Dreams4RPS

Passion4Learning is a comprehensive, multi-year effort meant to nurture students’ passions by creating an exciting, hands-on, and rigorous theme at every RPS middle and high school.

Passion4Learning is a comprehensive, multi-year effort meant to nurture students’ passions by creating an exciting, hands-on, and rigorous theme at every RPS middle and high school.

Students will select secondary schools based on their interests and aspirations, which might require them to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods. Providing this choice to families will, in turn, increase diversity across RPS.

Middle Schools - RPS provides sixth through eighth graders with the opportunity to select an educational theme that they are most interested in exploring. Students will still receive core content and will have the same opportunities to prepare for college and career at each school.

High Schools - All comprehensive high schools will adopt a learning theme so that students can begin to explore both their unique passions and their potential career choices. Students will still engage in core content and will have access to comparable college preparation at all schools.

Passion4Reading In School Year 2017-2018, only 38% of Richmond Public School first graders were considered “on track” to be successful on the third-grade reading test. To address this significant gap, RPS will take bold action through intensive training, early intervention, and greater access to engaging, high-quality texts at home.

In third grade, students make the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” – and students who are reading below grade level in third grade are very likely to continue to struggle with reading through high school. As such, it is important that students build a strong foundation in literacy in the early grades to ensure they are set up for future success.

The Science of Reading Instruction - In School Year 2017-2018, only 38% of RPS first graders were considered “on track” to be successful on the third grade reading standardized test. To meet the needs of aspiring young readers, and ensure ALL students are on track to read by fourth grade, we must provide teachers with the skills and expertise required to close this gap.

Summer Literacy Camp - All students are capable of reading, but sometimes young readers struggle to grasp the fundamental building blocks that make reading possible. Early intervention is critical.

RPS will identify first and second grade students who are struggling the most to participate in the RPS Summer Literacy Camp, an intensive six-week program where students will receive consistent reading instruction to catch them up. Private investment will provide teachers with specialized training, support, and stipends throughout the summer to ensure students make significant progress in their reading abilities.

Family Support - A child is more likely to succeed academically when they are surrounded by high-quality, engaging texts that instill a passion for reading. Establishing home libraries is an easy, cost-efficient way to ensure students have consistent access to exciting books that support their reading development.

Starting in Kindergarten through third grade, all RPS students will receive 25 books each school year to add to their home library. Private investment will ensure that, by the end of third grade, students will have a total of 100 books at home that they can share with their families and, eventually, read on their own.

Passion4Teaching To ensure that all students can benefit from top notch educators, RPS will launch an aggressive retention and recruitment campaign and a meaningful, job-embedded training approach. RPS will also launch a new initiative to attract more men of color to the teaching profession.

Students in grades with higher teacher turnover score lower in both ELA and math. Perhaps more importantly, the negative effects of teacher turnover are particularly strong in schools with high concentrations of low-performing students and schools with high concentrations of Black students.

To ensure that all students can benefit from top notch educators, RPS will launch an aggressive recruitment campaign, a meaningful, job-embedded training approach, and a new initiative to attract more men of color to the teaching profession.

Top Talent - The quality of a teacher in front of a classroom is an important predictor of a student’s success. RPS will implement targeted strategies to attract and retain the very best.

Private investment will enable the district to launch a professional marketing campaign to recruit experienced educators, provide hiring incentives like moving stipends and early-hire signing bonuses, will aggressively recruit key school-based and central-office roles, and will ensure staff are professionally supported through customer services training for the Talent Office.

Teaching the Richmond Way - RPS will ensure that its top-notch educators receive meaningful, job-embedded, and long-term professional development to achieve ambitious learning goals for their students.

Private investment will provide for a one-year induction program for new teachers and principals, career ladder training to prepare educators for more responsibility, and executive leadership training for principals on talent management, culture development, and vision implementation.

RVA Men Teach - Led by Rodney Robinson, the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, RPS will scale RVA Men Teach, an effort focused on increasing and retaining the number of male teachers of color across the district. Private investment will support a planning grant to kickstart this work and a convening for local educators to share best practices and build community.