How Taylor Middle School Went from Zero Positive Data to 98% Attendance
Once labeled one of the worst middle schools in the community, Taylor Middle School in Lovington, New Mexico rebuilt its culture through five years of PBIS implementation. The school now awards over 163,000 points per year, has 94% of staff actively recognizing students, and holds approximately 98% daily attendance.
“There's not a moment that we don't come on campus from 7:50 to whenever we go home at 3:30 that we don't have it up and that we use it because it's just a valuable tool”
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Zero Positive Data
Six years ago, Taylor Middle School in Lovington, New Mexico was a building people avoided. Parents in the community were afraid to enroll their children. Drug use was happening inside the school. Students were threatening teachers. Disruption was constant, and the staff who remained were exhausted.
Principal Lacy Lockwood arrived to find zero positive data – not low numbers, not a downward trend, but nothing at all to build on. Some teachers had become so worn down that negativity was the default. The school served 7th and 8th graders as the only middle school in town, drawing from families across every income level, and the culture had deteriorated to the point where the building’s reputation defined the experience before a student ever walked through the door.
Lockwood knew the turnaround couldn’t wait for a committee or a grant cycle. It needed people who cared enough to work for free.
Six People and a Summer
The foundation of everything Taylor Middle School became was laid by six people who met all summer without pay. A counselor, administrators, and teachers from English, math, and special education sat together and built the school’s PBIS program from scratch. Lockwood’s mentor through the process was Roger Hein – now a special education director, but at the time someone who had spent eight years at the middle school and understood its history.
The group landed on four core values: Achievement, Compassion, Integrity, and Safety. Those values have not changed since day one. The team built a PBIS matrix that mapped expectations to every area of the school – cafeteria, hallways, classrooms, gymnasium – so that no matter where a student was on campus, the expectations were explicit and consistent.
When the school year started, the first several days were dedicated to teaching those expectations. Students rotated through every area of the building, learning what Achievement looked like in the classroom, what Compassion meant in the lunchroom, what Integrity required in the hallways. The rotations were teacher-driven – not an assembly, not a video, but direct instruction from the adults who would be holding the standard all year.
Platinum Club
Early in the PBIS implementation, Lockwood’s team created what they call the Platinum Club – a weekly recognition for the top 15 point earners per grade. Every week, those students are called to the office and handed a personalized envelope of coupons. The coupons rotate: walk the mile in PE, skip to the front of the lunch line, get a free answer on a quiz, or the one students talk about most – an "Uber to class," where the principal rolls the student down the hallway in a rolling chair.
Recognition doesn’t stop at the envelope. Die-cut stars with each student's name go up on the wall – Hollywood Boulevard style – with a 7th grade side and an 8th grade side. Every week, a photo of the Platinum Club recipients runs in the school’s digital newsletter, called School Scoop, which reaches parents, guardians, the school board, and cabinet members.
What makes the program more than a leaderboard is who shows up on it. Lockwood and Dean of Students Chloe McFerson are intentional about making sure the Platinum Club always includes new students, special education students, and English language learners. The recognition is designed to reach every corner of the student body, not just the students who would succeed in any system.
Hiring for the Values
Sustaining a culture shift across five years required more than a strong launch. Taylor’s leadership filters every hire through the values the school was built on. During interviews, candidates must articulate what the core values mean to them and demonstrate a positive outlook. If they can’t, Taylor isn’t the right fit.
Lockwood describes one hire – a careers teacher – who opened his interview by stating his own core values before anyone asked. That kind of alignment is what the team looks for. The result is a staff that doesn’t just comply with the PBIS system but owns it. Students hold teachers accountable for awarding points, and teacher data is shared periodically to maintain consistency across classrooms.
McFerson, now in her third year as dean, describes an office that serves a different purpose than it did six years ago. Students come in not just for discipline but for honest conversations, for help, for a break, sometimes just for a granola bar. The shift from punitive to relational didn’t happen by accident – it happened because the adults in the building were selected for it.
Keeping Students in the Building
Taylor’s attendance strategy is built on timing. The school schedules reward days right before breaks – the stretches when attendance typically dips – giving students a reason to show up on the days they’re most likely to stay home. The approach has pushed daily attendance to approximately 98%.
Lockwood’s philosophy on rewards is pragmatic. She leans heavier on extrinsic motivation at the start of the year, when students are still learning the expectations, and transitions toward intrinsic motivation as the year progresses. The balance matters: too much extrinsic and students only perform for the reward, too little and the system loses its pull before habits form.
That philosophy extends to the only middle school in town serving students from poverty level to high income. Lockwood is direct about her goal: every student feels equal on campus regardless of what they go home to. The PBIS framework and the point system give every student the same access to recognition, the same shot at Platinum Club, the same experience of being told they’re doing something right.
What Comes After the Culture
Five years into full PBIS implementation, Taylor Middle School is a Capturing Kids’ Hearts National Showcase School. The staff has awarded over 163,000 points this year alone, with 94% of staff actively recognizing students. The school that once had zero positive data now focuses almost exclusively on positive data – Lockwood says they don’t bother reporting the negative numbers anymore because the positive ones are so much more worth talking about.
With behavior no longer consuming every conversation, the staff turned their attention to the next challenge: student apathy in work completion. They layered the Power of ICU program on top of the PBIS foundation, using the stable culture as a platform to address academic engagement. It’s the kind of problem a school can only tackle once the daily disruptions are gone.
The six people who met that first summer without pay built something that outlasted any single initiative. The core values haven’t changed. The matrix hasn’t changed. The expectation that every adult in the building will recognize students every day hasn’t changed. What changed was a school that the community was afraid of – and that part, Lockwood and her team made sure, would never come back.
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