Middle School Students Earn National Awards on Spanish Exams

Claudia Vakos’ Level I Spanish students at Lee Burneson Middle School (LBMS) earned several national awards for their performance on the 2013 National Spanish Examinations.

Eighth-grader Emily Schordock landed in the top 1 percent of all 36,205 Spanish Level 1 students who took the high school-level exam with her score of 99 percent.

Of the 31 Spanish students who voluntarily took the exam, nine earned gold medals, 14 silver and six bronze medals, along with two honorable mentions. All of the students received scores meriting recognition or awards on this high school-level Spanish I exam.

Scoring in the top 2 percent to 3 percent were Justin Krantz, Alex Lathem, Liang Hong and Nicole Horczak. Gold medalists scoring in the top 4 percent to 5 percent in the nation were Rachel Cuellar, Catherine Frerman, Zephyr Hameem and Leah Choban.

Silver medalists scored in the top 7 percent to 14 percent in the nation. LBMS students Carter Hoon, Riya Desai, Jotham Courtney, Ryan Detwiler, Bradley Katcher, Elizabeth Massien, Sneha Ramachandran, Jeremy Schwochow, Jordan Serrat, Alexis Sole, Megan Fleming, Diana Kalash, Chloe Pozderac and Maura Ryan all earned silver medals.

Honorable Mentions went to Emilee Skutt and Isabel Palmer. Students scoring between the 75th and 84th percentile received bronze medals. Those students are Ishaan Dutta, Kaitlin Hahn, Brent Feorene, Molly Hundt, Marlen Torres and Grace Busick.

The National Spanish Exam is the largest of its kind in the United States with 152,726 participants in 2013. Of those students who took the exam, 36,205 were Level I students.  The National Spanish Examinations are given each year in grades six through 12 and are sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.