Third Place, East Division, Elementary Schools
Terry Frost, Principal
2502 E. Brushy Valley Road
Powell, TN 37849
Knox CountySchools
Website here
Recipe For Success:
Copper Ridge Elementary has been on an exciting path of increasing student achievement. Our goals for the last five years have been to move students from scoring proficient to scoring advanced. Copper Ridge’s philosophy of “ teaching to the top” to attain the highest scores has proven successful. Achievement scores have risen from average to excellent and our value-added scores continue to soar above the state average. When asked to share our recipe for success, many factors began surfacing. The obvious and perhaps the most fortunate factors included a knowledgeable dedicated staff, supportive parents, and an excellent group of well-behaved students that are eager to learn. In addition to these positive factors, we have incorporated some strategies or techniques that we strongly feel have increased student learning and have certainly seasoned our recipe of success.
Beginning with organizing and scheduling, our school begins planning in the spring for the upcoming year to ensure that each grade level’s schedule includes common planning time for continuous collaboration. A key ingredient in school success is providing teachers the opportunity to collaborate as a team in analyzing data and implementing best practices. Methods that have proven effective, and originated from team level collaboration, include the following:
- Additional instructional time in mathematics
- Allowing additional students to participate in advanced classes
- After school tutoring for ALL interested students
- Smaller class sizes for remedial students
- Assigning teachers remedial or advanced classes based on teacher strengths
- Flexible ability grouping
- Encouraging and coaching students to move into more difficult groups
Copper Ridge Elementary has an active group of families and a great amount of effort is spent working together to create a calendar that engages family and community in activities that support academic success without disrupting time in the classroom. Assuring teachers ample time to teach is yet another ingredient of success.
Clear communication keeps all stakeholders informed and reinforces the school’s mission of achievement. Letters are mailed during the summer to students welcoming them to their new classrooms. This begins another important ingredient to success, which is communication. Copper Ridge Elementary communicates with parents through web sites, automated phone links, newsletters, open houses, emails, and newspapers and by keeping an open door policy.
As with all recipes and certainly all schools, success depends on a variety of variables. Scheduling for maximized time on instruction, team collaboration, parent involvement and continuous communication are Copper Ridge’s ingredients for effective outcomes.