e-news: September 12, 2023
APS Approves Calendar Policy:
What You Need to Know
In a 4-to-1 vote, the School board passed the amended calendar policy, codifying the following significant changes:
Each school year will be comprised of at least 180 instructional days (restoring the historic norm).
After amendment during the meeting, the school year will begin one week before Labor Day.
Spring and Winter breaks will be aligned with neighboring districts.
Five non-Federal holidays from three religions will be classified as non-school days; previously, per APS staff and Board members, the dates were chosen in consultation with religious leaders, but now they are stated to have been chosen for operational reasons. No known data was presented in the meeting, nor is data available to support this decision or characterization, as confirmed by our FOIA request, excerpted below:
"We have contacted the appropriate department in regard to your request for 'operational data related to staff and student absences demonstrating how each of the holidays was chosen for inclusion in the Arlington Public Schools calendar basis'. It has been determined that the records you requested cannot be found or simply do not exist.... Furthermore, Arlington Public Schools has no knowledge of any other public body that may be in possession of or has access to the records you sought; thus, there are no records responsive to your request."
Enshrines a paid leave policy for some 12-month staff (not teachers) of approximately 30 paid holidays per year.
Moved and adopted 17 cultural observance days (on which field trips, special events, sporting competitions, etc. should not take place) to the PIP.
Our Take:
We commend outgoing School Board member Reid Goldstein for stating APS is in “the instruction business” and that the five religious holidays create significant disruption to instruction and to childcare for working families.
We also appreciate School Board member David Priddy discussing community feedback and taking that into consideration in the policy.
As we have covered and discussed at length in previous editions, APE strongly opposes the new paid leave policy because it gives preferential treatment to certain 12-month staff over 10-month teachers and other staff, who work directly with our students.
Why It Matters:
We’ve argued for a policy that sets key parameters for future calendars and applaud the SB’s effort and the decision to set a minimum of 180 instructional days.
Excessively disrupted weeks may not be conducive to learning.
Impacts on working families must be considered.
What Happens Next:
APS staff will present the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school year calendars at the November 30th School Board meeting. A school board vote on the calendar will take place December 14th.
Advocacy In Action:
Aspire Expands Program at APS Elementary Schools
ASPIRE Afterschool Learning is establishing a new academic after-school program at Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School after a parent read our newsletter last spring, featuring Aspire’s important work.
Aspire provides high-quality academic support to historically underserved 3rd-8th graders at no-cost to low-income families. Aspire currently serves 125 historically underserved students in 3rd-8th grade from eight APS schools. The program is committed to closing the educational opportunity gap by providing students with after-school and summer learning programs at no-cost to the families who need support the most. This new program at Drew Elementary builds on Aspire’s existing relationship with APS schools and will support nearly 20 students enrolled in the program. Aspire is also opening a program at Randolph Elementary this fall.
After reading about Aspire last spring, a parent approached the principal about bringing the program to Drew. Aspire secured partial funding from the Washington Forrest Foundation to expand to Drew Elementary. Aspire does not receive funding from APS and is reliant on funding and support from the community. Good luck to Drew Elementary, Randolph Elementary, and Aspire as they launch these new programs and congratulations to this parent for his advocacy in action!
Financially support Aspire to help increase opportunities and close the literacy gap in Arlington!
Sign up for an upcoming volunteer night and dedicate an hour of your time to read with Aspire’s students.
Bipartisan Budget Deal Provides More Funding for Teacher Raises and Learning Loss Remediation
Lawmakers in Richmond recently reached a bipartisan agreement on a budget deal that will provide an additional $645 million of one-time funds for public education. Among other items, the funding provides the following:
$55 million to provide a 2% salary increase for teachers - building on the prior 5% increase provided for 2023 and 2024. These funds are tied to funding formulas based on the “composite index of local ability-to-pay” (e.g. wealthier districts are expected to contribute more in order to access these funds).
$418 million for flexible one-time payments to districts to address learning loss, implement the Virginia Literacy Act, and provide other support. Districts are encouragedto allocate 70% of the funds received on high-intensity tutoring, 20% on implementing the Literacy Act, and 10% to addressing chronic absenteeism.
$152 million for additional support and instructional positions.
Why It Matters: Virginia’s latest SOL data indicates that student pass rates are still below pre-pandemic levels and chronic absenteeism remains a problem. At present, it’s unclear how much APS might receive from the budget deal, but we are encouraged that there will be new resources targeted to addressing learning loss and to implementing the important requirements of the Virginia Literacy Act, as well as a recent expansion that helps cover older students.
