Summer 2012 Issue - De La Salle Institute

AdvancedED accreditation:
"Highly Functional"
On February 6, a team from the AdvancED accreditation
service visited De La Salle Institute. During the daylong
process, the Quality Assurance Review (QAR) team was
given a school overview, toured the classrooms at both the
Lourdes Hall Campus for Young Women and the Institute
Campus for Young Men and interviewed members of the De
La Salle faculty and leadership team, as well as community
stakeholders and students.
Accreditation is a voluntary method of quality assurance
developed more than 100 years ago by American
universities and secondary schools, and designed primarily
to distinguish schools adhering to a set of educational
standards. The accreditation process is also known in
terms of its ability to effectively drive student performance
and continuous improvement in education.
While accreditation is a set of rigorous protocols and
research-based processes for evaluating an institution’s
organizational effectiveness, it is far more than that.
Today, accreditation examines the whole institution—
the programs, the cultural context, the community of
stakeholders—to determine how well the parts work
together to meet the needs of students.
During its assessment, the QAR team is asked to determine
the level of accreditations, find commendations for the
school, and provide required actions for improvements,
which schools have two years to fulfill.
Upon concluding its assessment of De La Salle, the
QAR team determined that the historic secondary school
had achieved the top rating – Highly Functional – in the
standards of Vision and Purpose, Documenting and Using
Results and Commitment to Continuous Improvement.
De La Salle received the second-highest rating of
Operational in the remaining four standards of Governance
and Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Resources and
Support Systems and Stakeholder Communication and
Relationships.
The accreditation is valid for a period of five years. De La
Salle has been accredited since 1923.
“On behalf of everyone at De La Salle, I would like to thank
those involved with AdvancED for visiting our school and
providing their valuable input and insight,” De La Salle
president Fr. Paul Novak, OSM said. “Doing as well as we
did is a credit to the faculty, staff, students, administration
and stakeholders of De La Salle.
“We feel very confident in our providing a high-quality
college preparatory education to the young women and
young men who are enrolled at our school. The findings
of the QAR team validate our belief in the excellence and
strength of De La Salle and also indicate to us what we must
do to make our school even stronger in the years ahead.”
$25,000 GRANT PROVIDES
New DyKnow Software
In February 2012, De La Salle was notified that it will receive a
federal grant to obtain DyKnow software for its faculty members on
both the Institute and Lourdes Hall Campuses.
The DyKnow Monitor Project is a software tool and professional
development training program that aims to protect instructional
time in order to support student learning by empowering teachers
to prevent student non-curricular computer use. When the software
is installed on teachers’ Tablet PCs and professional development
training is provided on how to use the software to enhance
instructional strategies and classroom management, teachers will
have the capabilities that guarantee that the instructional climate of the
classroom has improved from a classroom management standpoint.
This capability will increase student and teacher interaction during
coursework and also will enhance teaching and thus have a positive
impact on student achievement.
Associate Principal, Dr. Jorge Peña, used the software in his
Advanced Placement American Politics class during the spring of
2012. Thanks to a variety of means, he was able to safeguard his
students from inappropriate applications.
“I was able to send a message with a discussion question to the
students to determine whether or not they were on the network,” Peña
said. “We also had quick polls with instant results, we used the chat
feature to have the students give replies to discussion questions and
sent questions in Word documents to the students. They completed
them and send them back to you.
“The implementation of the
DyKnow Monitor Project will
promote the active involvement
of students in the learning
process,” Peña said. “The
professional development
training will ensure that all
student technology use supports
the curricular and instructional
program of the school.”
8 Academics