Lafayette High School

School Information

School Name:  Lafayette High School
School District: Rockwood School District
School Address:  17050 Clayton Road, Wildwood, MO 63011                   
School Phone:  636.733.4100
School Fax: 636.458.7219
Principal:  John Shaughnessy
Principal E-Mail: Shaughnessyjohn@rockwood.k12.mo.us
Web Address: http://www.rockwood.k12.mo.us/lafayette/Pages/default.aspx

Demographics

Number of Students:  2030
Number eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch:  9.3%
Percent of Limited English Proficient:  0.6%
Percent of Special Education:  11.2%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

• White: 83.3%
• Black: 9.8%
• Hispanic: 1.5%
• Asian/Pacific Island: 4.9%
• Other: 0.5%

 

Student Achievement Data:

Data Source-ACT Testing, AP College Board and School Data

 

 

School Failing Grades Data:

School goal: LHS will reduce failing grades by an appropriate number per PLC.

	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
1st semester F's	376	329	244
2nd semester F's	399	330	200

Math - Algebra I Top 2 Levels (Percent proficient/advanced for Lafayette/Rockwood/State)

AYP was met on all subgroups!

Subgroup	Total	Black	White	F/R Lunch	IEP
2009	56.0/66.3/47.6	27.7/25.7/23.0	63.1/70.9/53.6	30.6/31.5/33.3	26.7/41.5/25.8
2010	71.4/71.0/52.7	23.4/31.5/29.0	76.1/74.8/58.3	29.4/38.4/38.9	40.4/46.1/29.2
2011	82.4/72.1/54.2	35.1/29.9/30.2	88.8/76.9/60.0	36.4/37.7/40.6	47.6/43.8/29.6

 

Please comment on any aspect of the data that you believe is particularly significant.

As you can see our achievement is high at various levels compared to state and national averages, however we feel that our greatest impact has been in the reduction of failing grades in a highly successful school.  Our RTI model is utilized by each staff member and purposeful interventions are placed early on to ensure the success of each student at LHS.

We have also had great success in our AP scores and college readiness benchmarks which shows that our focus for our school is on learning.  Our students are fully prepared to be successful in a post-secondary setting.

Please present additional information that indicates your efforts to build a professional learning community have had a positive impact on students and/or teachers.

Philosophy of PLC work at LHS:

LHS has been on the PLC journey for more than 7 years with the idea of continuous improvement pushing us along. We have a standard of excellence for each staff member and student.  We live and breathe it.  In our school you will see a banner that states “Through these halls walk the finest students in the nation.”  That banner is a constant reminder to us of why we do what we do—for our students.

We have a PLC handbook that guides all of our work for the year.  In it you will find a week by week plan for the entire year mapped out.  Including when SMART goals are due, Essential Learning Targets, Norms, failing grade reports, opportunities for professional development and much more.  This handbook guides all of our focused work that is centered on the basic four questions of PLC:

            What do we expect our students to know?
            How will we know when they have learned it?
            How will we respond when they don’t learn?
            How will we respond when they already know it?

Professional Development for PLC’s at LHS:

A focus on learning in the school is not only for students but an expectation for staff members as well. We provide our staff with job embedded professional development as much as possible.  We have developed four pathways (plan is to add more each year) that staff members may take part in:

1. PLC Collaborative leadership pathway- We are doing a book study on Leaders of Learning by Rick DuFour and Robert Marzano.  In this pathway, teachers also get an opportunity to sit and discuss any PLC issues with the building principal.  PLC 101 is offered for any new staff members at the school so they are immediately immersed in the PLC philosophy.  PLC leadership is basis of this pathway.
2. Lit-Link Pathway-one of our goals is Literacy and we provide specific instructional strategies to teaching literacy in any content area.  This will be tackled by each PLC across all content areas
3. A4A (Achievement for All) Pathway-Focus is on student learning, building relationships and interventions for all of our students.  A focus is on our RTI (Response to Intervention Pyramid) that is utilized by all staff members. 
4. IGeneration Pathway-teachers from various PLC’s become experts on how to integrate technology into their classroom and teach 21st Century Skills.