From The Teacher's Lounge:
New Grading Policy "Defies Common Sense," Says 20-Year Veteran APS Teacher
(Editor's Note: From time to time we will offer a perspective written by an APS parent or teacheron a topic of concern or interest for APS. What follows has been only lightly edited for clarity.)
As an APS teacher for almost 20 years, I am well-versed with the policy pendulum swings that occur on a cyclical basis. Different education fads come and go and the Central Office touts its new initiative for a year before abandoning it in favor of another one the next. These initiatives may be well-intended, though burdensome for classroom teachers, but, overall, they don’t radically alter the very core of one’s pedagogy. The new grading PIPs unleashed this summer are a different matter altogether. In the name of equitable grading practices, APS has crafted a policy that defies common sense, completely undermines the ability of teachers to hold their students accountable, and devalues any grades that students earn during the year.
For some context, APS has shown an interest in applying more equitable grading practices over the past few years, though these decisions were made at the school level by administration and lead teachers in order to best suit the needs of their student populations. Many equitable grading practices are good ideas. Limiting the weight that homework can count towards the overall grade benefits students who may not have support at home or have to work or take care of siblings after school. Using a minimum grade of 50% for work that has been submitted instead of a zero can help a less motivated student not give up if a few assignments are done poorly.
But instead of assessing the impact of these pilot programs and whether the desired outcomes (which were never really clear in the first place) were achieved, APS immediately swung the pendulum all the way to the extreme and has decreed that ALL students have the right to retake ANY summative assessment throughout the year. (A summative assessment includes things like unit tests, end-of-unit essays, or major projects) For non-educators, this may not sound like a big deal. And at the elementary level, where high-stakes summative assessments aren’t a regular occurrence and grades are not a part of transcripts that get submitted to colleges, this policy may not cause many changes. However, in secondary schools, especially high school, this policy, coupled with the APS policy that “Student grades reflect student achievement and not student behavior,” yields some unintended consequences that are hugely problematic.
Last year, if students skipped class on the day of a test or when a project was due, they got a zero. Now, they are entitled to complete it any time before the end of the unit with no penalty. Last year, if students cheated on a summative assessment, they got a zero. Now, they are given the opportunity to complete the assessment “without assistance.” This new PIP erases important tools teachers use to hold their students accountable for their learning, and essentially incentivizes cheating, which sends the wrong message to our students and also creates an undue burden on teachers, who have to first create and then re-grade additional work.
The policy also ignores the reality of upper-level AP and IB classes at the high school level, where many teachers are predicting that the students who will take advantage of these opportunities are NOT the students these policies were created to help. Students who earn a B on a test are clearly demonstrating above-average skills and content knowledge and do not need remediation and a retake, yet they are now entitled to it under this new policy. Students in these classes already earn a quality point on their GPA, but now they can ask to redo any test, essay, or project. This PIP just further devalues the grades that students are earning, and will not accurately reflect what students can do. These classes end with demanding, externally assessed exams that can potentially earn them college credit. Students build up their content knowledge and skills over the year working towards that goal, and this PIP ignores that reality.
Are you an APS teacher or parent interested in writing an op-ed? Email us your thoughts!
September 7th School Board Meeting Recap
Key takeaways from the September 7th School Board Meeting are:
APS is still recruiting for 2% of its staffing needs
Parent Square is new app used for communication with parents
Please share any transportation concerns as APS irons out these challenges
SOL test results indicate:
Secondary literacy needs work
SOL pass rates in math increased, science increased, social studies increased, while reading scores were flat and writing performance dropped
Significant gaps in performance between subgroups remain
"Robust feedback" on ThoughtExchange tool regarding calendar policy (1,788 responses), regarding proposed early start date, holidays, and winter break length
Mr. Priddy proposed amendment to policy to start school year just one week before Labor Day rather than the proposed two weeks, which was adopted and calendar policy was then passed.
Read the full recap.
What We’re Reading and Listening To
Letter: School-calendar proposal an affront to front-line educators (Arlington Gazette Leader)
On Sept. 7, Arlington School Board members will vote on an unpopular calendar policy. While many are opposed to shortened summers among other concerns, this vote also makes permanent a pandemic-era benefit that increased the number of paid holidays for 12-month employees from 13 days to 31 days – an increase of 18 paid holidays before annual leave.
