Welcome Our New Athletic Director!

It is my pleasure to announce to the Houston Academy family that we have hired a new athletic director. Mike Sickafoose, of Atlanta, Georgia will start at HA in the fall. Mike brings a wealth of experience and an abundance of enthusiasm to our athletic department.  Mike is currently the Athletic Director at Holy Spirit Preparatory School in Atlanta.  At Holy Spirit, Mike created and implemented a Lower School, Middle School, and Upper School athletic program from scratch. Over his 14 years there, Mike managed 14 Upper School and 13 Middle School teams, while at the same time overseeing the Catholic Basketball Metro League, the Catholic Metro Soccer League, and a lower school/pre-school basketball and soccer program at Holy Spirit. Furthermore, Mike oversaw athletic fundraising efforts, maintained and updated the school’s athletic website, as well as coordinating the schools athletic-related social media.

Mike has been a head basketball coach at both the high school and collegiate level. In fact, as Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Benedictine College in Kansas, Mike produced a 97% graduation rate while leading his team to the post-season every year he was head coach. In 1991-92, Mike was named NAIA District 10 Coach of the Year, and he coached quite a number of all district and all-American players. Additionally, Mike has served as a head volleyball coach and a head tennis coach.

Mr. Sickafoose holds an M.A. in Education from Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky, and a B.S. from Ashland College in Ashland, OH.  Mike was also member of the varsity basketball team at Ashland.

Mike and his wife, Kelly, have three boys: Michael Sickafoose (24), Dan Sickafoose (23), and Chris Sickafoose  (21).  Coach  Sickafoose will begin his duties at HA on July 1^st.  Please help me in welcoming Mike to the HA family!  

A Few Early Notes on Personnel For Next Year

Recently, faculty and parents have asked me questions about our job postings on the HA website. There are still a number of moving pieces, but here is what I can tell you, as of today. 

Athletic Director & Director of Buildings and Grounds

Jim Robbins will be changing roles.  Next year, Jim will be the Director of Buildings and Grounds and will continue to help manage Upper School discipline.

It has become obvious to me that our regular maintenance and upkeep has been lacking in several areas. This is not due to any lack of effort on the part of our maintenance staff’s, but rather, it is due to the fact that no one has actually been in charge of our facilities. We need someone to serve as a liaison to our contractors, solicit competitive bids, prioritize maintenance requests, procure materials and supplies, trouble-shoot and budget for future repairs, organize volunteers, and communicate with the faculty and staff. This will become especially important as we open our new Student Activities Center, make some long overdue repairs, and work to build a performing arts facility. Jim’s outstanding efforts managing our athletic facilities this year convinced me that he is the perfect person to take on a broader role with our campus.

Of course, with Coach Robbins serving Director of Buildings and Ground we now have an opening for Athletic Director. We are looking for someone with experience in athletic administration, who has strong technology skills, and who has independent school experience. We have formed a search committee consisting of Upper School teachers, administrators, and coaches, and we hope to have filled the position in the next few weeks.

Director of Admissions and Marketing

Another change for next year is that Leanne Todd has agreed to be our Director of Admissions and Marketing. If you know Leanne at all, you know that there is not a better ambassador for our school. She is highly organized, and her background as a parent and a teacher at HA makes her the ideal person to sell HA to prospective families. Shelly Phillipps will be moving into the classroom full-time, as our World and Classical Language program expands into the middle grades.

Learning Specialist

Thanks to the generosity of one of our grandparents, we have started a search for a learning specialist. The goal is to hire someone on who can help our students with dyslexia and other learning issues. As you probably know, having a learning difference has nothing to do with aptitude, intelligence, or ability to complete a college degree. You might also be aware that some of the world’s most talented and brilliant artists, scientists, and innovators had dyslexia.  A brief list of famous people with dyslexia includes Alexander Graham Bell, Pierre Curie, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Woodrow Wilson.

Students with learning differences need a different approach to learning. What bright students with learning differences do NOT need is a “dumbed down” curriculum or lower expectations. Currently, there are a number of students at HA who are hard-working, bright students who are struggling because we do not provide the support they need to reach their full academic potential. In fact, in many cases, students and parents have hidden their learning issues from the school because of a fear that they would be asked to leave HA.

By adding the position of Learning Specialist, we hope to augment what is being done by Patti Flowers in the H.A.L.L. (Houston Academy Learning Lab) to help our students achieve to their highest potential. This is consistent with the practices of a great number of quality independent schools throughout the country.

I should also note that Pamela Sewell has agreed to come on board for next year to work with any Upper School student who may need tutoring or extra academic assistance. Many students in the Lower School who have benefited from the HALL have found the lack of assistance in the Upper School quite difficult. In fact, I thought it was strange that we offered learning assistance to children through grade 6, but then did not provide that same assistance in the middle grades – a time when our children are going through some of the most dramatic biological and chemical changes.

