Article found online from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/new-state-plan-could-be-a-roadmap-for-normandy-schools/article_c80ea124-6bc3-5a0a-af98-cb4c041eac32.html
This article discusses the Missouri Board of Education’s plan for the Normandy school system following the transfer of 2,200 students from unaccredited schools. This transfer has caused many issues for the school system. The most straining being a $15 million bankruptcy because of inability to pay the increased tuition and transportation costs for these students. The new plan focuses on helping identify schools at risk for slipping into being unaccredited, providing interventions, and support before it gets to that point. The focus is to look at schools and make individuals plans not one plan for all schools. The key part of the plan is that once a school scores below 70% in its annual report a contract will be created linking the district to specific goals and targets. Also the plan hopes to look closer at the quality of teachers and make literacy plans.
I found this article interesting especially because I have been learning about similar issues in my community of University City. It seems like in the past, the plans put in place to help schools from becoming unaccredited have been too general and not specific to the needs of the particular district or more specifically the particular school. I think to combat the issues of why schools get to the point of accreditation many factors must be looked at. In this article it mentioned teacher quality, but what does that really mean? Educators can look perfect on paper but maybe more time should be spent making sure their personality, lesson plans, student expectations etc. are an even match to the population of students they work with.
What do you think is the most important factor that effects schools being at risk for losing accreditation? What types of interventions are out there? What strategies have schools in your community used that have or have not been successful?
As a past educator, I have never seen a solution for the issue of consistent lack of parental involvement, often not due to parent's desire, in many unaccredited schools until this past semester. Students value going to school with their neighborhood friends. I wonder if anyone has studied the affect upon student's social status within their community who transferred this year out of their community. I did read this issue caused some students to transfer back to their unaccredited school. Almost seems students are indirectly punished by the new transfer policy.
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