somewhere far from here: "La Salle High School" part 2

… a prominent feature of La Salle’s day-to-day reality is the community mandate to strive for and to achieve academic excellence….

In fact, La Salle may be seen as having built its institutional life around the legitimacy of academic excellence, but, practically speaking, in order for that definition of excellence to be maintained, mechanisms had to be created to ensure that all or almost all of the school’s students would be able to find success as the school’s staff and community define it.

[snip]

The heart of La Salle’s formal structure is an emphasis on careful diagnosis of academic problems, an extensive system of support for students encountering academic difficulty, and an especially close monitoring of student progress. A rather complex network of support for a defined standard of excellence keeps the system working and prevents a great many students from “falling through the cracks,” as one administrator put it. The formal structure includes the following:

1. Students are tested upon entry into the district to determine their levels of academic skills. These tests include “both cognitive abilities and a writing sample which indicates writing skills.” Students then are tentatively placed in classes for the purpose of further diagnosis. This tentative placement allows La Salle’s professional staff to evaluate further student capabilities by observing their actual levels of performance.

2. Students then are assigned by subject to one of four academic levels, Honors, A, B, and C. Level B is the most common placement and incorporates about 50% of the student population. In some cases, students may be placed in a high academic track for several subjects but a lower academic track in other academic areas according to their performance. The administrators interviewed stressed the idea that placement is “based on performance rather than ability.” They stated that the criteria used for placement include: (a) achievement testing; (b) motivation as perceived by the classroom teacher; and (c) the grades that students are receiving. Each academic department, primarily through the department head, does its own placement, and there is a re-sorting at the end of each semester based on the student’s semester performance. Parents, however, may intervene in this process by requesting either a higher or lower placement for students and, most often, parent requests are granted “with a note inserted in the student record indicating that the placement is not the recommendation of the department.”

3. The La Salle staff periodically tests student development and retention; for example, at one point, a mathematics test given to juniors indicated that approximately 25% of the school’s juniors could not achieve an eighth-grade level of performance in arithmetic with 80% proficiency. Accordingly, those students were given remedial instruction. This incident led to the establishment of a school-wide mathematics maintenance program in order to ensure that students obtained and retained basic mathematics skills.

4. In their freshman year, all students are required to attend study halls during the hour or two when they are not in class. The study halls are also resource centers, which contain many of the books and references needed by freshmen in their courses. In such study centers, emphasis is placed on assisting students with their work. The teacher aide who runs the center is familiar with the assignments that freshmen receive. (This stands in contrast to study halls in other schools, which provide only custodial care during study periods.) Some freshmen who are deemed to be academically deficient are required to attend a separate study skills center adjacent to the freshman study hall. There, the intention is to provide more intense help than is available in the freshman study hall. Together, the freshman study hall and the study skills center serve to initiate freshmen into the academic culture of the school.

5. During their sophomore, junior, and senior years students who are experiencing academic or truancy problems are assigned to study halls during times when they are not in class. Again, emphasis is on providing academic assistance.

6. A few students exhibiting extraordinary behavioral problems are assigned to “supervised study.” In this room, custodial care is supplemented with a strong emphasis on interaction between the aide and the students. The room has only 12 desks, indicating that supervised study is necessary for only a tiny portion of the student population.

7. The school places a premium on student attendance in classes and has designed an effective monitoring system whereby parents are notified by the classroom teacher of class cuts on the same day that they take place.

source:
Changing Course: American Curriculum Reform in the 20th Century
by Herbert M. Kliebard
(Teachers College: 2002)
Chapter 8: One Kind of Excellence: Ensuring Academic Achievement at La Salle High School
Co-authored with Calvin R. Stone

notes:

• grouping by performance & place in curriculum
• grouping criteria appear to be reasonably objective and understandable by parents
• grouping decisions revisited at end of each semester, not each year
  
• math "maintenance" program
• study hall monitors know the assignments and have most of the textbooks
  
• parents have an override on grouping decisions
  

a school board in an excellent school
"La Salle High School" - tracking, placement, accountability