Pamela has already worked with a number of our students, and as a substitute and parent, she is very familiar with our culture and our student body. Pamela will continue as a substitute at HA, and she will also be handling our attendance records.

Upper School Chorus and Drama Teacher

While HA has an outstanding visual arts program and an outstanding vocal and instrumental music program, our curriculum lacks is the dramatic arts. Despite the best efforts of Mrs. Arens, our drama numbers have been low, and it has been quite some time since we have had any sort of musical or production that involved students from across the Upper School.

I firmly believe that one cannot have a truly fine independent school without a thriving fine and performing arts program. Frankly, we are not where we need to be in this regard. Part of our struggle is due to the lack of an adequate performing arts facility. Regardless, we must have school-wide performances in both the Lower and Upper Schools. Shelley Keeley is working on expanding the lower school offerings for next year. In the Upper School, we are hiring a full-time teacher to continue our outstanding chorale music program and to direct the production of musical and dramatic performances. 

Lower School Positions

We will spend more time later in the year celebrating the careers of a number of faculty members who are retiring or who are leaving us, but for now, we do have a number of openings in the Lower School.  Mrs. Boothe has formed a search team, including members of the Lower School Academic Council, to hire the best available teachers for the following positions: 3P Teacher, 5K Teacher's Assistant, Kindergarten Teacher, (possible) 3rd Grade Teacher, and Lower School Physical Education Teacher.

We are conducting national searches for all of our openings, and we have been inundated with applications. You may read our job descriptions, which are posted on the employment section of the HA website at: http://www.houstonacademy.com/about-us/jobs/index.aspx  . Please encourage any qualified applicants to apply.  Houston Academy is a great place to work!

Safety and Security

Dear HA Family:

As you know, in order to improve the safety of our campus, we have enacted a number of security measures this year. One of those measures has been the requirement that all visitors sign in through the office and obtain a visitor pass.[1]

The establishment of the visitor pass system has served a dual purpose. First, of course, it allows us to ensure that any visitor actually belongs on campus. Prior to this system, I am told we frequently had delivery personnel and other visitors on campus without our knowledge. Obviously, this creates a potentially dangerous situation for the safety of our students, faculty, and staff.

Another reason we require all visitors to sign in through the office is for their own safety. We have been told by both our insurance company[2] and by the local emergency management officials that should we have a dangerous intruder on campus, or should we have a fire or weather emergency, the authorities need to be able to account for every single person on the HA campus. 

Recently, we had a safety audit conducted by our insurance company, and one of the main recommendations made was that we take the visitor pass system one extra step, to include the requirement that visitors turn in an official form of identification (such as a driver’s license) when obtaining a visitor pass. Upon return of the visitor pass, the visitor would receive his or her identification. Adoption of this policy would allows us to document who is on campus, and know for sure when the visitor has left.

In fact, all of our visitor passes are currently depleted, and we now must create a new set. That means that a few score of our passes are either in someone’s possession, or they have been lost or discarded. Obviously, it defeats the purpose of the visitor pass system for individuals to keep them permanently. Even if we know you (as we do most of our visitors), we need to know whether and when you are on campus to protect your safety and help the authorities respond to any potential emergency situation.

So, in short, after spring break, we will ask all on-campus visitors to turn in an official identification in order to receive a visitor pass. Once the visitor leaves campus, he or she can return the pass to the front desk in Flowers Hall and receive his or her identification. 

I should note that we are also in the process of acting on another recommendation of our insurance company. They recommended the installation of a decorative security fence between the open areas at the front of the school and by the front parking lot.

We hope that you will fully support our efforts to protect the safety of everyone on our campus. As always, I am open to your suggestions on campus safety, or any other matter.

Sincerely,

Dr. Scott Phillipps

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[1] The other security measures we have enacted include requiring all school employees to wear a nametag, installing a security fence on the lower school side of the building, and scheduling regular intruder drills.

[2] Odom, Jeff, C.S.P. "Loss Control Visits." Letter to Debbie Thornton. Feb. 2014. MS. Houston Academy, Dothan, AL.  “All visitors now sign in at the office. Consideration should be given to holding car keys and drivers license of these visitors in a box at the office. In case of emergency, you should have the ID of everyone at the school that is not normally there, and they could be easily identified by emergency personnel.”

Advanced Placement Program Provides "Value Added"

In my nearly 24 years in independent schools, I have come to understand that we must provide our students and families with some sort of “value added.” That is, we need to offer our families some benefit or advantage that they are unable to get elsewhere. In this vein, Houston Academy is extraordinarily proud of the rigor of our curriculum, our high level of academic support, our history of placing 100% of our graduates in a college of their choice, and our record of extraordinary student achievement once our graduates attend college. A fairly large component of our rigorous curriculum and our students’ success in college can, in my opinion, be attributed to our Advanced Placement (AP) program, which is unmatched by any other school in the Wiregrass. In case you are not aware, I’d like to point to the benefits of this program, both from a researched-based perspective, and from anecdotal evidence here at our school.

