Although the Bastrop ISD recently fell short of earning a recognized academic performance rating by the Texas Education Agency, numerous individual campuses within the school district made significant strides in the classroom.

Two main examples of success were Cedar Creek Intermediate rising to its first ever recognized status and, perhaps most notably, Bastrop Middle School climbing out of an academically unacceptable rating for the first time in 2 years.

With such benchmarks, BISD leaders claim momentum is building towards an academic turnaround, a main reason BMS’s principal and the district’s curriculum heads recently traveled to the University of Virginia to participate in the Texas Turnaround Leadership Academy.

The TTLA is a training program focused on data-based, research-driven academic achievement measures and was lauded as an especially innovative step towards raising the academic bar in Bastrop.

Jane Pollard, who is set begin her first year as BISD assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, was one of those traveling to Virginia last month.

“Many school improvement programs feature leadership training, but the TTLA offered us groundbreaking components that empowered us and positioned us for school turnaround,” said Pollard.

According to BMS principal Terri  Watson, who was hired last November, one of the tangible outcomes from the training was a commitment to implement a new and aggressive college readiness focus at her middle school.

Watson says her teachers will be emphasizing debate and note taking skills, more reading comprehension and critical analysis and pushing students to take as many AP classes as possible. A new commitment to host college and career days at the middle school will also be implemented. On a broader level, however, Watson says a goal for the upcoming year at BMS will be to change the mentality of both students and parents in terms of what is expected from them and viewed as possible.

“There is a lot of room for growth and raising the rigor and expectations for our students,” Watson said. “We want them to see they can break out of the cycles they may have grown up in and they can leave Bastrop and come back and give back to their community. That is what it is all about.”

In discussing the need to help students understand their own potential, Watson returns to the importance of improving literacy beginning in Bastrop’s elementary and middle schools. The principal says the problem is not necessarily that some students can’t read, but that they are not truly understanding the text to the necessary depth and subsequently applying that understanding to critical thinking and writing.

The TTLA training, says Watson, spent much time not only on the need to push students towards higher critical thinking, but to do so aggressively and quickly through focused action plans.

“It has inspired me to take action in a very powerful way and I think it is going to help inspire teachers to do more than we thought they could do,” Watson said. “A big part is changing the focus and vision so the expectations of our kids in this area can be much higher.”