Students are charging towards college.

Bullitt East has recently received recognition from a national company for adequately preparing students for a college experience.

Bullitt East recently received the “College Success Award” from GreatSchools. This company awarded high schools across nine different states. The purpose of this award is to recognize high schools that effectively prepare their students for a college education.

Principal Chris Mason shared an article to the school’s Facebook page written by The 74, a news source who primarily focuses on education. “Mr. Davis [Bullitt County superintendent] sent me that article, I didn’t know anything about it and saw we were one of the top six schools in the state of Kentucky and I thought ‘wow I have to get that out’ so people can see it,” said Mason.

The purpose GreatSchools had for conducting this research was to understand how high schools across the country are preparing teenagers to pursue a college education. They recorded that only 25 percent of all high school graduates continue onto a postsecondary education, while by the year 2020, approximately 65 percent of jobs will require a college degree. Because of this data, the company also has the goal to bring attention to necessity of preparing the young people of our country and recognizing high schools that already accomplish this.

The “Every Student Succeeds Act” was passed in 2015 and requires each state to record the number of students that enroll to further their education after high school. Part of the reason behind this act was the idea that standardized tests don’t fairly portray school’s success.

Only nine states provided enough data for GreatSchools to perform their examinations. These states include Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. Within these states 3, 879 schools were eligible for the “College Success Award”.

The schools that received this award all scored within the top 30th percentile in college preparation and college enrollment. None of the schools that were awarded fell beneath the 50th percentile in any area.

Within the state of Kentucky, Bullitt East is ranked as the 43 high school. “Yesterday a buddy of mine that’s the principal at Frankfort High School, where I went to high school at, said they were the 19th school [in Kentucky] so I started reading that and noticed that we were 43,” said Mason, “all those ratings and stuff are nice but our students are the reason why we are where we’re at. Our teachers also do a great job of getting kids prepared for college and even careers after high school. I can’t say enough about what a great job our teachers do to get kids ready for that.”

Thirty-one schools in Kentucky also received this recognition. These high schools include DuPont Manual, Louisville Male, Nelson County, North Oldham, Oldham County, South Oldham and Thomas Nelson.

“You have some schools that are consistently top 10 schools and to know that Bullitt East has been a school of distinction and a top 10 school before, that’s pretty nice company. That says an awful lot about our students and our teachers, like I said earlier. None of that could happen without what our students do and what our teachers challenge our students to do,” said Mason.