Francis Howell High School - St. Charles, MO

With its genesis in the Francis Howell family's immigration to the farming communities 30 miles west of St. Louis in 1800 and the one room schools they established beginning in 1821, Francis Howell High School is a rural public school nestled between the Weldon Spring and August A. Busch Conservation Areas in St. Charles County, Missouri. Founded in 1915, the school serves 1,788 students in grades 9-12. The 100 year history of growth precipitates a collaborative approach to innovation in the high school.

Results of these efforts include recognition for student achievement improvement from Advanced Placement, Project Lead The Way, and the Missouri Department of Education's National Model Professional Learning Communities School award. The ongoing processes of professional collaboration designed to identify, implement, and evaluate proven educational practices are a hallmark manifested throughout the school and embedded in specific programs. Examples include course specific teacher collaboration around learning goals, assessments, student growth; student support teams in which small groups of teachers, counselors, and administrators work jointly to address the specific needs of individual students, and a mentoring program designed to create rapport among students and teachers from a variety of backgrounds and instill an encouraging, supportive, and reassuring feeling of social emotional support within the school. The combination of a collaborative approach to improvement and an academic program offering more than 200 courses in 15 departments cements a long term, collective commitment to meeting the needs of students and to leading all learning community stakeholders to grasp their greatest promise.