Paris and Henry County school officials have been scrambling since late Friday afternoon to make sure local at-risk third-graders’ parents had the information they needed to make fast-but-informed decisions about repeating the year or moving on to the fourth grade.
The state’s new third-grade retention directive requires most third-graders to score in the top two of four levels of achievement on the TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program) test to be promoted.
Facing tight deadlines, both local school systems’ principals and central office staff had to work through the weekend to analyze the results and figure out who could opt to retake the TCAP by today, so those new scores could be returned by Friday.
Principals and teachers were calling parents Monday to discuss options.
Norma Gerrell, director of the Paris Special School District, said Paris Elementary School had 181 third-graders, and about 60 were invited to retake the test today.
She said she’ll know more next week about how many will be going to summer school and/or using a tutor in the fourth grade.
Leah Watkins, director of Henry County Schools, said only four PSSD students retook the TCAP on Tuesday.
She said Harrelson, Henry and Lakewood schools had a total of 147 third-graders, but only about 20 had to be called. She said others already had made arrangements either to be retained (about 10) or go to summer school.
“Our staff did a tremendous job,” Dr. Watkins said, “and the parents have been just phenomenal.”
About 24 third-graders are eligible to appeal the TCAP results, she said, since they were right on the margin.
PSSD had 39 at-risk third-graders and the county had 35-40 they’ve been working with most of the year.
If students’ parents can be recontacted Friday when the new TCAP results are received, they’ll have 10 days to decide whether to choose the option of attending summer school, which starts June 5.
PSSD’s summer school will end June 29 while the county’s will end the following day.
Both school directors said extra tutoring during the year has helped.
“We feel like all-corps tutoring had a great impact on our students’ reading performance,” Watkins said.
Post a comment as anonymous
Report
Watch this discussion.
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.