Northern Kentucky, where one city school is celebrating growth.

Just a few years ago.

Holmes High School in Covington was in the bottom 5% of all Kentucky schools.

Our Emily Sisk tells us how their scores are now moving in the right direction.

This as we round out our Making the grade reports.

When I saw the scores, I really just jumped out of my seat.

Couldn't help myself.

Holmes High School Principal Angela Turner has been waiting to announce the results from last year's state test scores.

The high school is now classified in the yellow level, which is one category away from total proficiency.

Covington Independent Schools District Assessment coordinator explained why this is a huge turnaround from just a few years ago.

We are at the bottom 5% of all high schools in the state of Kentucky, which was a red category as well.

Just a few years ago, Holmes High School received a red rating, which required them to develop an improvement plan.

Every year since the Covington based school has grown.

They are now nine points short of reaching that green proficiency level.

The years of work that we've put in over probably the last 5 or 6 years have really started to show.

In our scores.

We focus on every single area of school that needed to improve.

So that went from attendance to behavior to academics to social emotional learning.

So what's attributed to this growth?

The school leaders all referenced a district wide curriculum where all of its K through 12 schools share the same learning plan.

What was happening at the middle school aligned with the high school, and what was happening at the elementary schools, aligned with what was at the middle school, so that our kids were coming to us prepared.

We did a lot of work to make sure that not only did we have that same curriculum each classroom, but also that that curriculum was rigorous, that it was challenging our students.

The high school also implemented practice assessments and intervention for students who needed extra help.

We do three benchmarks every year, and those benchmarks are designed to show what they're going to score on the KSA.

If a student doesn't master a standard, they go and do some what we call wind time.

So what I need time.

And so during that time they work on that standard until they get that standard, till they've mastered that standard.

Covington Independent Public Schools is the most diverse school district in Northern Kentucky.

It is also a low income district, with nearly 90% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch.

Leaders in the school system said it can be difficult for urban school districts to see significant growth.

But students at Holmes High School want to know how they can improve.

Kids want to know their scores, which is a huge change for where we used to be.

Every other day, I have a kid that says, hey, what I do?

Do you know when I got on that test, what did I do on that?

How did I do on that?

They want to to see their improvement.

They want to know how to get to that next level.

So if they scored apprentice, they want to know how many points they were away from proficient.

And I sat down with a senior at the high school to see what he thought about this score improvement.

He gave all the credit back to his teachers.

Instead of just handing them a packet and saying go for it.

They're actually helping them hands on, and students are actually learning a lot.

And the more they improve and the higher our test scores be, the better our school gets.

Principal Turner said sometimes you have to stay the course even when it takes time to see results.

We're celebrating all those small wins that are now equaling out to to bigger wins for us.

Holmes High School leaders said their expectation is to earn a green proficiency rating next year for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Emily Sisk.