The parents of some middle-schoolers are in for a shock should the Fairfax County School Board decide to implement the proposed Student Accountability Plan, which would require all county students to reach set promotion benchmarks before moving on to the next grade level.
The plan is proposed to be phased in beginning with the sixth through eighth grades in FY ‘03. The Student Accountability Plan was sacrificed last year during budget cuts, and it remains to be seen whether it will survive this time around.
The estimated cost of the program is $2 million to cover the cost of additional personnel and instructional materials for required remedial classes.
The plan creates benchmarks — the minimum academic requirements for promotion — in elementary schools for language arts and mathematics, and in middle schools for English, mathematics, science and social studies. High-school students must earn Standards of Learning (SOL)-verified credits for promotion.
Students failing to meet the estimated criteria face being "conditional promoted" or retained and will be required to attend summer school and focused remediation during the next school year.
"Starting with the first report card, there is an additional note telling the parents the benchmarks aren't being meet," said Louise Porter, the Fairfax County Public Schools middle-school SOL coordinator.
CONDITIONALLY PROMOTED students will be able to advance to the next grade level but will have to attend summer school and remediation classes. Retained students will be advised to attend summer school, although it is not mandatory, and will repeat the grade while also attending focused remediation classes.
However, during the phase-in period, students in sixth through eighth grades who make progress in meeting the benchmarks in language arts and/or mathematics will be conditionally promoted and will have to attend summer school. Students in seventh and eighth grades who do not meet the benchmarks in science and/or social studies will be conditional promoted. They will not be required to take summer school but will have to take the remedial courses the following year.
Larry Kugler, the elementary-school SOL coordinator, told the School Board during a work session last Monday that currently, 258 general-education elementary-school students are in danger of being conditionally promoted, while 39 have the potential to be retained. Once special-education and English speakers of other languages (ESOL) students are factored in, those numbers jump to 445 and 53, respectively.
As for middle-school projections, Porter said a total of 1,617 seventh-graders, including special education and ESOL, and 1,871 eighth-graders are on track to be conditionally promoted, and 1,290 seventh- and 1,162 eighth-graders are potentially going to be retained.
The remedial courses would be offered in place of an elective during the regular school year.
The School Board is expected to adopt a final budget on May 23, which would determine whether the plan can begin to be phased in.