High School Curriculum

PURPOSE

Springfield High School is committed to preparing students for their post-secondary academic and career-oriented goals – “Commencement is only the beginning!”


OUR FOCUS

The goal of Springfield School District (SSD) is for its graduates to enter postsecondary programs ready to achieve without the need for remedial college courses. Furthermore, we want a higher percentage of SSD graduates to successfully complete their postsecondary education within a six-year period. 


CORE PROGRAM COMPONENTS


Curriculum

While at SHS, students encounter rigorous curricula, in a variety of subject areas, designed to build strong foundational knowledge while challenging students to think critically and to extend their knowledge and understanding to high levels of synthesis, application, and analysis. For more information, see Course Offerings below. 


Assessments

Each course has a variety of assessments anchored to Pennsylvania State Standards. Common quarterly assessments have been embedded into most courses offered.  The PA Keystone Exams are standards-based, criterion referenced assessments used to measure a student’s attainment of the academic standards while also determining the degree to which school programs enable students to attain proficiency of the standards. High school students are assessed in in Biology, Literature, and Algebra I. For more information about Keystone Exams, click here.

Academic Programming

Our graduates further their education through post-secondary degrees at two- and four-year colleges and universities, military service, trade or technical schools, or the workforce. Students have the opportunity to develop their academic plans and build their transcripts around a sequence of courses to maximize the potential to pursue rigorous and challenging post-secondary education opportunities.

The student academic plan begins in Grades 9 and 10 where an emphasis is placed on building a strong foundation in core academic areas while providing opportunities for students to explore a variety of courses in the areas of unified arts.

In grades 11 and 12, students make academic and/or career-oriented decisions by selecting courses that align with specific areas of interest. To guide students through this decision-making process, SHS has adopted an Academy Model where students align themselves with one or more Academies in their Junior and Senior years - Arts, STEM, Business/Finance, Humanities, and Liberal Arts. Each Academy is designed to prepare students for enrollment in university, college, or trade school programs as students pursue a required number of credits in the Academy of their choosing. Information about our Academy Model as well as information on course alignment can be found on our College and Career Academy webpage.

Grading

A student can be enrolled in College Preparatory, Honors or Advanced Placement courses. Due to the higher academic rigor of Honors and AP courses, a weight is assigned to these courses when calculating a student’s GPA. College Prep courses carry a weight of 1.00, Honors a weight of 1.125 and AP a weight of 1.25. All MP and Final grades will be recorded and reported as numerical values.