School Program

To achieve our vision of college preparedness, we must have clarity about our incoming students’ current needs, individually and collectively. Our instructional program is designed to bridge the gap between these needs and our vision of achievement for every student. The following data elements demonstrate the range of needs that our program will address. The data reveals that the overwhelming majority of our students are performing below grade level, and in fact find themselves predominantly in the bottom two achievement quintiles.

Theory of Action
The data clearly calls for something completely different for our students than what they have experienced previously. The theories articulated in this section represent the beliefs of CCPA about how to most effectively close the gap between our students’ needs and the vision of college preparedness.

• Academic improvement must be the explicit mission of the school
  Too often schools become overwhelmed with the implementation of new approaches or strategies, intended to provide a silver bullet to improve student achievement, and they lose focus of the actual results that these efforts are intended to generate: student learning. Our vision is high student academic achievement, and this clear purpose pushes us to view every decision, program, and operation of our school in service of reaching that end.
  
  At the heart of this philosophy is a professional culture grounded in inquiry. We will use data and school-wide reflection processes to constantly monitor our students’ improvement and evaluate our progress towards meeting our central purpose of academic improvement. Our professional development plan includes structures for data based inquiry that will occur at all levels of the school organization. The leadership team will routinely engage in school wide inquiry, content areas will conduct inquiry into their practices, and teachers will have time and support to develop their own inquiries into personal teaching practice. Families and students will be engaged in data inquiry and reflection as well through the work of our governance structures.
  
  
• Students who are behind need more time and support to achieve at high levels
  We expect all students to meet or exceed California’s rigorous content standards, but we also realize that student needs will differ in terms of the amount of time and support they will need to get there. Coliseum Prep students present a variety of needs: academic, including English Language Development, social, and emotional. To ensure students are prepared for entry to UC and CSU schools, we have designed an instructional program with the following characteristics:
  
  
  • Secondary Grade Configuration: CCPA will keep students from 6th grade through 12th. Our program is divided into 3 divisions that target the specific developmental needs of each group. With this structure, we are able to build a clear scope and sequence that accelerates student achievement. Particular emphasis will be placed on accelerating students’ skill levels in the first division, grades 6 and 7 as we acculturate them to CCPA and our approaches.
    
    
  • Core Standards Based Curriculum for All: Every CCPA student will be enrolled in grade level standards based courses within their division. There is no tracking at CCPA. Students will demonstrate appropriate grade level proficiency as they move from one division to the next.
    
    
  • Extended Day for Intervention and Enrichment: The school day at CCPA will be longer than a typical site to allow us to provide students with the support necessary to be successful in their core courses. The last period of the day will be a differentiated structure that provides intervention in reading, math, and English language development, as well as enrichment opportunities across a wide array of areas and topics of interest.
    
    
  • Social, Emotional Support Structures: Through our partnership with Safe Passages, we will provide a variety of counseling, case management, and conflict resolution supports for students. Additionally, we will implement a Student Success Team to ensure students are provided the necessary academic or social, emotional supports. Both will be supported by our advisory program as well.
    
    
• Knowing the student well benefits students and teachers
  In study after study of successful small schools, students compare their school to a family rather than a factory and link their academic achievement to their caring relationships with teachers. CCPA will use a variety of strategies to facilitate the development of these relationships. The core strategy is our advisory program. Also, teachers will loop with students within their divisions in order to provide more instructional and relational consistency. Class sizes and student loads for teachers are reduced so that there are no more than 25 in a class and teachers are responsible for the core content and achievement of approximately 50 students.
  
  
• Students need to be taught Habits of Mind and Work
  To complement our core content, CCPA is committed ensuring students leave our school able to use their minds well. The skills necessary for this are embodied in the Habits of Mind and Work. We believe these skills are essential components of success in school as well as in life. These habits will guide conversations throughout the curriculum, and we will implement a clear scope and sequence that supports students’ development in these areas.
  
  
• Families and the community are essential partners
  To immediately address students’ academic, social, and emotional needs, the engagement of and partnership with families and the community is essential. Parents and community will be engaged in the assessment of student work through our portfolio and exhibition systems. Additionally, through our parent leadership team, they will be engaged in reflection on the school achievement data and in developing the understandings of grade level mastery. Our design includes formal parent liaison roles to further develop the home-school connection.

Divisions
At CCPA, the secondary configuration is crucial to our vision. Having our kids for seven years affords us the rare chance to work with them deeply over time. To capitalize on this opportunity, we have broken down the instructional program into three specific divisions. These divisions are intended to offer a rigorous, standards-based curriculum while at the same time addressing the developmental needs of the different age groups. This structure also provides for an experience that continually builds upon itself as students move up through them. As detailed below, each division will have a particular philosophical underpinning that is imbedded in the students’ experience.

Division 1: (6th/7th Grades)

• Establishing culture of high expectations and focus on college—lots of college awareness curriculum
• Orientation to CCPA structures, assessment methods and programmatic designs
• Emphasis on explicit teaching of Habits of Mind and Work to provide thinking and organization skills to manage more rigorous material
• Cored program to support students’ transition
• Teachers loop with classes and advisories for development of ongoing relationships
• Specifically designed resources and time for ‘catch up’ in core skills: reading, math, and English Language Development
• Establish basis of technology skills

Division 2: (8th/9th/10th Grades)

• Focus on taking care of requirements and setting stage for creating options in Senior Institute
  
• Beginning of the A-G requirements
• Continue emphasis of college going work—exploring real options; begin test prep
• Academic program becomes increasingly departmentalized--Humanities program team taught while Math and Science are fully differentiated
• Begin arts/tech electives and Spanish study
• Advisory loops throughout

Senior Institute: (11th/12th Grades)

• Focus on transitioning to college and ‘real world’
• Internships and con-current enrollment at local universities play a large role in program
• Finish A-G requirements
• Culminating Senior project that represents interests and contribution to community
• Advisory loops and focuses on college application process and graduation portfolio presentation

Advisory
CCPA’s Advisory Program gives each of our students a meaningful, personalized connection to the school. The Advisory program creates a "home" for every student at the school - a place where each student is well known and their academic progress is supported.

Advisors act as mentors to each of their students and meet with their small group of students daily. The advisor gets to know each of his/her advisees well and students are engaged in activities that help them get to know the school, their teachers, other students, and themselves. Advisors work one-on-one with students on academic planning, tutorials and portfolio development and on group activities such as Socratic seminars or community involvement. To support students’ vision for their futures, advisors facilitate a college and career awareness curriculum that develops throughout the divisions.

Advisors also serve as the crucial and consistent contact between the school and the student’s family. They are responsible for convening ‘Learning Teams’ to evaluate student’s progress, and they coordinate each student’s portfolio presentations and gateway exhibitions. Quite simply, Advisors are on the frontlines of our students’ academic success.