Email from school about Academic and Career Plan asking for parent signoff

[Anonymous]

We got an email from DC school:

Each year, your child develops an Academic and Career Plan that supports their growth. This plan helps your child plan for their future.

Your child will work with teachers and school counselors to discover their personal strengths and interests. They will also create goals to help them achieve success, plan for courses that meet high school graduation requirements, and prepare for life after high school. The development of this plan starts in middle school. Students update their plans during high school as their goals evolve.

This plan supports on time graduation as well as college and career readiness. It is required by the Virginia Department of Education. Each student’s parent or guardian must review this plan at the end of 8th grade and again at the end of 10th grade.

We never heard about this and definitely did not do this in 8th grade.

Can anyone who has went through this process and knows about this, please provide any information on how important this is and what we should be doing? Any insight would be most helpful.

DC did not hear anything about this either.

Thank You!

[Anonymous]

Is this an FCPS middle school?

[Anonymous]

Dream Big! Give them no reason to shut your kid out of every opportunity. Limits are for your kid and you to decide. I would not show your hand

imo though, your child is not the reason for this program -- it's for students where the school system is unsure if they are college bound or not.

[Anonymous]

Pretty sure this is the stuff they put into naviance. They do it in their “extra” period. This isn’t something to worry about. They are helping your kid start planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure this is the stuff they put into naviance. They do it in their “extra” period. This isn’t something to worry about. They are helping your kid start planning.

I doubt they want the truth. DC will take as many AP classes as the possibly can, they will join clubs hoping for leadership roles, and they will continue to play their sports. Hopefully this will be enough to get them into a good instate college.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies.

Yes they did mention this goes into naviance.

They also had a google form where parents are signing off on these items.

I am bit concerned as I am not sure exactly what I am signing off on or even why they need a sign off at all. Would my sign off mean we are closing off doors on somethings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Yes they did mention this goes into naviance.

They also had a google form where parents are signing off on these items.

I am bit concerned as I am not sure exactly what I am signing off on or even why they need a sign off at all. Would my sign off mean we are closing off doors on somethings.

Generally, if you're choosing the most advanced academic options, you'll close the fewest doors. Look through your highschool's course descriptions to get an understanding of the prerequisite structure

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Yes they did mention this goes into naviance.

They also had a google form where parents are signing off on these items.

I am bit concerned as I am not sure exactly what I am signing off on or even why they need a sign off at all. Would my sign off mean we are closing off doors on somethings.

Generally, if you're choosing the most advanced academic options, you'll close the fewest doors. Look through your highschool's course descriptions to get an understanding of the prerequisite structure

Thank you!

I thought course selection was a separate process with course selection done around January - March of each year.

Could you please help me understand what doors are being closed? Are you referring to additional advanced courses later on? Or closing doors on certain colleges for good? Or closing out doors on career paths like Engineering or Law or Medicine, etc?

It is the closing of career paths that we would be most concerned about. Although I fail to see how that would work. Child on track to take advanced classes in several different subject areas (math, science, social studies, english) so I am assuming this should not be the case.

Thanks again for the helpful input.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Yes they did mention this goes into naviance.

They also had a google form where parents are signing off on these items.

I am bit concerned as I am not sure exactly what I am signing off on or even why they need a sign off at all. Would my sign off mean we are closing off doors on somethings.

Generally, if you're choosing the most advanced academic options, you'll close the fewest doors. Look through your highschool's course descriptions to get an understanding of the prerequisite structure

Thank you!

I thought course selection was a separate process with course selection done around January - March of each year.

Could you please help me understand what doors are being closed? Are you referring to additional advanced courses later on? Or closing doors on certain colleges for good? Or closing out doors on career paths like Engineering or Law or Medicine, etc?

It is the closing of career paths that we would be most concerned about. Although I fail to see how that would work. Child on track to take advanced classes in several different subject areas (math, science, social studies, english) so I am assuming this should not be the case.

Thanks again for the helpful input.

Oh, dear. Of course career paths aren't closed off by the selection of high school classes. There are community college graduates who go on to become doctors and lawyers and professors. High school is not setting anything in stone.

What PP likely means by their closed door comment is that the opportunity to take a class like Calculus in 12th grade could be "closed" if your child doesn't take Geometry in 9th grade (simply because Calculus by 12th requires Algebra 2 in 10th and Pre-calculus in 11th). So unless you do summer classes to catch up, your child will run out of time to be able to take it. This can potentially lock out other advanced science classes that require Calulus as a prerequisite, namely Physics BC.

Same idea can apply to World Languages where 5 years of language is the max available but only if a language was started in 8th grade.