Teachers and 10-month staff are not paid for these days…What is the rationale for a subset of staff to receive up to 31 paid holidays, but not the majority who work directly with students? What is the rationale for a public organization to be fully closed on those days? What is the monetary and operational cost? Read more.
Many American Parents Have No Idea How Their Kids Are Doing in School (Time) Nationally, 90% of parents think their children are reading and doing math at or above grade level. In fact, 26% of eighth graders are proficient or above in math and 31% are proficient or above in English, according to Learning Heroes, an organization that collects data and creates resources to improve parent-teacher relationships… There are two reasons for the staggering mismatch between what teachers know and what parents think. The first is that many report cards do not measure just achievement, or what a child knows, but a basket of items including attendance, effort, homework completion, and behavior…A second grader might raise his hand a lot, work hard to complete his homework, and take part in class activities but be reading or doing math at a first grade level.
Read more.
America Has a Reading Problem. Mississippi Has a Solution (NY Times–Opinion) For decades, Mississippi had some of the worst reading and math scores in the country. That’s no longer true. Recently, the state’s third and fourth graders have improved significantly, and they’re now on par with the rest of the country. As kids head back to school, the New York Times Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof explains what’s been called the Mississippi miracle and what other states can learn. Read more.
AEI's The Report Card with Nat Malkus: Mike Miles on Houston ISD (The Report Card podcast)
In May, Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin joined the podcast to discuss their research on Dallas Independent School District’s Accelerating Campus Excellence program and its Principal Excellence and Teacher Excellence initiatives. The man who implemented these reforms, Mike Miles, was superintendent of Dallas ISD from 2012 through 2015, and, in May, was serving as the CEO of Third Future Schools. However, on June 1st, following a state takeover of Houston Independent School District, Miles was named the next superintendent of Houston ISD. Since then, he has made quite the splash. On this episode of The Report Card, Mike Miles joins Nat Malkus to discuss the reforms he is implementing in Houston ISD and his views on district leadership and school reform more broadly. Listen now.
Letter: APS calendar proposal does not prioritize learning (Arlington Gazette Leader)
Arlington Public Schools’ proposed school-calendar policy requires closures for five religious holidays while designating 17 more as cultural observances with open schools but no events. This two-tier approach lacks empirical support from APS student or staff demographics, historical absence data, operational disruptions or educational benefits. Religious leaders also have expressed concern that selective holiday recognition pits faiths against each other and is not equitable… These closures, concentrated in the fall, result in an inconsistent start to the school year with sporadic breaks and few full school weeks. Last year, only seven out of 16 weeks before winter break had a complete five-day school week. Read more.
The Essential State Role in Educating Advanced Learners (Fordham Institute) Getting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility of state leaders. Today, sadly, America’s high-flying students—and those with the potential to soar—face a dizzying array of inconsistent and incomplete state policies and practices.
…They [state leaders] should turn to and follow the useful nine-part policy roadmap for state leaders that was recently developed by the National Working Group on Advanced Education in its excellent report, Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners. Read more.
Why Does the Start of the School Year Vary so Much? (Education Week) This year, only a handful of states will begin classes after the [Labor Day] holiday. The bulk of districts in most states started school in August. And in Arizona, Georgia, and Mississippi, most public school students returned to school at the end of July. Why such differences among school start dates? The reasons vary. What’s best for students’ academic interests isn’t necessarily at the top of those lists. Read more.
The 'science of reading' swept reforms into classrooms nationwide. What about math? (AP)
As American schools work to turn around math scores that plunged during the pandemic, some researchers are pushing for more attention to a set of research-based practices for teaching math. The movement has passionate backers, but is still in its infancy, especially compared with the phonics-based “science of reading” that has inspired changes in how classrooms across the country approach literacy.
Join the discussion about recent articles and podcasts on our Facebook page!
Happening Soon
Thursday, September 21, 7 PM: School Board Meeting. Sign up to speak. Syphax. Watch live.
Tuesday, September 26: School Board Work Sessions. Syphax. Watch live.
9-10:30 AM: Instructional Vision
10:45-12:15 PM: School Climate and Culture: Disproportionality in Suspension
1-2:30 PM: Boundaries
Wednesday, September 27, 8 AM: Policy Subcommittee Meeting. Syphax, Suite 260.
Friday, September 29, 8 AM: Audit Committee Meeting. Syphax, Suite 260.
Don't forget! You can subscribe to APS School Calendars here.
