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Russellville Ready

Russellville Independent High School senior Luci Suiter gives her panel review presentation to local business leaders, district administrators and a board member.

Russellville students demonstrate they’re Ready for college, workforce

Kentucky School Advocate
June 2018

By Matt McCarty
Staff writer

As thousands of seniors across the state received their diplomas this spring, one western Kentucky district was wrapping up the first year of a new program to ensure its graduates are “Russellville Ready” for college or the workforce.

Russellville Ready is a year-long program with 12 facets around the three main topics of college, career and citizenship. Only two aspects relate directly to GPA and ACT scores, which Russellville Independent Superintendent Bart Flener said are important, “but we know there’s many other things that we need to prepare students for so they can actually be successful when they leave our school district and face the world.”

The first year of the Russellville Ready program was a pilot and was voluntary for the seniors. All of the seniors participated on aspects of the program throughout the year, and about 20 of the district’s 75 seniors opted to do the culminating event, a final panel review presentation.

Russellville High School Principal Ben Bruni said he could see “significant growth” in the seniors who participated from start to finish.

This poster shows the categories that students must complete in order to be “Russellville Ready.”

To be “Russellville Ready,” a senior had to reach a required score on the 12 areas, complete the panel review presentation and participate in the Deep Dive Day program.

For Flener, who is completing his first year as Russellville’s superintendent, the Russellville Ready program was 25 years in the making. That was when he was a middle school teacher at Eminence Independent and the school’s eighth graders had to demonstrate to a panel that they were prepared for high school.

“I watched them do that and I saw what it did for students. It really was a great learning vehicle for them,” Flener said. “I said to myself, ‘If I ever get a chance to lead a school district, I would love to see our seniors do that.’”

In addition to Eminence Independent, Flener said he also borrowed some ideas from a similar Danville Independent program.

Year One
During the school year, Russellville’s seniors took an emotional intelligence test, a strengths finder assessment, an American Citizenship exam and a digital literacy exam, among others.

The students covered American citizenship during the first nine weeks, digital citizenship during the second nine weeks and financial citizenship the third nine weeks. The final nine weeks focused on community citizenship.

During the three Deep Dive Days, students went off campus to collaborate in groups. On the first day, the groups were given a topic to discuss and then they had to give a five-minute informative presentation on the topic. The second day included a persuasive presentation in which the group had to pick a side.

On the third Deep Dive Day, the students had oral debates as part of a 16-group tournament, with a champion crowned.

Flener said the three days not only gave him a chance to get know the seniors, but also to see how they would work together in groups because “collaboration is a key skill that employers want.”

Russellville senior Tajada Hampton said working in groups during the Deep Dive Days was beneficial. “I’ve always been a team player but I learned what my strengths and my weaknesses were while working with the group,” she said.

The program culminated with the optional panel review presentation. (See related story)

Going forward
Beginning next year, the program will be mandatory for all seniors. The district also plans to add the panel review component for all exit grades, which will include students in fifth and eighth grades.

Next year, seniors will earn academic credit for the program as it will tie in with senior English. Flener said organizers realized this year that students need some class time to work on the Russellville Ready components and not be required to work on all of it outside of the school day.

Russellville Independent High School senior Emma McReynolds looks

at her PowerPoint on the screen during her panel review presentation.

The district will also have a college/career readiness coach next year. A building on campus will be renovated into a sixth-grade academy next year. Part of the facility will be an area called the senior experience.

“We’re going to be able to keep our seniors together more. Our college/career coach is really going to work on a lot of these portable skills,” said Cassie Reding, Russellville’s literacy coach.

Bruni said the Russellville Ready program is where education is headed.

“I think if we’re going to produce students that really do integrate into the next level of their lives, these are the things we really have to get right,” he said.

“Our ambitious goal is that all students leave Russellville ready and that all students are exposed to the opportunity to refine these skills and to really fine tune them as they go through the program,” Bruni said. “One of the advantages of being a school system our size is that we can look at every student on an individual basis, have a real intimate knowledge of where they need help and where they’re really excelling and build off those things.”

Reding said the Russellville Ready concept would also work for schools with a larger graduating class provided they had “the right structures, systems in place to make it work.”

“It’s a lot of planning involved up front but I definitely think it’s doable,” she said.

Board view: Program not just for college-bound students

When the Russellville Ready program becomes a requirement next year, it’s important for the district to enhance it so students “want to do the program and not just because it’s a requirement,” said Russellville Independent school board member Joe Sparks.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re growing the kids that need to be employment-ready into this program because there’s tremendous amount of worth in it for those kids, and it’s not just for a college-bound student,” he said.

Russellville Independent school board member Joe Sparks checks

off a box on the rubric scoring for one of the panel review presenters.

Sparks said when Superintendent Bart Flener brought the idea to Russellville, the school board supported it because they anticipate it being a requirement from the state.

The program, he said, gives students “the opportunity to learn to speak in front of people where it counts, basically, just for them, and it’s not like it is in the business world when you get up and make a speech in front of a group of people that may impact your future employment.”

As a second-year board member, Sparks said being on the panel was also a benefit for him.

“For me it was good because I haven’t had the interaction with the students as a board member for many years,” he said. “My son graduated from Russellville High School in 1997. My wife was an employee of Russellville High School in the guidance office for 17 years so I had been around the school system in that (capacity), but had not been around these students. And just to see the degree that our students have and desire to learn, desire to display what they’ve learned, is tremendous.”