Jacobs ACT Team Helps Students Get Better Scores

It's not every day you get to see nine teachers and one associate superintendent have their heads shaved, but that's exactly the show Jacobs High School students got at a recent homecoming pep assembly.

The shavings were in direct response to a challenge made between Huntley High School and Jacobs High School last year over which high school could produce a greater increase in its school's ACT composite score. If Jacobs beat Huntley, Jacobs reward would be to watch the faculty members submit to the new hair-do.

Jacobs students found out in August that its composite test scores increased by .1 from 21.5 in 2009 to 21.6 in 2010.

Huntley High School's scored dipped by .1 to 22.3 in 2010.

More than 500 of Jacobs students are from Lake in the Hills and nearly 900 LITH teens attend Huntley.

District 300 Associate Superintendent Michael Bregy, who was the principal of Jacobs last August when he accepted the haircut challenge, returned to Jacobs to honor his promise and have his head shaved at a pep assembly earlier this month. While he said he appreciates the improvement in scores, he was not as happy to lose his hair.

"I do not like this," Bregy said. "Every time I look in the mirror, I scream. I am not used to it. But I'm happy the students won."

Jacobs seniors Eric Hanson and Brad Searle, who both scored a perfect 36 on the test, earned the honor of shaving Bregy's head.

The remaining student shavers scored in the 30s. The nine other teachers who lost their locks were Steve Shadel, Alex Lopkowski, Tom Domenz, Jason Borhart, Andy Quitno, Steve Szabo, John Gorby, Jaime Cadengo and school police liaison Dennis Walker.

Jacobs students say they worked hard for that .1 hike. Students from Jacobs established a Standardized Testing Achievement Team, STAT, last year and faculty advisers let students determine how they would study and prepare for the exam.

"In the past, individual teachers would use their own strategies to prepare for the ACT," Bregy said. "But students came to us, and asked us to put it all together. We started looking at it globally. The majority of what we came up with were the students' ideas."

Some of those unconventional activities included posting word walls throughout the school featuring vocabulary words; posting math formulas and questions in unique places, such as student restrooms and toilet stalls; daily vocabulary building tasks; and hosting phone-in Fridays, where ACT practice questions were announced via the school intercom and students in advisory classrooms worked together to determine the answers.

The school advisory committee also identified 100 students whose scores fell just below the 21.5 composite score the previous year on the I-ACT, the test taken by sophomores. The committee divided those students into groups of 10 and studied ACT prep lessons. Bregy said the committee is analyzing those students' individual tests scores.

Days before students took the ACT exam in April, Jacobs held an all-school assembly focused solely on academics, not athletics, to get the kids pumped up. The students divided themselves into groups and competed to answer ACT-caliber questions.

"It was great because the assembly was for the entire school," Bregy said. "Many times, the ACT focus is on juniors. This was great because the freshmen sat there and watched and realized, 'Hey this is a big deal.' And during the this year's homecoming pep assembly those students, now sophomores, saw that we followed through on our promise. And the new freshmen now saw that the ACT is a big deal."

The composite score for the ACT measures the results across all subject areas tested including English, math, reading and science. Jacobs students scored highest of all three CUD 300 schools. Dundee-Crown seniors' composite score fell .1 to 19.2, and Hampshire High School scores fell. 4 to 20.4. CUD 300's overall composite score was 20.4.

When looking at individual subject areas, Jacobs' results for reading increased .2 to 21.9, scores for math inched .1 to 21.4, science scores remained at 21.3, and English scores dipped .1 to 21.1, school officials said.

In August, ACT results for the 504 Jacobs test-takers revealed a .1 increase in their ACT scores, up from 21.5 in 2009 to 21.6 for 2010. Huntley High School's scores dipped by .1 to 22.3 in 2010. The results for both schools exceed the state composite score of 20.7.

Members of STAT are currently deciding which activities to implement for ACT-preparation for the 2011 exam. Principal Shelly Nacke said the school's goal this year is to hit a 22 composite score.

"We really want to build on the momentum we have going," Nacke said.