Lighthouse shines in scores

By Richard Shaw

The Lighthouse High School has only been in existence for a few years compared to other high schools in the state. But the story of success that the school has produced can be considered outstanding according the figures and releases the state has put out the last couple of years.
“Only one senior in the whole class did not graduate this year,” Lighthouse Principal Karleen Bianco said as she made a presentation to the Carbon School District Board of Education on June 13.
In May the school graduated 48 students.
Lighthouse High School provides educational services for students who have not been successful in a traditional high school setting. The school is very structured and has smaller class sizes. To attend the school, students have to be referred by local state agencies or their current school.
One requirement for attending the school is the student has to be credit deficient. Lighthouse High has a credit recovery program allowing students to get back on track, allowing the student to transfer back to the traditional high school setting, or to graduate from Lighthouse High with a high school diploma.
The school led the state in graduation rates this year and was also rated as one of the top three non-traditional high schools in the state in achievement.
Bianco told the board that the seven period schedules at the school are “bare bones’ and that students must work around any college classes they are taking in addition to going to the high school.
Lighthouse High School serves students in grades 10-12 and has a population of approximately 85 students (2014-15 figures).
Last fall the Lighthouse got top marks in the accreditation process as well.
“We worked on this accreditation for a year. It was worth it,” Bianco said.
Accreditation is a process by which high schools are judged on many characteristics. It is a quality assurance program to measure academic standards by an outside agency based on a set of standards. There are a number of accreditation agencies, some with better reputations than others. In this case the district worked through Advanced Ed, a company that purchased the Northwest Accreditation group that did accreditations for most school districts in the west for many years.
“The accreditation committee told us that we got the highest scores they had ever given to a non-traditional high school,” said Bianco.
Before that Lighthouse High School’s last accreditation was in July 2006.
The school’s IEQ results (Index of Education Quality) was very high. When grouped with all high schools it was extremely high. The overall score for the school was 317.95 while the national high school average was 282.79. The school excelled in teaching and learning impact, leadership capacity and resource utilization. According to AdvanceEd’s website the IEQ “provides a holistic measure of an institution’s overall performance based on a comprehensive set of indicators and evaluative criteria.”
The school also did well in the Effective Learning Environments Observation Tool. That tool is a learner-centric classroom observation tool that comprises 30 items organized in seven environments aligned with the AdvancED Standards and Indicators. It is based on a review of widely used observation instruments and the most current research on effective learning. Items focus on learner-centric tasks, attitudes, and dispositions that have been found to be conducive to optimal learning. The school’s scores were above the national average on all seven different evaluation areas. The areas of evaluation are equitable learning environment, high expectations environment, supporting learning environment, progress monitoring and feedback environment, well-managed learning environment and digital learning environment.
Bianco was particularly proud of the digital learning environment score which was rated at 2.88 for the school versus the national average of 1.88.
“It shows our students are interacting well with technology,” she said.
The accreditation is done through a number of activities including interviewing staff and students, observation of classrooms, looking at records, graduation rates, etc.
“In the interviews with students the interviewers could not find anything negative,” said Bianco. “They would ask the students questions and their replies were all positive.”
The latest ratings by the state shows that Lighthouse is superior to almost all other non-traditional programs in Utah and even better than many regular high schools.
One of the things that Bianco says the school does is provides an intimate setting for the students.
“They are part of a family in our school,” said Bianco.
Superintendent Steve Carlson says that with the district office being in the same building as the school he sees a lot of what goes on first hand.
“The students at the Lighthouse are expected to behave,” he told the board. “The whole concept is based on immediate reward as well as immediate discipline.”
Carlsen said that some people often question the concept of alternative education and the cost to the district, but he said in an interview on Monday that it is actually one of the most cost effective programs the school district has, partly because the state allows special money to finance the school.
Carlsen said that the state is trying to figure out the best way to evaluate all the alternative schools in the state, but is still coming up with way to do so consistently. There have been many alternative programs in the state that are failing in their mission, but he says that Lighthouse is just the opposite.
“When you talk about rewards it is like a family there,” he said. “Along with the fun stuff they do there is a lot of discipline that goes on as well.”