Liberty Common High School Earns State’s Highest ACT Scores Second Year in a Row
Fort Collins, Colorado (PRWEB) August 16, 2013 -- The Colorado Department of Education today released performance data comparing the state’s public high school composite scores on the 2013 ACT college-entrance exam. The State of Colorado requires the ACT be administered to all public-school juniors in the state.
For the second year in a row, Liberty Common High School, chartered in the Poudre School District, received the highest composite score in the state with a 27.5 out of a possible 36. School principal Bob Schaffer said, “These scores are a reflection of a solid classical, college-preparatory curriculum we’ve built atop the powerful Core Knowledge Curriculum we use in grades K through eight.”
The results also show that Liberty’s Class of 2014 earned the state’s highest composite ACT math score since Colorado first began requiring all high-school juniors to take the ACT exam.
The soaring score marks the second year Liberty’s students have taken ACT. The school opened in 2010 with sophomores as the leading class. Liberty’s first senior class graduated this past school year.
The school’s Board chairman, Bill Werst said Liberty’s extraordinary scores are due in part to parental involvement. “This high academic achievement in Liberty Common High School’s eleventh-grade year is a strong testimony to the parental support the school has received for the past seventeen years since Liberty Common School was founded.”
“The top ACT scores of Liberty Common and the other charter schools across the State of Colorado demonstrates the benefits Colorado is receiving from school choice and parent-led school boards,” said Werst.
The high performance of Liberty’s juniors indicates the strength of the foundation Liberty students build in their formative years. “Year after year Liberty Common Elementary students flourish. We attribute this to the solid and coherent curriculum our teachers provide,” said Liberty Common School’s elementary principal Casey Churchill.
“Teachers work together discussing the best way to organize content taught in each grade level so that students have prior background knowledge to move to the next unit. It is combination of both this rich content and the required skills taught that provide the students with the necessary background of knowledge to be literate and to learn more. By the time our students reach our high school, they are literate and have knowledge to achieve,” added Churchill.
According to Liberty’s Assistant Principal Torgun Lovely, the philosophy and rigor of the entire Liberty Common School program pushes students through high expectations. “Hats off to last year’s junior class,” exclaimed Lovely. “They were motivated to outperform their predecessors (the class of 2013) on the ACT exam, which was no small feat. The scores from the year before were the best in the state, and they were able to outdo that accomplishment by 0.1 of a point, which was again the best average composite score in the state. Well done class of 2014!”
Liberty Common High School is a tuition-free, college-preparatory, public, charter school. Children of all Colorado residents are eligible to attend. The school offers a classical, liberal-arts curriculum accentuating English, language usage, foreign language, history, the arts and economics.
The school emphasizes high-level achievement in math, science and engineering. Liberty’s Latin and economics programs begin in kindergarten and continue through high school.
“Our students and their families deserve the most credit for these outstanding scores,” Schaffer said. “Liberty’s instructional staff, from kindergarten through high school, is comprised of true professionals who are legitimate content experts and highly skilled educators.
“Our school’s culture is built by instructors who devote their careers to doing whatever it takes to boost achievement for each and every Liberty student,” added Schaffer.
Bob Schaffer, Liberty Common High School, http://www.libertycommon.org/high-school/, 970-672-5506, [email protected]
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