By Sarrah Peters
News Editor
On a recent ranking of nationwide schools, a local school placed in the top 100 elementary schools in Alabama. John S. Jones Elementary was rated 79th in the state.
The rankings were performed by a research website called Niche.com. Niche uses community reviews and opinions with hard data, like standardized test scores. The website has scores for each factor that contributes to the school’s success. These scores, weighted to importance, are used to calculate a grade for each school. Niche rates more than 120,000 schools nationwide.
“There’s a part of me that was shocked when I found out [about Niche’s ranking], but another part of me wasn’t,” said John S. Jones Principal Tanya Clark. “We have a lot of great teachers and great students.”
According to Clark, the community and parent participation has helped the school succeed.
Some of the data for the Niche rating gathered through student and parent surveys, which John S. Jones Elementary students and parents recently filled out because the school was getting re-accredited.
Another result of the surveys was John S. Jones being named as a ‘Speak Up Loud and Clear’ school “for listening to stakeholders’ views on education and digital learning” in 2014. Project Tomorrow/Speak Up selected John S. Jones Elementary as one of 250 schools to receive the national distinction out of the 9,000 schools that participated in the Speak Up surveys. Other local schools chosen for this award include Glencoe Middle, Hokes Bluff Middle, Gadsden Middle and R.A. Mitchell Elementary. Twenty-four schools were given this honor in Alabama.
For more information visit tomorrow.org/speakup and k12.niche.com/rankings.