by Conner Murray

Clovis West has been accustomed to the flood of awards it receives each year honoring student academics, but this is the first year it received the California Business for Education Excellence (CBEE) Foundation Scholar Honor Roll Award.

CBEE sponsors two honor roll awards: the Star and Scholar. The Star Award, which Nelson Elementary and five other CUSD schools received, is given to schools with higher levels of socio-economically disadvantaged students who continue to raise the bar through educational achievements.
The Scholar Award, given to 13 CUSD schools and multiple Clovis West area elementary schools, is presented to schools where student success is seen across all student subgroups.

“These schools are the bright spots of hope in efforts to raise student academic achievement and close persistent achievement gaps,” executive director of CBEE on its website Kirk Clark said.

This is also the first year in the awards history that a CUSD high school has been honored with the Honor Roll Award. Receiving the award was partly the result of Clovis West’s increasing ethnic diversity, but mostly because of its continuing success in the classroom and its improved proficiency on both the math and English portions of the CAHSEE.

Clovis West has made these improvements possible by the way it works with students.

“Each year, the school is assigned specific targets for each subgroup, and here at Clovis West, we work very strategically to maximize the progress of students within these subgroups,”  deputy principal Eimear O’Farrell said.

Clovis West has also taken a different approach toward the teaching, or in this case learning, process.

“We continually ask the question: ‘Which students are learning, and who is not?’ and then, ‘What are we doing to make sure they learn?’” O’Farrell said, “From that standpoint, a host of programs have been implemented that are all targeted toward the maximization of learning for all students.”

These programs range from freshman advisory, which focuses on their career goals, to AVID, Link Crew and other academic support classes.

“We hold ourselves accountable for the learning of our students and are constantly examining our practices to increase student learning,” O’Farrell said,   “This award is a validation of our efforts and a confirmation that our systems are succeeding.”