PAST BLUE RIBBON WINNERS

2011 Richland Elementary School, West Memphis

2010 Douglass School, Memphis, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, Cordova

2008 John P. Freeman Optional School, Memphis 2005 Delano Elementary School, Memphis 2004, Keystone Elementary School, Memphis percent, a reflection largely of a migration back home as people lose their jobs and move in with family. Still, Jeter’s scores have steadily risen. “Home lives are not tested,” Ashcraft says. “It doesn’t matter to me that your mother is not there for you. I’ll be there for you,” she says emphatically.

In math alone, Jeter — with a student body of 200 and average class size of 16 — went from 58 percent proficient in 2010 to 86 hitting the proficient level last spring.

“People always ask me if this could be done in a larger school. Best practices are best practices,” says principal Paulette Bond. “I think it could.”

She jokes that Jeter wouldn’t be what it is without the conference table in the room next to her office. She’s only half teasing.

Bond convenes sessions whenever the school needs its collective brain power. She provides snacks, closes the door and waits to see what the faculty produce.

“It makes you understand how important you are,” Bond says. “If they come to me with an idea and get behind it and lead, and it works, I give them that power.”

Math was the subject of a fourth-grade powwow two years ago. In the brainstorming, teachers decided to award make -believe money for every question students got right in their weekly assignments.

They made paper purses and wallets and let the students accumulate the loot on erasable debit cards protected by a fictitious PIN so other students wouldn’t know how much “money” another had.

And when the crowd at PTA meetings started to dwindle last year, “we came up with Technology Night,” James said.

“Lots of our parents don’t have Internet or know how to use it. But the students do.”

Staff put students in charge and routed parents through technology workshops, including how to use portals set up for them to see their children’s grades.

“We had to think of a strategy to make sure we got the students here. If they were in charge, they had to come,” Bond says, pleased with the coup.

The school was also jammed with parents. Students felt good about being the teachers, and parents’ use of the schools’ online tools increased.

This year, Jeter faculty are co -teaching, allowing the school’s whiz writing teacher, for instance, to influence all the students who must take the state writing test.

“When the teachers came to me, I asked them what the research was,” Bond says.

“I don’t intervene because those teachers are experienced. I empower them to do what they need to do to reach the students.”

— Jane Roberts: (901) 529-2512