South Lamar School Receives Big Bucks For Good Test Scores

MILLPORT, ALA. (WCBI) – Teachers push their students to be their very best every day in the classroom.

That hard work has payed off at South Lamar School in Millport, Alabama.

The school recently was awarded several thousand dollars because of test scores.

The scores are based off of last year’s state testing for third graders.

Those third graders are now in the fourth grade, and the school says it couldn’t be prouder.

The Alabama State Department of Education set aside $1 million to reward schools who scored in the top 50 in third grade reading gains.

South Lamar School made that list.

“They wanted this to be an incentive for schools to work hard to improve test scores and to push and challenge these kids and so that’s how it came about and then, of course, at the end of the year, they always pull our test scores and look and we were on the top of the list,” says South Lamar School Principal, Lisa Wright.

Each school is being awarded $20,000 for their scores.

“We don’t really know yet. We have kind of thrown around some ideas, you know, because we have a lot of needs, but we do plan on spending the money on something academically,” said Wright.

South Lamar landed on the top list with schools three times their size.

“We knew we were competing with 6A schools and 5A schools and sometimes, 1A schools kind of get left in the wind, you know, thinking maybe they don’t learn as much, or can’t keep up with bigger schools, but South Lamar School has proved that we can keep up with 5A and 6A schools in the area of reading.”

The school has two third grade teachers.

Mrs. Ables is one of them.

She says she’s never seen a group of students work so hard.

“They are very long tests. They take a long time, so the kids, when they go in, the questions get harder as they’re going, so if they’re doing well, the questions get harder and the kids have to stay focused on the test and like I said, I mean some of the kids took up to nearly two hours on the test.”

Wright says the school plans on doing something special for the group and teachers.