September 15, 2015 admin

Brick House Achievement Award: Jackson Junior High School

We are excited to announce that Jackson Junior High School will receive the Brick House Achievement Award for building an outstanding culture for student success and improved learning. This elite award is named after the book Brick House: How to Defeat Student Apathy by Building a Brick House Culture, by Danny Hill. Danny is a nationally recognized author and school consultant who has a network of hundreds of schools across the nation. Danny states, “The thing that sets Jackson Junior High apart from other schools is their relentless approach to improving each year. They are never satisfied.”

Students at Jackson Junior High in Missouri have completed every assignment for several years. The outstanding staff at Jackson, however, realized that completing assignments was just the beginning. After all, improved learning for all students was always their goal, not simply compliance. “You need to do your work,” and “You need to bring up your grades,” changed to, “Learn the standards.” All staff members have been filtering out busy work for the past three years and improving the quality of every single assignment.

Jackson’s “dedication to education” has paid off with scores in all assessments showing increase. State assessment data was released this summer and results have been “fresh and exciting.” EOC scores in ELA and Algebra 1 went up dramatically with an increase of 16.7% and 12.6% respectively, as well as, Geometry and Biology staying consistently strong. A Brick House culture build starts with defeating student apathy using the ICU list of missing assignments. It is a continuous build, not a quick fix or initiative, totally focused on student learning.

Does defeating student apathy result in improved student achievement? Of course!