How Rigdon Road Elementary aced the CRCT
School is only one in district where 100 percent of students passed test
Phyllis Jones has heard the talk.
In the past, the principal has led her school, Rigdon Road Elementary, to a top 10 ranking among Georgia's elementary schools by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
And recently, when local results of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test were released, Rigdon Road was the only one of 35 Muscogee County School District elementary schools to have 100 percent success.
In other words, not a single Rigdon Road student in third or fifth grade failed reading or math.
Jones said people remark that a school consisting of about 220 black children, more than 70 percent of whom qualify for free lunches, couldn't possibly make those kind of scores without some extra help.
"Yes," she said, "I've heard that we must be cheating. It used to bother me but it doesn't anymore. I know one thing -- Rigdon Road is usually the last to get anything and if any school was going to get a copy of the test, it wouldn't be us. Teachers can't help during the test, either."
She said the only extra thing Rigdon Road students get is attention.
"I know what good instruction looks like," she said.
Teacher at heart
Whenever her grandmother went to the grocery store, Jones would get a Golden Storybook. The young girl would then add it to her personal library from which she would check out reading materials to other children in the neighborhood. There was no cash involved for the borrowers, but there was a price to pay.
"They had to play school," Jones said, laughing.
The principal at Rigdon Road for 18 years, Jones said she never wanted to be anything but a teacher.
"I was always the one in the class whom my teachers would ask to help the struggling students," she said. "I couldn't think of anything I could become that would be more important."
And she never got discouraged, not even when she accidently set a trash can on fire in science class her first year teaching at Benning Hills Elementary.
"Even after becoming a principal, I've continued to teach adult education," said the 55-year-old Jones, whose motto is "Learning never stops."
But she said working with adults is not really the same as working with children.
"Sometimes, I'll go sit in a class to observe and just wish I could stay all day," she said.
Through the years, the Alabama native and daughter of a United Methodist minister has been one of the most honored educators in Columbus. A Georgia Senate resolution honored her for getting the Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Award. She has been named an "Unsung Hero" by the Congressional Black Caucus Spouses. Her school is a Georgia School of Excellence and has been a National Blue Ribbon Award winner for the No Child Left Behind Act.
Making the grade
As for her students, all come from the Rigdon Road zone. This is no academy or magnet school.
"Some of our children may be disadvantaged," she said, "but their minds are not disadvantaged. Just because they are poor doesn't mean they can't learn. Expectations are high here for the students and for the people teaching them. We accept no excuses."