BES named to Texas Monthly best schools list
By Nathan Straus News Reporter

Brownsboro Elementary School appeared in the December, 2007 issue of Texas Monthly, a magazine about all things Texas. Texas Monthly compiled a list of the best Texas elementary schools and BES appeared on that list.

Brian Ralson, BES principal, said he was honored to see his school had made the list.

"We were all very proud and excited," Ralson said. "The students, teachers and parents work very hard, and it's nice for them to be recognized for their hard work."

The school was rated on which subjects the students performed higher on than last year. According to the list, BES students improved their math scores to get them close to the 90th percentile.

Reading was also a plus for the school, Ralson said, but the subject has remained consistent in the high nineties and has not shown significant improvement past what it currently is. Thus, reading was marked as consistent in the list, and math was the only subject showing improvement.

The list read the school ranks around half high performing.

Ralson said the school of about 403 has 62 percent disadvantaged students studying within.

The magazine prints the "best schools" list once a year, Ralson also said. While he said he doesn't know BES's rank in the list, Ralson said to make the list is an honor.

"There are only three East Texas elementary schools on this list as far as I can see," Ralson said after perusing the names online.

The other two schools are Hudson Elementary in Longview and Caldwell Elementary Arts Academy in Tyler.

From here the campus will hopefully achieve the Exemplary Campus status, Ralson said.

"We'll just have to see the spring, 2008 TAKS results."

TAKS stands for Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

The National Center for Educational Accountability handles the gathering of the list for Texas Monthly, according to just4kids.org. For the 2007 list, the NCEA looked at testing results from spring of 2005-2007. Since the list requires there to be three years of elementary school testing, the NCEA only looked at data from third grade students through sixth grade students. All must have been enrolled for three years or more in a row.