Three Raleigh schools have won the national Blue Ribbon School Award, but none are from the school system.

The U.S. Education Department announced today that the Raleigh School, Our Lady of Lourdes School and Sacred Heart Cathedral School are among 287 schools nationally to get the award. Those schools won for having students scoring on the top 10 percent of students in the nation in reading and math.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh is understandably happy that two of their schools were recognized. The third winner, the Raleigh School, is a non-sectarian school.

The way the process works is that public schools are nominated by each state, in this case North Carolina’s Board of Education. Private schools are nominated by the Council for American Private Education.

The Wake school system has historically done well in the Blue Ribbon program. Davis Drive Elementary won in 2006. But no Wake schools were nominated by the state Board of Education this year.

10/02/07 at 10:39
Mr. Hui,

But no Wake schools were nominated by the state Board of Education this year.

Do you know if that was due to politics or performance?

10/02/07 at 11:10
Before anyone jumps on it, by politics I meant that the SBoE might not want the same district to win the award two years running, especially not the district in which the state government is located since that could easily cause discontent due to appearance of favoritism. I did not mean politics as in the Elephant and Donkey fights that we so often subjected to.

10/02/07 at 11:50
Rich,

I honestly don't know why. Wake gets a winner almost every year in the Blue Ribbon.

10/02/07 at 12:31
Congrats to the winning schools.

Shocked to see that none of the "Flagship" public high schools, Enloe, Southeast, nor Broughton High School did not make the list. Also, surprised to see Raleigh Charter HS didn't make it either.

What about the Cary Academy and Ravenscroft?

10/02/07 at 15:59
According to the Department of Ed's web site, Davis Drive & Morrisville are the only WCPSS schools to have received the award since 2003. Before 2003, we received a lot more.

In case you're wondering what changed in 2003, it was No Child Left Behind. The scoring model changed to where not only does a school need to be a great school overall, it also has to do a good job of teaching each identifiable subgroup (at least as measured by NCLB). As a result, a lot fewer schools are getting the award.

10/02/07 at 18:09
Just wondering: Is the process of nomination and documentation so time consuming that some may forego the process?

Looking at the previous winners, and speculating at the current schools, what is the F&R % at the private schools?

10/02/07 at 22:17
CF, you hit the nail on the head. Since the Blue Ribbon criteria changed in 2003 (used to be schools put together a self nomination package that was quite extensive, but DOE now 'invites' schools to apply based on test scores), the awards in general have been fewer.

It is no coincidence that the schools that win now have very few high needs kids, if any. That doesn't fit DOE's 'model'. Kind of stupid to me, but there you go.