One thing that we all have agreed upon as a community, especially over the past few years, is that the success of T.C. Williams High School is a priority for our students and the City of Alexandria.

Together we have committed tremendous time and effort, along with significant resources, into the transformation of our high school for the sake of our students. As we near the completion of the school year for the second class of graduates from T.C. Williams since the school received the persistently lowest-achieving designation from the U.S. Education Department in 2010, we have much progress to celebrate as we forge ahead with much work to do. (more…)

We celebrate the many gains made by ACPS students last year, and we take full responsibility for the work that remains.  Our community and students deserve candor and a complete picture when it comes to looking at school and division performance.

ACPS is a remarkable blend of students from all across this world.  Alexandria is a great city in which to live, and should have one of the finest schools divisions anywhere in the country. (more…)

I’d like to keep our discussion about T.C. Williams going for another week.  We’ve posted a lot of information online, including a video that Principal Bill Clendaniel and I made for the students and links to student articles in Theogony.  It’s so interesting, as we’re talking and writing about the students, to read their perspectives, and I’m looking forward to continued conversations with them about this issue.  I also had the first of several very productive meetings with the T.C. faculty last week (I’ve been spending a lot of time in the school) and with the T.C. PTSA. (more…)

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND ARNE DUNCAN, US SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

Dear Mr. President and Secretary Duncan:

T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, has been designated by the Virginia Department of Education as a “persistently lowest-achieving school.” Alexandria’s only public high school qualified for this label because our 11th grade Virginia Standards of Learning assessment pass rate for reading last year was 84 percent, and our combined pass rate for three math end-of-course tests (Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry) was 77 percent. These test results place us in the lowest 5 percent of 128 Virginia secondary schools that are eligible for (but do not receive) Title I funding. (more…)