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Challenger School
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| Challenger School | |
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| Scientia, Opus, Veritas (Knowledge, Work, Truth) |
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| Established | 1963 |
| School type | Independent |
| Founder | Barbara Baker |
| Location | San Jose, CA, Las Vegas, NV, Salt Lake City, UT, Boise, ID, United States |
| Campus | multiple, see article |
| Enrollment | approx. 10,000 systemwide |
| School colors | white, burgundy, black |
| Homepage | http://www.challengerschool.com |
Challenger School is a nonsectarian private school with 21 campuses located in Northern California, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. Challenger offers programs from preschool through eighth grade.
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Challenger School was founded in November, 1963 by Barbara Baker. She began a preschool program with six children in a small, remodeled house on Hamilton Avenue in San Jose, California.
By the end of the second year, she had 100 children on a waiting list to get into the school, which only had room for 24 pupils. In 1966 she opened another, much larger school in Saratoga, California.
In 1983 Challenger began offering elementary programs. Over the decades, Challenger expanded its operations across California, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho.[1]
Challenger School's mission statement is "Our mission is to prepare children to become self-reliant, productive individuals; to teach them to think, speak, and write with clarity, precision, and independence; and to inspire them to embrace challenge and find joy and self-worth in achievement."
Challenger is widely-known for a rigorous curriculum. Unlike many public schools, the preschool and kindergarten curriculum teaches reading through a system called phonics, or the phonetic sounding-out of words.[2] The elementary and middle school curriculum consists of an accelerated course of various subjects, usually one or two years ahead of their public school system counterparts. Alumni of Challenger are often placed in honors honors or advanced placement classes in high schools because of this accelerated teaching method [3]
Challenger School students on average score 40 percentile points higher than the national average on the ninth edition of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT9)[1], a placement and performance measurement test taken by elementary and middle schools across the nation.[4]
As with reading instruction, based as mentioned above on phonics, much of the later curriculum is traditional. Students are taught to have neat penmanship. Memorisation and public speaking excersises are held weekly. The literature and history taught are straightforwardly Eurocentric and overwhelmingly patriotic.
Along with many other private schools, Challenger School requires all students from kindergarten up to wear uniforms. All students wear burgundy sweaters and white Oxford shirts, with boys having the option of wearing white polo shirts. Kindergarten through fourth grade girls must wear plaid skirts with straps and boys must wear navy pants. From fifth grade on, girls wear plaid skirts and boys wear gray pants(which, many say are useful because of waterproof properties). Both boys and girls have the option to wear neck ties. Boys will also have the choice of wearing a white, dark red, or blue shirt. Girls can wear berets.
For girls, the uniforms have recently changed. Scholarwear is the new company for uniforms for Challenger School since the 2006-2007 year. Scholarwear is owned and operated by Challenger itself and has replaced the previous comapny, Dennis. Instead of wearing green plaid skirts and jumpers, now girls are wearing burgundy and gray skirts and jumpers. Also, for boys and girls, blouses now have the Challenger logo, and sweaters are a dark shade of purple.
Girls also have more choices to wear. On Mondays-Wednesdays, girls must wear their skirt/jumpers. On Thursdays and Fridays, girls MAY wear a polo shirt and navy girls pants/shorts.
Tuition for the 2007-8 school year, at San Francisco Bay Area campuses, is $10,780 for K-5 and $11,650 for grades 6-8. Paying early results in a discount of about $1000, with a further 10% discount applicable to families enrolling multiple siblings, and a further $700 discount (approximately) given to students whose grades placed them in roughly the top 20%. Thus, even before the various discounts, Challenger tuition is little more than half that of the average non-parochial private school in the San Francisco Bay Area. [2]
Challenger schools do not solicit parents or alumni for contributions; there is nothing like the "development office" common at other private schools. Neither are parents encouraged to volunteer for anything like a board of trustees, or to help in classrooms or the office, or engage in fundraising. Challenger's "business model", in which the customer pays for and receives a product but is otherwise uninvolved in the production process, is thus typical of most businesses, if atypical of the business of private schools.
Twenty-One Challenger Schools are located in the San Francisco Bay, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Boise areas.
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- ^ Challenger History. Challenger Schools. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
- ^ Preschool Curriculum. Challenger Schools. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
- ^ Elementary/Middle School Curriculum. Challenger Schools. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.
- ^ Challenger SAT Results. Challenger Schools. Retrieved on 2006-04-21.