NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Charter School of Wilmington

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The Charter School of Wilmington is a high school in Wilmington, Delaware, with approximately 1000 students. It was one of the first public/private (self governed, state funded) charter schools in the United States, opening in 1996. It occupies the third floor and a wing of the second floor of the former Wilmington High building. Under the leadership of Ronald R. Russo, the school's novel approaches have led to a successful student body. Over the past 10 years, Charter has risen to one of the premiere secondary schools in Delaware, excelling both academically and athletically. Charter continually comes first in many state academic competitions including Math League and Science Olympiad, as well as sending many students to both All State Band and Orchestra. Charter students continually score high on the Delaware Standardized Test Program every year, leading the State statistics with the most students scoring a 5 (the highest grade on the test) in several subjects including Math and Science. For other uses, see Motto (disambiguation). ... Educational institutions are often categorised along several dimensions. ... : Chemical Capital of the World , Corporate Capital of the World , Credit Card Capital of the World : A Place to Be Somebody United States Delaware New Castle 17. ... This article is about the U.S. State of Delaware. ... Red Clay Consolidated School District (abbreviated Red Clay or RCCSD) is a public school district in Delaware. ... The UniversitÃ¤tscampus Wien, Austria ( details) Campus (plural: campuses) is derived from the (identical) Latin word for field or open space. English gets the words camp and campus from this origin. ... School colors are the colors chosen by a school to represent it on uniforms and other items of identification. ... Millie, once mascot of the City of Brampton, is now the Brampton Arts Councils representative. ... Image File history File links Charter_School_of_Wilm_Mascot-1. ... For other uses, see Yearbook (disambiguation). ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2400x1800, 1651 KB) Summary Description: Charter School of Wilmington front entrance Source: Taken by Ruokai Chen and Arjun Gopalratnam Date: 2006-01-10 Author: Ruokai Chen and Arjun Gopalratnam Permission: Make any changes provided you give attribution to Ruokai Chen and... : Chemical Capital of the World , Corporate Capital of the World , Credit Card Capital of the World : A Place to Be Somebody United States Delaware New Castle 17. ... Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools in the United States which have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each charter school... Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ...

History

Charter schools in Delaware were authorized by Delaware Code, Title 14, Chapter five, enacted in 1995 under the leadership of Governor Thomas R. Carper. The school is operated by a consortium of six companies: AstraZeneca, Verizon, Delmarva Power, DuPont, Hercules Incorporated, and Christiana Care Health System. Thomas Richard Tom Carper (born January 23, 1947) is an American economist and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. ... AstraZeneca PLC (LSE: AZN, NYSE: AZN), is a large Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company formed on 6 April 1999 by the merger of Swedish Astra AB and British Zeneca Group. ... Verizon Communications, Inc. ... Pepco Holdings, Inc. ... Dupont, DuPont, Du Pont, or du Pont may refer to: // E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, the worlds third largest chemical company Du Pont Motors Gilbert Dupont, a French stock brokerage part of retail banking network CrÃ©dit du Nord ST Dupont, a French manufacturer of fine... Hercules Inc. ...

The school is located in Wilmington, Delaware. The Charter School of Wilmington was chartered by the Red Clay Consolidated School District, and was directly descended from the 'Academy of Mathematics and Science', an earlier (now defunct) math and science magnet school run by the Red Clay School District. The school is a college preparatory academy that focuses on mathematics and science, including statistics, calculus, chemistry, biology, physics, geology, and computer sciences. Charter also has a strong humanities curriculum as well as offering Advanced Placement courses. Also occupying building that formerly housed Wilmington High School are the Cab Calloway School of the Arts and the James H. Groves Adult High School. Red Clay Consolidated School District (abbreviated Red Clay or RCCSD) is a public school district in Delaware. ... In the U.S. system of education, a magnet school is a public school which offers innovative courses, specialized training, etc. ... Red Clay Consolidated School District (abbreviated Red Clay or RCCSD) is a public school district in Delaware. ... A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (usually abbreviated to preparatory school, college prep school, or prep school) is a private secondary school designed to prepare a student for higher education. ... This article is about the field of statistics. ... For other uses, see Calculus (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ... Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology (from Greek: Î²Î¯Î¿Ï‚, bio, life; and Î»ÏŒÎ³Î¿Ï‚, logos, knowledge), also referred to as the biological sciences, is the study of living organisms utilizing the scientific method. ... This is a discussion of a present category of science. ... This article includes a list of works cited but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... This article is about the machine. ... The humanities are those academic disciplines which study the human condition using methods that are largely analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences. ... Advanced Placement (AP) is the term used to describe high school classes that are taught at a college level. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

