Our front-page story this issue is “Heritage High Strives for Daily Growth,” which discusses the school’s grade from the state and the contributing factors that have resulted in a less-than-positive reflection on our school.

Ultimately, The Talon editorial board are not proud of our school grade and feel that it doesn’t accurately reflect what we see in our classrooms each day. We are calling on the student body, because the reporting revealed that we, the students, have the largest impact on the school report card.

For our school’s performance grade to improve, the entire student body must take part in a collective effort to increase daily attendance and show growth and achievement in state testing.

The Arkansas Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ADE) doesn’t take individual performance into consideration when calculating a school’s score report. Instead it looks at the overall trends on how many students are improving their scores (growth) and earning passing scores (achievement). This means it is up to the whole campus to put forth our best effort to raise Heritage’s grade.

If our accountability score continues to drop and we reach the point of needing intensive intervention as determined by the state, the entirety of our school’s structure could shift drastically. The LEARNS Act says in section 14 that schools at that level must enter into “school transformation contracts” in order to receive funds and avoid sanctions.

This means in a nutshell that our school could be controlled by either the state Board of Education or a local charter school, and Heritage would never be what it once was. Principal Chip Greenwell is confident that this is not a likely future for our school, and while we appreciate his positivity and effort, we also realize that many of our peers are unaware of the stakes.

We as students play a key role in our school’s grade; therefore, we have the responsibility to do our best to improve it. If you are not at school you can’t learn. If you don’t learn, you won’t do well on standardized tests. Those tests determine our school’s grade. Individual success or failure alone doesn’t make change happen, but if we all put in our best effort to succeed, we can bring about real change.

Let’s show up and show everyone how great our school actually is.