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The deadline for the June issue of Cairo-Glyphics is Sunday, May 18th. It will be available online on Sunday, June 1st.
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Superintendent’s News Dear CAC Community, Whew! What an amazing stretch this is as we hurtle toward the end of the school year, albeit with much still left to do and celebrate. It has been terrific to see so many of you here at school supporting our students over these intensely busy weeks. Over the course of the past year, you have heard from some of us about a project we have undertaken to consolidate our school wide curriculum for coherence and continuity. The vehicle we are using for this is called Rubicon ATLAS, and I want to assure you that we are making great progress in this effort. We also want to alert you to the opportunity to see what this looks like after information has been mapped. Check out our website: go to Academics and Athletics on the home page, click on ‘Curriculum’, then click on “Sample Rubicon ATLAS Maps”. This project has engaged all of our teachers, many of them as teams, in our collaborative effort to ensure there are no gaps or redundancies in our instructional program. Some of you are aware that we have been engaged in a conversation regarding the components of a World Class school. While it is a struggle to identify what the term really means and what a World Class school looks and feels like, we do want to believe that it looks a lot like CAC! Still, we know there are always ways to improve and become even classier. Toward that end, we are paying special attention to identifying benchmarks. Benchmarking is a way to gather and track information which tells us how we are doing. The key components of benchmarks are that they are measurable, repeatable, and have internal and external reference points. External reference points include such measures as meeting accreditation standards, standardized test scores, and university admissions. This year we are especially pleased to report markedly improved individual and group scores for both Elementary and Middle Schools from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS). We are also hopeful that our four-year upward trajectory on SAT tests will continue and that our significant efforts to enhance our IB program will produce fruits as well. We will have that information in August. A particularly important means of benchmarking for us at CAC takes the form of our Satisfaction Surveys. You will have been asked to participate in this annual exercise by the time this issue of Cairo-Glyphics is posted, so please do participate. Our goal is to have as many families as possible provide us with feedback which will serve to inform our path forward. This does seem to be the season of surveys for us at CAC, but we hope you will be patient with us one more time, as we plan on sending a World Language survey in anticipation of a consultant visit early next fall. We will continue the World Language conversations which have taken place in some of the CAT teams and zero in on philosophy, alignment, and transition points in order to ensure a language program which best meets our students’ needs. Those of you with children enrolled in Arabic will, I trust, appreciate the value of this exercise as you experience the new features of our Arabic language program during the next school year. As you are undoubtedly experiencing in your lives, there is melancholy in the air as we anticipate the inevitable farewells to colleagues with whom we have shared valuable years here at CAC. Every departure leaves an imprint and a set of memories which will remain part of the school, and we thank the twenty-nine departing faculty for their numerous contributions to assisting our students to “…envision new possibilities, …achieve their personal aspirations, and …serve a global community.” While this year’s 16% turnover is not high by international school standards, that does not make it any easier to wave good-bye at the close of this chapter in these educators’ lives. I know you will thank those who have worked with your children here at CAC and wish them well as they begin the next segment of their journey. We are on a slippery slope toward the end of what I hope has been a full, rewarding year for you and your children. I look forward to seeing you at numerous events during the next five weeks.
Monica N. Greeley
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