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You are here: Fairfax
County Public Schools > Plan for Excellence
Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech presented
a Plan for Excellence to the School Board Instruction Committee on May 1998.
The goal of the plan is to ensure that all students in Fairfax County Public
Schools not only pass the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs), but also succeed
well beyond the state-mandated levels. The Plan for Excellence includes divisionwide
initiatives and a more intense focus on a small number of schools with especially
high challenges.
"The Plan for Excellence is an accountability-driven response to the vision
and mission of the School Board," said Domenech. "Some of these programs are
already in place. We will begin most of the other programs next fall with the
new school year. We know what will work."
At the elementary level, the plan includes:
A class-size cap of 30 students in any elementary class that includes special
education students.
A focus on literacy that includes a mandated, uninterrupted 90-minute period
for reading and writing every day.
A technology-based phonics program for kindergarten and first kindergarten
and first graders that puts computers and phonics software in every first grade
classroom.
Project Excel, a specific program to support identified elementary schools.
Other initiatives include:
Expansion of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB)
programs. (FCPS will be one of the first two school systems in the country
to offer the AP diploma.)
Implementation of a middle school IB program that prepares students for rigorous
studies in high school.
Expansion of middle and elementary focus schools. These schools focus instruction
around such subject areas as core knowledge, science, math, partial language
immersion, or the arts or around organizational practices such as a modified
school calendar or parallel scheduling.
Plans to reduce the clerical and test administration workload of secondary
counselors to allow more time for student counseling and for more conflict
resolution and peer mediation services to students.
As part of the Plan for Excellence, the Superintendent has initiated divisionwide
steps:
Implementation of the largest staff development program in FCPS history to
address the SOL curriculum.
Alignment of all curriculum to meet the SOL test materials.
Remediation programs for students in grades three, five, and eight to ensure
that students are ready to pass the state tests.
The Superintendent has added an additional systemwide effort: a joint effort
with the Fairfax County Council of PTAs and with the Fairfax Partnership for
Youth. There are currently more than 100 mentoring programs in FCPS.
Related links:
Sharp Increase in Number of "Project Excel" Kindergartners
to Pass Phonemic Awareness Test, Press Release, September 11, 2000
More information on Project
Excel
Questions and Answers About
Project Excel
Project Excel Academic Programs
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