C N G E x e c u t i v e S u m m a r yf o r QA R Vi s i t O c t o b e r 2 011

C N G E x e c u t i v e S u m m a r yf o r QA R Vi s i t O c t o b e r 2 011

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Provide the school’s mission statement.

If the Executive Summary serves as an opportunity for a school to tell “the story” of its institution, then Colegio Nueva Granada’s narrative journey must undoubtedly begin with the three foundational pillars on which we build our community’s overriding sense of unified purpose and shared vision for teaching and learning as follows:

CNG’s Vision and Purpose Statement: Educating the mind, strengthening the body, and developing character for leadership and service in the world of today and tomorrow.

Aligned with this shared understanding in our Vision and Purpose to provide for the ho-listic education of CNG students, we also believe that our Mission Statement helps guide us in answering the following target questions: Whom do we serve? What type of program should we offer? How will we achieve our purposeful outcomes?

CNG’s Mission Statement: CNG serves a diverse student population and prepares responsible global citizens through an accredited American/Colombian college-preparatory pro-gram focused on motivating students to achieve their individual potential for excellence.

CNG ExECutivE Summary for Qar viSit oCtobEr 2011

Section 1: Introduction

What process was used to create the mission statement? Describe how the school engaged its stakeholders to parents and community members in the development and fulfillment of the mission statement?

As the foundation of our self-assessment process starting in August 2010, our institu-tion engaged in a school-wide review of our established mission and vision statements to gauge whether or not they continued to reflect both the honored traditions and visionary future of our CNG Fundamentals for education in the 21st century. In anticipation of the updated five-standard AdvancED/SACS protocols slated for inception in 2012, our school thought it wise to begin aligning ourselves with the new Vision-driven focus for the future. As a result, CNG implemented a multi-phase plan to engage all stakeholders in a thoughtful visioning process conducted through all-staff meetings, open house events, special presentations to students and parents, and structured feedback from our six established leadership councils comprising all stakeholder groups including our alumni and partner organizations. CNG also used the NSSE Opinion Inventory to survey nearly 2,500 members, representing a robust 84% of our entire school community, to receive comprehen-sive feedback and broad-based input into the process. After six months of engaging in this process designed to involve every stakeholder group, including an analysis of benchmarking data derived from mission and vision statements at high-performing stateside and international schools, the process concluded with our Board of Directors, Administration, Director’s Council, Parent Council, PTA, Student Leaders, Faculty, and Support Staff reaching full consensus on the above statements to advance CNG’s vision and mission into the next decade. In the end, the entire review and revi-sion process provided CNG with powerful verification of our community’s strong commitment to retaining the three main pillars of our former mission statement (Mind, Body, and Spirit) while refining the wording to reflect a recalibrated and enhanced vision for the future.

Our updated Vision/Purpose and Mission Statements have served to provide a clear and compelling “North” that, in turn, have helped guide the development and implementation of our School Improvement Plan. In addition, the mission and vision review helped expand and clarify the former notion of “nurturing the spirit” in order to assist us in unifying the strands of religious instruction, moral and ethical development, and affective education under the broader umbrella of Developing Character.

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Once our institution completed this lengthy process, we set forth in a concerted effort to publish and highlight our refreshed statements across every facet of our school community. Everyone now finds these statements prominently displayed at all building levels, in every office and classroom, on our web site, within curricular documents, in our official publications, and as an integral part of our written communications ranging from school calendars and student agendas down to the signature line on our e-mail accounts. Our revised statements clearly serve as the foundation for informing our efforts in the teaching and learning process as well as driving for-ward our organizational improvement plans.

briefly provide demographic information with regards to both students and staff and the community at large.

As a second critical element informing our School Improvement Plan delineating the spe-cific needs of our student population, CNG actively collects a comprehensive demographic data set to help our institution better understand and serve our ever-changing school community. For nearly a decade, CNG has tracked, analyzed, and published demographic profile information for our community. The following table highlights this quantitative data as well as our demographic trends over the past six years that have helped guide decisions made by our leadership teams:

CNG Demographic Profile Data

2010 2011

2009 2010

2008 2009

2007 2008

2006 2007

2005 2006

Total Enrollment 1815 1807 1784 1752 1724 1683Primary School 495 494 488 464 447 478

Elementary School 376 385 409 413 373 423Middle School 417 449 425 419 447 354

High School 527 479 462 456 457 428

Average class size 22 23 21 20 20 23

Nationalities at CNG 36 33 40 40 44 44Colombian 59% 61%  63% 65% 63% 65%

Dual National 20% 19%  21% 15% 19% 13%American 11% 11%  8% 11% 9% 9%

Other countries 10% 9%  8% 9% 9% 13%

Total Number of employees 394 368 370 355 349 337Teaching Faculty 306 270 251 249 242 234

Administrative Personnel 43 50 65 50 51 42General Services 45 48 54 56 56 61

Teacher Advanced Certification Master's Degree 103 91 85 66 66 55Doctoral Degree 2 4 4 4 4 3

Graduates attending college/university 98% 98% 98% 98% 98% 98%

Advanced Placement Courses 18 15 15 15 15 15Pre-AP Courses 24 17 25 16 16 16

Campus Hectares 10 10 10 10 10 9.7Bus Fleet 37 33 30 25 23 23

Describe the community in which your school is located.

