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OGDEN — Kudos to Dee Elementary School. The State Office of Education has just released statewide language arts scores and the biggest success story took place there.
Last year, the school ranked dead last in the state's reading test scores. A third of its students were reading at grade level. But one year year later, 75 percent of its kids are reading at grade level.
How did the school do it? It all centers around the children — individual students like Noelia Castro. Last year, Castro struggled to complete a sentence. Now she is reading entire books.
A key player involved in Noelia's remarkable progress is her volunteer reading tutor Cheryl Hoth.
"It's a feel-good opportunity," Hoth said. "You come away and you just feel so good about what you are doing."
Hoth was part of the small army of Read Today volunteers that descended on Dee Elementary last year. The LDS church recruited the volunteers and AmeriCorp trained them. Dee Elementary also has a peer tutoring program.
"Not only did they help them with these sight words, but they built these relationships. It has a huge impact," said Julie Applegate, a teacher at Dee.
Tutoring is just one component of Dee's remarkable turnaround. Teachers also played a crucial role.
"They really targeted their lesson plan on what the students were expected to know (and) shared students to meet their needs most effectively," said principal Sandra Jolovich-Motes.
The Ogden School District transferred Jolovich-Moltes with the mandate to improve student performance.
"Every single morning I would remind the students our goal is to no longer be the lowest performing school in the state," she said. "We want to become one of the highest performing school, and to do that each and every one of (them) must meet or exceed (their) goal."
Dee Elementary not only achieved the best year-to-year improvement in the state, but also one of the best in the country. The school has been working with the University of Virginia through a special leadership program. The program provides training for low performing schools and Dee's turnaround is the best it's seen.
"They have created the yellow jersey which is the University of Virginia t-shirt and they have mailed one to my entire staff," Jolovich-Moltes said.
She says the entire school is excited that Dee is now being looked at for its achievements instead of its low ranking.
"No longer do I want to hear as an excuse, ‘It is where I live socially, economically. I don't have the advantages of everyone else.' But you believe in yourself and believe in what you can become working hard and you can achieve it," she said.
What's almost as amazing is that a year ago, five schools in Ogden were on the state's bottom 10 list. Today none of them are on that list. We thought that was reason to celebrate. So Monday, KSL and several community partners, including United Way, Ogden School District, the YMCA, AmeriCorps, Prosperity 2020, and the Deseret News will host a party for the City of Ogden, its families and the students.