Dear Steller Parents and Guardians,

End of the Year Conferences will take place on Tuesday, May 19th and Thursday, May 21st. These will be student led conferences that include the student, parent/guardian(s), and the advisor, but will be led by your child. Our goal is to have 100% attendance so all Steller students have the opportunity to show off their strengths and talk about areas they need to improve. The focus for end of the year conferences will be to review this year, goal setting for next year, and planning out steps of how to achieve those goals, review credit count sheets and progress towards graduation, and deal with any concerns that students and/or parents might be having.

Conferences can be scheduled a number of ways and this quarter we have access to the district’s online scheduler, which is the easiest way for you to register. Do so by following the steps below:

1. Go to http://www.asdk12.org/ConferenceScheduling/StudentScheduleStartExt.aspx * This can be reached by going to the district web page, clicking on Parent conferences on the left, and then on the Middle School conference scheduler.

2. Choose Steller as the school;

3. Choose 7th grade! (In order to work In the system, all conferences are scheduled as 7th graders. It is the square peg into a round hole thing);

4. For Team Name, choose your student’s ADVISOR. Conferences will be with the advisor, if you want to meet with classroom teachers, you will need to schedule a meeting outside of the conference dates;

5. Choose the date you wish to come in;

6. Choose your time and continue through the process. You can sign up to receive a reminder email. If you need to cancel your appointment time, you will have to email your advisor. If you cannot use the online scheduler, you can email your student’s advisor with times and the day that would work for you and they will schedule you into open spot.

Dear Parents, Students, School Staff,

The College Board has released the concordance tables for the new SAT, allowing the scores from the old SAT to be compared to the scores from the new SAT. The new SAT cut scores (400-1600) required for APS qualification are based on concordance to (agreement with) those required under the old SAT (600-2400).

*taken before March 1, 2016 (2400 point score scale)

** taken on or after March 1, 2016 (1600 point score scale)

Qualifying APS test scores are defined in the Department of Education & Early Development’s (EED) regulations. In March 2016, EED presented to the State Board of Education (Board) draft regulatory language that adopts the College Board’s concordance table comparing old SAT and new SAT scores. The Board subsequently voted to put the draft language out for public comment and will vote on whether to adopt the new SAT cut scores at the June 17, 2016 meeting. NOTE: The new SAT cut scores for APS qualification are subject to approval by the Board in June 2016.

Important Combined SAT Score Notice: For APS, a combined SAT score is allowed, which includes taking a student’s highest section scores from multiple administrations to create a highest combined score. However, combined SAT scores will only be allowed when combining section scores from the same version of the SAT. This is because the old SAT consisted of Critical Reading, Math, and Writing sections, and the new SAT varies in design, section structure (only two sections instead of three: 1) Evidence-Based Reading & Writing and 2) Math), score scale, and measures different academic concepts. A numerical score on a section of the old SAT may not be equivalent to a numerical score on a section of the new SAT.

To compare your new SAT scores to the old SAT, use the College Board’s SAT Score Converter online tool sat-score-converter. For more information on SAT concordance, visit the College Board’s website.

If you have any questions, or would like additional information, please contact Deb Riddle, APS Program Coordinator, at Deborah.Riddle@alaska.gov

KCIS Help Desk (800) 441-2962 Option #3 akcis@alaska.gov