KCTS Awards Golden Apple to Tacoma's Lincoln Center

We are excited to learn that the Lincoln Center has been awarded the KCTS 9 Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Education.

The Lincoln Center is a very special program launched in 2008 at Lincoln High School, focused on closing the infamous achievement gap, and getting more of their students to college. The Lincoln Center program asks students to commit to longer school days (from 7:20 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.), and to focus on doing well in high school and going to college. Those students spend their extra long school days working with parents, teachers, support staff and community members to build strong foundations for academic success.

The hard work and long days for students and everyone involved in the program has led to successes in shrinking the achievement gap; students in the Lincoln Center have better grades and attendance rates, compared to Lincoln High School students as a whole. This year the first cohort of Lincoln Center students are seniors, and a greater percentage are on track to graduate. Some of them have even already begun receiving college acceptance letters.

Along with those acceptance letters, the other signs of the success of the program’s innovative approach are getting some much-deserved recognition too. The KCTS 9 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Education, which honors successful teaching models and programs in Washington State is recognizing the hard work, commitment and innovative model of the Lincoln Center as one of their 2011 award recipients.

To learn more about the Lincoln Center, visit the Tacoma Public Schools webpage. To learn more about the Golden Apple Awards and see other winners, visit www.kcts9.org,