Posts Tagged ‘Fairfax County Schools’

Fairfax County Leads in Graduation Rates

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Looks like the Northern Virginia area is a great place to go to high school. Fairfax County and Prince William County are nation leaders in graduation rates.

This is according to Education Week’s recent “Diplomas Count 2011: Beyond High School, Before Baccalaureate” report.

The rates come from 2008 data collected in the nation’s 50 largest school systems. Fairfax came in second with a graduation rate of 85.1 percent. Prince William County is a little further down, but still relatively high, at spot 17. It had a graduation rate of 68.4 percent.

Unfortunately, that is a fall in ranking for Prince William County. It was previously in 15th place. Also, that puts Prince William County below the national graduation rate of 72 percent. But that percentage is unusually high. Not since the 1980s has the national average been this good.

That’s good news for a country eager for evidence of education improvement, according to one expert quoted in the Washington Examiner article about the report.

“Just as Americans have been following the stock market and employment reports for signs of an economic turnaround, education watchers have been on the lookout for improving graduation rates for the better part of a decade,” said Christopher Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit that publishes Education Week. “It looks like we are finally seeing strong signs of a broad-based educational recovery, which we hope will gain further momentum.”

It may be premature to celebrate, however. The recession has led to deep cuts at many schools. It’s possible that graduation rates at some of the systems on the list have fallen since 2008. Plus the contrast between Prince William County and the national average show that there is a lot of work still to be done.

The challenge going forward is how to maintain and improve graduation rates with fewer resources. Though the recession is technically over, its effects still weigh heavily on school systems. It is unclear how long schools will be beleaguered by budget shortfalls or whether they will eventually rebound to previous levels of funding.

It’s possible that a long-term strategy for surviving on less is needed.

In the meantime, Fairfax County should be riding high on its ranking while taking steps to try and kick Montgomery County out of the top spot.

Check out this press release for more information about the Education Week rankings.

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Suicide Spurs Review

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

It seems there’s a never-ending spate of incidents to worry about when it comes to our public schools. The latest happened in Fairfax County. That is where 15-year-old Nick Stuban committed suicide after being suspended from W.T. Woodson High School.

According to this Washington Post article, some, like Nick’s dad Steve, think reform is necessary in light of what happened with Nick.  They think the school system’s “discipline system is too punitive, with harsh hearings, long suspensions and destabilizing school transfers.”

This article tells the story of Caroline Hemenway. She has wanted changes to the school system’s policies for years. Her son was a sophomore at a Fairfax County high school when he was busted with pot. He was out of school for the fourth quarter of the year, and he was then expelled and transferred to another high school. He is now an honor student in college, but Hemenway thinks the way the school system handled her son was reactionary and wrong.

Fortunately, Fairfax County is listening to parents’ concerns. The school board is beginning a review of the disciplinary policies. See the article on the latest update from Superintendent, Jack D. Dale. It is unfortunate, however, that it took a suicide to get the school board to take action. Apparently, six school board members tried to get a review of disciplinary procedures last fall. They were rebuffed.

To look at a comprehensive critique of the situation, go here.

Whatever the view, whatever the circumstance, it cannot hurt a school to periodically look over all of its procedures — disciplinary and otherwise. A school’s primary focus is education. When student misbehavior gets in the way of that, appropriate action must be taken. But what if the discipline itself stands in the way of education?

In Fairfax County, we have a school board that is serious about looking into whether a new direction is necessary. As the Washington Post editorial said, school system policies cannot be blamed for the suicide of Stuban. However, if ever there were a time to re-evaluate them, this is it.

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Online Textbooks Here We Come

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Educators are turning the page on school textbooks — the future is online.

A pilot program in Fairfax County will provide classes at certain schools with netbooks which will give access to textbooks online instead of in print. Social studies classes at six high schools and six middle schools will be part of the year-long study.

Fairfax is following the lead of Frederick and Arlington counties, which are moving toward the use of online textbooks.

Naturally there are drawbacks to phasing out printed books and moving online. One concern is access: Will all students have the ability to get on the Internet and access online books when not at school? And what will happen when teachers open the Pandora’s Box that is the Internet? Will students use their netbooks for accessing online textbooks? Or will they goof off during class by surfing sites like Facebook?

