Teachers from three East Cobb schools have been awarded grant money for lab ideas pitched at the Cobb County School District’s annual “Cobb Tank” competition.
A total of $71,00 in grant money was handed out to teachers at 10 schools in the district. They include Zakary Jezequel and Amy Morris at Hightower Trail Middle School (above, all photos submitted by CCSD), who will receive $6,595 to develop a project in which students will race toward a healthy lifestyle using spin bikes.
At Kell High School, English teacher Lauren Forbes’ grant of $1,600 is for an “Escape from the Ordinary Classroom” program, as her students will take a true literary escape in their studies.
Dickerson Middle School teacher Lawton Willingham is receiving a Cobb Tank grant worth nearly $11,000 for a music prototyping and programming program.
The program is modeled after the TV program “Shark Tank.” All recipients pitched their “Cobb Tank” ideas at CCSD headquarters. Per a CCSD release, here’s how the competition went:
Through lively, creative, and effective presentations, many involving their students, the teachers appealed beneath TV camera lights for the sharks to fund their ideas to enhance classroom instruction.
A panel of judges, or “sharks,” included several school district teachers and administrators, including assistant superintendent David Chiprany, a former principal at East Cobb Middle School and Wheeler High School, as well as business and community leaders.
A video presentation of the entire competition will be made available later this month on Cobb edTV, the school district’s cable access channel.
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CCRPI scores at Timber Ridge Elementary are up almost 18 points from 2015.
Seven East Cobb schools surpassed the maximum scores in the latest CCRPI test results released Thursday by the Cobb County School District.
The CCRPI—which stands for College and Career Ready Performance Index—is a state accountability measure that gauges overall achievement results and how schools are preparing students for the next level of education.
The CCRPI is formulated on a 100-point scale as follows:
Student progress totaling 40 percent (Milestones results from year to year);
The remaining 10 percent related to closing the achievement gap (between the 25 percent lowest-performing students in a school or district compared to all Georgia students).
At the elementary school level, Timber Ridge (100.5), Murdock and Sope Creek (100.3 each) led all of Cobb, earning what’s referred to as “challenge” points in such categories as improved results among subgroups of students and innovative measures at a school, the so-called Exceeding the Bar (ETB) score.
Three Cobb middle schools, all in East Cobb, also exceeded the 100 mark: Dickerson (103), Dodgen (101) and Hightower Trail (101.5).
At the high school level, Walton’s score of 101.1 led the county as well. The high school achievement score includes graduation rates.
Cobb’s overall CCRPI score of 82.9 was higher than the statewide average of 75. For the high-scoring schools in East Cobb, those results were among the best in Georgia.
Timber Ridge’s score of 100.5 not only was a gain of 5.8 percent from 2016, but it’s one of the highest in the state (Lake Windward, in north Fulton County, topped out at 104.5). Timber Ridge scored 47.1 on achievement, a perfect 40 in progress, and earned 3.4 challenge points.
In a statement, Jeffrey Castle, the Timber Ridge principal, attributed his school’s results to “a supportive parent community, engaged students and motivated, highly-capable teachers who have the education of the whole child as their main priority.
“Our focus last year was on progress, with implementation of computer-based reading intervention programs, and on intentional delivery of rigorous instruction and congruency among curriculum, assessments and instruction.”
All but two of the 21 East Cobb elementary schools had higher scores than 2016, but the drops by Kincaid and Sedalia Park were slight.
The biggest jump was at Powers Ferry, with a score of 72.3 representing a 14.5 percent increase from a year ago, the fourth largest boost among Cobb elementary schools.
Although the achievement score at Powers Ferry was 26 and its progress was at 37, the school reported a score of 8.3 (out of 10) in closing the achievement gap.
In a release, Cobb schools said that measuring year-to-year progress in 2017 is not exact because of some minor changes to how the CCRPI is formulated. At all levels, science and social studies were removed as indicators in the progress and achievement gap categories.
Elementary Schools
2017 Score
Change from 2016
All of Cobb ES
80.5
+4.8
Addison
93.0
+5.3
Bells Ferry
89.3
+7.5
Blackwell
86.2
+6.8
Brumby
67.8
+7.1
Davis
87.5
+2.4
East Side
96.3
+4.5
Eastvalley
93.5
+5.8
Garrison Mill
96.8
+1.5
Keheley
88.7
+2.6
Kincaid
89.9
-0.9
Mt. Bethel
96.4
+1.4
Mountain View
99.7
+7.8
Murdock
100.3
+6.2
Nicholson
88.5
+11.2
Powers Ferry
72.3
+14.5
Rocky Mount
97.4
+5.0
Sedalia Park
68.9
-0.1
Shallowford Falls
88.0
+1.0
Sope Creek
100.3
+6.1
Timber Ridge
100.5
+5.8
Tritt
96.8
+6.0
Middle Schools
2017 Score
Change from 2016
All of Cobb MS
82.0
+2.2
Daniell
77.9
-2.1
Dickerson
103.0
+4.3
Dodgen
101.0
+1.4
East Cobb
79.2
+3.6
Hightower Trail
100.5
+2.9
Mabry
91.3
0.0
McCleskey
82.5
-0.3
Simpson
89.9
+3.2
High Schools
2017 Score
Change from 2016
All of Cobb HS
87.3
-0.9
Kell
85.8
-6.4
Lassiter
99.9
0.7
Pope
92.9
-6.5
Sprayberry
86.7
-2.0
Walton
101.2
-1.2
Wheeler
90.3
+1.7
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