It's been a week since students finished the 2025-26 school year at Midwestern Christian Academy. It is always an experience to see the excitement and anticipation in the students' faces and in their body language as they finish a school year and head into summer break. It is also an experience to see the teachers and staff members who have worked hard all year celebrate the achievements in the awards assembly, which are the result of their work.
Recognizing the influence that the education of children and youth has in their life, in a place where they spend more time in their early years than anywhere else except at home, a Christian school is a place where the platform of education is merged with the discipleship ministry that is a biblical function of the Christian church. The amount of time spent in school each week is far greater than the amount of time children in Christian families will spend in church or its ministries, so Christian schools have developed and grown as a means for parents to put their children in a place that will support and undergird the work of their church, upholding their family's Christian values.
Awards day this year was a little different.
We eliminated a lot of awards that were simply too subjective to have much meaning. Academic awards are easy, they go to the students who earn the top two grades in each subject area for the year. There are some students who get multiple awards, because their grades are that good, and there are those who win one in a single subject, or a couple of subject areas. That just goes by the numbers.
But the confusing tangle of character awards had an element of subjectivity that left them open for question. And some awards were a stretch, to be fair, to make sure everyone gets something. But they had lost their meaning.
So our elementary teachers came up with the idea of the Cougar Character awards. Using the first letter of the word "Cougars," a biblical characteristic was developed out of each letter. The idea behind these awards is that every student can be recognized for exhibiting at least one of these characteristics, with one student from each grade level being recognized as the "Cougar of the Year." Not only does that place an emphasis on what we are trying to teach from a Christian perspective, but it provides encouragement for students so that they can see in themselves what others also see in them.
And I think that worked very well. Students go home for the summer with a slip of paper that indicates a Biblical character trait they exhibited well enough to be recognized. That's a great way to leave the last day of school.
From an academic standpoint, our students hit it out of the park. I like to use the sports analogy because that is exactly what it feels like. Sometimes, a small, Christian school like MCA gets unwarranted criticism because it doesn't appear to have a strong academic program. But we've insisted for years that MCA has a superior academic program, with evidence to show that we do, in spite of the limits we have on extra-curricular activities and on non-academic subjects. Our test scores are always strong, school wide, and among our eighth grade students going on to high school. Every assessment our students take shows their academic level to be well above average compared to public and charter school counterparts, and among the best when it comes to head to head comparison with other religious-based schools around us.
And our 2026 assessments proved it. Not only did we see our school wide score move up by 5 percentile points, but we had whole grade levels finishing above the 85th percentile on individual tests, with some classes over the 90th percentile rank in Mathematics and Reading. And we had a record number of students who were recognized for a perfect score on one or more individual tests, and for finishing in the top 3 percent nationally on individual tests. This is blue ribbon achievement territory.
And This is Where I Leave It
It was a long, uphill climb that we faced on July 2, 2018, the day I arrived to start my new job as Principal of Midwestern Christian Academy. The building itself characterized the school's condition, as construction had begun on the renovation of the Vernon Lee building, with an uncertain completion date. We approached the school year with a lot of prayer, depending on God to sustain us. And of course, he was faithful.
The academic success we celebrated on June 5 is the result of eight years of hard work developing a curriculum plan, providing the kind of materials and instruction to support the excellence we desired to see, along with stability in the turnover of the teaching staff, which had been a problem. The school achieved its first recognized accreditation in 2021, a recognition of excellence by peers, which was a major contributing factor to the success we have experienced.
Our teaching staff is now stable, the turnover rate averages less than two per year, and our teaching faculty has all of their academic credentials. I am leaving behind a school which has had strong, stable enrollment growth for five years in a row, a budget that has been balanced and produced a cash flow surplus capable of sustaining contingent expenses, such as a roof replacement, and which has attracted major donors providing funds for projects that included the renovation of the gymnasium, resurfacing of the parking lot, and this summer, the replacement of all of the windows and doors in the main building.
We have expanded and improved our athletic department, fielding competitive teams in soccer, volleyball and basketball on two levels. We have parents willing to invest in all aspects of the school's improvement.
It is still very clear that God has work for Midwestern Christian Academy to achieve in the hearts and minds of the students he sends our way. The last day of school, which was, for me, the very last one I am expecting to experience in my life, was one that fills me with gratitude for being called to serve these last eight years in this school. It has, a times, been long, and difficult, and uncertainty and the worry that often accompanies it, has been overwhelming at times. But God is faithful, and he has found a way for us to come through the storm of crisis into the light. And here we are.
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