It is the goal of DCVPA that all students will make adequate academic progress each year and thereby acquire the skills necessary for secondary education and career success. To realize this goal, students who are at risk of academic failure and who are not successfully progressing toward grade promotion and graduation must be identified and provided additional assistance. The principal or designee is responsible for ensuring that students at risk are identified and that the school improvement team develops a plan to include successful transition between grade spans for such students.

A. Identification of and Assistance to Students at Risk

The Dean shall organize available resources to implement a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) that uses data-driven problem-solving and research-based instructional practices for all students. The Dean shall establish processes and standards for addressing concerns about student performance and for documenting student responses to research-based instruction and interventions within the MTSS. Using information about the student’s response to instruction and/or interventions and other student performance data, school personnel must identify students at risk of academic failure as early as reasonably may be done, beginning in kindergarten. School administrators and teachers shall address the needs of students identified as at risk of academic failure through the supports available in the MTSS and/or other processes established by the Dean. The parents or guardians of such students should be included, through oral or written communication or other means, in the implementation and review of academic and/or behavioral interventions for their children.

B. Transition Plans

Transitions in the school environment can be stressful experiences that pose academic, social, and emotional challenges for students. Addressing students’ academic, social, and emotional needs to create successful transitions provides students with a better chance of academic success. A comprehensive and coordinated transition plan will be implemented for students who are at risk of academic failure in order to facilitate their educational transitions between elementary school and middle school and between middle school and high school. 

At each school, the school improvement team shall use the school transition plan to design a school-based transition plan tailored to meet the specific needs of that school’s population.

The transition plans should be designed to encourage successful transitions that foster respect for individual differences, encourage understanding of the whole child, create a sense of trust and belonging, and reduce child and family anxiety about school. The plans must include an on-going evaluation process to verify that the outcomes established for the different transition levels are being accomplished and that these goals are updated as student data and environmental changes occur.

Issued: July 12, 2018