(WJHL) – After third-grade TCAP retesting, some students in Johnson City and Kingsport City Schools will not have to attend summer school. However, Kingsport still saw an increase in enrollment.

In Kingsport, 75 third graders retook the reading portion of the TCAP. 14 automatically passed, and get to move on to the fourth grade. Nine students have a choice to either attend summer learning or go to tutoring throughout the next school year. The rest of the students’ scores stayed in the same range.

Rhonda Stringham, assistant superintendent of curriculum for Kingsport City Schools, said numbers are still high due to many appeals not being back.

“We fielded a lot of emails and phone calls with parents,” said Stringham. “And yes, we did enroll quite a few more because some parents still haven’t heard back on their appeal. And so we told
them, go ahead and get them in summer learning, even if it’s just for a week or so.”

Stringham said they can stop attending summer school if their appeal gets approved. She said parents have already called her and said their student’s appeals have been approved.

“So, we had a lot of happy children because the appeal means you go directly to fourth grade,” said Stringham.

The school system still doesn’t know how many third graders must attend summer learning yet.

“I won’t know exact numbers until probably Thursday, because we still have some that needed to be here that have not shown up yet,” said Stringham. “And, so I have people on my team. The site leads at the schools who are making home visits to those children and saying your child has to be there or they will stay in the third grade.”

Students must attend 90% of summer school to pass the requirement. In Kingsport, third graders can only miss two days or they’ll be retained. They started summer learning yesterday on Monday.

In Johnson City, 16% percent of the students who took a retest passed and get to move on to the fourth grade.

Robbie Anderson, director of accountability and school improvement for Johnson City Schools, said 25 students are still required to attend summer learning.

“So, that left us with about 5% of last year’s third-grade students who did not have a pathway to fourth grade other than making sure they attended a summer program,” said Anderson.

Anderson said they still have around 190 third graders enrolled, although not required.

“We think that being in a summer program will really give them a lot of confidence and prepare them for fourth grade, by shoring up any kind of skills they may have missed during their third-grade year,” said Anderson.

Both Johnson City and Kingsport school systems don’t know the exact number of appeals yet. The appeals are sent directly to the Tennessee Department of Education.

Stringham and Anderson said the state is supposed to send out a weekly report with the numbers of appeals to each school district soon.