Nourishing the Soul
By Head of School Michael Dewey
As a Christian school, we strive to nourish the soul and educate the mind—to ground our students in a living and vibrant love for Christ and his Word, and to cultivate within them a thirst for truth and wisdom. What I have learned over the years is that we cannot effectively do one without the other. Our Creator is a God of love and of truth. As creatures designed in his image, we have both a heart and a mind. It is because we prioritize developing a student’s relationship with Christ, that our students in turn can be successful academically.
We were created to love God and be in communion with him. We were also created to reflect God’s dominion over the earth by cultivating and subduing it for his glory. Our minds not only have the ability to seek knowledge and gain understanding, but they reflect God’s creative nature. While the world celebrates the innovations of science and technology as somehow proving that mankind has no need of belief in God, we celebrate them as evidence of the imago dei and how our creative minds reflect the majesty of our sovereign Creator.
In a school, the temptation is to give priority to the mind, and we see countless schools that have chosen this path. It is a sad fact of history that our world is littered with once proud Christian schools and universities that are now entirely secular. While the reputation of such institutions has grown over the centuries, they most certainly have not become better. We need only watch the news to see how barren of virtue and bereft of wisdom they have become. The graduates they produce are no longer the shapers of a great nation, but rather the heralds of its demise. Any school that seeks to separate heart and mind will find itself untethered from truth and drifting farther away from the purpose for which it was created. It is imperative for us to never let this happen to Evergreen Christian.
The early 20th century philosopher and spiritual writer A. D. Sertillanges said it best when he wrote, “The true springs up in the same soil as the good: their roots communicate. Broken from the common root and therefore less in contact with the soil, one or other suffers; the soul grows anemic or the mind wilts.” Yes, we strive for academic excellence, but as Sertillanges reminds us, it will never come if we sacrifice the cultivation of the good—a heart that loves God, dwells on his word, and seeks righteousness. As Christ reminds us in Matthew 6:33, if we seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, he will provide for all our needs. And in a school where we challenge students to develop rigorous thinking, the mind will blossom if we keep it in the fertile soil of the good.
Developing the Mind
This past October, our students in grades 9–11 took the PSAT. We have administered this test for the past five years so that we can track the progress of our students. I thought I would share the results with you, as a tangible example of what I just shared. Our admission process is not designed to enroll only students who are academically exceptional. Instead, it is designed to enroll students who want to become academically exceptional. This means that the majority of our students come to us expecting it to be challenging and understanding that it will take hard work to excel. We enroll these students because they have a strong desire to grow in their faith—they want to be here. They are here because we believe that by cultivating the heart the mind will also flourish. And flourish it has!
First, let me begin with the PSAT scores for all ECS students testing this past October. The percentile ranking shows where our students are testing compared to the national average. A 74% ranking for all juniors means our students (when taken as a whole) are testing higher than 74% of students testing. For those juniors who have been in our program all three years, they are testing at the 79%. Overall, I am enormously proud of how our students have risen to the challenge and shown improvement each year.
2025 PSAT Scores
[THIS YEAR’S SCORES]
All students testing in 2025, both new and returning.
| 9th Grade | 10th Grade | 11th Grade | |
| Students Testing | 44 | 44 | 50 |
| Average Score | 947 | 1029 | 1074 |
| Average Percentile | 55% | 70% | 74% |
Freshmen: Our incoming 9th grade scores are lower than last year’s incoming 9th grade scores. Freshmen scores are always indicative of what these students have learned at their previous school, since we are testing them after only being at ECS a little over a month. Because of this, freshman scores vary from year to year. The true measure of the growth of these students will be revealed when they test next year, after being in our program for a full year.
Sophomores: This is the highest scoring class of sophomores that we have ever seen at ECS, both average score and percentile ranking. Unsurprisingly, last year they were also the highest scoring group of freshmen we have ever seen.
Juniors: This group of juniors is only testing slightly better than last year’s juniors but have a much higher percentile ranking. Percentile rankings vary from year to year depending upon all students testing nationally that year. For example, our 2023 Junior Class had an average score higher than this group, with only a 70% percentile.
Cohort Testing: The following charts track students' growth over their time in our program. While freshman scores show what a student has learned elsewhere, the scores below show growth while in our program. This is where we can truly begin to see student progress and the value added the longer a student is at ECS. Because some students transfer out, or are absent the day of testing, cohort numbers are less than the overall number of students testing.
2024 Freshman Cohort
[THIS YEAR’S SOPHOMORES]
Students entering program as freshmen in 2024.
[tracking growth for the same 33 students over the past two years]
| 2024 Freshman Cohort | 9th Grade | 10th Grade |
| 10/2024 | 10/2025 | |
| Students Testing | 33 | 33 |
| Average Score | 991 | 1054 |
| Average Percentile | 75% | |
| Student Growth | +63 Points |
2023 Freshman Cohort
[THIS YEAR’S JUNIORS]
Students entering program as freshmen in 2023.
[tracking growth for the same 27 students over the past three years]
| 2023 Freshman Cohort | 9th Grade | 10th Grade | 11th Grade |
| 10/2023 | 10/2024 | 10/2025 | |
| Students Testing | 27 | 27 | 27 |
| Average Score | 947 | 1038 | 1101 |
| Average Percentile | 79% | ||
| Student Growth | +91 Points | +63 Points |
While the growth we are seeing from last year to this year in both cohorts is very good, we feel it can be much better. As a school, we have revamped our college readiness curriculum for 9th and 10th grade enrichment and have also purchased a new software program specifically designed to help students improve PSAT, SAT, ACT, and AP scores.