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Tech Academy Rated Excellent Again
The Pueblo Technical Academy has scored Excellent on
the Colorado School Accountability Report for the
2007-2008 school year. The school has rated excellent
for the past three years, moving up from the high rating
earned every year since its inception. Interested
parties can visit the Colorado Department of Education
Pueblo Technical Academy school information page to
view the report for this and previous years. As reported
in the
December 8 Pueblo Chieftain article, the ratings are
based on scores earned by students on the CSAP and ACT
tests among other criteria. |
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Tech Academy makes the U.S. News & World Report’s
Ranking of Top High Schools
The Pueblo Technical Academy was recently named as
one of the nation's top high schools in the U.S. News &
World Report’s ranking of U.S. high schools. The
Academy made the Bronze list, which, according to the
December 8 article in the Pueblo Chieftain is
comprised of "1,321 schools, or 6 percent of the total
high schools nationwide that were analyzed for the
magazine by School Matters, a Standard & Poor’s division
that studies the performance of American schools."
The methodology used in the report is described in the
following excerpt from the online article by U. S. News
"America's Best High Schools Methodology" dated
December 4, 2008:
We analyzed
21,069 public high schools in 48
states using data from the
2006-2007 school year. This is
the total number of public high
schools in each state that had
grade 12 enrollment and
sufficient data to analyze
primarily for the 2006-2007
school year. A three-step
process determined the best high
schools. The first two steps
ensured that the schools serve
all their students well, using
state proficiency standards as
the measuring benchmarks. For
those schools that made it past
the first two steps, a third
step assessed the degree to
which schools prepare students
for college-level work.
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Integrated Project 2008-2009
This year's second large-scale project,
Alternative
Energies, began in early November. In this project,
students investigate six sources of alternative energy:
biomass/biofuel, hydrogen, hydropower, solar, geothermal
and wind.
During the project student teams complete extensive
research on real-world application of alternative
energies, perform laboratory investigations, and
design/build working models of an alternative energy
technology among other activities. The working model is
part of a final presentation with the purpose of
convincing the Pueblo School District 70 school board to
consider the team's suggestion for alternative energy
technology implementation at one or more District 70
facility. Although the scenario is fictitious, it is not
uncommon for real school board members to serve as
judges for the final presentation competition. The final presentations are to take place December
12.
*For information on other integrated projects, visit
the archives page. |
