More on Cactus Shadows Prep Academy in Cave Creek Unified: Got Kids??

Like a kid at Christmas we exploded with glee when the mailman FINALLY delivered our personalized (“Resident”) invitation (lame postcard) to come and join the dead school walking AKA Cactus Shadows Prep Academy (is ‘Prep’ really the official name? Not Preparatory?). Nice to see them (donor, grant, M&O?) throw away printing and postage on a school that has 12 applications to date and clearly does not have a chance of opening in the fall.  Return address on the postcard; CAVE CREEK USD NO. 93. If I was new to the area I sure would wonder who CAVE CREEK USD NO. 93 is and why are they shouting.  The Watch HQ will not have children eligible to attend this school for many years and we live firmly in the district boundaries (why aren’t we marketing only to out of district areas?), but it was so nice that the postcard gives us a detailed descriptions of the academy, its offerings, philosophy, and curriculum. It really pops in its all of its monochromatic splendor. 

 

What?  That’s it!?! No, there is more, but not much.  On the front it does not forget to mention the obligatory EXCELLING, and in case you missed it "Honors Curriculum, Uniforms, and Small Class Sizes” is repeated on the front along with the witty ‘GOT KIDS??’. At least the insipid ‘Inspiring Excellence’ was missing. Who was the marketing genius who decided to promote the honors academy with a grammatically incorrect phrase? So yeah, Cave Creek USD No. 93, I have ‘got kids’, but I want them to have rigorous education, not drink milk. Don’t we have students in a graphics art class who could have helped with this?  If this was generated from our secret marketing committee, the secret is out, they suck.

All the fun aside, we decided to take a deeper look at the test scores we could expect from the Cactus Shadows Prep Academy curriculum.  You know the curriculum that was ripped off from modeled after Hamilton Prep.  We looked at Hamilton Prep’s 8th grade NNRT (nationally norm-referenced test) scores and compared them to achieving charter and traditional district schools in the area.  We also included DAMS and STMS.

So one can see that clearly Hamilton Prep does not have the top results in the area. If our administration was going to offer a superior and rigorous curriculum for our students at the honors academy, why didn’t they MODEL it after a school that has better results?  Sure they blow away Desert Arroyo and Sonoran Trails MS, but just because we have a guy, who knows a guy in Chandler, who opened a school,  should we  crib  photocopy  cut and paste their model as gospel?  How about doing a little work and finding out what is the best, who has the best test scores, and what curriculum and programs THEY offer. Of course we recommended that the district open a charter school (which would have equated to more funding per student) based on the BASIS model (see scores above).  More on the governing board’s botched charter decision to come.

One more item of note.  Every school on that list teaches Latin EXCEPT Hamilton, DAMS, and STMS.

[We didn’t have the heart to scan the front of the postcard showing the other lame side of our district’s first marketing effort along with  amateurish cactus logo. If only we had had a paid PR person working at in our district, he/she could have spent the last couple of years working on this. Too late now we guess.  Hey, here is an idea, let’s get the 5th grade at DSES fresh off of their crest designing gig to come up with a new district logo.]