iSchool: West Chester Area School District

The West Chester Area School District serves the borough and surrounding townships of West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States. The other parts include the surrounding townships of East Bradford, East Goshen, Thornbury, West Goshen, West Whiteland, and Westtown, all in Chester County, as well as Thornbury Township in adjacent Delaware County. The WCASD consists of ten elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools, as of the fall 2006 school year. Elementary schools include grades 1-5, middle schools grades 6-8, and high schools grades 9-12.

The mission of the West Chester Area School District is "To educate and inspire our students to achieve their personal best."

Almost 12,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend schools in the WCASD. The class size average is more than 25 students. Over 900 are employed by the WCASD, with 64 percent holding at least a masters degree. For the 2006–2007 school year, the district had a $176.4 million budget.

At Henderson High School, the Promethean torchlight award was given to a chemistry teacher, Kevin Orlando. This grant was awarded to only ten classrooms in the entire United States of America. This grant provides the classroom with many state-of-the-art equipment features, including the ActivWand, Expressions, and other technology.

For the third consecutive year, the West Chester Area School District has received the top rating of “Gold Medal District” by Expansion Management Magazine in its annual Education Quotient issue.

This years rating places the school district among the top 17 percent of all public secondary school districts in the United States with an enrollment of at least 3,300 students. Those districts—totaling 3,819 and serving a population of more than 35 million students—were included in an extensive study conducted by the magazine.

The majority of Expansion Management readers are CEOs of small to mid-sized manufacturing companies, according to the magazines website. "Many of these same business executives are actively engaged in the process of comparing locations around the country in order to determine the best location for a future manufacturing (or distribution center, call center, back office, etc.) facility," the magazines website states. "These ratings provide them with an important tool to evaluate the high school graduate work force in those prospective communities."

The Education Quotient, or EQ, is calculated on a weighted scale that measures results in three major categories. The most important component is defined as the Graduate Outcome Index, which uses College Board scores and graduation rates to compare a districts educational efforts with other districts nationwide. College board scores are used because they represent a common test that high school students take around the country. Graduation rates are calculated by comparing the number of students in the fall semester of their junior year with the number of students who graduate the next year.

A second Resource Index measures a communitys financial commitment to public education, including per-pupil expenditures, student-teacher ratios, and beginning and average salaries for teachers.