Earlier this month, representatives from Brown County Schools were in Washington, D.C. to accept the official National Blue Ribbon award on behalf of Van Buren Elementary School.
Principal Gavin Steele, VBE master teacher Sarah Cochran and Superintendent Emily Tracy made the trip out to the nation’s capital to accept the National Blue Ribbon award from the U.S. Department of Education.
News about the award was announced by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in September. Van Buren was one of seven to officially be honored as a Blue Ribbon School in Indiana and was one of 325 schools in the country to receive the honor. The school was nominated for the award by the Indiana Department of Education in February.
The state nomination for education’s highest honor designated Van Buren as an “Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing School.” This means VBE was in the top 15 percent of schools who closed achievement gaps for English and mathematics for students groups, including those are low income and in special education, over the past three to five years. The achievement was measured by state assessments, like ILEARN.
After being nominated, schools had to complete an application detailing curriculum, culture, leadership and engagement, which was then evaluated by the U.S. Department of Education.
At the time of the application, 40 percent of Van Buren students were on a free or reduced lunch program and 23 percent received special education services.
Overall ILEARN scores increased for all students 29.3 percent for English-language arts and math last school year compared to ISTEP scores in 2018-2019. In 2019, ISTEP standardized testing was replaced by a test called ILEARN.
Students did not take ILEARN in the spring of 2020 due to COVID-19.
Within that comparison, special education students also grew 3.6 percent in ELA and 21.7 percent in math assessment pass rates. Students in the free and reduced lunch program achieved a 16.8 percent growth in math pass rates.
The application for the Blue Ribbon was written based on work during the 2020-2021 school year.
The school also sets reading goals and last school year there was an average growth of two reading levels in each grade level and 87 percent of students were able to achieve at, or above, grade level success in reading fluency skills.
Steele, Cochran and Tracy accepted the award on Nov. 5.
