Reply to TJ: Kids having second thoughts?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe remediation is for anyone hovering at B+/A-?[/quote]

Sadly, no.[/quote]

Actually, more like hovering at the B area. And they are using the word "remediation" to refer to requiring students to attend extra help sessions during activity periods, not a separate lower level class which is what the average person would think of as "remedial math." These are ninth grade Algebra II students.

I was at two parent meetings where this topic was discussed in great detail last spring.

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Symantics.  The fact remains these kids are unable to do the math at the level of TJ kids from previous years.  At a math and science magnet that is a problem, no matter how you dress it up.   And they're not the only 9th graders taking Algebra II in the county.  Any kid who took Honors Geometry in 8th grade moves on to Honors Algebra II in 9th grade in most FCPS high schools - unless he or she decides to repeat Geometry.  TJ's Algebra II may be accelerated, but the kids who should be there can handle it without extra help.   [b]Seems they managed to do that in previous years[/b]. 
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Actually, freshmen having trouble adjusting to high school was not new last year.

The reason the teachers decided to keep track of and proactively offer help to students very early in their freshman year was that they'd been seeing problems for a number of years before this. Teachers had been noticing freshmen needing help and decided in the summer of 2011 to begin offering help within the first month or so of school to students who appeared to need it, instead of waiting till later in the year when it might be harder to catch up.

This information comes from the letter the teachers wrote, many details of which were not included in the newspaper article.

There has been a "watch list" at TJ for a long time: the idea is to help students whose grades might be getting too close to the point where they'd be asked to leave. It is nothing new.

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Are you TJ's press person or just drinking the kool-aid?   15% of last year's freshman class struggling in math [i]was[/i] new, which was why veteran teachers felt compelled to complain to the school board.[/quote]

It was not new that students were struggling with math. Teachers had been noticing freshmen having problems for a number of years and decided in the summer of 2011 to keep track of the numbers and offer help right away. This year (Fall 2012) the numbers needing help were about the same as last year (Fall 2011), roughly 15%. [b]They don't know the exact number for previous years because they were not previously keeping track on a formal basis.[/b] The reason they decided to keep track was that they had observed freshmen struggling with Algebra II in the past.

I'm just a parent who wants to see the correct information going out there.
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Then you should probably have this information from a May 30, 2012 Washington Post article:

"In recent years, [b]about 8 percent[/b] of the school’s freshmen have landed on a “watch list” of students with grade-point averages below 3.3 on a 4-point scale. This year, that proportion [b]nearly doubled, to 15 percent,[/b] and teachers said they were overwhelmed with students needing extra help."

Here's the link:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/math-and-science-gaps-found-at-elite-fairfax-school/2012/05/30/gJQAmT2s2U_story.html

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