Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools

The Alliance's educational model reflects research on best practices in high-performing schools -- those that consistently produce well-educated students prepared to successfully enter and succeed in college. These best practices include:

Students learn best in small learning communities where their education is personalized, where they know their teachers, where their teachers and all adults in the school know them, where advisory structures connect each student with a personal learning team and where there is student voice in all aspects of the school that directly affect them. Through small high schools with a student body of 500, Alliance creates intimate learning communities where relationships between adults and students are sustained over time.

All students are supported through advisory groups that connect each student with a personal learning team. Advisory groups are guided by a credentialed teacher who works with the same students from 9th grade through graduation. The advisory structure provides a small, focused support group to motivate and support each student’s progress. Each secondary student has a personal learning team consisting of their teacher advisor, a parent and a mentor who meet throughout the year to provide guidance and assess progress. Teacher advisors monitor each student’s individual learning plan to address individual interests and needs.

Alliance students learn in classrooms where teachers have high expectations for all students. Proficiency in core subject areas is based on grade-level expectations for rigorous standards.

Research shows that students learn best when there is a rigorous standards-based curriculum with high-thinking demand that challenges them to test their understanding of concepts through real-life applications. It is critical that students clearly know the expectations and criteria they are trying to meet and can judge their own work and are encouraged to participate actively in classroom talk about the concepts and standards they are learning.

Students apply skills and concepts learned in the classroom through creating real-world projects and participating in service learning and community internships that require problem-solving, critical thinking and active engagement.

The Alliance knows that college readiness requires proficiency in English for all students. Therefore, structured English language development curriculum and instructional strategies are provided for all Alliance students learning to speak English as a second language and English-only students who speak non-standard English

Second-language learners and non-standard English speakers are required to demonstrate proficiency in English language development after three years of instruction.

Teachers participate in training to develop expertise in focused English language development (ELD) instructional strategies as well as sheltered ELD strategies in core subjects.

Integrated TechnologyStudents and teachers have adequate access to technology for student learning, classroom instruction, data management and communication. Technology is used to provide electronic assessment and electronic student portfolios for immediate access to student progress data for teachers, students and parents.

Students have access to technology to esearch information on the Internet, develop standards-based multimedia projects and presentations and to maintain individual portfolios of their work.

Classroom teachers are provided comuters and use a consistent data system for managing grades, student performance data and internal school and network communication with other Alliance schools. Alliance schools use a data management system to access individual student and classroom data.

Principals are responsible and accountable to the entire school community for ensuring that each and every student gets what he or she needs to achieve individual and school performance goals. Alliance is responsible and accountable for guarantees made to its schools, monitoring progress and documenting and publishing results to the school community and the greater Los Angeles community.

Principals are hired with an annual contract renewable based on annual performance evaluation conducted by the Alliance president and CEO. Principals are responsible for and have the authority to select, hire, evaluate and recommend the termination of teachers based on clear performance expectations and evaluation criteria.