Eustis Middle School Has Improved Test Scores AGAIN! Does being a band member have anything to do with this?

The 8th graders of Eustis Middle School blazed a trail to the top of the list in Lake County, topping all other middle schools in every category!
EMS was tops in the county amongst the 9 middle schools with a percentage of 57%. That was not only tops in the county, but was also above the state average. 
By the way, EMS was the only school to be above the state average at the 3.5 level!

How Do We Know If Participating In Our Band Program Helped With This? 

We Have About 125 students. 

Well over ten percent of the school 

belong to our band program. 

What else can be done? We need even more children to complete our program because learning music notation makes learning easier.

About 20 percent of the City of Eustis’ population of 18,600 residents is student age.

• Right here at our school we have a student population of approximately 1,050 students, which is a large student body. About 28% of the total Eustis student population is at our school, Eustis Middle. 
• 36 percent of our students are minorities.
• 51 percent of the total student population qualify for and receive free or reduced lunch
• Math proficiency is 10-20 percent lower at our school than the statewide average.

Our fine school rates well on FCAT scoring, ranking 72 out of 100, and our school consistently earns an A rating, something of which we are very proud

The numbers show that Eustis High School ranks 50 out of 100 on the FCAT exam.

We feel that we can help to raise that number by at least 25% percent on the FCAT standardized exam at the high school if we continue to improve our music education program here in the middle school level.

We know that Eustis High School has a 77% graduation rate, something to be proud of! The graduation rate is high among other cities, but we feel that it could be, and would be, improved upon with improvements to our music program.

Research proves that the long term benefits of a strong music education program can help to raise the graduation rates to 94% and beyond.

Currently, only about 17% of our high school graduates continue on to earn a higher education degree, with only 5 percent earning graduate or higher degrees. This is a number that our program aims to change.

However, among those with a long-term music education, 80% are likely to go on to earn a masters degree or better. In addition, statistics show that of people with a doctorate degree, 80% are well trained in at least one musical instrument. Truly, the statistics show the benefits of a music education! 

 Congratulations Eighth Graders! Move on up to The Eustis High School Panthers and keep up on that learning! 

You guys are the next leaders, teachers and community of our tomorrow! 

And Our future is brighter for it!
Information is from http://lake.k12.fl.us/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=2214&ModuleInstanceID=14454&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=44501&PageID=10109