Charter School of Wilmington


The Charter School of Wilmington is a high school in Wilmington, Delaware. It is one of the first public/private charter schools in the United States and opened in 1996. It shares the former Wilmington High School building with Cab Calloway School of the Arts and occupies the third floor and a wing of the second floor of the building. There were 970 students enrolled in the fall for the 2012-2013 school year.

History

Charter schools in Delaware were authorized by Delaware Code, Title 14, Chapter five, enacted in 1995. The school is operated by a consortium of six companies: AstraZeneca, Verizon, Delmarva Power, DuPont, Hercules Incorporated, and Christiana Care Health System.
The Charter School of Wilmington was chartered by the Red Clay Consolidated School District, and was directly descended from the 'Academy of Mathematics and Science', an earlier math and science magnet school run by the district. The school is a college preparatory program that emphasizes mathematics and science education. The Cab Calloway School of the Arts also occupies the same building.
The Charter School of Wilmington is a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology.
The Charter School of Wilmington placed 10th in Newsweek's Best High Schools in 2014. It was ranked 127th in 2006, 75th in 2007, and 100th in 2008. Furthermore, Charter placed 41st in 2007 and 42nd in 2008 as well as 2009 in U.S. News' America's Best High Schools, earning the Gold Medal.
CSW was selected as a 2013 National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education and a Recognition School by the Delaware Department of Education for exceptional performance in 2013. CSW is also currently ranked #10 on Newsweek's America's Top High School's list and #30 on the Daily Beast's Top High Schools list. In June 2014, CSW's Jefferson Council was honored in Washington, D.C. by the Jefferson Awards as the 2014 National Silver Students in Action recipient for their philanthropic contribution to the community.

Approach to Education

Modified Block Scheduling

Charter uses a modified block system. With three rotating classes and one fixed class of about 80 minutes each along with an "Activity Period" slot, the schedule allowed elongated class periods and eliminated the need for many lengthy, after-school extracurricular club meetings. Students have eight class periods total, and four classes per day thereby meeting with a class every other day.

Shared classes with Cab Calloway

Students may elect to take Cab classes focused on visual arts, drama, and the musical arts, UD classes, or any other Charter classes during these periods. Cab Calloway classes are still limited in the fact that time slots must match the two schools' schedules and thus certain courses can only be taken during certain class periods.

Research projects

During the junior year, all students complete a Science Fair project as a necessary requirement to graduate. The Science Fair requirement used to take place during the sophomore year, but restructuring of the research curriculum to better improve research skills beforehand required pushing back the Science Fair requirement. Sophomores are required to take Introduction to Scientific Research to prepare them for Science Fair.

Academics

General graduation requirements

Delaware state standards mandate semester-long health education and a full year of physical education, split into semester-long freshman and junior gym classes. The Introductory to Computer Science class satisfies the Delaware state standard for computer literacy, and three years of history and four years of math, science and English meet the state requirements for the respective subjects. A total of 24.5 credits are needed to graduate.

Advanced Placement

The school offers many advanced placement classes which allow students to earn college credit while still attending high school. Advanced placement courses include calculus, statistics, biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science, computer science, English literature, English language,, Latin literature, Spanish language, French language, AP U.S. history, U.S. government and politics, world history, psychology, and economics. Many students choose to independently study for other AP exams or elect to take AP courses through the Cab Calloway School of the Arts. Sometimes, academically motivated students prefer to self-study the material covered in an advanced placement class instead of attending the class. For students who choose APs as a part of their formal curriculum, taking the end-of-year national AP examination is required in order to pass the course.

Other Coursework

While not unique to Charter, there are some course offerings that are not seen at a majority of American high schools. Some of these include software engineering, data structure, differential equations, digital electronics design, introduction to engineering, robotics, and data, forensics, calculus 3, advertising and marketing, philosophy, programming and algorithms, critical and creative thinking research and publication in human & computer interaction, nanotechnology, modern physics, optics, and others.

Special tests

A challenge test administered to incoming freshmen allows prospective students to move up to Integrated Math III or skip the first year of a foreign language course if they test well.. Phases range from 3-6, with non-academic classes at phase 4, phase 5 being considered as honors, and AP and post-AP classes designated as phase 6.

Students

The student body is made up of 960 students as of 2007-2008, including 68% of students coming from area public school districts, and 32% of the students coming from Catholic and other private schools. However, the freshman class for the 2012-2013 school year consists nearly entirely of Red Clay Consolidated School District students. For the first time since the school's inception, a lottery with out-of-district siblings and children of the founding companies had to be performed. Additionally, the school had to accept fewer students than before, due to district constraints. 99% of students attend college upon graduation. Individual students have won many state and national awards in mathematics, general science, biology, physics, journalism, French, Spanish, Latin and forensics competitions. In addition, students have also gained recognition in sports and other extracurricular activities.

Faculty

The student to teacher ratio is 18:1, with an average class size of 24 students.
Members of Charter's faculty were Delaware's English Teacher of the Year in 1997, Conservation Teacher of the Year in 1999, recipients of the Science/Math Excellence in Teaching Award from the Science Alliance in 1999, and Delaware's History Day Teacher of the Year in 2002.

Extra-curricular activities

Music

The Charter School of Wilmington has various musical groups. Those associated with Cab Calloway School of the Arts are concert band, jazz band, drum line, and marching band. Other groups include show choir, Red Clay String Quartet, and Red Clay Secondary and Select Orchestra.

Sports

As both Charter School of Wilmington and Cab Calloway School of the Arts share the same building, students from both schools compete on teams representing Charter.
The sports available include:
  • Football
  • Cheerleading
  • Cross Country
  • Field Hockey
  • Soccer
  • Volleyball
  • Marching Band
  • Basketball
  • Dance
  • Swimming
  • Indoor and Outdoor Track
  • Wrestling
  • Baseball
  • Crew
  • Golf
  • Lacrosse
  • Softball
  • Tennis

    Club sports

Some club sports include fencing, rowing, skiing, mountain biking, kayaking, table tennis, ultimate frisbee, and basketball.

Newspaper / Force Media

The school newspaper, The Force File, is a brand-new digital-first newspaper owned and operated solely by students of Charter, started in the 2016 - 2017 school year. It is part of a larger organization known as Force Media, a group which consists of four Charter clubs: Newspaper Club, Photography Club, Ten Minutes Club and Charter's chapter of The Association for Computing Machinery. The content Force Media creates can be found at .

Standardized exam achievement

Test scores at The Charter School of Wilmington are consistently the highest in the state with 100%, 99%, and 100% of Charter students in 11th grade scoring at or above expectations in reading, writing, and mathematics, respectively.
  • Top-scoring Delaware high school in Math Assessments
  • Top-scoring Delaware high school in Reading Assessments
  • Top-scoring Delaware high school in Writing Assessments
  • Top-scoring Delaware high school in Science Assessments
  • Top-scoring Delaware high school in Social Studies Assessments
  • Highest average SAT scores in the state

    Media Appearances

The Charter School of Wilmington's founder, Ronald Russo, has been featured on TruTV's The Principal's Office.

Notable alumni