The Charter School of Wilmington is a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology. National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology (NCSSSMST) is an alliance of specialized high schools in the United States whose focus is advanced preparatory studies in mathematics, science and technology. ...

The school celebrated its tenth anniversary of operation in the 2005-2006 school year.

The Charter School of Wilmington placed 127th in 2006 and 75th in 2007 in Newsweeks's Top High Schools.

Novel approach to education

Rotating schedule

Charter has taken a very novel approach to class schedules. Rather than the commonly used block system or a simple rotating schedule, Charter students take part in a rotating schedule with classes of different lengths. The first two periods of the day are both over an hour long, with periods three through five 45 minutes long, and periods six and seven about half an hour long. This system was devised after research showed students' attention spans decreased throughout the course of the day, making it more appropriate to have longer classes in the mornings. Block scheduling is a type of academic scheduling in which each student has fewer classes per day for a longer period of time; academic days alternate, with students having half of their classes on one day and the other half on the other. ...

Shared classes with Cab Calloway

Periods C and E/F at Charter are fixed, including shared periods with the Cab Calloway School of the Arts, a unique opportunity for students located in a math and science school. Students may elect to take Cab classes on museum studies, visual arts, drama, and the musical arts, UD classes or any other Charter classes during these periods. The other five periods of the day (A, B, D, G, H) rotate each day of the week with the period of E/F referring to the class/lunch period. Students either have 5A lunch in which case E is lunch and F is class, or 5B lunch in which E is class and F is lunch. Lunch lasts a half hour and 5th period class is 45 minutes. For example, on a Monday, students follow the schedule ABCDE/FGH. On a Tuesday, students follow the schedule of HACBE/FDG with a Wednesday schedule of GHCAE/FBD. This continues throughout the week and restarts the following Monday so all rotating periods of long and short classes balance out throughout the week. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The University of Delaware (UD or UDel) is the largest university in the U.S. state of Delaware. ...

Research projects

Students participate in four research projects over the course of their four year education at Charter. During the sophomore year, all students complete a Science Fair project as a necessary requirement of their Biology class. During the junior year, students complete a Research project for their English classes. Phase 5 History classes also complete historical research projects, which may be able to be entered into the History Day competition. These research projects are used to enforce, not introduce the MLA style and teach research for Liberal Arts fields. During the senior year, students are required to participate in a senior research project, involving either performing or investigating an empirical experiment, through creating an invention or shadowing a scientist. The project teaches the APA style and ends with a final presentation in front of faculty members. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fifth Edition The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of literature and literary criticism. ... In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprise two groups of studies, the trivium and the quadrivium. ... A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. ... The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed. ...

Criticisms from Delawareans

On occasion, Charter's legality has been questioned. Delaware's charter school law defines fairly specific restrictions charter schools may use, including the requirement of a blind lottery after certain criteria have been met. Charter's admissions process operates in part upon an assessment test administered to all prospective students, which critics claim is an exclusionary policy. School representatives claim that a clause in the law allows the school to give preferential treatment to students who show "a specific interest in the school's teaching methods, philosophy, or educational focus", expressed through performance in school, teacher recommendations, and the admissions assessment. Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner and other state politicians have condemned the school's apparent extraction of high-performing students from local schools across the state, citing that this has inflated Charter's statistics while hurting that of other schools. Ruth Ann Minner (born January 17, 1935) is an American businesswoman and politician from Milford, in Kent County, Delaware. ...

