Henrico Schools remains committed to Achievable Dream Academy despite literacy struggles

At a Henrico School Board meeting almost two years ago, board member Alicia Atkins was brought to tears as school division officials presented the reading scores for elementary students enrolled at An Achievable Dream Academy at Highland Springs.

After three years under the oversight of an outside agency based in Newport News, only 3% of fifth graders were reading on grade level. When that same cohort of students was in second grade, slightly more than half of them were reading on grade level.

Henrico County Public Schools leaders called the test scores in 2020 a “call to action” and vowed to turn the school around, even as Atkins called for its closure and other school board members questioned the hefty monetary investment.

A new principal was brought on, and changes were made in programming.

Last year’s scores on the same reading test are a mixed bag.

Two classes improved from the 2019-2020 year (the reading assessment test was not administered in the 2020-2021 school year). Last year’s third- and fourth-graders improved their scores by 5 to 8 percentage points.

But the greatest pass rate change was in last year’s fifth-graders, of whom 9% tested as reading proficiently last year, compared to 19% two years prior. The same cohort of students – the inaugural first grade class – had almost half of its students reading on grade level in 2016-2017, before Highland Springs Elementary transitioned into Achievable Dream. Each year, that cohort’s collective reading scores dropped lower.

“There’s so much focus now in academia about (Standards of Learning assessments) and so forth – that we take the SOLs, that we do well on the SOLs. But as I always say, there is no SOL of life,” said Pervis Blake, Vice President of the Achievable Dream nonprofit which oversees the Henrico program as well as four Achievable Dream campuses in Hampton Roads.

Formerly Highland Springs Elementary School, a traditional HCPS school, it began the transition into the oversight of the nonprofit Achievable Dream in July 2017. The program started with Kindergarten through second grade, and each year a grade level has been added. Next year, the middle school program will be housed in the former Highland Springs High School building, which has been rebranded as the Oak Avenue Complex. The first sixth graders who entered the program last year were housed at Fairfield Middle School.

Despite relatively low reading proficiency scores last year, school board members lauded the progress and are hopeful for the future of the program – a stark contrast from the “call to action” meeting in fall 2020.

“Reading scores are important, the SOL scores are important, but if you focus solely on the testing scores, we're really missing the full scope of the learning impact that's happening with our students,” said Henrico School Board member Roscoe Cooper in an interview with the Citizen. “Many of those students are struggling with food insecurity, housing insecurity, and other mitigating factors that do impact their learning… As we come out of this pandemic, as far as not even fully realizing the ramifications, we're still confident that we're heading in the right direction, and we are putting the right plan in place.”

About 79% of the students are deemed “economically disadvantaged” by the Virginia Department of Education.

Atkins, who represents the Varina district where the Achievable Dream programs are, said that the usage of instructional assistants in Kindergarten has helped with increased reading comprehension and she wants to keep the momentum going.

HCPS continues to shell out millions for the program. The HCPS FY2023 budget allocates about $5.8 million to Achievable Dream Academy – though the figure doesn’t include all expenses associated with the school such as utility and custodial costs.

The school division will pay an annual $555,443 management fee to the nonprofit in the fiscal year starting this July, according to budget documents.

A unique approach

Each school day, students at Achievable Dream start the morning with repeated chants sung in unison. “I am somebody.” “I can go to college if I work hard.”

The school’s morning program includes things like etiquette, conflict resolution, ethics, “speaking green,” mindfulness, meditation and yoga.

Ebony Gayles, who has a rising fifth-grader at Henrico’s Achievable Dream Academy, said her daughter loves the school and everyone works together to help her daughter grow. In addition to academics, Gayles said her daughter learns things like how to shake someone’s hand and look them in the eyes.

Students attend more than 75 field trips each year, according to Blake.

“Our demographic, it really is students that society says have risk factors that may have probability of them dropping out of school before 12th grade. Things like socioeconomic status or… homeless and those types of things,” Blake said. “That's why we have extended days for us, Saturdays, summer intersession, all of those things to make sure that we are evening the playing field for our students so they have the exact same exact opportunities and exposure to education as anyone else.”

Highland Springs Elementary School was picked as the site for Achievable Dream because of its population – students who are in poverty and struggling academically.

School staff members all are HCPS employees and are paid by HCPS. The school division is responsible for the major aspects of school including core curriculum.

The nonprofit fund-raises in order to provide the uniforms, field trips and wraparound services.

Although the school staff’s salaries are paid by the school division, the nonprofit is part of the hiring process and is involved with interviews for principals, assistant principals, teachers.

“We all have to be at all of those interviews because there's a certain characteristic that we're looking for that you have to have to be a part of our family here,” Blake said.

Employees are paid more for the extended schedule. School days are 8.5 hours instead of the standard 6.5 hours. Some students attend Saturday school as well, and all students attend a four-week long summer session in order to mitigate learning loss.

The four Achievable Dream Academy campuses in Hampton Roads have been successful. Between 90-95% of Achievable Dream students in Hampton Roads go to college, while 3-5% join the military, and the rest are gainfully employed, according to Blake.

HCPS officials stressed to the Citizen that the reading assessment, called the  Fountas & Pinnel Benchmark Assessment System, is not used as a “stand alone” metric — although it was used to define reading proficiency in past years and used in the “call to action” presentation.

Other assessments such as the SOL tests paint a similar picture as the reading assessment. About 21% of students passed the English SOL assessment in 2020-2021, compared to 48% in 2018-2019. SOL scores on the state and division level also dipped post-pandemic, though not nearly as significantly.