The Advanced Placement program is administered by an organization called the College Board, which is located in Princeton, NJ. Thirty-seven AP examinations are offered in 22 subject areas. Students who take AP classes do not earn college credit for taking the courses, but rather, earn credit through a national examination in each subject area. Each subject area exam is given on the same day across the world. The exams are comprised of a multiple choice section and some sort of “constructed” or “free response” section, and they are then holistically graded on a five-point scale (Clemmitt, 2006). Typically, college credit is granted for a score of three or higher (Byrd, 2007). Over 3,700 colleges and universities in the United States offer some kind of AP credit ("AP and IB," 2006; "AP," 2008; Rhodes, 2007).

In 2013, HA students took 93 Advanced Placement examinations in 9 different subject areas. 72% of the scores on these AP exams were a three or higher. In fact, 70% of all graduates of HA students take at least one AP course during their four years in the HA Upper School. This May, we will have 52 students taking 93 Advanced Placement Examinations.

In a general sense, the advantages of an AP program are clearly elucidated by the literature:

1. AP courses better prepare students for college (Mathews, 2007; Melton, 2007; Rhodes, 2007).
2. AP courses avail students the opportunity to earn college credit, which can save students money in college, allow them to graduate from college sooner, and/or take a wider variety of courses in college (Mathews, 2007)
3. AP coursework aids high school graduates in gaining admission to college— to selective colleges, in particular (Byrd, 2007; Lord, 2000; Wilensky, 2007).

It should also be noted that the AP program has been widely recognized for its excellence (Byrd, 2007; Clemmitt, 2006; Kyburg, Hertberg-Davis, & Callahan, 2007). In particular, the AP curriculum has been recognized for its high academic standards and its clear goals for student learning outcomes (Brighouse et al., 2006; Byrd, 2007). Furthermore, the end-of-course examinations are closely connected to the course curriculum and content. Moreover, in order to succeed on AP exams, students have to synthesize complex material, make intellectual connections, explicated and support opinions, and employ information in a novel way (Byrd, 2007). Finally, the program has a proven track record, as it has been in existence over 50 years.
 
One of the strongest appeals of the AP program for parents is the evidence that AP courses prepare their children better for college than do “regular” courses (Lord, 2000; Mathews, 2007). Additionally, there is much stronger evidence to support the efficacy of AP programs than there is to support college joint-enrollment programs that have been offered by various high schools across the United States (Hughes, 2008; Karp, Calcagno, Hughes, Jeong,  & Bailey, 2008). For example, in a 10-year longitudinal study of 67,000 students which was conducted by the National Center for Educational Accountability, students who took AP courses were two-times more likely to graduate from college than students who had not taken such courses (Melton, 2007). This study also showed that AP courses have been particularly helpful to Latino and African American students: Minority students who took these courses were three times more likely to graduate from college than students who did not take any AP courses (Melton, 2007). Students and teachers have also consistently attested to the strengths of these more rigorous programs (Matthews & Kitchen, 2007).

Certainly, taking an AP class affords students advantages in the college admissions process and provides a highly rigorous curriculum; but make no mistake -- a successful AP also program depends on quality teachers who are knowledgeable in their subject area (Byrd, 2007; Clemmitt, 2006; Lord, 2000). In this regard, I can attest that HA’s faculty is as strong as any in the country.  Currently, 10 out of 11 upper school AP teachers hold an advanced degree, and each teacher has won numerous awards and accolades. Finally, I should mention that several of our AP teachers have served as AP readers. This means that they have actually graded students’ AP exams from all over the county. Of course, this experience gives our AP teachers a unique understanding of what it takes for our HA students to be successful on the exam.

In short, the AP program is but one portion of the “value” we believe HA “adds” to your student’s high school experience. I believe that this value added exists even for students who never take an AP class. This is because the high standards that we set for AP courses help to create an overall atmosphere of excellence at the school. That is, even if students do not participate in the program, they benefit from a culture that values rigor and prizes a life-long love of learning.

This article was adapted from an article originally written by Dr. Phillipps in 2009. 

HA Graduates Excel in College

  “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”   – Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University

Let’s talk about the proverbial elephant in the room: HA is more expensive than our public and private school competitors in Dothan. Sure, we’re almost half the average cost ($22,700) of independent schools, nationally[1], and we are significantly less expensive than our peer schools in Montgomery[2], Birmingham[3], and Huntsville[4]. Still, I understand where we are – we’re not in Montgomery, Birmingham, or Huntsville; we’re in Dothan.  Moreover, I certainly understand that a Houston Academy education is a huge financial sacrifice for our families.

