ACE's Personal Ties to Blue-Ribbon Schools
Among the 256 public and 49 private schools across the country that received Blue Ribbon Awards this year, three outstanding Catholic schools had personal ties to ACE. In each case, educators from ACE Teaching Fellows or the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program serve or previously served on the faculty:
- Christ the King Catholic School, Tampa, Fla. – Michael Zelenka and Andrew Shannon from MARLP
- St. Paul's Catholic School, Jacksonville Beach, Fla. – Krissy Thompson and Stephanie Thomas from MARLP
- St. Joseph School, South Bend, Ind. – Several teachers from STT and Melissa Greene from MARLP
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program annually honors public and private schools based on one of two criteria:
1) Schools whose students are high-performing; these are schools ranked among each state's highest performing schools as measured by their performance on state assessments or, in the case of private schools, the schools that score the highest performance level on nationally normed tests.
2) Schools with at least 40 percent of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds that improve student performance to high levels as measured by the school's performance on state assessments or nationally normed tests.
ACE congratulates all the Blue Ribbon Award winners, with special celebration for the Catholic schools that constitute the vast majority of the winners in the private sector.