Common Summative and Formative Assessments at LHS:

Teachers in a PLC have developed common summative assessments and continuously look at data to provide feedback regarding student learning and then to adjust instruction accordingly.  Teams use various data instructional tools that are provided including Mastery Manager Software to gather this data.  Student self-reflection is part of this process

PLC Goals at LHS:

PLC goals are developed by each PLC.  These goals are SMART goals and tied in to the school goals which are tied to the district goals.  2 goals required by each PLC are:

1. Reduce the number of failing grades by an appropriate number per PLC
2. All students will demonstrate mastery of essential standards in each course by the end of the school year as measured by PLC-created assessments.

Time to PLC at LHS:

The number one challenge for a PLC is time to meet.  For our staff, we needed to make sure we were providing this opportunity. Once a month, all schools in the district have a professional development day which allows teachers to get together and work in their PLCs.  In addition to the once a month meetings, most PLC’s at LHS have a common PLC hour that is provided for them during each week for the school year.  This was accomplished with purposeful planning and master schedule design.

Please elaborate strategies you have found to be effective in the following areas:

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Each PLC has a minimum number of common summative assessment and formative assessments that they must have.  The information from this is then used to alter instruction. Goals are visited during each PLC meeting and discussion revolves around these goals and the four basic PLC questions.  Action steps are then formulated based on data gathered from these meetings.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

LHS has an intense 3-tiered intense RTI model that it follows.  An RTI strategic plan has been developed in which a grade level intervention PLC is formed.  This PLC meets once a week to look at the list of our targeted at risk students.  The list is generated by the entire staff every three weeks and is reported to the grade level principals which then disseminate that information to the grade level intervention PLCs. 

Each hour of the day we have the ALC (Academic Learning Center) that is staffed by teachers.  Students may report to this for additional tutoring and/or support in their content areas.  In addition, academic detentions are given to students who fail to complete assignments and thus are required to come in for additional assistance from their teachers.  Finally, we utilize teachers to help with struggling students in ISS where a teacher (Push-In) is assigned to ISS each hour to go and help students in there or in other classes that may need the assistance.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

We continue to offer professional development that is targeted in building teacher leaders in our school.  The district offers continuous PLC workshops and our staff is heavily involved in this process.  Administrators also meet with PLC leaders to go over PLC goals, and offer any support or guidance.  Department chair meetings are held every two weeks with the building principal.  During these meetings professional dialogue occurs around PLCs.  We have attempted to build our knowledge base on PLC work for the past 7 years by attending various workshops out of the state, in-state, in the district and now have brought the PD into our own building. 

List awards and recognitions your school has achieved:

• LHS is a two-time Missouri Gold Star School and a National Ribbon School
• LHS was honored with the Red Quill Award for 2008-2009 by the American College Test’s (ACT) Midwest Regional office.
• The North Central Association of Secondary School and Colleges rates Lafayette “Triple A”. Lafayette has been lauded for the high levels of competency of the staff and the outstanding diversity and strength of the academic program by the NCASSA
• In 1996, LHS was selected as the Outstanding High School in Missouri and one of “America’s Best” High Schools by a panel of Educators representing Redbook Magazine.
• LHS earned elite status in 2001 by being the only high school in Missouri whose students placed in the Top 10 in all five areas of the state MAP test. Since then, LHS has been recognized by DESE as a Top Ten school for its sustained high scores on the MAP.
• Since 1993, Lafayette has offered teams at all possible levels for every state sanctioned activity. The GPA of students in Lafayette’s activity groups rate in the top of the state.
• LHS offers more MSHSAA-sanctioned programs than any other Missouri high school.
• Lafayette sports teams have captured 28 state championships since 1992.
• LHS was chosen by the St. Louis Post Dispatch as the #1 athletic program in the Metro St. Louis area in 2004-2005 and #2 in 2007-2008.
• Lafayette has been recognized as a National Top 10 Renaissance school for the past 13 years. The program awards students and staff achievement.