CLARK COUNTY — After one year of getting everything in place and another putting all the ideas into motion, Northaven Elementary School is seeing results.

The school’s ISTEP scores from this spring jumped 23 percentage points from last year, with 66.99 percent of students passing both the math and English sections of the test. That jump secured Northaven a spot in the top 10 schools in the state for increasing ISTEP scores, said Lauren Auld with the Indiana Department of Education.

“My staff and students have worked hard to achieve these scores,” said Principal Ronda Hostetler, who is being moved to a teaching position next year. “We have made several changes in the past two years, including changing staff members to different grade levels, implementing a new intervention system, becoming more data-driven and having grade-level meetings on a weekly basis to monitor individual student achievement.”

Those changes have yielded changes in attitude among students and staff, she added.

“The staff knows what our students need, and the students feel confident that they are going to do well. The students looked forward to taking the test this year, and all of them put forth their best efforts during testing,” Hostetler said. “The staff looked forward to administering the test because they were confident our students would excel.”

Northaven raised its scores the most in Clark and Floyd counties. However, the school wasn’t the only ones in Greater Clark to make a sizable jump.

Parkview Middle School increased the percentage passing both portions of the test by about 17 percentage points, reaching 61.82 percent. Pleasant Ridge Elementary School saw a 15 percentage point increase and River Valley Middle School upped its scores by 14.5 percentage points. Every school in Greater Clark — with the exception of Wilson Elementary — increased its scores from last year’s percentage passing both portions of the test.

“We have not seen these scores before. We have not seen these gains before. We’re pumped,” Superintendent Stephen Daeschner said. “In my opinion, we’ve only scratched the surface.”

The district as a whole increased nearly 11 percentage points compared to last year, having 61.29 percent students passing both portions of the test. Though this is only the second year for spring testing, the previous fall testing did not reach that level. The highest score for fall testing since 1996 was 55.8 percent in 2007, according to the IDOE.

Daeschner said the improvement came from principals and teachers focusing more on academic achievement; monitoring assessments and scores of individual students; improved professional development; intervention for struggling students and other initiatives.

Mark Laughner, principal at Parkview, said that’s exactly what his school has been doing. Specifically, he said there is a board in the teachers’ lounge that details how each individual student is doing so that every teacher knows where every student is academically. He said those falling behind are taken out of electives for more courses on the basics — math and English — to get them caught up.

Laughner said he started the school year telling his staff his three-year goal was to increase scores by 15 percent.

“For our school population size and how diverse our school is, what we were able to accomplish is really similar to [what the president accomplished]. To go up 17 percent in one year with the population we serve and the diversity we have is really quite amazing,” Laughner said. “We’re extremely happy.”

Laughner said he hopes to continue the growth, adding that he’s told his staff he wants the number passing each individual subject to increase from the low 70s to the high 70s.

“I told them I don’t want to take the back seat to any middle school in this area,” he said. “I don’t care what our socioeconomic status is.”

Laughner said he also hopes to increase the number of students passing both sections of the test.

“This was a really big sense of relief that we are doing the right thing,” he said. “Our staff believes that next year we are going to be doing even better, because we are doing the right things and we have the right programs in place.”

Today, the school celebrated its accomplishment, with school and area city leaders speaking to the students and staff.