Late Entry/Early Withdrawal

Policies and Procedures 2015-2016

By

Patricio Rene Escamilla III Migrant Education Program

Coordinator

One responsibility of the school district, as stated in House Bill 72, is to “develop policies for awarding credit to students who are not enrolled for a complete grading period. Policies shall ensure that the student is treated fairly in terms of meeting the intent of this subsection.” (75.169 Award of Credit, Grades 9-12). In an effort to assist specific needs of the migrant student, this material contains viable options which a school district may incorporate into its policies. These policies should meet the educational needs of the migrant student who enters school late and/or withdraws from school early.

INTRODUCTION

In preparing a policy of this nature, the specific needs of the migrant student and the requirements of a school district must be taken into consideration. After attention is given to these issues, a policy acceptable to the school district and fair to the migrant student may be developed.

On the following pages are a rationale, goal, objectives, and several options that school districts can utilize in developing late entry/early withdrawal policies for granting credit.

RATIONALE

The migrant student is part of a school population with unique needs due to migrating with their parents to pursue agriculture- or fishing-related employment. For many migrant students, a pattern of entering school late and/or withdrawing from school early has made it very difficult, if not impossible, to complete course requirements and/or credits to graduate from high school. Teachers and administrators have also struggled with a consistent procedure for obtaining and awarding grades for migrant students. Late entry/early withdrawal policies may be developed to provide an opportunity for the migrant student to achieve academic success, thereby providing him/her with more viable options in the future.

As with any other policy affecting students, the strong support and understanding of parents, students, teachers, counselors, and administrators is imperative to accomplish the intent and purpose of the policy.

To enhance the graduation rate of migrant students who may enter late or withdraw early by providing them fair and consistent options to complete courses and achieve required credits toward graduation.

OBJECTIVESTo provide specific procedures for:

1. transferring students’ grades from one school to another;

2. enabling students to complete course work missed due to late entry in school;

3. enabling students to complete course work missed due to early withdrawal from school; and

4. grading students consistently and fairly.

GOAL

LATE ENTRY POLICYAttendance Minimum attendance (90 percent) for credit begins on the day the student

enrolls in the district.

Award of Credit

Credit is awarded when the student has demonstrated achievement by meeting the

standard requirements of the course, regardless of the time the student has received

instruction in the course.

Must Award Credit

For high school students grades 9 through 12 in addition to fulfilling assessment requirements for graduation, a student’s score on STAAR EOC assessment (s)

English I Reading and Writing (Combined), English II Reading and Writing (Combined), Algebra I, Biology I and U.S. History as per House Bill 5.

Student Transfer Grades

Teachers will be given a form for each identified migrant student. This form will denote grades obtained at a previous district. If no grades are denoted the teacher needs to give the student the opportunity to complete the work.

Notice

A notice is given to each student when he/she enrolls in our

campus.

The student will give upon entering each scheduled class the notice to his/her teachers. The teacher will then assign any work assignment(s) the student needs to complete.

Missing Grades

No No-Grade(s), Incomplete, or Blank Grades will be accepted. A grade for each course that a migrant student takes each semester must be reflected on their report card for every migrant student at the end of each semester. The grades need to be inputted in the New Generation System (NGS) .

CREDIT FOR COURSES FOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION MAY BE EARNED ONLY IF THE STUDENT RECEIVED A GRADE EQUIVALENT TO 70 ON A SCALE OF 100, BASED UPON THE ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS OF EACH COURSE (TEKS). BELOW IS A SAMPLE OF MINIMUM GRADE(S) EARNING A PASSING SEMESTER AVERAGE FOR SEMESTER 1 AND SEMESTER 2 (EI-LEGAL)

1st Six Wks

2nd. Six Wks

3rd. Six Wks

Sem.OneExam.

1ST. Sem. Avg.

4th. Six Wks

5th Six Wks

6th Six Wks

Sem. Two Exam

2nd Sem. Avg.

70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70

.5 Credit

.5 Credit

EARLY WITHDRAWAL POLICY Edinburg CISD Migrant Education Program

understands our Migrant Parents must withdraw their children from school early at times, however with the NEW State Assessment called STAAR-State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness all students including “Migrants” will be required to complete and pass all assigned classwork, and take their (STAAR) - EOC exams in order to receive credit and be on target for graduation.When possible, please notify the campus NGS- New Generation Clerk ten (10) days in advance if a migrant student is withdrawing early.

EARLY WITHDRAWAL POLICY CONT.

The NGS Clerk is required to fill-out the Texas Migrant Interstate Program—Student Referral form and complete the four (4) sections. The NGS Clerk will in turn scan the form(s) and e-mail them to tmip@sbcglobal.net along with a courtesy call to TMIP personnel to share specific details about the migrant student concerning the early withdrawal. The next slides will show a copy of the Texas Migrant Interstate Program—Student Referral Form and the two testing calendars for the 2015-2016 school year…

INSTRUCTIONAL OPTION PLANSPacket Plan – The teacher may have ready-made packets

categorized according to scope and sequence. These packets will be ready for students to do make-up work for missed assignments. Packets should be ready to easily be divided by weeks. (Example: If a student will miss the first six-weeks, then give the highlights of that six-weeks).

Contracts – Teacher-student contracts are individually done by the teacher. The teacher may grade a student’s make-up work by giving the student an informal assessment.

Starting Point Plan- The teacher may decide to start giving the student grades after the enrollment date for work completed for the course with No penalty for previously missed grades. The teacher can be innovative in working with the student so that the student can earn a grade.

Other – be assigned to our CTCOHS for Migrant Students (Only). See your high school migrant counselor for details….

SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR MIGRANT PARENTS

Our Migrant Education Program recognizes the difficult choices our migrant parents face regarding the appropriate date and time to secure work in agriculture or fishery within Texas or out- of- State within the school year. So our sole intent is to guide and share with all our migrant parents new changes and best practices.

A two-way communication between our migrant parents and the migrant personnel at the campus level is very important to ensure a good understanding of our primary goals of our Migrant Education Program .

New State Assessments : STAAR, End-of-Course

House Bill 5 : Under House Bill 5 (HB 5), passed by the 83rd Texas Legislature and signed by the governor, high school students are now required to pass five State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR®) end-of-course exams to meet the new graduation requirements. The five assessments under HB 5 include Algebra I, English I (Combined reading/writing), English II (Combined reading/writing), Biology, and U.S. History.