Charter has also come under scrutiny for its expulsion practices. Charter officially publishes a 0% expulsion rate, which many students claim to be false. They suggest that Charter, rather than officially "expel" an unwanted student, "asks the student to leave" without an actual choice. Purportedly, this is done in order to prevent expulsions from appearing on the school's records.

Classes

Mathematics

Mathematics courses offered include the Integrated Math Series, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, Analytic Geometry and Calculus C, and Ordinary Differential Equations. AP Statistics and Discrete Math may be taken in lieu of the calculus classes, with four math courses needed to graduate. Precalculus, Probability and Statistics, and Calculus Concepts are often substituted for those that consider college level math courses to be too rigorous.

Science

Freshmen usually enroll in the Introduction to Science courses, three semester-long courses in Physics, Chemistry, and Geosystems. Sophomores usually enroll in full-year biology, while juniors usually enroll in full-year chemistry and seniors usually enroll in full-year physics. There are a variety of AP courses in each of the respective sciences available that hold the normal courses as prerequisites. The Charter School of Wilmington offers AP Biology, AP Chemistry, an AP Physics C class that covers topics on both the Mechanics and Electricity/Magnetism curricula, and an AP Environmental Science course. Electives include Digital Electronics Design Lab, Introduction to Robotics, Advanced Robotics, Astronomy, Oceanography, Anatomy, Forensics, Introduction to Engineering, Biogenetics, Modern Physics, and Human Life Cycles. Students also are given the opportunity to earn credit by serving as Lab Assistants. See Challenge Tests for more information on science requirements. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1793x2211, 2313 KB) Summary Description: Charter School of Wilmington students Source: Taken by Ruokai Chen Date: 2005-12-02 Author: Ruokai Chen Permission: Make any changes provided you give attribution to Ruokai Chen and share your derivative of it under the... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1793x2211, 2313 KB) Summary Description: Charter School of Wilmington students Source: Taken by Ruokai Chen Date: 2005-12-02 Author: Ruokai Chen Permission: Make any changes provided you give attribution to Ruokai Chen and share your derivative of it under the... The word forensic (from Latin: forensis - forum) refers to something of, pertaining to, or used in a court of law. ...

English

Required English courses include Freshman English, British Literature, American Literature, and World Literature. AP English Literature may be taken in lieu of World Literature. Electives include AP English Language, Myths and Legends, Journalism I-IV, Creative Writing, Philosophy, Advertising and Marketing, Shakespeare, and College Preparatory Writing.

Social sciences

Required social studies courses are Integrated Social Sciences, World History, and United States History. AP United States History is offered in lieu of the standard US History class. Electives include standard and AP Economics classes, a military history class, courses on pre-Civil War and modern American history, a stock market lab, a standard psychology class, and AP United States Government and Politics.

Foreign languages

A minimum of two years of foreign language is mandated, although four years are recommended. Many students elect to continue language studies up until the AP level, in Latin, French, and Spanish.

Computer science

A computer science course is required for graduation. Freshmen enroll in either the Technology Utilization class that teaches basic usage of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or in Java Programming. The Computer Science department at the school features Java and AP Computer Science classes and electives including data analysis, computer graphics, engineering drawing, and network programming.

Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1726x1374, 1523 KB) Summary Description: Charter School of Wilmington students Source: Taken by Ruokai Chen Date: 2005-10-18 Author: Ruokai Chen Permission: Make any changes provided you give attribution to Ruokai Chen and share your derivative of it under the... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1726x1374, 1523 KB) Summary Description: Charter School of Wilmington students Source: Taken by Ruokai Chen Date: 2005-10-18 Author: Ruokai Chen Permission: Make any changes provided you give attribution to Ruokai Chen and share your derivative of it under the... For other uses, see Calculus (disambiguation). ...

