Hoover students greatly exceed state averages for college readiness, superintendent says

Students in Hoover City Schools are substantially exceeding state averages on college readiness tests, Superintendent Kathy Murphy told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today.

Instead of giving her typical chamber speech on the state of the school system, Murphy gave the 160 or so people in attendance at the Hoover Country Club a more brief snapshot of how the district’s students are performing. She decided to save her state-of-the-school-system speech until the Jan. 16 Hoover Board of Education meeting due to time limitations at the chamber luncheon, she said.

Last year’s senior class at Hoover and Spain Park high schools scored 16 percent higher than the state average on a college readiness index put together by the ACT testing agency, Murphy said.

In a subject-by-subject comparison, the Hoover district’s Class of 2017 was 24 percent more ready for a college English composition class than the average student in the state, 21 percent more ready for a college algebra class, 20 percent more ready for a college biology class and 19 percent more ready for a college social science course, Murphy said.

Regarding actual ACT scores, the average composite score for the Hoover district’s Class of 2017 (the last time those students took the test) was 22.3, or 3.1 points higher than the state average, Murphy said.

Hoover’s Class of 2017 also posted average scores of 22.8 in reading (3.1 points than the state average), 22.6 in English (3.7 points higher than the state average), 22.1 in science (2.7 points higher than the state average) and 21.2 in math (2.8 points higher than the state average, she said.

However, Murphy said she is less interested in how Hoover compares with other students in Alabama and more interested in seeing them compete nationally and internationally.

She was proud to see the Hoover High School Scholars Bowl team place fourth at a prestigious competition at Harvard University recently, she said. That competition featured some of the top-ranked teams in the nation, she said.

Advanced Placement courses

The Hoover school district offers 27 Advanced Placement classes, ranging from calculus and physics to art appreciation, studio art, music theory and foreign languages, Murphy said. Last year, students in the district took 1,988 AP exams in an attempt to earn college credit, which is an increase of 555 exams from three years ago, she said. There also was a 25 percent increase in the number of students taking AP exams, she said.

“Our students are willing to take it to the next level,” Murphy said. “They’re willing to engage in rigorous learning.”

The percentage of last year’s seniors from Hoover and Spain Park high schools who graduated within four years of starting high school was 92.7 percent, Murphy said. School district leaders would like to see that number at 100 percent but are proud of that graduation rate, she said.

Murphy also shared that Hoover City Schools recently broke the 14,000 mark in terms of the number of students enrolled. As of Wednesday, Nov. 17, there were 14,040 students enrolled in Hoover’s 10 elementary schools, one intermediate school, three middle schools and two high schools, she said.

Attendance and discipline

The average attendance rate is 97 percent, and there was only one day so far in this school year where fewer than 95 percent of students were present, and that was the Aug. 21, the day of the solar eclipse, Murphy said. The attendance rate that day was 92 percent, she said.

That’s good because it shows “students are willing to come to school, and they’re willing to be a part of that learning process,” the superintendent said.

Perhaps even more impressive is that the school district has only 24 discipline referrals on the average day. In some school districts where she has served, there were that many discipline referrals by the first break time, she said.

Discipline issues are so important because when teachers are struggling with a lot of disruptive students, it impacts the focus on teaching and learning, she said.

Overall, the Hoover school district is in fine shape, Murphy said.

“Do I believe that we’re walking on water and we do not have challenges in front of us? I’m not foolish,” she said. “We have plenty of opportunities. We have lots of challenges in front of us.”

But she and other school officials continue to work on strategic plans for improvement in the coming years, she said.

Murphy invited people to attend the Jan. 16 school board meeting to hear more details about the status of the school system.

This article was updated at 8:56 a.m. to correct the amount of the increase in the number of Advanced Placement exams taken by students in Hoover City Schools last year, compared to three years ago. It was an increase of 555 exams.