievement and students strived for high scores.
“When you don’t have 75 percent of your students reading on grade level, it’s a problem and I put pressure on myself,” McWhite said.
He noted the improved scores comes from a group of students, many of whom started at Tiger Academy as kindergartners.
He also said many teachers came to work early to tutor students and did the same on the weekends for no extra pay.
McWhite applauded the teachers’ effort, but the teachers said their students did all the work.
“Their work ethic is just unbelievable; it’s what put them beyond,” said fifth-grade teacher Pamela Chapman.
