• Category 3

    Selected in 2020

  • Grades: 6 - 12
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 560
    Student Enrollment: 614
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 4.4%
    White/Caucasian: 51.9%
    Hispanic: 37%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.3%
    Asian: 3.1%
    Native American: 3.3%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:18
    % Reduced Lunch: 20.6%
    % ELL Learners: 1.8%
    Founded: 2014
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Leticia Fraga
  • CONTACT:
    5100 Masthead NE
    Albuquerque, NM 87109
    505-305-5300
    info@exploreacademy.org
Explore Academy
Albuquerque, NM
Explore Academy has a school culture that is supportive, interconnected, consistent, and positive.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Explore Academy has an active Parent Teacher Organization, a group where many of our parents and guardians come together to work toward school and student success. The PTO holds events throughout the year for teachers, other parents, students, and the school community as a whole. Additionally, there are parents on the governing council, ensuring a family voice in school governance. The school also holds events during student free periods where families can attend workshops or contribute as guest speakers, strengthening the family-school connection through a wide variety of topics and initiatives. The school also includes many parents and guardians on various committees and councils such as Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC), Equity Council, and the annual needs assessment committee.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Explore Academy has a student population that spans a large geographical area from Santa Fe to Socorro, East Mountains to Grants. The school is located in a business-centered area where there are fewer opportunities for community in the traditional sense. To help strengthen ties to the entire community, there are several activities ranging from transportation to school projects. Transportation services are offered for all students, ensuring that the school can serve students from all areas. Teachers design their class themes around many community-based topics such as history and current events/concerns, bringing the community into the school. As students move into upper level “majors”, classes resembling college majors, students investigate interests across various content areas then dive deeply into a project in their declared major. The Major Capstone connects students to the community through internships, interviews, industry investigations, expert panels, and community service.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Explore Academy believes that authentic data analysis is a critical component to school change and improvement. A school must hold itself and its members accountable for performance levels while also promoting a growth mindset, encouraging students, teachers, and staff to “fail forward,’ always working toward improvement. Performance data should not be punitive; the goal is to create an atmosphere in which it is totally acceptable to struggle while working toward improvement and, eventually, mastery. Collecting and analyzing data frequently throughout the year is crucial, and using this data in a needs assessment, at least annually, enables a school to view its strengths and weaknesses openly, without making excuses or hiding metrics that are less desirable. All school members, from each individual student through the president of the school board, should embrace authentic data with transparency and accountability , maintaining a focus on growth and improvement.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
The top two goals for 2021-2022 are to address achievement gaps caused by the pandemic education limitations and to support students and staff as they make personal and academic adjustments, such as maneuvering the transition from distance to in person learning. Identifying areas of concern for each student will be critical in order to support growth and remediate areas with new or continuing deficits. This goal goes hand in hand with the second goal. Students and staff are not defined by academic achievement; the overall wellbeing of each student and staff member must be taken into account. Next school year will be a delicate time during which the school must strike a balance between a strong academic achievement framework and a robust health and wellness initiative. As a school and a member of the community, Explore Academy will devote itself to remaining a safe place built on academic and personal support systems.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
Data collection plays a central role in the success of Explore Academy. Using a standards-based system, classes focus on specific, clear goals and accurately assess student progress toward these goals. When classes are aligned to a manageable set of standards, teachers can effectively teach and assess content and skills. Formative grading throughout a class supports student progress. Weekly progress reports reflecting current student behavior and performance ensure that open communication is maintained. The formative data each month leads to the summative data collected from the exit exams, each of which is aligned to the class standards and measures student proficiency after the targeted instructional period. Students whose data shows proficiency move to the next level of that content while students who have not yet achieved proficiency are scheduled for remediation. All schools can achieve greater student growth and success by implementing more robust data collection systems.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
The Explore Learning model has had an immensely positive effect on student achievement, particularly on closing learning gaps and increasing student engagement and progress. The choice-based system allows for greater student buy-in, which then makes the rigorous standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment model accessible to all students, regardless of their initial performance levels. Through a mastery-based system in which students must show proficiency in all standards before moving on, Explore Academy students close learning gaps before progressing. Over time, this system allows for unprecedented growth in all subject areas, especially language arts and math.
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Explore Academy has focused its ESEA funding toward individual student support services such as data collection and analysis, comprehensive tutoring services, and student materials and supplies. The funding from federal Title programs, including Title I and II, are prioritized to provide our school community with academic tutoring, high quality professional development, universally acceptable resources and tools, and individualized attention for students and staff members to support their unique needs. Specifically, some of the initiatives and activities funded through ESEA federal allocations include student technology, tutoring and support for academic areas, technology, language development, and wellness, data-driven interventions through various metrics, instructional coaching and training resources, and adaptation of resources and school material for easy access across all platforms and devices.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Ensuring that Explore Academy teachers are highly trained and that the educational model is used consistently has been critical to the model’s success. The instructional training system in place uses in-depth professional development sessions, comprehensive training modules in person and online, clear and detailed handbooks, and readily accessible resources for all aspects of the Explore Learning model. Teachers receive relevant PD targeted on concepts such as seminar-style instruction, inquiry-based learning, standards-based classroom practices, and choice-based learning. The instructional training staff maintains an online repository for teaching and school resources. Quality professional development, combined with high levels of accountability and transparency, leads to highly trained teachers who are focused on high quality teaching and high levels of student learning.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Explore Academy believes that data analysis is crucial to student success. Multiple metrics are used to drive decision making. The year is broken into eight terms, each with five classes focused on a set of standards. Each class culminates with a standards-based exam. This exit exam data is used to drive instructional initiatives.
Students also participate in state interim assessments, providing performance data three times a year. These testing windows not only provide valuable student data, but also help students become familiar with the style of state tests to which the interim assessments are aligned. Explore Academy has developed comprehensive progress monitoring systems to make effective interventions. These systems include weekly progress reporting for all students, academic referrals, progress toward goal monitoring for IEP goals, study group for students who are at-risk, and daily progress monitoring in all classes.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Explore Academy has developed a school culture that is supportive, interconnected, consistent, and positive. This begins in our classrooms with our teachers. The teachers connect with students through class “flavors'' based on common interests. Students choose new classes each term, grouped not randomly, but purposefully by academic level and interest, allowing them to meet many peers and teachers, building a strong community.
Positive school culture continues as students work to earn their free period, called flex, through academic achievement and good behavior. The school has zero tolerance for bullying and other harmful behavior, ensuring that all students feel safe at all times. The positive culture is also developed through the growth mindset used in all classes, through which students are encouraged to work hard and not punished for struggling as they grow.
Stats
  • Category 3

    Selected in 2020

  • Grades: 6 - 12
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 560
    Student Enrollment: 614
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 4.4%
    White/Caucasian: 51.9%
    Hispanic: 37%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.3%
    Asian: 3.1%
    Native American: 3.3%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:18
    % Reduced Lunch: 20.6%
    % ELL Learners: 1.8%
    Founded: 2014
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Leticia Fraga
  • CONTACT:
    5100 Masthead NE
    Albuquerque, NM 87109
    505-305-5300
    info@exploreacademy.org