Corbett Charter School: A Note Regarding End of Day Routines

Monday, August 22, 2011

A Note Regarding End of Day Routines

Dear families,
With the school year upon us it's time to get organized for after-school pick-up. For the majority of you who will be picking your children up from school yourself or with a carpool, here are the arrangements.
If your child will be traveling together with a middle or high school student, they will meet you at the high school drive-through pick-up area. Please enter the drive-through area next to the post office east of the school.
If your children are in the elementary school and traveling with only elementary students, you may drive up to meet them at the parking lot loading area in front of the main grade school doors. We are eager for any of these families to volunteer to use the high school pick-up area instead! It is important that charter families enter the grade school parking lot no sooner than 3:15.
If your child is in the elementary school, your child's teacher will be collecting this information from you at Back-to-School Night on Thursday, Aug. 25 from 6-8 pm. Let's be sure to plan ahead for a great first day of school!
Regardless of the pick-up routine, your child will be under the direct supervision of a teacher for the entire time until you have them safely on board.
Regards,
Corbett Charter School Elementary Teachers

All That You Can Be is Not Enough

"All that you can be" might sound ambitious, but it's not enough. It is, in some respects, an impoverished goal...a call to efficiency and nothing more. It says 'Don't fail to realize your potential.' Your potential, which is presumably fixed, static, perhaps even measurable, but certainly limited. 'Be all you can be' casts you as a resource not to be wasted. 'Don't fail.' 'Be efficient.'

We want to encourage you to become more than that. Much more. Exceed yourself. Overcome your limits. Confound expectations. Surpass the 'standards' of others on your way to doing something really interesting. Create a marvel.

Class of 2011 AP and SAT Results

The Corbett Charter School Class of 2011 was exceptional. How? They just kept beating the odds.

Statewide, odds are that in a class of 19 graduates, 5.3 of them would have attempted one or more AP exams, and 2.66 would have passed at least one. Instead, 11 passed at least one and 5 earned AP Scholar status by passing three or more. In all, members of the class passed 43 exams during their careers.

Then there's the SAT. In Oregon, about 54% of graduating seniors have taken the SAT, and the average score is 1047 for verbal and math combined. Corbett Charter School's Class of 2012 had a participation rate of 89%! Their average score was 1079...a remarkable number with that level of participation.

A score of 1079 is in the 60th percentile, meaning that our average score was in the top 40% of test-takers nation wide. When 89% of your students average in the top 40% of the nation, that's beating the odds.

Great kids, beating the odds. Corbett Charter School.

Corbett Charter Advanced Placement Passing Rates Jump in 2011

It's no mystery that our practice of enrolling all high school students in AP classes raises eyebrows around the country. This year we got a great confirmation of the wisdom of this practice.

In May, 2011, over half of all of the Corbett Charter School students in grades 9-12 passed one or more Advanced Placement exams! Not only that, over half of the students in each grade achieved this benchmark! Count 'em, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th... 9th grade? Impossible. Except that it happened.

Another way to turn it is that if all of our students carried their May 2011 results to OSU, they would have earned ten years worth of college credit. All for the cost (to the charter school) of about one year of college attendance at an Oregon university. What a remarkable return on our investment and on our confidence in our students.

Enrollment!

DON'T WORRY IF YOU MISSED THE ENROLLMENT PARTIES!!!

Many thanks to those who were able to make it to the enrollment events. It was very helpful toward our efforts to prepare for next year. If you were unable to make it, no problem. We will do it again in mid August. Keep an eye on the web site.

I will also be providing enrollment forms for those who have time to drop by the high school library between Monday and Thursday, from 9 to noon, over the next two weeks. There won't be a party, and we will be busy with math students, but you are welcome to come and get your paperwork out of the way.

Thanks again to those who made it in.

See you again soon!

New Phone Numbers

As the result of a money-saving conversion, Corbett Charter School has new digits!

Corbett Charter School 503 261-4221
Elementary Office 503 261-4242
Rachel Dolkas 503 261-4233
Sheri Dunton 503 261-4250
Alyssa Reed Stuewe 503 261-4256
Lindy Sims 503 261-4247
Middle/High School Office 503 261-4226
Lukas Houck 503 261-4203
Jenny Robertson 503 261-4208
9th Grade Teachers
Tiffany Hedger 503 261-4212
Katie Swanson 503 261-4227

More to follow

Summer Math Nine to Noon High School Library

Summer math this year is exclusive to those 8th and 9th graders who are completing Pre-algebra, Algebra I and Algebra II. It is 'clean-up' time.

Eighth graders must have a teacher recommendation.

It is a drop-in session from 9 to 12 noon, Monday through Thursday. You may arrive and depart any time during the window.

No-one is allowed in the building who is not participating in the program. All business.

No food, no drinks, no gum, no hats in the library...

This schedule will continue through the end of July, with the following 'blackout' dates:

NO SUMMER MATH the week of June 20th.
NO SUMMER MATH July 4th.

