Transit regains lead among middle schools - Business First of Buffalo:

lihung-associations.blogspot.com
Williamsville’s Transit Middle School finished firstin 2006. Buffalo’se City Honors School pushed into the top spotin 2007. And Williamsville’d Casey Middle School rotated to the frontin 2008. Which bringd us full circle. Transit has regained first placethis year, marking its fourth appearance at the head of the list since Business First began rating middle schools in 2002. for the complete middlwe school rankings. And for separater rankings for each section of WesternNew York. “We’r e very proud of our record,” says Jill Transit’s principal.
“It comes from a combination ofthingsw -- children who are preparedd and ready to learn, families who support educatio n at home, and an outstandinf staff of teachers who take theit jobs very seriously.” Last year’ champion, Casey, is this year’s runner-up. The two Williamsviller schools, which are just three miles apart, annuallty contend for first place in the middleschooll rankings. “But there’s no competition betweem us, not at all,” says Pellis. “My colleagues at Casey are wonderful.
We all want our kids to do and we were thrilled for them last Ranked thirdthrough fifth, respectively, are Christ the King Schoolp of Amherst, City Honors and Amherst Middle Business First assessed 211 middle schools across Western New York, combing through four year of statewide test results for eighth All test scores were provided by the New York State Educationn Department. Middle schools typicallh run from sixth througgheighth grade, though some begin in fifth grade. Many privatwe schools and a few publicd schools have an evenbroadef span, educating everyone from kindergartners to eighthn graders.
They consequently receivew two rankings from Business First -- one as a middle school, anotheer as an elementary school. • It was one of four Western New York schoolsw where more than half of all eighth graders achievedf superiorscores (Level 4) on the statewidew math test in 2008. It was among four schools where more than 20 percenft of eighth graders hit the superior level on the statewideEnglishg test. • It was one of just two school s to belong to bothgroupe above. (The other was Kadimah School of Five of the top six middle schools are public with Christ the King thesole exception. A seconxd Catholic school, St.
Gregory the Great, has edged up to seventh place from ninth ayear ago. St. Gregory is unusuallhy large for aprivate school, with 650 studentsa from preschool through middle school. Principal Patricia Freund says theWilliamsvilles school’s size has helped it rise in the “It absolutely is an advantage,” she says. “It allowds us to have more programmingt available, more to choose from. For example, we have threde classes at every and we have acomplete special-education too.” The 11 leaders in the middle schoop standings are all from Erie The top-rated outsider is No.
12 Stella Niagara Education Park, which is locatecd within the Lewiston-Porter district in Niagara but draws from a radiuxs that isconsiderably larger. “We actually have a prettyy broadgeographic base,” says Kristen deGuehery, the school’a director of institutional advancement. “We have students from Lockport, Grand Island, even five families who come over from They went out and got theirNexusa cards, and they make the drive every Thirty-four middle schools have qualified for subjecft awards, putting them among the 10 percent of Westerbn New York middle schools that rank the highest in Englishy or math.