The last week before the start of the new school year proved to be a busy one for School Board members as they held a work session, as well as their regular meeting, and a meeting with the growth task force. Looking towards the possibility of rolling out a few changes and additions in the school division, School Board members also received good news as they learned that Chesterfield County Public Schools once again met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards under No Child Left Behind.

CCPS Makes AYP
For the third year in a row, and fourth time in the past six years, the Chesterfield school division has made AYP. Under current guidelines, at least 95 percent of the division’s students must participate in reading and mathematics testing with a 77 percent pass rate in reading and a 75 percent pass rate in mathematics. Students must also have a 70 percent pass rate in science and a 61 percent graduation rate.

“Chesterfield County Public Schools is an award-winning school division that continues to outperform the Virginia targets for No Child Left Behind. We continue to show improvement and remain committed to narrowing achievement gaps, but work still remains to ensure all children have the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century. The strong partnership among our parents, teachers, students, and community is vital to ensuring our continued success,” says Superintendent Marcus Newsome.

To meet AYP, schools must meet or exceed all of the 29 benchmarks set forth under No Child Left Behind. In the division, 49 of the county’s 61 schools met AYP standards; of the 12 that didn’t make AYP, six missed only one objective, while two others missed two. Those not making AYP included Davis, Ettrick and Gates Elementary, Chester, Falling Creek, Manchester, Matoaca, Perrymont, and Providence middle schools and Chesterfield Community, Matoaca, and Meadowbrook high schools. However, some of these stats may change as Chesterfield officials are working with the state department of education to correct data for some schools.

As the ultimate goal of No Child Left Behind is for all school divisions to have 100 percent proficiency in reading and mathematics for all students by 2014, Chesterfield officials are looking at ways to improve student performance. Ways outlined include further implementing Design for Excellence strategies to narrow gaps; reviewing and enhancing school improvement plans; having principals share best practice strategies for success with other school leaders; and having principals analyze data to see where further improvement is needed.

“We still have ground to cover, but Chesterfield County Public Schools is committed to having every school achieve AYP even as the bar continues to be raised each year,” says Newsome. “Academic success for every student is our top goal, and we are working strategically to move our students and schools forward.”

Weighted Grades
After the controversial decision last year to eliminate honors classes where an AP or dual enrollment class was available at James River and Midlothian high schools, the School Board is now looking at course levels for all Chesterfield County schools.

“We are pushing to try to bring consistency to schools,” says Joe Tylus, Director of High Schools.

Throughout this past spring and summer, school officials held separate public engagement sessions with parents and students, reviewed course levels with high school principals, organized a school employ study team to look at course levels, and developed an initial model for all schools to use. This model would give standard classes a weight of 4.0, honors a weight of 4.5, and advanced a weight of 5.0.

“As we try to solve problems, we sometimes introduce new problems,” says Tylus. “We want to know whether the levels are keeping kids from being successful.”

From meetings with county officials, parents, and students, most agreed that every school should offer the same opportunities. In addition, students felt that they should have the choice whether or not to take a more rigorous course of study rather than have a more rigorous course be the only option. With the proposed weighted system, C, X, Y, and Z classes would fit the standard level; honors, specialty center, dual enrollment, pre-AP and pre-IB would be classed under the honors level; and AP, IB and college courses taken on a four-year campus would be classed under the advanced level.

“The goal isn’t just to get more students in higher levels, but the get them to be successful. If we were able to simply implement these levels, it would address these concerns,” says Newsome.

To help ease the transition, School Board members suggested that the new levels would only apply to rising eighth graders, while preparing ninth grade for the changes; only make changes to upcoming students without changing any past grades; and fully communicating to all who will be affected before implementing any changes.

If any changes hope to be effective for the 2009-2010 school year, the decision to change must be made in time for courses to be approved in December. The study group should have their full results by October so that this option would be available in time, if desired.

Online Classes
As the School Board works with the growth task force to address issues of overcrowding, they continue to look for alternatives to building new schools. After a survey conducted last February of faculty, students and parents at Thomas Dale showed that students were overwhelmingly supportive of online classes, Chesterfield school officials announced the addition of several new online classes: geometry, computer math, and world literature.

“These are the classes that teachers had expressed that we had the biggest need for,” says Lynda Gillespie, Director of Technology for CCPS.

During the 2007-2008 school year, 2,709 students participated in an online class. Currently, Chesterfield County offers four different options for students: Blackboard delivered classes, Virtual High School, Virtual Virginia, and Novel Stars. According to Gillespie, Novel Stars is by far the most popular.

“Just about every core subject is offered by Novel Stars,” says Gillespie. “Chesterfield pays a yearly subscription fee for the service and then we can have as many students as we want in the class.”

Though the most popular, Novel Stars may also leave some to be desired in the rigorousness of its courses. To address this issue, officials will be enhancing the physics, government, and American literature courses to make them more rigorous.

With the new additions, school officials hope to draw even more students towards online learning, something they don’t expect to be too difficult to do.

“We have had online learning since 2000,” says Gillespie. “And it has grown each year since. The number of students taking online courses has increased by ten times since we started.”
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