It would be interesting to know to what extent Powhatan is implementing this program, how much it costs the county and/or state and whether it has been effective.

Helping students strive
Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007 – 12:08 AM
By HOLLY PRESTIDGE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

At Meadowbrook High School, D’s and F’s have all but disappeared from the grading scale.

The Chesterfield County school is using a national school-improvement plan called High Schools That Work, which includes an optional approach to grading called the Power of I.

The “I” in Power of I isn’t an awkward personal pronoun. It stands for incomplete.

Under the plan, when Meadowbrook students turn in an assignment, they get an A, B, C or NY — Not Yet ready.

The school has established a 45-minute student resource period for work on NY assignments.

Students who score below a 74 on a test, quiz, lab or project, have one chance to redo the work. The second version can earn up to an 80, which is a C.

Other assignments such as homework, classwork and some quizzes can be redone several times and students can earn A’s.

Students have four weeks to redo the work.

Students who have incomplete or missing work must spend time with the corresponding teacher during the student resource period.

Neal Fletcher, Meadowbrook’s principal, said the idea is to encourage students to strive for a strong result.

“We want to get kids in the habit of turning in quality work,” he said.

The process allows students to grasp what they’re being taught, he said. While it will help many of Meadowbrook’s students, Fletcher acknowledges that “with some kids, you could roll out the red carpet and they’re still going to refuse to do it.”

Students who don’t do the makeup work or whose work is still below passing level are given failing grades.

Meadowbrook is one of eight schools in the Richmond region using the High Schools That Work program. Three other Chesterfield schools — Thomas Dale, Clover Hill and Monacan — use it, as do Petersburg High School, Goochland High School, Powhatan High School and Henrico County’s Virginia Randolph Community High School.

The program is run by the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit organization that provides educational services to schools in 16 member states and around the country.

The organization asks the schools to:

• have 85 percent of students meet the program’s standards in math, English and science on a standardized test given every two years to a random group of 60 seniors;

• have 85 percent of students complete advanced-level classes;

• have all students leave with some postsecondary credit; and

• have 90 percent of each freshman class complete high school in four years.

Meadowbrook has been involved with High Schools That Work for seven years. School officials say involvement dwindled in recent years to little more than after-school tutoring.

However, since January, Meadowbrook has jump-started the program’s initiatives.

To pay for its participation in High Schools That Work, Meadowbrook gets a $10,000 grant administered by the Virginia Department of Education and $5,000 in required matching funds from Chesterfield.

Schools in the program may pay extra to purchase additional services from SREB.

Thomas Dale and Clover Hill are implementing the program this year. Monacan is in its second year.

Those three schools do not get grants through the state’s support program. Rather, they contract directly with SREB. The school system foots the bill, which can run as high as $25,000 per school depending on the services used.

The three Chesterfield schools are the only ones in Virginia that have direct contracts with SREB. There are 37 state-supported programs in Virginia this year.

The state requires all schools to have school-improvement plans. Schools and school systems can devise their own plans, but some prefer the structure of High Schools That Work.

“It’s the way they package the goals for continuous improvement,” said Dale Kalkofen, assistant superintendent for instruction for Chesterfield’s schools. She said the program outlines examples of best practices that are research-based and proved to work.

“They get pretty specific, and that appeals to high school” teachers and administrators, Kalkofen said, which isn’t easy. “It’s always a challenge to get high schools to change.”

Goochland High School has been using the High Schools That Work program for at least a decade.

Principal Jon Bennett said his staff has added a senior-year project that requires students to gain real-world experience in either community-services projects, internships or job-shadowing opportunities. Students must create multimedia presentations with their project.

“We really think it helps kids stay focused during their senior year,” Bennett said. “They don’t take a lot of multiple-choice tests out in the real world.”

Bennett said the school system has sent teachers to national conferences, and talked with other schools nationwide about strategies and programs already in place. Every few years, Goochland gets objective feedback from educational consultants provided by the program.

Principal David Sovine of Monacan said his school added an adviser/advisee program to address the ninth-grade transition. Each freshman meets with a teacher once or twice a month to go over study skills and course selection. The school has introduced literacy strategies and is trying out the Power of I.

Sovine said he is still working to get all of his teachers on board. He said nearly 80 percent of his staff members support the program.

“If you’re going to do something like this that impacts the teachers, the stakeholders, you want them to buy into it,” he said.