Advanced Placement

The school offers many advanced placement classes which allow students to earn college credit while still attending high school. Advanced placement courses include Calculus (AB & BC), Statistics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics C, Environmental Science, Computer Science A/AB, English Literature, English Language, Latin Virgil, Spanish Language, French Language, U. S. History, U. S. Government, World History, and Economics. Many students choose to independently study other AP exams or elect to take AP courses through the Cab Calloway School of the Arts.[1]

General graduation requirements

Delaware state standards mandate semester-long health education and semester-long sophomore and junior gym classes. The Technology Utilization class satisfies the Delaware state standard for computer literacy. Three years of history and four years of math, science and english exceed the state requirements for these subjects. A senior research project completes the graduation requirements.

Challenge tests

A challenge test administered to incoming freshmen allows prospective students to bypass mathematics classes up to Integrated Math III, the Introductory Science courses, or the introductory foreign language courses. These tests are not used to determine the phasing of students in each subject (Math, Science, English, History, and Foreign Language), which are determined by the admissions test. Phases range from 3-6, with non-academic classes (i.e. Driver Education and Gym) at phase 4, phase 5 being considered as honors, and AP and UD classes designated as phase 6.

University of Delaware classes

The Charter School of Wilmington offers several University of Delaware courses taught with University curricula and professors through the University's Continuing Education program. The UD Analytic Geometry and Calculus C and Ordinary Differential Equations classes have been successful due to the high number of students who finish AP Calculus BC before their senior year. The school introduced a UD Survey of Organic Chemistry class during the 2004-2005 school year, and a Data Structures class for the 2005-2006 school year. The University of Delaware (UD or UDel) is the largest university in the U.S. state of Delaware. ...

Students

The student body is made up of 936 students as of 2005, including 68% of students coming from area public school districts, and 32% of the students coming from Catholic and other private schools. A dress code barring jeans was enacted in the first year of operation and has since been expanded. The current dress code requires students to wear a school shirt (available in a variety of colors and styles) and "Khaki" or "Docker" style pants, shorts, slacks or skirts. Students are permitted to wear sandals, athletic or dress shoes year round. However, the last Friday of each month is a dress-down day. 98% of students attend college upon graduation, with approximately half of each graduating class going to the University of Delaware. Alumni have also attended such schools as Brown University, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, especially Wharton, Princeton University, Rice University, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale. Individual students have won many state and national awards in mathematics, general science, biology, physics, journalism, French, Spanish, Latin and forensics competitions. In addition, students have also gained recognition in Odyssey of the Mind, and sports.[2] Casual Friday (also known as Dress-down Friday Professor Jackson isnt even trying Day or simply Casual day) is an American and Canadian business custom which has spread to other parts of the world, wherein some offices celebrate a semi-reprieve from the constrictions of a formal dress code. ... Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ... California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. ... Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. ... Alma Mater Columbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ... â€œCornellâ€ redirects here. ... Dartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. ... Duke University is a private coeducational research university located in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... MapÃºa Institute of Technology (MIT, MapÃºaTech or simply MapÃºa) is a private, non-sectarian, Filipino tertiary institute located in Intramuros, Manila. ... The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn[3][4]) is a private, coeducational research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... Wharton most often refers to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. ... Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. ... Lovett Hall William Marsh Rice University (commonly called Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art) is a private, comprehensive research university located in Houston, Texas, USA, near the Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. ... Stanford may refer: Stanford University Places: Stanford, Kentucky Stanford, California, home of Stanford University Stanford Shopping Center Stanford, New York, town in Dutchess County. ... The University of Virginia (also called U.Va. ... â€œWashington Universityâ€ redirects here. ... YALE (Yet Another Learning Environment) is an environment for machine learning experiments and data mining. ... Odyssey of the Mind (often called OotM and OM, but see below) is a creative problem-solving competition involving students from kindergarten though college. ...

