Parent update: No Child Left Behind

Virginia Beach City Public Schools continues to support No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) for the benefit of all students in grades K-12. Key areas of NCLB include: measurement of student progress, accountability for every school and the school division, highly qualified instructional staff in all classrooms, English proficiency for limited English speaking students, increased parental involvement, and learning environments that are safe, drug free, and conducive to learning.

This article is intended to provide you with an update on Virginia Beach City Public Schools initiatives supporting the basis of NCLB.

Office of Exceptional Children Employs Effective Strategies Supporting
No Child Left Behind

Virginia Beach City Public Schools will continue its commitment to providing training opportunities for teachers and teacher assistants assigned to special education programs. To better prepare our teacher assistants and to help ensure compliance with NCLB, a flexible series of training activities (offered in the summer, during school, after school, and weekends) will be provided. The purpose is to enhance their staff’s ability to work more effectively within programs serving students with disabilities.

The goals of the training are:

• Increase the level of phonological awareness and reading comprehension strategies among teacher assistants serving students with mild disabilities.
  
• Increase collaboration between teacher/teacher assistant teams assigned to self- contained classrooms in implementing specific writing strategies. These strategies will systematically incorpo-rate key aspects of the writing process, using color and mnemonics to increase students writing skills across all curriculum areas. If this pilot program is successful, steps will be taken towards program expansion.
  
• Increase the use of data collection strategies among teacher assistants in order to provide special education teachers with a data-driven, decision-making process to benefit the instructional and behavioral management of students with disabilities.

For additional information contact the Office of Exceptional Children at 757.263.2400 or e-mail rmitchel@vbschools.com.

Resources to Benefit Targeted Elementary Students and Teachers
Targeted elementary schools, students, and staff will benefit from funding intended to provide students with the resources necessary to achieve academic success. This grant funding directly provides support for the following elementary-level programs and initiatives:

Improving Basic Programs (Title I, Part A Grant)
This program supports supplementary instructional services designed to help educationally disadvantaged children in high poverty schools, in order to meet challenging State academic
content and student academic achievement standards. The primary focus is reading, language arts, and mathematics supported by programming such as: Extended Day and Full Day Kindergarten, Reading Recovery®, Math Support, Resource Reading and an expansion of our pre-K summer program, Kindergarten Academy. For additional information contact the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at 427-4705 or e-mail jmsmallw@vbschools.com.

Teacher and Principal Training and Recruitment (Title II, Part A Grant)
Though strategies such as improving teacher and principal quality and increasing the number of highly qualified teachers in the classroom and highly qualified principals and assistant principals in schools, the school division’s goal is to increase academic achievement in targeted schools. The funds from this grant will be used to implement programs and activities to: recruit, retain, and hire highly qualified teachers; reduce class size in the early grades; and provide professional development activities that improve the knowledge of teachers, principals, and paraprofessionals.

To ensure our students have teachers equipped with the skills to provide academic achievement in targeted schools, the school division has implemented programs to attract and retain committed staff such as: the Career Switcher Program; mentor-training program; the Futures Program; a program for summer teacher interns who are selected from current teacher assistants; and promotional material to attract prospective teachers. For additional information contact the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at 427-5631 or e-mail lbclemen@vbschools.com.

Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students
(Title III, Part A Grant)
The Title III, Part A Grant provides funds to increase the English proficiency of limited English proficient children by providing high-quality language instruction educational programs and providing high-quality professional development to classroom teachers, principals, administrators, and other community-based organizational personnel.

These same funds are also being used to purchase instructional materials designed for English language learners.

The Language First platform is targeted for kindergarten, first, and second grade limited English proficient students. Language First assists language minority students with English language vocabulary development and with the reading process. For high school ESL students, additional materials are being purchased to assist them with their studies in English, world geography, world history, and earth science.

Through Title III funding a workshop, Kagan Structures for Second Language Learners, will be hosted by the school system for 40 participants. The participants will be made up of Virginia Beach ESL teachers and current teachers in Virginia Beach working on an ESL endorsement.

For additional information contact the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at 427-5631 or e-mail rcollier@vbschools.com.

NOTE: To read more about the NCLB legislation. If you have a question about NCLB as it relates to Virginia Beach City Public Schools, send your e-mail to nclb@vbschools.com or call 427-4383.