Reply to Lewis Academy - community input?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Lewis Academy - community input?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The solution for Lewis is this: allow academically inclined/college prep students to transfer to other schools and make Lewis a Vocational/Technical high school for students who want to learn building trades like HVAC, become an electrician or stone mason, or an auto mechanic, or heavy equipment operator. Those are well paying skills that are truly needed and would change the lives of students and their families by providing marketable skills. That’s what the vast majority of Lewis students need most! [/quote]

and, core classes needed for graduation should provide practical knowledge. Lewis should then be viewed as a unique feature of FCPS, and those students should not be compared academically with other schools. It would be an opt-in program designed to serve those who want that type of education. Those who don’t could go elsewhere and the current stigma of Lewis as an underperforming school would be eliminated. Lewis would have an entirely different focus.[/quote]

What you are describing already exists through the Nontraditional Career Readiness Academy (NCRA) alternative program jointly with the academies at Edison HS, Falls Church HS, and the unique Spring Village location. Nontraditional students complete CTE courses and other basic coursework for an alternative pathway to graduation. Lewis is an ideal location for such a program given that it has so much available capacity.

But as you stated, the [b]critical[/b] factor is that students in the alternative programs should not count against the base school's scores. The NCRA students are technically enrolled in a separate school (Interagency Alternative Schools) while attending Edison and hence do not count against Edison's test scores. That is why Edison can publish decent test scores while helping nontraditional students. Lewis has greatly suffered due to not being given that benefit.[/quote]

The school systems I went through (we moved in the middle of high school) had schools that were 100% devoted to VoTech students. That model worked great because the kids attending them choose to go there and were with other kids who were interested in the same path as they were. That was their cohort. There was no schedule disruption because they had to bus to a specific location for a class. There was no possibility of not being able to take a class because a class for graduation would be impacted. FCPS needs something along those lines. VoTech is a valuable opportunity for kids. It needs to be mainstreamed and it's own thing. Most people in the US are not going to graduate from college, it is fine to say that outloud and have a specific program, or programs, for those kids.

It is not all that different then TJ, a much needed program for kids who are very interested in STEM and advanced academically. Or an arts magnate program. We have schools that are under capacity, let's use that space to build out programs that reflect a real need for the students and society in general. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics