School Closures

Advisory Lesson #10

Section: 901
Ms. Holly
Why FAET is proposed to close…

• Decrease in enrollment

• Low scores on state assessments

• Poor academic performance

• Building utilization (Not being used outside of normal school

operations).

• Increase in disciplinary action

● FAET current Enrollment SY 17-18: 389
Enrollment SY 16-17: 535
● FAET current Suspensions SY 17-18 : 3
Suspensions this time last year SY 16-17: 16
● FAET made a 13% increase in math Alegbra 1 PARCC scores in
the 16-17 SY. (13% of students moved from scoring 2’s to
scoring 3’s).
What our building is used for…
● Monthly free food pantry for the community & families (last Wednesday of every month)

●FAET’s closet – free clothes, shoes, and toiletries – open during food pantry times

●Community Association meeting location – Bel-Air/Edison Community Board meetings are held at our school the first
Monday of every month.

●City Voter training location & City voting location

●Community church held here every Sunday in the auditorium.

● Family Grieve Counseling (FREE) sessions for students, families, and community members hosted by Mrs.

●Workshops for adults on financial literacy provided quarterly

●Drug Counseling provided weekly for students, their families, and community members.
Why are City Schools closing?
Federal and state policy decisions increasingly emphasize closings as an accountability measure for
schools where standardized test results are low.

No Child Left Behind Act (2002): President Bush created the NCLB act to hold States accountable for improving the
achievement gap of poor and minorities students in low-performing schools. It created a system that used testing and other
accountability measures to fix it. It was created to ensure that every student was learning and used assessments to prove if
students were actually learning based on how they were performing on assessments. States began to close schools that
were not producing high-performing assessment data.

Every Student Succeeds Act: President Obama signed the ESSA which still holds the fundamental purposes of the NCLB
act. High standards, accountability, and closing the achievement gap. The difference between this act and the NCLB act is
that the ESSA leaves accountability almost entirely to each state. States decide how they will hold school districts
accountable for test scores, graduation rates, and other measures. School districts began to close schools that were not
producing high-performing assessment data.
Why are City Schools closing…

Under both the No Child Left Behind Act's school improvement sanctions
and the Obama-era school improvement grants, school closure has
been promoted as a key way to move students to a better education.

“Meaning” students from closing schools are supposed to relocate to

better schools that offer more resources, support, and interventions to
help close the achievement gap and increase assessment data.
 Pre-Selected Schools for Student
Relocation
●Reach Partnership School

●National Academy Foundation (NAF)

●Academy of College and Career Exposure (ACCE)

●NACA Freedom and Democracy Academy

 Please take out Article 1

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/24/closing-failing-schools-doesnt-help-most-
students.html
7th Grade Parcc Mathematics 2015-2016

FAET is performing better than 3

of the 4 pre-selected relocation
schools.
8th Grade Parcc Mathematics 2015-2016
FAET is outperforming 3 of the
4 pre-selected relocation
schools.
Chief John Davis required every BCPSS
school to increase PARCC assessment
scores by a minimum of 5% as part of their
SPP goals….
 Cohort 2021 ELA PARCC Data
School Year Level 3 Level 4

SY 15-16 (7th 23 % 8%
Grade)
SY 16-17 (8th 34% 10%
Grade)
Percentage in 11% 2%
Growth
We’ve shown that we can fulfill the mandate from the Chief of Schools
by having a 5% increase in PARCC scores.
 Cohort 2018 ELA PARCC Data
School Year Level 3 Level 4
SY 15-16 (10th 24 % 10%
Grade)
SY 16-17 (11th 36% 17%
Grade)
Percentage in 12% 7%
Growth

We’ve shown that we can fulfill the mandate from the Chief of Schools
by having a 5% increase in PARCC scores.
FAET outperformed all four of the pre-
selected relocation schools on Math
PARCC.
 Please take out Article 2

http://neatoday.org/2015/12/15/closing-schools-privatization/
Based on the information received today,
do you think closing inner-city schools is
equitable?

You’ll have two minutes to turn-and-talk and then write

your responses on the back of your reflection sheets.