BURLINGTON — Boone County Schools have had a reputation as a good system. Now, according to the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, it's official.

        “We did extremely well,” Bryan Blavatt, superintendent of Boone County Schools, said of the ratings. “We are the highest-performing large school district in the state.”

        The district has 11 elementary, four middle and three high schools.

        “All but two schools exceeded their goals,” Mr. Blavatt said.

        The two, Burlington and Stephens elementaries, failed to receive a “meets goal,” instead receiving “progressing/novice” ratings.

        That means that, although the schools' CATS assessment index score, released Thursday, was near or at the goal established by the state, too many of the schools' students scored in the “Novice,” or lowest category, on the Kentucky Core Content Test.

        “Both of them improved significantly, though,” Mr. Blavatt said.

        Burlington received the same score it did last year, a 73.6 on a 140-point scale.

        The arts and humanities score was a 53 out of 140, improving by 12 points from last year. However, the reading score dropped from a 91 to an 80 out of 140.

        Stephens improved almost four points, from a 73.8 to a 77.6. The reading score jumped from an 81 to a 92 and the arts and humanities score increased 16 points to 61.

        “I'm extremely pleased. We grew by 700 students in our district this year,” said Mr. Blavatt, noting that some Northern Kentucky school districts don't even have 700 students.

        Kelly Elementary scored significantly higher than any other school in the district, with an overall score of 91. Ockerman Elementary followed with an 85.

        Not only did Kelly receive the highest district score, it improved the most, jumping 14 points.

        The school's writing score soared from a 57 to 75, the social studies score from 79 to 98 and science from 84 to 103.8. But the practical living score slid from 96 to 77.

        “We're not sure why that went down, but we're going to try to find out why,” said Bill Whitaker, principal at Kelly.

        “It could be because the kids are more isolated.”

        Kelly serves students living in Petersburg, Belleview Bottoms and the rural areas surrounding Big Bone Lick State Park.

        Mr. Blavatt said people often blame poor performance on socioeconomics, claiming that lower-income children don't have as much of an opportunity to learn. “Socioeconomics — that's a crock when you look at Kelly,” he said. “The single biggest factor there is people are beginning to believe that all children can learn.”

        Mr. Blavatt said he expects the schools to continue to improve.

        “Now we're not as concerned with comparing ourselves with the commonwealth but rather the worldwide scale.”
       

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