QualityCore^® Helps Small, Rural High School Overhaul Academic Culture

Jocelyn Lyons has some advice for small schools that want to better prepare their students for college and careers: Try QualityCore.

“If you want to infuse more rigor into your teaching and learning to give your students a higher quality academic experience, QualityCore will help you get there,” said Lyons, principal at Spencer County High School (SCHS) in Taylorsville, Kentucky.

A math teacher at Spencer County High School helps students master a new algebra concept.

As a small high school enrolling about 800 students, SCHS faces many challenges. Its location in a rural community restricts educational opportunities for students. Limited resources make it difficult to provide rigorous instruction to students and high-quality professional development to teachers.

With just 35 percent of its graduates going to college, SCHS needed to overhaul its academic culture, said Lyons. “That figure indicated to us that everyone—administrators, teachers, and students—had very low expectations. For too long, we’d believed that college and career readiness was optional. The truth is that all students deserve to be prepared for college and workplace training.”

Enter QualityCore, which the school began implementing in fall 2010. It is now using seven of the 12 available courses: Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and English 9, 10, 11, and 12, and will administer the QualityCore end-of-course assessments in May.

Raising academic expectations started with QualityCore’s professional development component. Trainers from ACT met with SCHS teachers in a three-day workshop held in late spring 2010. “The level of training far surpassed anything that our teachers had ever experienced,” said Lyons. “It allowed us to have the kind of high-level conversations that lead to change.”

A Spencer County High School student uses a library computer to conduct research for a class.

Within days of the QualityCore training, teachers began modifying instruction and the grading system and redefining what constitutes quality, rigorous work. Teachers like Kim Cook and Janet Helms found the training especially powerful.

“It changed my philosophy about my purpose as a teacher,” said Cook, who teaches twelfth-grade English. “I always believed I was supposed to help make my students better readers and writers. My bigger goal now is to teach my students how to think at higher levels, so the knowledge they learn in my class can carry over to their other classes.”

She has found the QualityCore Model Instructional Units particularly helpful. They illustrate how standards for each course are connected to instruction and can be delivered in the classroom. Teachers can use them as is, to assess the quality of existing units, or to develop new units. “Without the QualityCore resources, there is no way that I could have gotten to the level of rigor I now have in my class,” she said.

For Helms, who teaches geometry and precalculus to ninth through twelfth graders, QualityCore has opened up a whole new world. Students who once feared math are now grasping information more quickly and easily. “They are developing a deeper understanding of the concepts involved in solving mathematical problems, rather than just memorizing a set of steps to follow. They are seeing how the ACT standards we cover in class prepare them to take the ACT^® test and, ultimately, to succeed in college and careers.”

Helms and her students like the “toolbox of activities” that is included in QualityCore. “I can approach mathematical concepts in different ways that make them more engaging for students. My students are constantly asking me what they are going to learn today.”

Overall, reaction to QualityCore among teachers and students has been positive. “There are some growing pains that come along with higher expectations, but our students are seeing the benefits of working harder and studying harder,” said Lyons. “They are much more academically focused.”