There it is: the reminder during Warrior Period about the ever-dreaded Panorama survey. You mentally prepare yourself for fifteen minutes of covertly trying to make a pretty shape with the multiple-choice bubbles while your teacher stalks around the room making sure everyone completes the survey. Surprisingly, the Panorama survey isn’t meant to torture students but to compare the school’s data nationally and find improvement areas.
Recently, results from the Panorama survey have indicated that students in Albemarle County high schools have been less engaged in learning than students in schools nationally that also take the survey. Based on the 2023 Panorama survey, students in ACPS high schools ranked 20 points lower than the national average for their value of school. Part of this can be attributed to developmental reasons, students value sports, friendships, and family more than they value school or it could be due to the tedious method of obtaining this information. Yet after an Action Research program at Monticello High School, students found that some of the reasons that their peers didn’t value school were because of the lengthy lectures, lack of hands-on learning, and excess of busy work.
Thus began the High School Redesign program, a way to address this problem by creating alternate learning environments and styles of teaching. The Scholars Studios, formerly known as Career Learning Communities, are just one solution to this issue. Meagan Maynard, a project manager for High School Redesign, described the Scholar Studios as, “a way for students to dive into topics they are passionate about and have the flexibility in designing their course schedule.” They will be available for 8th, 9th, and possibly 10th graders to select what studio out of the 12 offered they’d like to be in. The 12 different studios span all the elective options offered at the high schools. “It’s hard for students to get a sense of what the elective entails after only hearing the name. So we took all of the electives and organized them into the Scholars Studios. It is the same offerings that students have always had, yet in a more organized way for them to access,” Maynard affirmed. The Scholars Studios include Blueprint, Encore, Impact, Link, Nexus, Pulse, Savor, Solve, Terra, Thrive, Venture, and Vivid. They will be offered at Western, Monticello, Albemarle, Center 1, and Center 2. The schedule for the Scholars Studios will include a gateway course, a pathway sequence, a pathway plus sequence, and a final capstone course. A gateway course allows students to dive into the whole industry and discover related career pathways. Next is a pathway sequence that involves two sequential courses aligned with their interests in the industry. Pathway Plus allows students to explore topics related to their interests that are an extension of the actual course. In their senior year, students take the capstone course along with a cohort of peers and explore a very specific area of interest. The ultimate goal with these programs is again, “emphasizing focus, community, and experiences through hands-on learning and field activities,” according to Maynard.
These three pillars are also the foundation of the new, modern learning space, Center 2. Center 2 will allow students to engage in a variety of different kinds of educational programs and provide additional capacity to accommodate all of the ACPS comprehensive high schools. Different educational programs were deemed important when information about the 2015 cohort of graduates was found. The data showed that more than half of students entered adult life without a degree or certification, lessening their chances of working in high-paying jobs, which made it all the more important to focus on supporting students to get a head start on these goals and ensure a smooth transition into post-secondary life.
Helen Dunn, Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Officer added that “Center 2 also seeks to offer additional capacity that will help relieve some of the overcrowding at our comprehensive high schools.” “When questions of capacity were brought up in 2017 the school board was looking at whether to build a brand new high school or to provide a center that created a different type of learning and where every student in the county could attend. That was the direction that the school board went in,” Maynard explained. “Our hope is that at Center 2 they will have access to working at high levels around real-world problems, connecting with experts, access to industry credentials, and work-based learning experiences. Providing that for all students is a way that we can impact them more than just having a new building.”
