SELT letter

[Anonymous]

We received the annual SELT letter from FCPS (Summer Extended Learning Time) - just in time for the end of school. Honestly, what are they thinking? They have three weeks for this program in July - and by this late date, everyone's already made their summer plans. Does no one ever think ahead, that families might need advance notice to work three weeks into their summer schedules?

What would really have made a difference would have been extra tutoring/help throughout the school year, when it was needed, not just as an afterthought due to bad SOL scores. Are SOLs the only things these schools care about?

[Anonymous]

Your child did not get invited to SELT based only on SOL scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We received the annual SELT letter from FCPS (Summer Extended Learning Time) - just in time for the end of school. Honestly, what are they thinking? They have three weeks for this program in July - and by this late date, everyone's already made their summer plans. Does no one ever think ahead, that families might need advance notice to work three weeks into their summer schedules?

What would really have made a difference would have been extra tutoring/help throughout the school year, when it was needed, not just as an afterthought due to bad SOL scores. Are SOLs the only things these schools care about?

1) Not everyone has over scheduled their child's summer.
2) They work with SACC and the Rec_Pac camps so that a full day will be covered.
3) They have a working list, but wait until the end of the year to see where the children are (some who may have been lagging may have surged in the past few months and other who were ahead may have fallen back).
4) If your child plays a string instrument- get used to it, many music camps don't get organized until June either.
5) If this is a shock to you, perhaps you should have paid better attention.
6) SELT is not mandatory, it is voluntary. If you don't want your child to do it, don't have them do it.
7) My children and HS and there was no such thing as SWLT then, count your blessings. In fact, there were a few years where they was only ESY and no other summer school unless the parents paid for it.

[Anonymous]

Your child was likely in the second or third wave of invites after kids in the first wave said no. At my school, we sent out the first invites out before the SOL, then automatically added anyone who failed an SOL to the next wave, but also left it up to the discretion of the teachers to decide whether the poor SOL score was a fluke. Not all the teachers followed that instruction, which left many parents feeling like you are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your child was likely in the second or third wave of invites after kids in the first wave said no. At my school, we sent out the first invites out before the SOL, then automatically added anyone who failed an SOL to the next wave, but also left it up to the discretion of the teachers to decide whether the poor SOL score was a fluke. Not all the teachers followed that instruction, which left many parents feeling like you are.

Exactly. It's the same all over. My school invites the first round. Many decline. After that it doesn't take long before they are inviting students who really don't need SELT. They keep inviting until all slots are filled.

[Anonymous]

How are SOL scores a fluke when if you fail you can retake them?

If you don't have the sense throughout the year that your kid may need SELT and are surprised now doesn't that mean you weren't paying attention to your kid's education? Kids with 4s are not being offered SELT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are SOL scores a fluke when if you fail you can retake them?

If you don't have the sense throughout the year that your kid may need SELT and are surprised now doesn't that mean you weren't paying attention to your kid's education? Kids with 4s are not being offered SELT.

17:46 here.

We invite students who really don't need to be in SELT. Those parents sometime are surprised and I'd say justifiably so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are SOL scores a fluke when if you fail you can retake them?

If you don't have the sense throughout the year that your kid may need SELT and are surprised now doesn't that mean you weren't paying attention to your kid's education? Kids with 4s are not being offered SELT.

16:11 here. Some kids are just bad test takers. The anxiety gets to them or they're easily tripped up by the questions that are intentionally misleading (of which there are many) or any other number of things can lead to a child being a bad test taker but not a bad student. If they're a bad test taker, re taking the test isn't really going to improve anything. SELT is not about teaching test-taking skills, so wouldn't be very useful to these children. However, as SELT coordinator for my school, I don't necessarily know all of the kids who failed an SOL individually, so I have to rely on their current classroom teachers to make the decision of whether or not SELT will be useful for them. Unfortunately in the chaos of the end of the year, not all of the teachers noticed that caveat, which can result in some confused parents like OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We received the annual SELT letter from FCPS (Summer Extended Learning Time) - just in time for the end of school. Honestly, what are they thinking? They have three weeks for this program in July - and by this late date, everyone's already made their summer plans. Does no one ever think ahead, that families might need advance notice to work three weeks into their summer schedules?

