Shelby County is top-performing county school system in state, superintendent tells chamber

The Shelby County school system is one of only 16 school districts in the state to receive an A on the most recent report cards given out by the state, Superintendent Randy Fuller told the South Shelby Chamber of Commerce today.

That’s out of 138 school systems in total, Fuller told the group at its monthly luncheon at First Baptist Church of Columbiana.

Shelby County was the only county system to receive an A, and (with 20,300 students) it was by far the largest system to get an A, he said.

“Our students, our parents and our leaders and teachers in our schools have done a wonderful job of getting us to this point,” Fuller said.

Shelby County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. “The reason they move to Shelby County is because they’re getting away and coming to a location with good schools,” Fuller said.

The average composite score on the ACT college prep test in Shelby County is 21, which ties Shelby County for fifth in the state, along with Arab, Auburn, Cullman, Hartselle, Hoover, Huntsville and Winfield, Fuller said.

Mountain Brook is first, with an average composite score of 26, followed by Vestavia Hills at 25 and Homewood and Madison at 23.

Those other school systems are smaller school systems with large amounts of money, Fuller said. Shelby County is the only county system in the top 12, he said. “We’re very proud of that.”

Ninety-five percent of Shelby County students graduate high school, compared to the state average of 89 percent, and all of Shelby County’s public high schools are above the state average, Fuller said.

Shelby County accomplishes this even though 14 of its 31 schools have at least 40 percent of their students at or below the poverty level, he said. Those schools with higher poverty levels have some of the highest-performing scores and success rates in the system, he added.

Since 2001, Shelby County has had 82 National Merit Scholars, 20 Presidential Scholars and one Truman Scholar, Fuller said.

It’s taken a lot of hard work, organization and collaborative spirit to get the school system to where it is today, he said.

“Every person in our school system in every department, every school strives to be a model for excellence in education,” he said.

School officials are very intentional about trying to manage growth, continuously improve and develop the highest quality of education and partnerships with families and communities, he said.

He thanked the chambers of commerce for partnering with the school system in so many ways.

School system leadership teams each year develop about three to seven goals in about a dozen areas and follow up on those goals at the end of the year, he said. The school system also routinely trains its school board members, principals, assistant principals and lead teachers on how to efficiently operate a school system, he said.

These efforts have led to dynamic changes in the school system over the past 10 years, Fuller said.

In the classroom, teachers are assessing students’ progress at least three times a year to try to move students to the next level of achievement, he said. A new initiative this past year has been to get students to take ownership of their own learning.

Students are keeping notebooks with goals about areas in which to improve and leading conferences in which they share with their parents how they are doing and what’s important to them, Fuller said.

“The parents leave with tears in their eyes, and it’s been something special,” he said.

He recently attended his 6-year-old grandson’s conference and heard his grandson talk about his goals. “I could not believe he could do that,” he said. His grandson and other kindergartners talked about Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People” and being pro-active, he said.

“It’s a seismic shift in Shelby County schools,” Fuller said.

Shelby County school officials have decided that no matter what happens in Montgomery with the Legislature or in Washington with education legislation, “we are going to take care of our kids in our schools regardless of what they do,” Fuller said. “Whatever they throw at us, we can take it, and we can make good out of it. We’re going to continue to do the right things for our kids and help them.”