At state fairs blue ribbons are given to winners. That also applies in education. Two local Catholic grade schools, Saint Mary Academy in Prospect and St. Albert the Great, recently received top honors in the form of  the National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award.  Only 50 private schools nationwide received the United States Department of Education honor in 2015.

A third local school, St. Raphael the Archangel, is a previous winner of the award and is applying again for 2016.

St. Albert the Great Principal Ms. Bernadette Cooper explained that to receive Blue Ribbon recognition, test scores must be high. Cooper said, “When you’re a private school, your test scores in reading and math have to be in the top 15 percent of the nation.”

Being named a Blue Ribbon School means that a school is among the elite.

Cooper said, “Only 50 private schools get to be Blue Ribbon Schools every year — that’s elementary, middle and high schools. So, it’s a pretty big honor. They told us that would put us in the top one percent of the nation when it comes to private schools right now.”

Cooper said that Blue Ribbon recognition speaks volumes to the teachers, students, and the overall community at St. Albert, which previously received the award in 2004.

She said, “It’s a community effort. It’s like that book from a long time ago – ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ Well, it takes a community to have a Blue Ribbon school.”

Ms. Mary Alice Zettel, principal of Saint Mary Academy, said this is the first time they have received the award.

She said, “We’ve been in existence for eight years, and you couldn’t apply for the application for the Blue Ribbon until you had been a school for at least five years. So, even though we had the scores that qualified us to apply, because we were such a young school, we couldn’t apply until now.”

Zettel received the award at a ceremony held in Washington, D.C.  She described the experience:  “There were 338 schools, and only 50 of them were private schools. We were pretty honored to be one of those 50. It was really neat during the celebration when we received the award. You can think 338 schools — how boring that might be — but they added all this really upbeat music, so we danced across the stage to get the award. It was quite a good celebration.”

Zettel expressed her pride in this recognition. “I’m just happy for this community to have this award,” she said. “It means so much to them and says so much about who we are and what we’ve become.”

St. Raphael Assistant Principal Jean Ann May said her school plans to apply this year for a second Blue Ribbon recognition. The fact that St. Raphael earned the recognition in the past is impressive, May said.

May said, “I think (the honor) says a lot. We have a rather large population of students who have learning differences, and we don’t desegregate the data. We don’t take those kids’ scores out of our data, so they do really well.”

A big focus at St. Raphael is narrowing the achievement gap between students with learning differences and those without them.

May said, “We may have students who at the very beginning when they started at St. Raphael may have an achievement gap (compared to) other students who don’t have a learning difference. But, by the time they’re in the seventh grade, the achievement is just about the same for both sets of kids. They work hard. The teachers hold them accountable, and the kids reach the bar.”