High School Incentive Program Targets Struggling Students

This week marks the start of Standards of Learning testing at T.C. Williams High School and this year, the school has added some appeal to the exams. An incentive program started by the AYP committee to increase participation in remediation sessions and overall scores has been implemented in the “persistently lowest achieving” high school.

T.C. Williams has never made AYP or “adequate yearly progress” and last year it was ranked in the bottom 5 percent of public high schools in Virginia based on standardized test scores. One in seven students did not pass the English SOL and one in four did not pass the math SOL.

This year, remediation classes have been instituted for students at risk of not passing their SOL exams. According to English teacher and Department Chair Sarah Kiyak, 50 percent of those assigned to remediation have been attending.

David Serensits, the test coordinator at T.C. Williams, said that between $500 to $1,000 has been spent on the incentive program which hopes to entice students to attend remediation sessions. Gift cards to local vendors, such as Subway and McDonald's, were offered to attending pupils.

Students who pass their SOLs also will be entered into a raffle for other various gift cards and the top prize, an iPod Touch. Besides monetary incentives, the school is also allowing students the opportunity to swap their SOL scores with their final exam grades in classes other than honors or AP courses.

SOLs are scored on a 600 point scale with 400-600 being passing marks. In the school’s incentive plan, a 400-450 would translate to a “C”; a 450-500 being a “B”; and anything between 500-600 would give the student an “A” on a final exam score.