Oxford School District reports the largest gains in kindergarten readiness in the early learning collaborative among all schools in Lafayette County.

OSD is part of a community partnership with the Lafayette County School District, the City of Oxford, and Lafayette County to impact the reading success of all children in Lafayette County. The partnership focuses on the key areas of school readiness, school attendance, summer learning, and children’s health to increase student reading proficiency rates in our community.

The community partnership supports and works through a local coalition of the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading known as Lafayette-Oxford-University Reads (L.O.U. Reads). L.O.U. Reads is comprised of any local community member or agency interested in helping our children read on grade level by the third grade.

Bramlett Elementary pre-k students began the 2021-2022 school year with only 20% of the students performing at or above the projected kindergarten readiness MKAS score of 498.

By the spring, that number grew to 82% of Bramlett PreK students meeting the target for kindergarten readiness.

Abbreviations: LOU Early Learning Collaborative (LOU ELC), Bramlett Elementary School (BES), Lafeyette Elementary School (LES), Mary Cathey Head Start (MCHS), Willie Price Lab School (WPLS).

Director of the Early Learning Collaborative, Tamara Hillmer, provided the spring progress report at the OSD Board of Trustees meeting in May where the collaborative and Bramlett’s PreK teachers were recognized.

“Not only did we meet expectations, our students with the support of our teachers far exceeded expectations,” said Marni Herrington, Chief Academic Officer. “The average spring scale score for our pre-k was 649, an increase of 226 scale score points- ranking first among all sites in the Early Learning Collaborative.”

“These scores further reinforce our vision to grow our pre-k program, ” Herrington continued. “We believe the younger we can begin educating students, the more success we will see.”