JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As the Florida Standards Assessments loom, Duval County Public Schools emailed families of 17,299 students who are enrolled in the district’s virtual learning platform Duval HomeRoom, encouraging those families to return their students to face-to-face instruction.
“Our Spring Reopening Plan requires that the district contact families of students who are failing to make adequate progress to notify them of their child’s academic status and to require them to return to face-to-face instruction,” the message said. “Your child, listed above, has been identified as being scheduled into at least one Duval Homeroom course and is not making adequate progress.”
These interventions are required as part of the district’s spring 2021 reopening plan. That plan secured the district’s ability to continue offering Duval HomeRoom through the summer.
The message instructs parents to log into their district accounts and fill out the “Fourth Quarter Plan Letter,” asking them to select one of three statuses:
1. The parent wants to move their child back to in-person learning.
2. The parent requests a meeting to discuss their child’s progress.
3. The parent acknowledges their child is “failing to make adequate academic progress in Duval HomeRoom and this could result in his/her retention in the current grade level.”
The third option frustrated some parents, one of whom reached out to News4Jax but asked that her name not be disclosed due to concerns of retaliation. The parent said that when she received the letter, she was worried and immediately logged on to check her daughter’s grades.
“Everything’s fine,” the parents told News4Jax. “Everything’s normal. I mean, she’s got 100% plus in her grades. She’s done phenomenal since she’s been in Duval HomeRoom, so my mind was blown.”
The parent, who has kept her daughter in the virtual learning format this year as a COVID-19 precaution, said her daughter has never scored below a C on any assignment but did “score lower” on the second quarter Progress Monitoring Assessments.
The lower score on the second round of PMAs is likely why she received a notification from the school district, according to the DCPS spring reopening plan, which states that the following five categories of students will receive interventions:
- Students who receive a D or an F in ELA (English language arts).
- Students who receive a D or an F in Math.
- Students who score Achievement Level 1 on the ELA portion of the PMA.
- Students who score Achievement Level 1 on the Math portion of the PMA.
- Students whose attendance drops below 90%.
The Florida Department of Education’s emergency order, which extended FTE (full-time equivalent) funding for students engaged in virtual learning options, also required the districts to perform progress monitoring for those students in the so-called “innovative” learning models and conduct interventions as needed.
The parent who spoke to News4Jax said she was nevertheless frustrated by the message, interpreting it as unfair pressure.
“I think it’s bullying for the district to say ‘you have to do this or ‘you have to do that,’” the parent said. “No, I have to do what I think is right for the health and safety of my child, which is what every parent has to do. I mean, that’s what we all want to do.”
In February, Superintendent Diana Greene told the Duval County School Board that the third quarter PMAs would be used as a “trial run” for the state-level FSAs, which begin in April. The district must attain 95% student participation, in-person, to receive a grade from the FDOE -- placing a heavy incentive for the school district to encourage students to return to the brick-and-mortar format.