What would really have made a difference would have been extra tutoring/help throughout the school year, when it was needed, not just as an afterthought due to bad SOL scores. Are SOLs the only things these schools care about?

1) Not everyone has over scheduled their child's summer.
2) They work with SACC and the Rec_Pac camps so that a full day will be covered.
3) They have a working list, but wait until the end of the year to see where the children are (some who may have been lagging may have surged in the past few months and other who were ahead may have fallen back).
4) If your child plays a string instrument- get used to it, many music camps don't get organized until June either.
5) If this is a shock to you, perhaps you should have paid better attention.
6) SELT is not mandatory, it is voluntary. If you don't want your child to do it, don't have them do it.
7) My children and HS and there was no such thing as SWLT then, count your blessings. In fact, there were a few years where they was only ESY and no other summer school unless the parents paid for it.

OP here. You sound like a peach.
1) We are hardly "overscheduled" - we just happen to have a long-planned trip to visit the grandparents during the time that SELT is scheduled. Is that ok with you?

5) What IS a shock to me is that I've been asking the teacher for extra help throughout the year, as I knew my child was struggling in certain areas. The answer was always, "No, Larla is doing fine. I just think she had a little confusion here and there." But now, when it's too late, all of a sudden some remedial help is appearing. So I think I paid attention very well, but was met with complete disinterest from the teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are SOL scores a fluke when if you fail you can retake them?

If you don't have the sense throughout the year that your kid may need SELT and are surprised now doesn't that mean you weren't paying attention to your kid's education? Kids with 4s are not being offered SELT.

OP again. See my previous post about asking for - and being denied - help from the teacher throughout the year. In addition, my DC has always had 3s and 4s on her report card.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are SOL scores a fluke when if you fail you can retake them?

If you don't have the sense throughout the year that your kid may need SELT and are surprised now doesn't that mean you weren't paying attention to your kid's education? Kids with 4s are not being offered SELT.

OP again. See my previous post about asking for - and being denied - help from the teacher throughout the year. In addition, my DC has always had 3s and 4s on her report card.

NP here. My daughter was offered SELT pretty much at the end of last year with no explanation from the teacher. We were surprised and annoyed because nothing had ever been mentioned about remediation and our daughter was reading at grade level; she also had mostly 4s with a few 3s. We were taken aback because we felt that if she had been deficient, the teacher should've said something earlier so we could have gotten her the help she needed. Regardless, we put her in and her SELT teacher was always very complimentary about her reading. At the beginning of this year, her teacher mentioned to us that she was expecting DD to be reading at a much lower level and was very shocked to find out that was not the case. She thinks that what PPs mentioned had happened- that others had turned it down and they were trying to fill the spot.

Anyway, it did take a lot of schedule rearranging as both DH and I work, but I'm glad we put her in. It did seem to help a lot, even if she didn't really "need" it.

[Anonymous]

I wish my DD is offered SELT.It's free education offered by certified teachers! I literally asked her teacher for SELT, but her teacher said she was not qualified.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish my DD is offered SELT.It's free education offered by certified teachers! I literally asked her teacher for SELT, but her teacher said she was not qualified.?

SELT at our school last year was just four hours of play/games with a tiny bit of instruction mixed in. I could (and should) have kept my DC home and given instruction myself in half the time. They need to cut out the games and make the most of the time given to really bring the kids up to speed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Your child was likely in the second or third wave of invites after kids in the first wave said no. At my school, we sent out the first invites out before the SOL, then automatically added anyone who failed an SOL to the next wave, but also left it up to the discretion of the teachers to decide whether the poor SOL score was a fluke. Not all the teachers followed that instruction, which left many parents feeling like you are.


Exactly. It's the same all over. My school invites the first round. Many decline. After that it doesn't take long before they are inviting students who really don't need SELT. They keep inviting until all slots are filled.

This sounds like a post for the "how to save money in FCPS" thread.

[Anonymous]

My child received the invite earlier in the year and I declined.