Philosophy of PLC work at LHS:

LHS has been on the PLC journey for more than 13 years with the idea of continuous improvement pushing us along. We have a standard of excellence for each staff member and student. In our school you will see a banner that states “Through these halls walk the finest students in the nation.” That banner is a constant reminder to us of why we do what we do—for our students.

We have a PLC handbook that guides all of our work for the year. In it you will find a week by week plan for the entire year mapped out. Including when SMART goals are due, Essential Learning Targets, Norms, failing grade reports, opportunities for professional development and much more. This handbook guides all of our focused work that is centered on the basic four questions of PLC:

• What do we expect our students to know?
• How will we know when they have learned it?
• How will we respond when they don’t learn?
• How will we respond when they already know it?

Professional Development for PLC’s at LHS:

A focus on learning in the school is not only for students but an expectation for staff members as well. We provide our staff with job embedded professional development as much as possible. We have developed many pathways (plan is to add more each year) that staff members may take part in:

1. Equity at LHS-This year at Lafayette, we are "Growing Together."  Teachers are provided the opportunity to learn in depth about the history of St. Louis and the Voluntary Interschool Choice Corporation.  We are moving through a personal and professional journey by meeting with and learning from community members about diversity in our community.  All staff members are taking a day trip to St. Louis city to further understand the areas in which our transfer students reside, and will continue professional learning second semester on how to have the greatest impact within our community.
2. Mental Health - We are working with community mental health programs to provide teachers with further learning about mental health and how to idenify if/when a student needs additional help.  We have also developed a speaker series for our community and are providing parents with information on the resources available for their children.

Common Summative and Formative Assessments at LHS:

Teachers in a PLC have developed common summative assessments and continuously look at data to provide feedback regarding student learning and then to adjust instruction accordingly. Teams use various data instructional tools that are provided including Mastery Manager Software to gather this data. Student self-reflection/assessment is part of this process

PLC Goals at LHS:

PLC goals are developed by each PLC. These goals are SMART goals and tied in to the school goals which are tied to the district vision score card. Two goals required by each PLC are:

1. Reduce the number of failing grades from 1.29% to 1.2% school-wide.
2. While increasing or maintaining enrollment in AP courses: (1) LHS will maintain or increase the percent of students enrolling in AP classes by 1%, from 26.5% to 27.5%, (2) LHS will maintain or increase the percent of AP exams taken by 1%, (3) LHS will maintain or increase the percent of students scoring a 3 or higher on the AP exam by 1% from 93.1% to 94.1%.
3. LHS will increase the overall ACT composite score from 24.2 to 24.7 by increasing the percentage of students meeting all four college readiness benchmarks established by ACT from 49% to 50% for the upcoming school year.
4. LHS will increase the percentage of students scoring proficient on all EOC exams.
5. All students will demonstrate mastery of essential standards in each course by the end of the school year as measured by PLC-created assessments.

Time to PLC at LHS:

The number one challenge for a PLC is time to meet. For our staff, we needed to make sure we were providing this opportunity. Our district has been supportive of this and starting in the 2014-2015 school year, the high schools were provided a late start Monday every other week. Teachers now have 90 minutes to collaborate in their PLC’s and continue to discuss best practices and student achievement.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Each PLC has a minimum number of common summative assessment and formative assessments that they must have. The information from this is then used to alter instruction. Goals are visited during each PLC meeting and discussion revolves around these goals and the four basic PLC questions. Action steps are then formulated based on data gathered from these meetings.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

LHS has an intense 3-tiered intense RTI model that it follows.; An RTI strategic plan has been developed in which a grade level intervention PLC is formed. This PLC meets once a week to look at the list of our targeted at risk students. The list is generated by the entire staff every three weeks and is reported to the grade level principals which then disseminate that information to the grade level intervention PLCs.

Each hour of the day we have an Academic Learning Center, Testing Center, and Writing Center that is staffed by teachers. Students may report to any of these locations for additional tutoring and/or support in their content areas. In addition, we provide students with a Homework Help Center after school that is staffed by teachers and honors students.  Finally, we utilize teachers to help with struggling students in ISS where a teacher (Push-In) is assigned to ISS each hour to go and help students in there or in other classes that may need the assistance.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

We continue to offer professional development that is targeted in building teacher leaders in our school. The district offers continuous PLC workshops and our staff is heavily involved in this process. Administrators also meet with PLC leaders to go over PLC goals, and offer any support or guidance. Department chair meetings are held every two weeks with the building principal. During these meetings professional dialogue occurs around PLCs. We have attempted to build our knowledge base on PLC work for the past 10 years by attending various workshops out of the state, in-state, in the district and now have brought the PD into our own building.

