Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School, Le Conte Middle School, and STEM Academy of Hollywood
This project would answer the question: how can these three STEM-focused community schools work together to create an alignment so that students are moving through a coordinated pipeline? This project also provides aspects of transitioning between an elementary school, middle school, and high school as well as sharing across the spectrum of a charter school, a traditional school, and a pilot school.
Through this project, a charter elementary school, traditional district middle school, and LAUSD pilot high school have worked together to create a coordinated STEM pipeline for children in the Hollywood Promise Neighborhood. Through this “STEM Corridor Initiative,” Schools have engaged since 2016 in creating this STEM pipeline, developing an overarching plan to ensure that students at each stage of education acquire skills for success in STEM fields.
The fruit of this collaborative professional development opportunity has been a wealth of positive outcomes for students. Thanks to the STEM corridor initiative, students have attained better ACT, SAT, and AP test scores, achieved recognition for their achievements in science, and seen greater gender parity in STEM. The initiative has facilitated college field trips, work-based opportunities in engineering, and industry, alumni, community, and higher education support. It has also provided opportunities for youth to participate in cross-age collaboration, mentor younger students and participate in campus-wide STEM events.
Moving forward, collaborators plan to increase enrollment among their three schools and to encourage more students to study STEM in college. In addition, they hope to crystalize student understanding of learning expectations at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. Finally, they seek curriculum alignment with “Project Lead the Way” and “Next Generation Science Standard” assessments and rubric.