“A vision for educational excellence” By: Joaquín Fernández-Castro

ALL children can reach their full potential when provided with the opportunities and structures conducive to building upon their gifts and motivate their curiosity. Achieving educational excellence requires talented faculty and staff properly trained and motivated as well as a rigorous and high quality curricula providing all students with opportunities to reach and develop their full potential. A forward looking school should establish an innovative program that will bring the school to its highest level of accomplishment. How can we design an outstanding educational program that delivers excellent results?

Achieving educational excellence and joyful rigor begins with the school leadership, senior administrators and faculty. We can only expect educational excellence from our students if we, the adults in charge of their education, continuously strive to reach and model excellence ourselves. For a school to achieve its full potential, the priorities should focus on the educational quality, scholarly skills and the rigor of all its academic programs.  After all, 21^st century skills can only be achieved through a rigorous curricula. Proven programs like the College Board Advanced Placement (AP), the International Baccalaureate (IB) or support programs like the Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) together, with other rigorous programs of experiential, interdisciplinary and inquiry based learning can help fulfill the school’s mission to achieve educational excellence for all students. Extra-curricular programs will aim at growing the whole child in all aspects, including integrity and service to truth and others.

Educational excellence can be accomplished through a Liberal Arts curricula, balancing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) with Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts’ curricula, including extracurricular activities. Expecting rigor and high academic standards within that balanced curricula and establishing strong graduation requirements in all disciplines is the keystone to educational excellence and 21^st century skills. This may include requiring and expanding external benchmarks such as AP or other national (SAT, ACT, or subject specific) or international (IB, PISA) programs to measure progress and achievement. A critical element of this balanced curricula is an earlier, intensive and strong world languages requirement linked to a global studies program to prepare students for our increasingly interconnected world. Extra-curricular programs with high expectations are one additional element to achieve an excellent yet balanced education. Thoughtful discussion with all constituents needs to take place on any new or redesigned curriculum and how to develop and implement the programs adopted.

To best serve all students’ learning abilities, a flexible structure of regular, honors and accelerated tracks within ALL academic departments should be in place if the school has the resources and the number of students to do so. The AVID program could be part of this flexible structure, since it has a proven record of bringing “middle of the road” and struggling students to successfully complete rigorous courses. AVID, the IB program and the AP program also can provide opportunities for early acceleration for all students like the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program (PYP) and Middle Years Program (MYP) or the College Board pre-AP courses. A discussion about the sequencing and pace of the whole curriculum K-12^th grade will be necessary to devise the most effective program. These topics need in-depth discussions with division heads, department chairs and faculty and with the larger school community such as the board of trustees and parent associations.

In order to provide the best pedagogical practices, the school needs to support professional development and training for all teachers and administrators. If a school adopts either the AP, IB, AVID programs (or a combination of all), the school should require and use the professional training resources and workshops established by these programs. If the school adopts its own unique program, it is critical for it to include a strong professional development component. Faculty and administrators’ training should be part of the professional development expectation. School scheduling and assessments should reflect the pedagogical needs of the curricula adopted. Opportunities and structures for students to reach their highest potential and support for training a dedicated and high quality faculty are the keys to academic excellence.