Additional Achievement Data

As you can see our achievement is high at various levels compared to state and national averages, however we feel that our greatest impact has been in the reduction of failing grades in a highly successful school. Our RTI model is utilized by each staff member and purposeful interventions are placed early on to ensure the success of each student at LHS.

We have also had great success in our AP scores and college readiness benchmarks which shows that our focus for our school is on learning. Our students are fully prepared to be successful in a post-secondary setting.

School goal:

LHS will reduce failing grades from 1.29% to 1.2% school-wide.

School Data:

	08-09	09-10	10-11	11-12   12-13   13-14
1st sem. Failing Grades	376	329	244	208        216      162
2nd sem. Failing Grades	399	330	200	221        213      165

School goal:

While maintaining or increasing the enrollment in AP courses, we will increase the number of tests taken by 1%, and increase the percent of students scoring a 3 or higher on the AP exam by 1% from 93.1% to 94.1%.

School Data:

	Enrollment	# tests taken	% of students taking exam vs. enrollment in class	Average score	% of Total AP students with scores 3+
2007	486	971			90.1
2008	486	974			86.6
2009	466	948			91.0
2010	489	963	91.4	3.84	91.8
2011	456	871	91.0	3.94	93.2
2012 2013 2014	525 514 520	1079 1089 1103	90.3 95.8 89.1	3.97 3.6 4.02	92.8 94.4 93.1

School goal:

LHS will increase the percentage of students scoring proficient on all EOC exams.

School data:

Content Area Grade Year Accountable Reportable LND Below Basic Basic Proficient Advanced  LA 11 2015 * * 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0 0.0   LA E2 2015 487 485 0.4 2.5 10.1 46.0 41.4    Mathematics 11 2015 * * 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0    Mathematics A1 2015 287 286 0.3 5.6 11.9 51.7 30.8    Mathematics A2 2015 249 249 0.0 1.6 5.6 35.3 57.4    Science 11 2015 * * 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0    Science B1 2015 491 490 0.2 0.6 8.6 38.8 52.0    Social Studies GV 2015 469 467 0.4 0.6 12.0 43.9 43.5

School goal:

LHS will increase its overall ACT composite score of a 24.8 to 25.3 by increasing the percentage of students meeting college readiness established by ACT from a 49% to 50% for the upcoming school year

School data:

LAFAYETTE SR. HIGH	2012	2013	2014	2015
Percent of Graduates Taking the ACT	98.75	99.02	99.02	100.00
Composite ACT Score	24.60	24.40	24.00	24.80

• LHS is a two-time Missouri Gold Star School and a National Ribbon School
• LHS was honored with the Red Quill Award by the American College Test’s (ACT) Midwest Regional office.
• The North Central Association of Secondary School and Colleges rates Lafayette “Triple A”. Lafayette has been lauded for the high levels of competency of the staff and the outstanding diversity and strength of the academic program by the NCASSA
• In 1996, LHS was selected as the Outstanding High School in Missouri and one of “America’s Best” High Schools by a panel of Educators representing Redbook Magazine.
• LHS earned elite status in 2001 by being the only high school in Missouri whose students placed in the Top 10 in all five areas of the state MAP test. Since then, LHS has been recognized by DESE as a Top Ten school for its sustained high scores on the MAP.
• Since 1993, Lafayette has offered teams at all possible levels for every state sanctioned activity. The GPA of students in Lafayette’s activity groups rate in the top of the state.
• LHS offers more MSHSAA-sanctioned programs than any other Missouri high school.
• Lafayette sports teams have captured 32 state championships since 1992.
• LHS was chosen by the St. Louis Post Dispatch as the #1 athletic program in the Metro St. Louis area in 2004-05 and #2 in 2007-2008.
• Lafayette has been recognized as a National Top 10 Renaissance school since 1992. The program awards students and staff achievement.
• Missouri Assessment Program Top Five
• Newsweek Top 1,500 High Schools - 2015
• Newsweek Top 500 High Schools - 2015
• National PLC Model School since 2013
• Algebra I and BAM PLCs were awarded the West County Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Teaching Award - 2015
• Lafayette received the first annual Missouri Commissioners Cup for Top Athletic Program in 2015.
• Lafayette has received Promising Practice Character Education Awards since 2010.
• Scholarship Money for the graduating class of 2015 was over $4,000,000