Barren County Middle School

- Charles Campbell, Former Superintendent
Barren County Schools

“Barren County Middle School's National School to Watch designation would not have occurred without our long-term partnership with CTL. It's through their expertise that our school continues its journey of professional improvement."

– Michelle Pedigo, Former Principal
Barren County Middle School
(2000 National Middle School Principal of the Year)

Barren County, Kentucky Middle School was interested in helping its teachers with curriculum mapping and alignment to instructional standards in each subject area. CTL implemented its Lesson Plan Xpress program there to assist teachers with curriculum mapping and alignment to state and local standards. The goal was to help teachers build an instructional culture that gathers ongoing evidence of student learning. Teachers are then better able to adjust instruction to meet the needs of individual students based on that evidence.

In 1997, a comparison of Barren County Middle School's test scores to all other middle schools in the state, ranked the school 101st in Kentucky. In 2000, following three years of CTL's work there, the school was ranked 26th in Kentucky.

In 1999, Barren County Middle was named a "School to Watch" by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, in part thanks to the school's implementation of CTL's Different Ways of Knowing (DWoK) whole school reform initiative. Its principal, Michelle Pedigo, was named the 2000 National Middle School Principal of the Year.