Chuck Taylor, the retired principal of Bowdon High School, was named a high-performance principal because of the school’s improvement during his tenure, but Taylor believes that is less a reflection on him than on the support of the school community.

“We had such good support of what we did,” Taylor said. “We began with just great people and great people came to Bowdon and stayed in Bowdon because of our positive atmosphere.”

Gov. Sonny Perdue and the Georgia Department of Education teamed up to announce the 112 high-performance principals who were chosen based on test scores for the last three to five years.



The list was compiled solely on statistics, said Dana Tofig, director of communications for the Department of Education. The schools had to show improvement in at least three of the four tested areas: math, reading/English, social studies and science. The principal had to have been assigned there for three consecutive years.

Perdue started the high-performance principal program in 2006 to recognize excellent school leaders.

“These outstanding educators have fostered school environments that are conducive to student achievement,” he said in a written statement.

The school environment is exactly what Taylor worked to improve during his eight years as principal at Bowdon.

“When you walked into Bowdon High School, you could tell school was in,” he said. “We worked very hard to make every student at every level feel like they were part of that school. That’s my foremost philosophy in how to be successful, is for everybody to be a part of and buy into what we’re trying to do.”

In the last three school years before he retired, Bowdon High School students had improved in every subject except geometry and economics. On the biology test in 2004-2005 school year only 50 percent of students met or exceeded standards. In 2006-2007, 93 percent of biology students met or exceeded standards. In ninth grade literature, 60 percent of students met or exceeded state standards in 2004-2005. In 2006-2007, 85 percent did. In algebra the percentage of students meeting or exceeding rose from 67 to 82 percent and in history it rose from 66 to 74 percent.

The school was awarded a 2007 Bronze Award for Greatest Gain in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards. The percentage rose to 94.84 percent of students meeting or exceeding, 15.68 percent over the 2006 test results.

Bowdon, which was once home to Bowdon College, the first co-ed college in the state of Georgia, is an old college town and the community values education, Taylor said. That made it easy to enlist the community in putting emphasis on academics as well as athletics. In 2005, the school’s football team had had 18 consecutive winning seasons, and the baseball and basketball teams were perennial state playoff contenders.

“My goal when I went there was for our academic excellence to be as good as our athletics and we were able to achieve that,” he said.

The school began reading programs, encouraging students to read not only for classes but also during the summer. He also organized after school tutoring programs for those students who needed it.

“We had hours and hours of after-school tutoring,” Taylor said. “That was something we did throughout the year, and then at test time just doubled the intensity.”

He praised the school counselor, Donna Simpson, who worked to target students who were having difficulty in their classes.

“Those are the ones that determine your AYP (adequate yearly progress) status, the kids in the middle or on the lower end,” he said. “When you focus on that group of children and their scores, then your overall scores are going to be better.”

But Taylor said the work was a team effort that wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the teachers, administration and the community.

“I think if kids have good relationships with their teachers they’re a lot more apt to perform for that teacher,” he said. “Everybody’s got to be working on the same thing and believing in the same thing and that was my main focus when I went there was to get everybody on one team, with one common goal.”

Travis Thomas, former principal of Villa Rica Middle School, was named principal of Bowdon High School as of July 1, 2008.