Watch this inspiring Principal in a School Focus feature, starting December 5 on Comcast Channel 21, Prince William County Schools TV.  See a video clip and hear what it takes.

“Never say never!” Principal Diana Lambert-Aikens knows something about overcoming the odds. When she took the helm at West Gate Elementary School in 1997, the majority of the students were struggling to overcome a language barrier in their efforts to achieve. Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores were in the “teens.” This year, 100% of third graders passed the social studies SOL; on the fourth grade Virginia history test, 95% of the students passed. Similar results were posted in English, mathematics, and science.

Based on her leadership, innovative approaches to instruction, strong parental involvement, rising test scores, and West Gate Elementary’s overall record of accomplishment, Mrs. Lambert-Aikens has been named the Prince William County Principal of the Year and received The Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leadership Award. A committee of parents, teachers, administrators, and other school employees selected Mrs. Lambert-Aikens from among eight outstanding principals nominated by their school communities.

“Our goal is to look at what we are doing and how we can change,” Mrs. Lambert-Aikens told the teaching staff when she arrived. “When you get your data, you analyze it, you go back and re-teach where you need to…..It’s about student learning, not teaching.”

Mrs. Lambert-Aikens put into place new methods and systems to help children learn. Everyone in the school is assigned a group of students with whom to make a personal connection, to encourage them, to offer help -- including the principal, assistant principal, library secretary, librarian, office secretary, and all specialists. Groups change constantly and change throughout the building, on about a two-week rotation based on new assessments. Three days a week from October until May, the last 35 minutes of the school day are spent on remediation or enrichment. “The whole school functions as a unit,” added Lambert-Aikens.

Mrs. Lambert-Aikens’ initiatives include team meetings on instructional focus; implementing the Davenport Eight-Step Process, a model program to close the achievement gap between white and minority students; providing the county’s first extended-day bilingual program for Spanish-speaking kindergartners; hiring more bilingual teachers; expanding communication with Hispanic parents; and instituting a Saturday SOL camp for fifth graders. Many of West Gate’s teachers took sessions in Spanish designed especially for educators to expand their teaching strategies.

Mrs. Lambert-Aikens credits much of the school’s success to the Davenport Eight-Step Process , a program involving collection, analysis, and monitoring of data on student achievement; school-wide focus on instruction, and strategies to provide remediation and enrichment. West Gate was the first county school to implement this program. “For a school that doesn’t have it in place, it is the most powerful thing you can do,” says Mrs. Lambert-Aikens.

Diana Lambert-Aikens is doing lots of powerful things at West Gate. And thanks to this Principal of the Year, the school and its students are sailing a steady course toward success.

11/29/05