| State: Louisiana | Number of Students: 1,500 |
| School Type: Charter Management Org | Free and Reduced Lunch: 92.0% |
| Grade Level: 9-12 | English Language Learners: 11.0% |
School Context
Teachers Count: Collegiate believes that teacher quality is the best predictor of academic success. Therefore, Collegiatehas a rigorous hiring process and includes over 550 hours of professional development annually for teachers.
Ability to Improve: The network believes that every student and every teacher can learn and improve. As such,incremental growth is celebrated more than absolute mastery and cycles of inquiry are encouraged.
Preparing for College: Collegiate focuses on rigorous academics so that students are academically prepared for college.In addition to academics, the network also focuses on noncognitive skills so that students are set up for success once theyarrive on campus.
Data, Data, Data: Collegiate believes in collecting and analyzing academic, social and emotional data in short cycles toimprove school culture and academic performance.
State of Technology
Hacking Higher Ed: In 2013 Sci Academy, the flagship school of CollegiateAcademies, began an initiative to add online components to all 12th gradecourses to prepare students for the online environments associated withcollege courses. For this initiative, all seniors were issued Chromebooksfor school and home use. Teachers used Google to create sites for eachcourse to store and track syllabi, assignments and announcements. In2015 the 1:1 program for seniors will expand to Carver Prep and CarverCollegiate. As a network, Collegiate has close to a 2:1 device to studentratio.
Senior Seminar: In 2014, Sci Academy piloted a yearlong senior seminarfocused on design thinking and project based learning. The course, whichcounts as a social studies credit, includes three projects where studentsresearch issues affecting the school, network or community and thenserve as consultants tasked with recommending solutions. Students useChromebooks in the lab to research and work collaboratively throughoutthe year. When projects are complete, student groups present theirfindings to local stakeholders including community leaders and activists. In2015, Carver Prep and Carver Collegiate will be adding the senior seminarcourse.
Teacherpreneur: Teachers and staff at Collegiate turn to Evan Stoudt, anAlgebra I teacher at Sci Academy, for blended learning guidance. In 2014Mr. Stoudt decided to vary his instructional model by incorporating moretechnology into his daily lessons so that he could teach in small groups.Inspired by Sci Academy’s senior seminar and the pervasiveness of digitalenvironments today, Mr. Stoudt regularly pilots various online tools andprograms. In particular, Mr. Stoudt creates his own direct instructionvideos and posts them on www.mrstoudt.com for students to use.
Blended Learning Fellows: In March 2014, Claire Fisher (Sci Academy) andCharles Aponza (Carver Prep) were selected for the inaugural cohort of the NewOrleans Blended Learning Fellowship. The fellowship, developed by EducateNow!, intends to provide teachers with support incorporating innovative andeffective uses of technology in their classrooms.
Instruction First: At Collegiate Academies, technology is not just used forthe sake of having technology. Technology purchases and implementationsare aligned to established instructional and cultural goals. For example, at SciAcademy all technology initiatives must enable the teacher to efficiently identifycritical academic and social issues, increase practice time that students spend atthe appropriate level of rigor, or enable consistent, high quality feedback.
Tech Needs & Requirements
Collegiate is considering increasing the number of Chromebooks in each school. Collegiate would like to have one central data system that integrates all of their tools. The network believes that this will beespecially important as they grow and develop new schools in new regions.
Initiatives
Collegiate is working on building a lightweight LMS for all students and teachers to use, beginning with the 2015-2016 schoolyear.
Starting in August, Collegiate will also be piloting a goal setting system using Google Forms with 11th graders.
Collegiate will also be piloting Hapara with 9th graders.