About the National High School Center
Friends of the National High School Center
Molly Howard
Molly Howard, principal of Jefferson County High School in Louisville, Georgia, has been named the 2008 MetLife/National Association of Secondary School Principals National High School Principal of the Year. Howard has been at the helm of Jefferson County High since 1995, the year in which two county high schools were closed and consolidated, with mixed community reaction, to form Jefferson County High. Arriving during this very traumatic event in the community forced Howard to work even harder to assure residents that the change would be a good one.
Since then, Howard and her dedicated staff have changed the culture of learning in the school, by setting higher expectations and eliminating all lower level courses. When she arrived, only 20 percent of the school's students were high achieving, 10 percent joined the military or attended technical schools and 70 percent graduated without seeking higher collegiate achievement. When Jefferson was built in 1995, over half of the county's adult population didn't have a high school education. Howard was determined to change that statistic.
Since Howard's arrival, students now start the 9th grade at Jefferson taking college preparatory level English, math, science and social studies. Howard and her staff have turned Jefferson into a true professional community, implementing several strategies to increase collaboration among teachers in order to best serve the student population. An "Algebra That Works" (ATW) program was initiated, breaking Algebra I into four units and allowing students a greater chance of mastering the course. The results have been undeniable. Before the ATW program, during the 2003-2004 school year, only 41.7 percent of students at Jefferson met or exceeded the state-mandated end-of-course test for Algebra. During the 2006-2007 school year, 68 percent of students met or exceeded the standards.
Return to Friends of the National High School Center overview page.