So, the question is: “Is it worth it?”

Speaking solely in terms of finance, I think we can predict some value with a Houston Academy education.  Over the last five years, our students have been awarded $16,874,012 in scholarships. That’s an average of $73,686 awarded per HA graduate.

However, as we all know, getting into college and getting a scholarship is one thing; keeping that scholarship and graduating from college is quite another. So, that begs the question of how our students actually perform once they get to college. Anecdotally, we always hear from our students how well prepared they are for college, but recently I received some hard data from Auburn University that should be very encouraging to our stakeholders.

Auburn sent us a report of how our graduates who attended Auburn have done through the spring semester of 2013.  What Auburn tells us is instructive. 

 To understand these statistics, we need to talk about what research tells us is a good predictor of college GPA.

Not to confuse you too much with statistics, but a common statistic in educational research is Pearson’s r. Pearson’s r is a correlation coefficient, which in layman’s terms, means that Pearson’s r measures the strength of a linear relationship.

Accordingly, as the value of r moves in either direction away from 0, the strength of the relationship gets stronger. Generally speaking (and there is certainly academic debate about this), an r-value of .40 or higher is considered to be a strong, positive relationship; an r-value of .30 or higher is considered to be a moderately positive relationship; and an r-value of .20 is considered to be a weak, positive relationship. Any r-value below .20 is of negligible strength.

In short, research I find to be fairly reliable (Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012), indicates (not surprisingly) that two of the strongest predictors of college GPA are high school GPA (r = .40) and ACT/SAT score (r = .34). Academic self-efficacy is also a fairly strong predictor of college success, but that is a discussion for another time.[5]

In any case, the data that Auburn sent us tells us three things:

1.     Our students are doing MUCH better at Auburn than the general student population;

2.     Our students are doing better at Auburn than either their high school GPA or ACT would predict[6];

3.     The lower our students’ ACT/SAT scores and high school GPAs, the larger the difference between our students’ GPAs and other students at Auburn.

Without betraying any confidentiality, the table below illustrates that the cumulative GPA for HA graduates who are freshmen at Auburn is 3.76, while Auburn’s average freshman GPA was 3.05. That means that our HA graduates had GPAs that were .71 higher than the Auburn freshmen population, at-large. For our students who had an ACT score in the 28-36 range, the average, cumulative GPA was 3.91. For all other students the average GPA was 3.34 – a difference of .57. When comparing high school GPA to students’ GPA at Auburn, you can see that our graduates are earning a GPA at Auburn that is equal to or higher than the GPA they earned at HA.  That is NOT the case for other Auburn Freshmen.  On average, most Auburn freshmen are doing worse in college than they did in high school.  What was most interesting to me in this regard was that our students who had GPAs at HA between 2.50-2.99 had the largest, positive difference from their Auburn counterparts (almost a full GPA point!).

Certainly, HA graduates’ relatively higher college GPAs will make a big difference when it comes time to apply to medical school, law school, or graduate school. Likewise, a higher college GPA certainly can’t hurt when it comes time for our graduates to get a job in an increasingly global and competitive market.

Of course, any statistician will tell you that we should be careful about extrapolating results like this to all our graduates or even attributing causation. However, when combined with HA graduates’ stories of how well prepared they are for college, we can reasonable assert that our primary mission as a college preparatory institution is being met.  Moreover, the ACT data would seem to contradict the notion that there is no benefit to the rigorous education provided at HA and that “smart kids” at other public and private schools across the state will do just as well as HA graduates. The fact is, on average (and in every single individual case), HA students are performing better than their peers at one of the nation’s premiere “Doctoral/research universities."

As an HA parent, I would classify that as good news!

Freshman GPAs at Auburn University

	Auburn Freshmen/Houston Academy Graduates	All Auburn Freshmen
ACT of 28-36	3.91	3.34
ACT of 24-27	3.34	2.92
ACT of 20-23	3.29	2.67
HS GPA of 3.5-4.0	3.79	3.22
HS GPA of 3.0-3.49	NA	2.57
HS GPA of 2.5-2.99	3.29	2.37

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[1] http://www.nais.org/Articles/Documents/NAISFactsAtAGlance201213.pdf

[2] http://www.montgomeryacademy.org/page.cfm?p=270

[3] http://www.altamontschool.org/admissions/scholarships-and-financial-aid/tuition/index.aspx

[4] http://www.randolphschool.net/apply/affording

[5] My dissertation dealt heavily with the concept of self-efficacy, which in this sense is, basically, the belief that one’s hard work pays tangible results in terms of grades.

[6]http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/8/researchreport-2012-6-validity-sat-predicting-cumulative-gpa-major.pdf