The recipient of this award has: 1) completed the HSTW Recommended Curriculum in at least two of the three subject areas listed below 2) completed a concentration in a career/technical field, mathematics/science or the humanities and 3) met all three of the performance goals on the High Schools That Work Assessment.
The HSTW Recommended Curriculum:
English: Four credits in college-preparatory level courses.
Mathematics: Four credits in college-preparatory level courses including Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II and a higher level mathematics course such as trigonometry, statistics, pre-calculus, calculus, or Advanced Placement Mathematics.
Science: Three or more credits in science, including at least two credits in college-preparatory biology, chemistry, anatomy/physiology or physics/applied physics.
Concentration Definitions:
Career/ Technical: Four or more credits in a career/technical field or major.
Mathematics/Science: Four college-preparatory courses each in mathematics and science. At least one course in either mathematics or science must be at the
Advanced Placement level.
Humanities: Four college-preparatory courses each in English/language arts and social studies and four courses in an area of the humanities, such as foreign language, fine arts or additional English and social studies courses. At least one course in either English or social studies must be at the Advanced Placement level.
Performance Goals:
The performance Goals on the High Schools That Work assessment are a 279 in reading, a 297 in mathematics and a 299 in science on a scale of 0-500.
Reading: Students who meet the goal demonstrate understanding of both details and overall meaning when reading a variety of text types. They understand explicitly stated ideas, retrieve relevant information and connect ideas from across a text to make inferences. Students draw on ideas presented in different parts of a text to make inferences about main ideas and supporting details. They use examples and specific information in the text to support relatively straightforward interpretations and evaluations of the text. They have some knowledge of common structures of both informational and practical texts and use this knowledge to describe and evaluate how information is presented. When reading practical texts, they locate and use multiple, related pieces of information presented in textual and tabular forms.
Mathematics: Recipients are able to perform basic arithmetic operations. They utilize elementary reasoning techniques to solve straightforward problems. These students are able to process a limited amount of mathematical information in a problem at one time.
Students can use their knowledge of procedures and elementary concepts to solve one- or two-step word problems. They can perform simple measurement tasks, and can work with metric units of measure. They have an understanding of properties of triangles and quadrilaterals, and can identify lines of symmetry on geometric figures. These students are able to visualize geometric figures in two and three dimensions and may be able to reason spatially using properties of those figures. Students can read and interpret graphs, compute with data from tables and graphs, and answer simple conditional probability questions. They have acquired a procedural understanding of algebra; they are able to complete tasks such as combining like algebraic terms, solving simple linear equations and inequalities, and locating points on a coordinate grid. Students can construct simple algebraic representations and extend numerical patterns.
Science: Recipients have some elementary factual and conceptual knowledge of various areas in science. Skills include reading and interpreting a graph or diagram as well as estimating distance on a map using a scale. Students recognize the elements of the scientific method, such as appropriate experimental conditions, and understand that scientific theory is founded on experimental observations and predictions that are testable.
Students are familiar with fundamental terms and concepts. For example, in life science, they know fundamental biological terms’ can identify biological structures in a diagram, can recognize basic functions of structures in living systems and can recognize evidence of change over time. In physical science, students know basic terminology related to matter and recognize that symbols and formulas represent chemical substances. They can identify principles of physical science such as the laws of motion, and recognize implications of simple concepts such as density and reflection. In earth science, students recognize geological formations and can provide a partial description of processes taking place within Earth’s systems, such as the water cycle.