Good News

November 20, 2009

Area schools share in Keystone Awards for academic achievement

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
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Touted by the state as “showing sustained academic achievement,” 35 local schools in 12 districts received Keystone Achievement Awards on Thursday.

More impressively, 18 of those schools – slightly more than half – have won the award every year since they started handing it out in 2003.

The Keystones are given to schools that meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” two years in a row, which means meeting minimum goals in state math and reading tests, test participation rates, attendance rates for elementary schools and graduation rates for high schools.

The minimum goals in test results increase every few years.

The local schools that have won Keystone awards every year since the program’s inception are: Fairview and Rice elementaries and the high school in Crestwood; All four Dallas schools: McAdoo-Kelayres Elementary in Hazleton Area: Ross and Lehman-Jackson elementaries in Lake-Lehman; Hunlock and Huntington Township elementaries in Northwest Area; Tenth Street, Sara Dymond and Montgomery Avenue elementaries in Wyoming Area; Dana, Third Avenue and Chester Street elementaries in Wyoming Valley West.

Among area districts, Dallas is the only one to have all its schools win Keystones every year.

Only one school on this year’s list won a Keystone for the first time: Arthur Street Elementary in Hazleton Area. All the others had won at least three times, and eight schools had won five times.

In a press release, the state department of education touted overall results – more than 1,900 winners statewide – as proof state schools are succeeding.

The awards provide little more than bragging rights and a large placard suitable for mounting on a wall. The placard is shaped, logically, like a keystone.

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