There are, of course, positive aspects to the plan as well. One big advantage to online textbooks is cost. The printed behemoths that have lived in our children’s classrooms for decades are expensive. Doing away with them would be a big cost-saving measure for schools.

You can read more about this at The Washington Post.

The truth is that fate outweighs opinion on this issue. As the printed page moves online in all aspects of our culture, schools are sure to follow suit. If they do not, students might find themselves at a disadvantage.

Observe the chaos in the newspaper industry as periodicals increasingly move their pages online and attempt to find new business models to sustain them.

Watch how the Kindle, Nook, and other digital reading devices transform the book publishing industry.

Pay attention as bloggers and other online writers begin to sway the conversations once left to the established American intelligentsia.

The Internet has transformed our world like nothing before, and the changes are coming whether the schools want them or not. The choice left is whether to be early adopters or latecomers to the digital party. Either way, especially with financial crisis lingering for the foreseeable future, schools will probably end up adopting online textbooks eventually.

Whether this change is a good idea or bad is something that will be left to others to decide. But is it inevitable? Probably so. And schools would do well to recognize that fact.

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Helping Students Catch Up

Monday, August 9th, 2010

“No Child Left Behind” is an ambitious project set up under the Bush administration to do exactly what its title implies. Despite that, some students in school systems continue to lag behind. Schools often have their own measures for helping those students. Now, Fairfax County Schools have a new one.

The Fairfax County school system says it can make progress with poorly performing black and Hispanic students, but it needs monetary support from the Fairfax Board of County Supervisors to make it happen.

The school system says it needs $1.3 million dollars to morph programs at some of its schools from something called the Excel program to a newly created “Priority Schools Initiative.” Excel has been in place in 20 Fairfax schools since 1998. It was supposed to help low-income elementary school students improve their grades. But school officials say that many aspects of Excel weren’t working. Rather, other efforts — such as needs-based staffing, which decreases student-teacher ratios at schools with a lot of low-income and beginning English-speaking students — were more effective in helping the schools that were part of the Excel program, school officials say.

So, Excel is basically out and the “Priority Schools Initiative” is in. Rather than focusing on low-income students alone as Excel did, the “Priority Schools Initiative” will look to help poorly performing students no matter how much money their families have. In particular, schools where Black and Hispanic students don’t do as well as their white and Asian peers will be targeted by the new program.

All together, 30 schools —some elementary, some middle — will be part of the “Priority Schools Initiative.” Some of these schools were formerly part of the Excel program, but not all. The plan is to give these 30 schools more resources for at least three years. The school system allocated the $1.3 million dollars so that it could use that cash to move schools previously using Excel to the “Priority Schools Initiative.” The county supervisors have set aside exactly that amount for the schools, assuming school officials are able to show that the money is really needed.

So far, not all the supervisors are convinced.

Read more about the situation at Fairfax Times.

It’s the constant battle of public schools to find a way to reach those students who can’t seem to keep up. Countless hours and dollars have been spent trying to achieve what all teachers’ desire: the effective teaching of every student. As some programs fail to accomplish that task, others must come up to replace them. The only thing that is clear is that doing nothing is not an option.

Towards that end, Fairfax County Schools are making a concerted effort to help students who are often forgotten. Parents and students in Fairfax County schools may have first-hand experience with this. Perhaps some of your children did well under Excel. Perhaps some of them will do better under the “Priority Schools Initiative.” Perhaps not.  Regardless, projects like these two will continue — in Fairfax and across the country — as long as there are students lagging.

Learn more about Fairfax’s new program. Whether you think it will help your child or it’s a waste of money, contact the Board of County Supervisors to let members know what you think about the possibility of them spending this $1.3 million. If you’re a part of the school system, don’t let this opportunity to be heard pass.

Go to http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/government/board/ to find more information on how to contact the supervisors.

Go to http://www.fcps.edu/schlbd/members.htm to find out how to contact your school board members. Ask them to tell you more about the “Priority Schools Initiative.”

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