News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Students will have to show they can meet certain state standards to get passing grades and a diploma from Sisters schools in coming years.
The Sisters School Board passed a resolution at their Monday, May 10, meeting directing school staff to spend the next 12 months in intensive planning to link grades and diplomas to state standards for the Certificate of Initial Mastery.
Students will have to satisfactorily complete CIM--related "local work samples" in order to get a "C" grade or better in classes.
The resolution also requires that students achieve certain levels - still to be worked out - on 10th grade state assessment tests in order to receive a Sisters High School diploma. According to the board resolution, "the required scores may vary from CIM level, but will ensure communication and computation literacy."
The graduating class of 2003 will be the first to matriculate under the new standards.
District curriculum director Lora Nordquist said that, for the district curriculum committee, creating the linkage of grades to standards "will be the heart and soul of our work next year"
It promises to be challenging work. Standards will have to be clearly defined and teachers will have to "buy into" them, according to Nordquist. And a sophisticated monitoring system must be established to track students' progress from elementary school through middle and high school.
"It's definitely going to be an issue for all three buildings," Nordquist said. "What does a student have to be able to do at fifth grade, what will he have to do at eighth grade, to be on track?"
Some kind of system will have to be established for students who come late to the district and are not up to speed to meet the diploma requirements.
"We'll have to have some kind of waiver for a student who comes into the district in eleventh grade," Nordquist said.
School site councils, administrators, the curriculum committee and the school board will meet soon to launch strategic planning for the initiative.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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