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The Education Innovator, September 28, 2005
Just south of the coffee shops, clothing boutiques, and music stores of Sierra Vista Mall that typically attract many San Joaquin Valley teenagers, sits a 75,000 square-foot technological and research facility that has become a popular destination for students in the Clovis and Fresno Unified School Districts. The Center for Advanced Research and Technology (CART), a charter school developed from a partnership between these two districts, houses students from 18 California high schools who want to combine their traditional academic program with opportunities for challenging project-based learning and access to the latest technology.
Through a unique mix of the traditional high school experience with the freedom of a charter school to develop a distinctive curriculum, students focus on building their academic knowledge along with their technical, design, entrepreneurial, and critical thinking skills. Each day, 1,350 eleventh- and twelfth-grade students in Clovis and Fresno attend classes at their home high schools, either in the morning or the afternoon. For the remainder of the day, they attend CART, where they are in class either from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. for the morning session, or from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. for the afternoon session.
Before the first students arrived on CART's doorstep in 2000, a team of teachers, predominantly from the Clovis and Fresno Unified school districts, took a year of release time from their regular classrooms to develop the CART curriculum. This initial curriculum, aligned with California State Standards, forms the backbone of the school's current academic plan. Students learn in one of four "career clusters:" Professional Sciences, Global Dynamics, Advanced Communications, and Engineering and Design.
As part of the "Professional Sciences" career cluster students often walk into peculiar crime scenes in Jill Rossetti's English and forensics class. Recently, the forensic research and biotechnology lab was cordoned off with yellow police tape, and a contorted plastic mannequin lay on a blood-red couch in the center of the room. Students gathered around the scene with notepads, trying to piece together how multi-colored papers strewn on the body and a bottle on a nearby table related to the crime. These students not only acted like Sherlock Holmes, they had read about him in short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They regularly wrote about the psychological underpinnings of Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare, and studied college-level criminology texts. In addition to forensics, students in this cluster can study in the Biomedicine Learning Lab where they investigate how a healthy body functions, or in the Environmental Sciences and Field Research Learning Lab, where they analyze the impact of humans on the natural world.
The "Global Dynamics" cluster houses learning labs for Economics and Finance, Marketing and Advertising, and Law and Policy. Here students examine how people use and manage resources to satisfy personal and societal wants and needs. The third cluster, "Advanced Communications," allows students to study in the Multimedia, Network Management, or Database Design laboratories. Students explore various means of communication using emergent technologies such as web broadcasting, wireless and satellite devices, and the Internet. As an added benefit to the program, students who successfully complete their coursework in the Network Management lab are eligible to take the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam. Passing this exam enables students to work as fully qualified technicians. Finally, the "Engineering and Design" cluster allows future microbiologists, genetic counselors, or aeronautical engineers to hone their skills in the Product Development or Bioengineering labs.
Within their individual learning labs, students earn advanced credit in English, science, math, and technology. All classes at the school are college preparatory, and meet requirements for the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems. Through partnerships with businesses and postsecondary institutions such as CSU Fresno, UC, and the State Center Community College District, students can combine CART lab classes with college-level courses and other certification programs. CART also offers an Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course, and some AP classes online.
Students are expected to achieve at high levels through their class work as well as community-based projects and internships. Each year, students complete five to six projects, and for each one, students are matched with a mentor from the business community who can serve as a resource. In labs such as Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences, students are assigned yearlong mentors who guide them through job shadowing experiences and various site-specific projects. One community-based project teamed three students with a professional cartoonist to meet Clovis's need for a map of the city to give to visitors. The business community invested money in the project, and the students learned about aesthetics, cartography, computer assisted design, and how to meet the needs of customers. The students made a formal presentation to the business community when the final product was unveiled.
Chary is one student who benefited from the CART program. When he came to CART, he was a member of a gang and had no plans for his future. He had not been successful in school and had a history of attendance problems. With the help of CART teachers and mentors, Chary discovered that he had an interest in and an aptitude for engineering. He applied himself and improved his grade point average from 0.8 to 3.8 in one year. His business mentors recognized his potential and offered to pay his tuition to CSU, Fresno. Chary will graduate from college this year with a degree in engineering, and often visits CART to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning.
The school also supports teachers in their quest to ensure achievement for every student. CART was awarded a Teaching American History (TAH) grant from the Office of Innovation and Improvement, to provide CART teachers with resources and an online history course. On the website, teachers can find links to primary source documents, state standards, and hands-on activities that help students meet those standards. The colorful and easy-to-navigate site also includes student work, and ideas for online projects and field trips. Recently, students who benefited from their teachers' participation in the TAH program presented history projects at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Any student in the eleventh or twelfth grade in a Clovis or Fresno Unified school is eligible to attend CART. The school recommends that students be on track for graduation when they apply, and have successfully completed two years of English, one year of science, and one year of algebra. Once students complete their applications, a lottery process determines who will attend. The school's population currently consists of 45.1 percent white, 27.2 percent Hispanic, 18.4 percent Asian, 6.4 percent African American, and 2.8 percent Filipino and Native American students. Nearly one-half of the students qualify for federal free or reduced price lunch.
Academic achievement data for 2003-2004 showed that 45 percent of the students improved their grade point averages from the beginning of the school year. The California School Boards Association recognized CART with its Golden Bell Award in 2004 for this reason, calling the school an "Exemplary Instructional Model for Improving Achievement." The previous year, the Microsoft Center of Excellence selected CART as one of eight schools in the nation that it honored. CART was a field study school in the "Charter High Schools & Real-World Practices" applied research project that was conducted by the Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison between 2001 and 2003.
The school received start up funds from the Charter Schools Program grant to California in 2000. CART charter school made adequate yearly progress for school year 2004-2005.
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