Greetings to all School/District AO Users!
I hope that all of you had a lovely and relaxing holiday
weekend! As we approach the second semester, there are a variety of
developments here at the SDE that I’d like you to be aware of. I realize that
this email is lengthy, however please bear with me as it includes critical
information for the upcoming weeks.
AO Portal Updates:
·
Build Your
Menu: If you have not
already, this is the time that you should build the drop-down menu of courses
for Semester 2. This can be done by the District Manager user. In the portal,
select the Administration tab, then select Course
Assignments. Use the drop downs to select the institution through which
the course is provided. Select Populate Grid and a catalogue from
the institution will populate. Use the filters to find the course. Click
on Disallow and change the cell to Allow in the
appropriate term.
·
Tips &
Tricks: In this link, you will
find a helpful timeline and cheat sheet for all of the most common concerns for
the portal. Please take a look at the timeline to better understand the
expectations, various “windows” and processes. This also includes a snapshot of
activities that should be occurring at your school related to Advanced
Opportunities during certain times of the semester.
·
Spring
Deadlines: In the spring
semester, the student access and data entry window will be January 2, 2017- February 24, 2017. This means
that ALL eligible data for the spring semester course must be entered by February 24th. Please note that
any corrections or edits to data made after this date cause significant delays,
and issues for course providers, counties and the SDE. Entries after that date
are reserved for corrections; only with permission by the course
providers.
Payments & Data:
·
Payments Sent: All payments for Fall semester and Trimester 1
have been sent to our finance department for processing. Your district should
expect to see this payment within a week or so. If you need a receipt of where
funds should be applied, District Managers can find this under the Reimbursements
tab in Billing Statements.
·
ACTION REQUESTED: During our verification process there were a handful
of courses that were denied by the SDE for various reasons. Prior to
entering/approving new data, please look through any data in the Courses
Awaiting SDE Submission that may belong to previous terms (i.e.,
Summer, Fall or Tri 1). When you select the course, you will find
the reason for the denial in the notes section. Please read notes carefully and
act accordingly:
Events
·
Portal
Webinar: Wednesday, January
11, 2017, 9:30-10:30 (MST). There have been a number of updates to the portal
recently. I will be hosting a live webinar to go over these updates.
During this time we will go over new features, share shortcuts, and take
questions about various functions of the portal. An invitation for this event
will be sent out in the near future.
·
Advanced
Opportunities Conference: Save
the date for the 2nd annual Advanced Opportunities Conference on
September 7-8, 2017 with pre-conferenced on September 6th. The event
will be at Boise State University in the Student Union Building. More
information to come!
Advanced Placement (AP) Info:
·
Advanced
Placement Fee Reduction Program:
Due to changes from NCLB to ESSA, the federal grant for AP free
reduction will no longer be available. Instead, these funds will be
distributed directly to district through Title 4A which includes funding for
curriculum enrichment, college/career readiness, safe schools, and technology.
Each school district can choose to mirror the federal program with these funds.
However, because it is a small amount, most will choose simply to use Advanced
Opportunities funding instead. College Board has agreed to continue
offering a discount of $31.00 to low-income students, bringing the cost to
$62.00. In these cases they also ask that schools contribute by forgoing their
$9 rebate, bringing the exam cost to $53.00. In short, regular AP exams
should be charged to Fast Forward accounts at $93.00, and exams for low-income
students should be charged at $53.00.
·
AP Teacher
Grants: College Board is also
offering grants for teachers to become AP credentialed. If you are looking to
increase the number of AP offerings at your school, please let me know and I
will connect you and your teachers to the proper channels to begin this
process.
Graduation Requirements:
·
Updated
Document: In the link, you will find the updated version of the High School Graduation Requirements, which includes that civics test. We are in
process of getting the Spanish version of this document updated as well and
will post it to our website.
·
Algebra 1
Requirement: During our last round of College and Career
Readiness trainings a question came about eighth grade students who are taking
Algebra 1 and whether or not the student must re-take it in high school if they
choose not to have it transcribed in eighth grade, and I informed folks that I
would include this guidance in this update. In such cases that student does NOT
need to take Algebra 1 a second time. IDAPA code states that: A student will
have met the high school content and credit area requirement for any high
school if…
o the
student completes it with a C or higher
o the
course meets the same content standards
o the
course is taught by a teacher who is credentialed to teach the high school
equivalent course
If the student chooses not to
transcribe the Algebra 1 credits in eighth grade, they need not retake Algebra
1 in high school, however they still must earn six math credits while in high
school.
I hope that this information is helpful to all of you as you
enter another busy time of year. If you have any questions, please
remember that our support team is available to help. On behalf of the
Superintendent and the Advanced Opportunities team, I would like to say thank
you for your work and dedication to Idaho’s kids!
Warmly,
Tina Polishchuk
Coordinator of Advanced
Opportunities