CHCS Charter School Persuasion Video
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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I want to talk to you about the difference we're making at chattahoochee Hills Charter School. And in order to do that, we need to talk about Fulton County. This is a map of median household income distribution by zip code in Fulton County. As you can see on the northern side of the county, you have enormous wealth with households making more than twice the average wage and on the southern side you have people making less than half the national income. So when you look at test scores for basic things like third grade reading, if you look at the northern part of the county, You can see that scores typically come in the 70s and 80s. The national average is normalized to 50. So these are really great scores. Then when you come to the south side of the county, things look a little different Things are in their 30s and 40s. These are schools that are well below the national average. So essentially, even though these schools are funded in the same way from the same pool of money and get the same allocation of dollars from the county and the state, the poverty level of the area and the community correlates directly to the educational outcomes. Think about it this way on the north side of the county, many parents can afford to spend money on private tutoring counseling to find a learning disability extracurricular activities or even donating to the school on the south side of the county, many parents do that too, but not nearly as many and there's just less money to be spent. So here's where it gets really interesting. While the regional average is 41.3 for third grade reading nearly nine points below the national average Chattahoochee Hills Charter School is batting 17 points above that average in the 3rd grade. Same thing is happening for math too. This is happening across all subjects and all the grades tested whether it's science in the third grade or social studies in the fifth grade everywhere you look, Ch. C. S. Is doing really well while we have the same population that other schools in our area have were a statistical anomaly in the region. Even more exciting is our growth In both the 3rd grade and the 5th grade. The county saw negative year over year growth whereas Ch. C. S. Saw double digit gains for our students. We saw a similar story in the fifth grade huge gains made by CH. C. S. And no growth made in the county. Ch. C. S. On average showed more growth per subject tested than any other school in our county. Not just the southern part of the county. We showed more year over year academic growth than any school in the county. So the question is why what's the secret? It's in the design. We leverage the outdoors and everything that we do while most schools look like this or this or even the traditional ones look like this, ours looks like this. Each classroom is in its own building with tons of natural light and big doors that open up to the outside. Kids have the rest of their lives to sit at a desk at our school. They learned by walking in nature. The natural world is our biggest classroom and greatest teacher. And as a result our kids come to school. They love being there and they're engaged with our curriculum because they're engaged with the natural world around them. But how do you measure that? It's easy to just take it all to be true. But what evidence do we have that? It is the natural world that's the case. Well one way we could measure it is with health. Our school is healthier than the average school in our area. Last year. The average absence rate in the state of Georgia was 8.8% of the school's population is absent for more than 15 days or more At our school. That number is zero anecdotally our schools. Health people are saying the same thing. The kids here don't get sick. It seems reasonable to say it's because they're not locked inside of a cinder block room. All together sharing the same H. V. A. C. System most of the air that they get as fresh and they're not all sharing the same stairwell handrail or anything like that. Either it's harder for contagions to spread. The absence rate means Children are more engaged to. They like coming to school. They're having fun and they're learning through our curriculum and our mission to inspire Children to the highest levels of academic achievement by using the natural world around them. Because guess what? That works. Kids don't want to learn about trees with ipads. They want to learn about trees through climbing them. We're now doubling down on our efforts to continue to build our school. Next year. We're going to add 1/7 grade. The year after that, we'll add an eighth. We're in the midst of building our outdoor classroom environment with a natural wetland preserve, a wooded outdoor hallway between our classrooms and an operational organic farm where kids can learn and find their lunch. We're really excited. If you'd like to find out more about the school, you can always check out our website at chat hills charter dot org or send us an email at info at chat hills charter dot org. Thanks a lot for your time. I really appreciate it.