When it comes to Northern Virginia public education, Fairfax County is the big powerhouse. Falls Church is the tiny, but elite, school district, and Arlington schools consistently rank in the top tier. Alexandria City Public Schools, meanwhile, doesn’t make headlines for student performance.
But recent data shows a diverse school system on the rise: Students at T.C. Williams, the district’s only high school, scored at the highest levels in its history on state exams.
More eighth-graders than ever took algebra, and 99 percent passed.
Although scores remained mostly unchanged on Advanced Placement exams, participation hit its highest-ever benchmark, with 35 percent of high school students taking the college-level tests.
Many of these figures still float beneath the achievements of its Northern Virginia neighbors, but parents and educators say they’re impressed with progress that Alexandria’s schools are making.
“It’s frustrating for me as a parent whose kids are having a really great experience, and I think getting a terrific education, to see the drumbeat of stories that we’re failing and wasting taxpayer money. We’re not a failing school system at all,” said Linda Kelly, president of the Alexandria PTA Council and mother of two at Cora Kelly Elementary.
Instead, Kelly said, there exists “an untold positive story that’s been going on at ACPS for a long time.”
With 19 schools, Alexandria is a small district, but remarkably diverse: Sixty-four percent of students are black or Hispanic, and more than one in five students requires English Language Learners services. More than half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the schools’ typical standard of poverty.
“Most people think of Alexandria as this nice little white suburb outside of Washington, and we’re not,” Superintendent Morton Sherman said.
Often, Alexandria’s minority students felt like they couldn’t succeed in tough courses, Sherman said.
But his staff has worked to increase enrollment in eighth-grade algebra and Advanced Placement classes by literally calling the homes of students “who we believed had the potential to do well, but for some reason in elementary or middle school were given signals that they couldn’t,” Sherman said. “Sometimes knocking on doors, but more often through a personal telephone call.”
In the past few years, eighth-grade enrollment in algebra has tripled, from 17 percent of students to 51 percent. AP participation has jumped.
An achievement gap between minority and white students remains, Sherman acknowledged. The system has sharpened its focus on the classroom: Alexandria is the only district in Virginia that has given teachers raises for all of the past three budget seasons and capped class sizes at low numbers.
“We’re beginning to see this shift, to close the gap,” Sherman said. “These numbers, they’re not numbers, but deeply personal to us.”
