By Dave Fopay

CHARLESTON - It's a year-long, school-wide effort to help students at Charleston Middle School get ready for state tests each year, the school's teachers say.

Lessons in class combine with incentives and rewards, aided by what the students learned before they got to middle school, lead to CMS doing well on the tests the last several years, they say. State officials recently recognized the school's results with an award that's based on the test results.

CMS received the "Academic Excellence Award" from the Illinois State Board of Education because of how the school did meeting federal testing requirements overall and how students scored in reading and math.

In addition to the preparation, students hear that the state tests might not result in a grade but do bring a personal outcome, such as affecting what classes they can take in high school, CMS reading teacher Patti Murphy said.

"We stress that there is a high stake for them," Murphy said. "Decisions are made about them based on those results."

The state award goes to schools that meet the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law for the last two years. Another requirement is that schools with students in up to eighth grade had to have at least 90 percent of their students meet or exceed the testing standards in reading and math.

CMS has actually met AYP the last six years and didn't meet the mark the two years before that because students in subgroups, namely economically disadvantaged and disabled, didn't score high enough. The school's overall test scores surpassed the AYP minimum for those years.

The math scores both topped 90 percent from 2006 to 2008 as well, and the reading scores also exceeded 90 percent in 2008 and were just below that the two years before.

Murphy and math teacher Eric Bright both said part of the school's approach is to have lessons throughout the school year that are similar to the problems the students will encounter on the tests.

"We don't take time out two weeks before the test and try to cram," Bright said. "I push the students and if they don't understand, that's good. We want to handle those challenges."

Murphy also noted how teachers in "non-test" subjects incorporate reading and math into their lessons. Those teachers also plan activities to give students breaks during test time, which comes up again next week, and parents make sure students are in school and provide snacks and other things that help the students test well, she said.

"It kind of becomes a whole-school effort," Murphy said.

Students also know the format of the test and have learned test-taking strategies "by the time they get to us," Murphy added. Bright and CMS Principal Brad Oakley also credited the district's elementary schools for preparing the students for middle school.

Oakley also said the middle school method, with teachers working in "teams" to plan overall curriculum for both seventh and eighth grade, helps the students by making them feel like they're part of a group.

"The teams are able to take care of the students' needs," he said. "I think that leads to our doing well on the tests."