There is a generally acknowledged rivalry with Cab Calloway School of the Arts, located in the same building. This rivalry is generally seen as light and good-natured, as the two schools co-mingle quite well. There are inter-school friendships and relationships, with Charter students appearing in Cab Calloway theater productions, while Cab Calloway students play on Charter sports teams, as there are no sports teams at Cab Calloway.

Faculty

The student to teacher ratio is 18:1, with an average class size of 24 students. Members of Charter's faculty were Delaware's English Teacher of the Year in 1997, Conservation Teacher of the Year in 1999, recipients of the Science/Math Excellence in Teaching Award from the Science Alliance in 1999, and Delaware's History Day Teacher of the Year in 2002. One member of the faculty even helps to write supplemental math activities that relate to some of the episodes of the hit television show Numb3rs. Numb3rs (also capitalized as NUMB3RS and pronounced as Numbers) is an American television show produced by brothers Ridley Scott and Tony Scott. ...

Extra-curricular activities

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Clubs

... National Academic Quiz Tournaments (LLC) is a question-writing and quizbowl organizing company founded by former players in 1996. ... The National Academic Championship was first run in 1983, created by quizbowl mogul Chip Beall and his company, Questions Unlimited. ... For other uses, see Chess (disambiguation). ... The original Dungeons & Dragons set Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) published by Gary Gygax and David Arneson in January 1974. ... Engineering is the applied science of acquiring and applying knowledge to design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. ... The Envirothon is a nationwide high school environmental competition in the United States and in Canada wherein teams of five students are tested on five categories: Aquatics, Forestry, Soils/Land Use, Wildlife, and a rotating current environmental issue. ... Math League is a mathematics competition for elementary, middle, and high school students in the United States. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... Physics olympiad is a competition in physics, usually among high school students, where the participants solve problems and/or perform and analyze experiments. ... Science Olympiad is a primarily American elementary, middle school, or high school team competition that requires knowledge of various science topics and engineering ability. ... A shaped, twin-tip alpine ski. ...

Music

A cappella music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. ... A concert band, also called wind band, symphonic band, symphonic winds, wind orchestra, wind symphony, or wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of several members of the woodwind instrument family, brass instrument family and percussion instrument family. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A jazz band (or jazz ensemble in western dialects of American English) is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. ... An American college marching band on the field (University of Texas) A marching band is a group of instrumental musicians who generally perform outdoors, and who incorporate movement â€“ usually some type of marching â€“ with their musical performance. ... For the song titled Orchestra, see The Servant (band). ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instrumentsâ€”usually two violins, a viola and celloâ€”or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ...

Sports

Image File history File links Charter_School_of_Wilm_Mascot-1. ... Image File history File links Charter_School_of_Wilm_Mascot-1. ...

Boys

Girls

Club sports

Newspaper

The school newspaper, The Blue Streak, was originally a small newsletter, written by students and printed on 8.5x11 inch paper. In 2002, Journalism was offered as a class and the paper received more funding. Now standard newspaper size, The Blue Streak has dozens of reporters and editors, and is published approximately eight times annually. The paper won 18 awards in The First State High School Press Contest.

Standardized exam achievement

All freshmen, sophomores and juniors at Charter take the Delaware Student Testing Program exams. Test scores at The Charter School of Wilmington are consistently the highest in the state with 100%, 99%, and 100% of Charter students in 11th grade scoring at or above expectations in reading, writing, and mathematics, respectively. [4]

External links

References

Categories: Articles lacking sources from January 2007 | All articles lacking sources | Charter School of Wilmington | Charter schools | Educational institutions established in 1996 | High schools in Delaware | National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology schools is the 364th day of the year (365th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... March 8 is the 67th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (68th in Leap years). ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Contents

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