Wellington The Magazine – June 2016                                                       Renaissance Charter School At Wellington Offers A Unique And Personalized Approach To Education

By Deborah Welky

Although it could be mistaken for a private school at first glance, the Renaissance Charter School at Wellington is actually a public school, one of six in Palm Beach County (and 77 nationwide) run by Charter Schools USA. There is no tuition, although students do buy and wear uniforms. But that’s not all that distinguishes a charter school from a private school.

“A district public charter school has to apply to open, getting approval from, in some cases, the district and, in some cases, the state,” Colleen Reynolds of Charter Schools USA explained. “They must come to the table with a plan of education, and they must perform to a certain level or they get shut down. A charter school has to succeed.”

Charter schools must also define what is acceptable to parents in each region they serve, then meet those expectations.

“The advantage that Charter Schools USA has is that we have been managing charter schools for 20 years and have been able to establish an educational model that’s called ‘a guaranteed and viable curriculum,’” Reynolds said. “If the model is followed with fidelity, the curriculum is guaranteed — the students will grow and succeed. Each child is taught and learns until they reach mastery. We run benchmark testing and base the curriculum on this data. If a student is not reaching 80 percent mastery, the teacher goes back and teaches the subject again, perhaps in a different, more innovative way.”

This is because Charter Schools USA believes that a test score is not a reflection of the student as much as it is a reflection of the teacher.

“It really makes sense when you think about it. What sense does it make for a student to fail a test and keep on going?” Reynolds asked. “Another thing that sets our charter schools apart is the personal learning plan. It’s a collaboration of teacher, parent and student. We figure out where the student is and set benchmarks. If a student struggles in reading but aces math, we’ll provide enrichment programs for math to further challenge that student, but we’ll set more difficult goals in reading. We use the data to see what each student needs to do to achieve academic success.”

In addition to this data-driven instruction, Charter Schools USA uses a variety of instructional resources and software programs to meet the needs of its students.

“Some of the programs and resources might be the same as the district, but we use our own disciplined approach for innovations to review and identify the resources that our schools use,” Reynolds said. “There are some resources that would be consistent within all of our schools, but additional resources are identified to meet the needs of the specific students within each building.”

Helping students achieve is not always easy, particularly in areas where students have many challenges in addition to schoolwork.

“When we open schools, we open them in a variety of different places,” Reynolds said. “And what we have found is that in less-affluent or disadvantaged areas, the first-year grades are not usually very good. But that data is what helps us find our benchmark. We find out where to alter, change and tweak so that those students who came in below grade level can be brought up to grade level and then beyond. It takes one to three years to do that, generally.”

This brings students to a more equal footing across the socio-economic spectrum.

“What we do is lessen the achievement gap so that students who don’t have parents to help them with homework or who may be worried about whether or not there will be dinner on the table get the same opportunities as those students who do not have those same struggles,” Reynolds said.

Charter Schools USA prides itself on being the first corporate system to receive automatic, system-wide accreditation by AdvanceED.

“Because we have such high standards for all our schools, every school that we open will be accredited when it opens instead of needing individual review to be accredited,” Reynolds explained.

With before-care and after-care available, the Renaissance Charter School at Wellington serves grades K through 8.

The Renaissance Charter School at Wellington is located at 3200 S. State Road 7 in Wellington. Call (561) 228-5242 or visit www.palmbeachcharterschools.org for more information.