By Noah Schmidt, Paw Writer
What’s new with CAP this year? A student is ineligible for 24 hours following the sub 70% grade being released. He or she cannot re-take the exam the afternoon of becoming ineligible, and hope to become eligible by that evening for an extracurricular event.
CAP scores were introduced last year and designed to, provide more feedback for students and parents regarding conduct, attendance and preparedness from week to week. CAP is an acronym that stands for Conduct, Attendance, and Preparedness. A poor CAP score makes a student ineligible for extracurricular activities.
This year, every classroom is adorned with a poster that states, “A student in good standing is eligible to participate fully in life of the school and enjoy all privileges and opportunities Providence Academy offers.”
Is CAP effective? Luke Tapani, a senior at Providence Academy, is uncertain on the issue. “I get where the administration are coming from, CAP does allow students to achieve minimum proficiency, but there is the problem. If I don’t know something, I shouldn’t be given a second chance if I didn’t study the first time around. CAP, in my opinion, makes for rather stressful winters and springs when I play hockey and golf. If I don’t perform well on a test, I can’t play. That doesn’t only affect my grades, but also my relationship with my coach.”
PA has introduced some new changes this year to remedy one of the issues Tapani identified. For 2014-2015, if a student gets a 2 on his or her CAP score, their coach is warned that if something doesn’t change, their athlete will become ineligible.
CAP is a new system, but it is a beneficial one. As Isaiah Counts, a senior at PA said, “CAP has motivated me to try harder in school. I appreciate the changes this year and think it will work a lot better than last year.”