Two More Hits and Two Home Runs

A member of Corbett Charter School's Class of 2011 just received notification of a full scholarship to Dartmouth College! (Yes, THE Dartmouth!) Another has had the same offer from University of Portland! Full scholarships to great schools aren't easy to come by, and we are immensely proud of these graduates-to-be.

Two members of the Class of 2012, meanwhile, have distinguished themselves by scoring among the top 3% of the 1,500,000 Juniors who took the PSAT this past October. They are the running for the National Merit Semifinalist competition, the first step toward the National Merit Scholar award. We wish them all the best as they attempt to join Mark Huddleston (Corbett Charter School Class of 2010) as National Merit Finalists.

More on SAT's

How to judge SAT results? The State of Oregon School Report Cards include information regarding the SAT results of each high school. They publish both the average scores and the rate of participation. Today's question?

How does one judge? Is the average score the best indicator? The participation rate? What if one school has higher scores but another has a higher rate? Doesn't that skew the results?

Here are my methods. They each involve more than one step, but they are as simple as I can make it:

Method one: the Oregon comparision. Since about 55% of Oregon students take the SAT, compare the scores of Corbett Charter School's top 55% to the Oregon scores and see where we fall. Last year only 55% of charter seniors took the SAT, and the results are already posted on this page.

Method two: the National comparison. The oldest trick in the book is to limit the number of students who are encouraged to take the SAT in order to maintain a higher average score...weird, but not so uncommon as one might wish. So we see schools where far fewer than half of the students take the exam. And sometimes their average scores don't look so bad. So here's the math. If 100% of my students take the SAT, then the average expected score should be in the 50th percentile (half above and half below the middle. Remember, they are only being compared to the college bound students of other schools.) If 50% take it, they should average in the 75th percentile, and so on. If only 20% of my students take the SAT, then their average score ought to be in the 90% percentile! (Say, in the 1300 range for math and verbal combined) That's how the game works.

Last year, for example, 55% of Corbett's seniors took the SAT, and by my method their average score should have been in the 72.5th percentile? Their average score of 1140 was in the 71st.

This year, with 85% participation, I expect our average score to be in the 57.5th percentile. Their average score of 1057 is in the 57th!

How does this translate? Our entire school population is behaving very much like the more limited 'college bound' population of students nationally.

There are other tests that one might run. What about our top 20%? Did they average in the 90th percentile as predicted? Their average score of 1343 is in the 93rd percentile, as it happens. Last year's top 20%? The 91st percentile.

Corbett Charter School does college prep. For everyone. Our results confirm it. 9th graders? Be strong. You will be taking your place on the page before you know it, and you will be prepared.

2010 and 2011 SAT Results

Corbett Charter School Class of 2010 had a 55% participation rate on the SAT exam, slightly above the State of Oregon average. Their average score was 1167 for verbal and math combined, and 556 in writing. By way of comparison, the best results among the four high schools where most of our students reside was a 41% participation rate with an average score of 1022 verbal and math combined and 479 in writing. The State of Oregon average, with 53% participation, was 1048 in verbal and math combined and 499 in writing.

Corbett Charter School's Class of 2011 already has an 80% participation rate, which is a remarkable statistic in itself. Their average score is about 1061 for math and verbal combined, a very good showing for 80% of the class! The top 55% of the class, equivalent to the percentage that will test around the State of Oregon this year, has averaged 1144 so far. We can anticipate placement in some very good universities for this year's students.

What About Those Advanced Placement Tests?

What if I told you that Corbett Charter School passed 50% more exams per graduating senior than any school outside of Corbett even attempted in 2009?

True enough. Corbett Charter School students passed 64 exams with a score of three or higher. We graduated 19
seniors.

The State of Oregon has a standard rubric for awarding university credit for scores on AP exams. If Corbett Charter School students carried all of their scores to OSU (or any other Oregon system school) they would be awarded six-and-a-half years worth of credit, valued at about $125,000.00, or the equivalent of over $6000 per graduating senior. The total cost of the Charter School AP exams? $16,000.00. So our students earned nearly eight dollars worth of credit for every dollar that we invested.

Eleven Charter School students earned AP Scholar honors. Twenty-three others passed one or more exams.

Last thing...counting only our 9th,10th and 11th graders, Corbett Charter School PASSED as many exams per graduating senior as any other Oregon school ATTEMPTED in 2009. Really. Not counting our 12th graders. Add our 12th graders, and the comparison becomes absurd. But fun.

Contacts

Ms. Ducey jducey@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mr. Robertson wroberts@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mr. Swanson lswanson@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mr. Dunton bdunton@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Ms. Hedger thedger@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Swanson kswanson@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mr. Houck lhouck@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Robertson jroberts@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Loeung dleoung@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Kelly lkelly@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Sims lsims@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Ms. Reed-Stuewe areed@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Dolkas rdolkas@corbettcharter.k12.or.us
Mrs. Dunton sdunton@corbettcharter.k12.or.us