Academic Planning

Our families benefit from an academic plan that is tailored to meet the aspirations and needs of each individual student.

As new students progress through the admissions process, Laurel Springs takes the time to get to know each student and his or her family.  For students in grades 7-12, our staff reviews a wide variety of information about the incoming students, and then consults with parents to make recommendations for an academic plan. Frequent feedback and assessment take place throughout the admissions period as well.

Transcript Review

The entrance review process starts with reviewing records from the student’s previous school.  Our staff evaluates what was effective and successful for each student in the past, and where opportunities exist to improve.  This step in our admissions process ensures that the student has successfully completed prerequisites, had made successful progress on grade level, and allows our staff to select the appropriate grade level placement.

Diagnostic Assessment

Diagnostic assessments are designed to provide parents, students and teachers with specific information about what skills the student has and has not mastered. The results empower students, parents, and teachers to pinpoint, assign and review those areas the student must master before moving on to more complex materials.

Learning Styles Profile

Laurel Springs assesses five aspects of learning style: disposition, modality, interests, talents and preferred environment. The profile helps parents better understand their child’s blueprint for learning and offers helpful study tips and techniques. By understanding their child’s learning style, parents can help their children excel not only in school, but in life. Families may request an in-depth phone consultation, during which a learning style coach with advanced training reviews the Learning Styles Profile and discusses how the results could be applied to a student’s individual learning goals. During this consultation, families learn how to implement data from the Learning Styles Profile to support student success in specific courses.

Academic Plan

The academic plan is the result of a collaborative process between the family, admissions office, and school counseling department.  The process ensures that students specific needs and goals are addressed to help them attain academic success.

For high school students, the college counseling team incorporates information from the learning styles profile, the diagnostic assessment, and transcripts from previous schools to create an academic plan.  The academic plan recommends carefully-tailored placement options based on the student’s talents, skills, and educational experiences.  The counseling department reviews the proposed academic plan, and makes adjustments or recommendations for course selection (including honors or AP curriculum) to meet the student’s goals.  Finally, the admissions coordinator presents the academic plan to the student’s family, and finalizes the enrollment.

Ongoing Assessment

Our approach is mastery-based, and students need to demonstrate that they understand assignments and courses. In this light, we have developed a student-centered approach to assessment that helps us better understand each child and measure the effectiveness of our courses.

In addition to the assessment and feedback that is built into every course, a national norm-referenced standardized test is administered to full-time Laurel Springs students in 4th through 11th grades. This test provides valuable information about the student’s academic progress in language arts and mathematics.