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Rumor Mill-5614

Published February 28, 2014

The purpose of this section is to answer any questions parents, teachers or community members might have regarding the school district and to set the record straight in regards to any rumors that might be circulating.

If you have a question or have heard a rumor that you would like for us to address, simply SEND US your questions and we will respond to them in upcoming issues of InFocus. Below are some of the questions we have received since our last issue.

I have heard the Nolensville High School will not offer AP courses. Is this true? Also, will the school open with freshmen through seniors?

Nolensville High School will open with freshmen and sophomores. Ravenwood, Independence and Summit high schools have all opened with a freshmen through sophomore class, growing by a class each year.

Regarding our Advanced Placement (AP) classes, course offerings will be determined once the principal of the school is named. AP classes will be offered along with Career and Technical classes and extracurricular activities. As in all high schools, student demand for courses will drive the scheduling whether it is standard, honors or Advanced Placement.

Is grandfathering guaranteed for eligible students who apply, or is there a limited number of slots? If so, how are students selected?

According to School Board policy 1.703, students re-zoned due to the opening of a new school or the rezoning of an existing school may request and be grandfathered to continue in the former zoned school as follows:

Elementary School: rising 5th grade students
Middle School: rising 8th grade students
High School: rising 11th and 12th grade students

The policy does not place a cap on the number of students allowed to grandfather. Out of Transportation Zone forms for 2014-15 will be available March 25 with May 15 being the deadline to submit the request. The parent will then receive a copy of the approved form with confirmation letter and can then register at the out of zone school.

When will the announcement be made which schools will have open enrollment 2014-2015 school year?

The Williamson County School Board will vote on open zoned schools at its March 24 meeting. We will post those results on our Facebook page, Twitter feed and in the March 28 issue of InFocus.

Is the TCAP going to be totally “written correspondence” this year for the middle school grades? Is it only going to be given in this format as a “test sample” at Brentwood Middle School? If the TCAP is going from “bubble answers” to written, how is this graded? Wouldn’t this be subjective to the TCAP representatives grading this? If this is given to only one school, not all schools and grade levels, how is this fair/equal if counted as a percentage of the student’s grade?

As has been the case in previous years, this year’s TCAP Achievement Tests and End of Course Exams are comprised solely of multiple-choice items to which students respond by marking “bubbles” on an answer document.

There are other TCAP assessments that use some form of written response constructed by the student, including the Writing Assessment and the Constructed Response Assessment. Subjectivity is minimized with the practice of multiple readers using a scoring rubric. This year, these tests are being used as formative assessments and are not used for grading purposes.

Students (grades 3rd-8th) are taking the MIST writing assessment. Is the material the students are reading for the writing assessment identical for each grade level? Is a fourth grader reading the same material as a seventh grader?

State testing policy prohibits viewing the actual items on any TCAP assessment, including the Writing Assessment being administered through the MIST platform. According to the TNCore site (see link below), the writing tasks are grouped by grade bands. While some grades share the same material, fourth and seventh grades are in different bands and use different texts.

http://tncore.org/english_language_arts/assessment/sample_assessments/2013-14sampleassessments.aspx

It should be noted that all texts used on the TCAP Writing Assessment have been read and vetted by Tennessee classroom teachers.