The Lenoir County School Board approved student promotion standards for its third, fifth and eighth graders to address public concerns regarding low student achievement levels. The standards require students to achieve a minimum scale score in reading and math in order to be promoted to the next grade level. Students not meeting the benchmark are eligible for summer school and re-testing. The challenge to Lenoir County teachers was not only to drive home to students and parents the importance of taking class work seriously, but also to motivate students to ensure maximum promotion. The experiences of a group of sixth and eighth grade teachers at E.B. Frink Middle School in Lenoir County might be helpful to others, now that North Carolina is implementing statewide accountability standards.
Subsequent meetings let students and parents know how far they ve come towards meeting their goals.
JoAnne Sharber, a sixth grade mathematics teacher, agrees that making students aware of their academic goals is important. I think it has made them take their work more seriously. It s not uncommon for students to ask me if I think an activity will help them score higher. We re on a block schedule which, of course, allows for longer classes. We break our social studies class in half and take the Level I and II students out at the end for 40-45 minutes of reading remediation.