Originally published in eSchool News, September 4, 2024
Implementing initiatives like STEM education and performance-based learning requires a commitment to beliefs and values
Although Mercy Academy is one of four all-girl Catholic high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, we’re the only one that is STEM certified. In fact, Mercy was the first all-girls school in the country to earn a STEM certification. The interest in our program has been intense; the school’s 500+ students come from 95 grade schools across several counties and even the neighboring state of Indiana.
We became STEM certified in 2016 because we wanted independent verification of our program’s quality. After examining several certifying agency options, we chose Cognia, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that provides accreditation, certification, and improvement services worldwide.
The nonprofit already served as our accrediting agency. However, rather than convenience, we were looking for certification that aligned with our performance-based courses of study. Mercy’s curriculum requires at least 75 percent of a course’s assessment points to be for performance tasks addressing real-world problems.
For example, our engineering design class has an occupational therapy unit in which two graduates who became therapists come in to explain to the students what the job entails. The engineering students’ performance task for that unit is designing a toy that will help pediatric patients perform a particular movement or learn a skill. Then the two occupational therapists try out those toy prototypes with actual patients.