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SA - 01 - 04 ASPIRE EDUCATIONAL MODEL An education at Aspire Public Schools provides all students with access to opportunities for success in all their future endeavors, including post-secondary education,work, and citizenship. Through personalized learning experiences, students master basic skills, develop productive life skills, and acquire the thinking skills needed for the rigorous work of the real world. Student Outcomes To establish a foundation for success, Aspire students will: • Basic skills:Master at least grade level competency in the four core subjects: mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts (including reading,writing, listening and speaking); • Thinking skills.Be able to apply classroom learning to their real world experiences in a relevant and valuable way, using higher-order thinking skills (including creative thinking, decision-making, problem solving, reasoning, knowing how to learn); • Life skills:Have developed personal qualities of individual responsibility, sociability, self- management, confidence, and integrity' School Structure To create a community where each student is known personally, Aspire schools are small with small, multi-grade classes. • Small Schools:Students are more likely to succeed in small schools,where teachers and principal know each family well. Aspire elementary and middle schools will have no more than 350 students;high schools n�rP *han 7nn 2 • Small class sizes:In smaller classes, teachers can give each individual student the time and individual attention necessary to realize his or her personal academic goals. Aspire maintains a 20:1 student/teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grade;a 28:1 ratio in grades four and five; 30:1 in middle school;and 32:1 in high school. • Multi Age Instruction:Heterogeneous grouping into classes of more than one grade level enables more personalized learning experiences by providing continuity and requiring varied instruction. Teachers who stay with a student for two consecutive years develop a better understanding of each student's individual learning needs, and can better tailor instruction. Deliberately heterogeneous grouping also forces teachers to use a variety of teaching strategies,which helps ensure students receive instruction at their individual level. Continuing students in a class help incorporate new students, decreasing the time required to spend on socialization to class norms. The broadened age range also decreases the chance that an individual child will feel developmentally "different," minimizing those psychological barriers to learning, both peers and teacher appreciate the natural range of skill differences. 'Based on important workplace skills as determined by the U.S.Department of Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills(SCANS),Learning a Living:A Blueprint for High Performance. April,1992. 2 Although researchers have documented the positive effects of small schools,they are relatively uncommon in California: at the elementary level,only 5%of California students were in small schools of less than 350 students,versus 17%nationally.