T O W N R E P O R T 2007 L U N E N B U R G - Town of Lunenburg

TURKEY HILL MIDDLE SCHOOLKeith Hochstein, PrincipalDuring the 2007-2008 school year, Turkey Hill Middle School continued to fulfill its mission as an authentic middleschool emphasizing both academic and affective sides of students, as well as fulfilling the mission of the LunenburgPublic Schools to develop students who are life-long learners and responsible community members.There are a number of categories that demonstrate the academic success of THMS. The 2007 MCAS results show thatour school performed quite well in comparison to a number of factors. First, our scores versus the state average score:% of STUDENTS SCORING IN THEADVANCED/PROFICIENT RANGEGRADE SUBJECT THMS STATE6 ELA 80% 67%6 Math 77% 52%7 ELA 86% 69%7 Math 76% 46%8 ELA 90% 75%8 Math 66% 45%8 Sci/Tech 47% 33%The second was a comparison done by Boston.com. They tallied the percentage of our students scoring in the“Advanced or Proficient” categories on MCAS and compared our results to the results of every school across the state.Here is how THMS stacks up versus every other school. In the placement column our school is on the left and the nextfigure is the number of schools in the state with that particular grade.GRADE SUBJECT PLACEMENT PERCENTAGE6 ELA 136 of 565 top 24%Math 62 of 565 top 11%7 ELA 81 of 464 top 17%Math 19 of 464 top 4%8 ELA 73 of 462 top 16%Math 70 of 461 top 15%Sci/Tech 97 of 462 top 20%The placement category means that, for instance, there are 565 schools in Massachusetts with a 6 th grade. Since wewere 62 nd in math, that means there were only 61 schools that scored higher than us in 6 th grade math and 503 schoolsthat scored lower than we did. This means we placed in the top 11% in the state. In other subjects we did as well orbetter. In seventh grade ELA, out of 464 schools, there were 80 schools with higher scores and 383 with lower scores,which places us in the top 17%; in math there were only 18 with higher scores and 445 with lower scores, which placesus in the top 4% of the entire state. Considering that the Lunenburg Public Schools is in the lower end of per pupilaverage spending, our scores are, to put it simply, excellent.In addition to our MCAS scores, our students compete in a number of academic contests that are based locally andnationally. This past fall our Math Team competed against twenty-seven middle schools throughout Worcester County.Our team finished second overall, and we had four students with either perfect scores or only one problem wrong. Outof 465 participants there were only ten students who scored in either of these categories, and we had four of them!In the National Latin Exam we again had terrific success. We had a number of students in both seventh and eighthgrade scoring in the very top categories. We again had one student obtain a perfect paper; out of 135,000 studentstaking this test, less than 1% obtained that score.