Record number and percentage of OHS seniors score 30 or higher on ACT test

     A record number and percentage of Oxford High School seniors scored a 30 or higher on the ACT this year.
    According to an ACT score report given to the Oxford School District board by the high school, 39 students from the Class of 2016 scored a 30 or above on the ACT. An additional 10 students scored a 29. This compares to 25 students with a 30 or higher from the Class of 2015, with an additional 10 members of that class scoring a 29.
    Some of the increase is due to a larger graduating class. The Class of 2016 had 247 students taking the test, versus 203 from the Class of 2015. But class size doesn't account for all of the increase. 15.8 percent of the Class of 2016 scored at least a 30, versus 12.3 percent for the Class of 2015 and 13.6 percent for the Class of 2014.

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    In any event, the Class of 2016 is the largest graduating class ever from OHS. Based on enrollment numbers from the state, the Class of 2017 will likely be even larger; and the Class of 2018 bigger still; the Class of 2019 even bigger. The Class of 2020 is likely to set another record, after which class size should drop by about 50 students for a few years.
    So why the sudden end to growth for the class of 2021? Well, my theory is that the housing and credit crisis slowed the massive movement of families with young children to Oxford. Subtract 13 from 2021 and you get 2008, the year Easy Money Died.
    I find looking at school enrollment numbers interesting, in that you can get a good idea of the overall health of various communities. You can review the Mississippi data for yourself by clicking here.

    Enrollment in the Oxford School District has increased from 3,320 in 2006 to 4,250 in 2016. That's an increase of 28 percent in 10 years. Schould this rate of growth continue for 20 more years the school district will have 7,000 students. Of course, it's got to end sometime, although that sometime doesn't appear to be in sight right now.
    There are a lot of ways to interpret data, but when a large enrollment increase is accompanied by an ever larger increase in high-end test scores, the most obvious conclusion is that an unusually high number of people moving to Oxford have very bright children. That's a sign of a robust and thriving community. I've referred to this trend in the past as "Brain Clustering."
    A score of 30 on the ACT is in the top five percent, so a nationally representative sample of 247 students would have 12 or 13 students with a 30 or higher. With 39 such students, Oxford has three times more very bright students than the national average.
    Congratulations are due to a lot of OHS students as well as the high school. May the numbers go ever higher

   

National Merit winners announced with five from Lafayette County; OHS 4, LHS1

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    National Merit Semifinalists have been notified and the state cutoff scores have seeped out. Mississippi's NMSF cutoff remained at 207 this year.
    Oxford High School has four National Merit Semifinalists. This is fewer than the 11 last year or the 12 the year before, but is still an outstanding performance. Lafayette County High School has one Semifinalist.
    Oxford High School's Semifinalists are William E. Anderson, David M. Dennis, Joonhee Jo, and William G. Tollison. Lafayette County's Semifinalist is Addison E. Roush. Congratulations to these winners, who are now automatically eligible for full-ride scholarships to many universities worth as much a quarter-million dollars!
    I'm surprised. I predicted that this year's cutoff would be 205, two points lower than last year. I based this on a two-point drop in the score for commended students, and on the substantial drop in Mississippi critical reading scores. Of course, math and writing scores were up.
    The Commended Student cutoff for this year is 201, and this info has been out for quite a while. In 2010 and 2011, and the Semifinalist cutoffs were 203 and 205 respectively, so this year has the largest gap between the Commended cutoff and the NMSF cutoff in Mississippi's testing history.
    Most states had a drop in their cutoff score. Alabama, for example, had a four-point drop to tie Mississippi at 207. Alabama's cutoff has tended to be five or six points higher than Mississippi's.

    While this is bad news for those of us hoping our children will make the cutoff in a year or two, it's good news for Mississippi. Semifinalists represent the top one-percent of graduates in each state. Commended students are made up of those scoring in the top three percent nationally who don't make Semifinalist. There were years in the past where Mississippi had no commended students; our top one percent was so far behind the rest of the nation that the Semifinalist cutoff was at or below the Commended cutoff.
    So a 207 Mississippi cutoff means that our state's best students are closing the gap with students from high-achievement states. A large gap still remains, though, as the chart reveals; the Massachusetts cutoff this year is 223.
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Source for state cutoff scores: www.collegeconfidential.com

Feds force Oxford Schools to make students pay more for lunches that they like less

    The Oxford School District is raising the price of full-pay lunches from $2.25 to $2.75 for the next school year, according to a memo from Nutrition Director Richmond Smith to the school board.
    The memo states that the increase is being mandated by Section 205 of the Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Essentially what the federal government has done is to force school districts to comply with all sorts of expensive federal directives in exchange for increased reimbursements for students on the free and reduced lunch program.
    Now the schools are being required by the federal government to raise prices on full-pay students to help pay for lunch changes that they did not want and do not like.
    Oxford is not alone in raising prices. Schools all over the country are increasing prices to comply with this new federal intrusion.  And some schools are just opting out of the federal school lunch program altogether. Almost 1,500 school have said "No thank you" to federal funding and regulation of school lunches since changes went into effect.
    Nationally about 1.6 million full-pay students have stopped buying their lunch at school since the federal government began micromanaging the program. That's about seven percent of the 25 million students who were buying their own lunch at school each day. With lunch prices increasing, expect this number to rise. Most people don't like to pay more and get less.
    I don't blame the Oxford School District for making these changes; it is just complying with federal law. But this is certainly an example of how an increase in federal spending can make the lives of the supposed beneficiaries worse instead of better.