KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This year a Hickman Mills elementary school launched a year-round academic program that kept students in school over the summer.
The district selected Ingels Elementary for the model program because of the school's history of low academic performance.
Students who took part in the program underwent testing in September and their scores proved the program works. The program had an average of 85% participation rate and added 32 additional school days to the calendar year.
"We think the program was very successful, we had 87% of our classes in reading that had growth, the average growth overall for the building was 10 and we had some classes that had as high as 70 points growth," said Principal Dr. Michelle McDaniel.
McDaniel said additional testing will be conducted in December to gauge the program's success.
"It works. Students who come to school during the summer don't have that learning loss, and they can learn and have fun at the same time during summer months," said McDaniel.
It’s a milestone nine-year-old John’Nae has been working toward. She participated in the pilot program to work on multiplication and reading, and saw first hand how additional instructional hours helped her better perform in school.
"I love swimming, but I think that my learning was kind of more important," said John'Nae.
She and the majority of her classmates were in school during the summer with breaks scattered in between in an effort to boost academic performance and engagement.
The fourth grader is part of Melody Gibeson’s class, a classroom that saw some of the biggest growth among the entire school
"I've noticed that a lot of the kids who were coming in really struggling were the ones who weren't here over the summer," said Gibeson. "The ones who came in, needing phonics help over the summer, we were able to give that to them. I had 88% go up an entire grade level just over the summer in reading and 77% in math."
At this time, Hickman Mills won't be expanding the program and wants to give Ingels Elementary an additional year to test out the program.
In a statement to KSHB, a Hickman Mills spokesperson said:
At this time, leadership wants to give Ingels more than one year to go through the process and ensure they have good, strong data to back up that the extended year is a good model. Increasing the instructional hours for the teachers, paras, and staff, does make a huge difference for our students, but it also is a big hit on our budget as well and unfortunately, we do not get reimbursed from the county or state for that extra time in the classroom. It's balancing what's best for our students and being fiscally responsible at the same time.
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