St. Michael Elementary School - St. Cecilia Middle & High School

At Hastings Catholic Schools we offer an educational experience where students encounter Christ, grow in knowledge and become Christian witnesses of the truth of the Gospel.

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Registration forms are also available in the back of St. Cecilia’s Church and at the southwest entrance at St. Michael’s Church.

Three years ago, the Language Arts faculty at Hastings Catholic Schools embarked on a more rigorous writing program for their high school students.  Greater emphasis was placed on the accountability of students in the areas of punctuation and sentence structure and a more focused transition from writing persuasive essays to writing essays requiring critical thinking and analysis, a format demanded by most college professors.

 

As a test to see if this approach would prove to be successful, a panel of college/university professors from a variety of backgrounds was invited to read student essays on one of Shakespeare’s plays, and complete a rubric based on the Nebraska state standards for writing.  Some papers were read by up to four evaluators from a cross-section of educational arenas.  The papers were evaluated based on ideas and content, organization of ideas, sentence fluency, grammar and punctuation, as well as proper documentation and use of external literary sources.  In addition, readers were asked the most direct question:  "If this paper had been submitted as part of your college class, what overall grade would it have received?"

 

The findings affirmed the school’s writing program.  The answer to the question of whether or not the Senior class was "ready" to meet the challenge of college assignments across a variety of disciplines was a resounding "Yes".  76% of the Senior class scored in the A/B range with 38% of those garnering a grade of A- to A+.  No failure grade was given by any of the readers.  Several students received straight "A's" in all of the assessment categories by one or more of their evaluators.  Equally affirming was the high degree of "match" between the grade of the evaluators and the grade given by the teacher.

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