As the 2010-11 school year approaches, I want to take a few minutes to articulate the vision I have for the students at Bancroft-Rosalie School. My number one priority is to have 100% of our seniors go on to college, or some type of post-secondary education. According to leading economists, 63% of all jobs in the year 2018 will require some type of training beyond high school. If we want our students to be successful in the future, then they need to go to college.
So how do we get them there? Researchers have found that fourth grade seems to be the age at which children start seeing themselves as a college student or ruling out the prospect of going to college. It starts in the elementary. I believe we have an excellent elementary program in place. Our reading, language and math programs are skills based. Each student is placed in the curriculum where they can be successful. All of our elementary students should be getting 85-90% of their schoolwork done correctly. If it becomes too easy for some, we accelerate them through the program by moving them ahead into a group further along in the program. If they are moving slowly through the program, we try to accelerate them by having them spend more time on reading or math skills so that they can master them and move on to new and more difficult skills. Wouldn't it be great if we can get all of our students to complete Geometry or Algebra II?
If our elementary students are at or above grade levels in reading, writing and mathematics, then we should see higher scores on standardized tests, including the ACT. The ACT is still one of the best indicators of a student’s ability to succeed in college. This year we started giving the ASSET test to our juniors. This test is used by community colleges to determine if new incoming students can start in the regular curriculum or need to take remedial math and English classes first (they must pay for the class but receive no credit). Our school goal is for 90% of our seniors to pass this test (or the COMPASS test, which is the computer equivalent of the ASSET). If they can get the required ASSET scores, then I am satisfied that our school has adequately prepared them. Of course we want them to do much better than the minimum, but that is the level at which I expect ALL students to achieve.