Along with the above demographic trends, our school has also taken thoughtful consid-eration of our privileged location within the broader community context. CNG finds itself uniquely located in the heights of the mountainside bordering the eastern edge of the city. Our particular locale dramatically reflects a stark dichotomy that mirrors the diverse extremes of our city. On the northern and western side of the school lies the Rosales Neighborhood, one of the most upscale residential areas in Bogota, located minutes away from the city’s largest financial and business district. As a result, our 10-hectare campus provides the school with an advantageous location given its easy access to a high-SES population living in close proximity via the Avenida Circunvalar and the Carrera Septima. Most of the students attending CNG live in the surrounding neighborhoods aligned with these compass points, which allows for relatively short commuting times and easy access to school, two important factors that serve to enhance our extensive parent participation at school events.

However, another face of Bogota also exists adjacent to our campus in the Juan XXIII, Bosque Calderon, and Olivos neighborhoods directly to our south -- an extremely low-income area replete with significant social challenges associated with the dispossessed population of this city. Our proximity to this neighborhood has served as one of the central catalysts for CNG’s decision to begin a one-of-a-kind outreach project: Hogar Nueva Granada, a stand-alone educational in-stitution located inside our campus grounds and currently serving over 550 highly disadvantaged students from the neighboring barrios.

Our school’s establishment and continuing support of the Hogar arose from our com-munity seeking to take an active leadership role in providing one part of the solution to the dire conditions of these underserved children their and families facing the lack of available public education, high drop-out rates, the semi-abandonment of children, extreme levels of malnutri-tion, and a dearth of basic social services for ensuring the health and emotional well-being of its community.

The next section of this report describes how the Hogar uniquely embodies the vision and purpose of our institution and community.

What are the unique features and special challenges of your school community?

First and foremost, our CNG community believes in the importance of social responsibility and tries to serve as a role model among international schools in our financial and organizational commitment to the under-served communities surrounding us. We concretely demonstrate this strong commitment to recognizing and addressing the significant social needs beside us by oper-ating our very own sister school, Hogar Nueva Granada. The Hogar offers educational programs for students from kindergarten up through our first graduating class in 2013, serves three free meals a day, provides free dental and medical care, supports the entire co-curricular program, and offers parent training and adult education courses. Beyond faculty and parent volunteerism at the Hogar, CNG students also engage in service-learning projects and a wide range of activities with our Hogar students such as MUN and Destination Imagination, thus bringing our student communities together as part of the extended CNG family.

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In addition to the Hogar, CNG serves as a founding member of Alianza Educativa, a con-sortium that operates five public charter schools located in some of the most socio-economically challenged areas of Bogota. Our consortium provides support for a full range of kindergarten through high school educational services and co-curricular programming that serve the needs of nearly 6,500 disadvantaged children who would not have equity in educational opportunity without our curricular, logistical, financial, and professional development support. These two major social-outreach projects clearly embody a central value found in our vision -- developing character for leadership and service in the world of today and tomorrow. In essence, our community not only understands but also tangibly demonstrates the importance of modeling for our children the value of our words being fully aligned with our deeds in the area of service-leadership to others.

The second key feature that helps distinguish our CNG story revolves around our commit-ment to maximizing the individual potential of each student. Our school truly attempts to exemplify the belief that our “Big Picture” as an institution necessitates a laser focus on the unique needs of each child. CNG currently provides the full breadth of educational programs and services covering the entire spectrum ranging from our AP Academy Program, for those students vying for the most competitive colleges and universities, to those students who require extensive learning support to find success in school. CNG has one of the largest and most comprehensive Learning Center programs among international schools worldwide with up to 200 students receiving services. Our professional staff works with learning needs ranging from mild to severe: students with cerebral palsy and brain damage due to severe accidents; students requiring occupational therapy for visual-motor skill development; students needing specialized math courses utilizing both pull-out and inclusive models; and students who require a full-time shadow/co-teacher to help them better access their latent potential for learning the curriculum.

Reflecting the similar high level of financial support provided to the Hogar and Alianza projects, CNG has also demonstrated its commitment to serving our students’ needs by construct-ing a purpose-built and fully equipped Learning Center facility employing 50 full-time staff mem-bers. This commitment to the individual also finds its equal at the other spectrum of our school program, which provides over 40 Advanced Placement and Pre-Advanced Placement courses taught by highly-trained teachers to serve over 300 students with the academic rigor they re-quire to achieve their individual potential. As a final note that combines our unique features as a school committed to both service-leadership and learning support, our Learning Center has also expanded its support network and services to the Hogar and Alianza schools through a special program called SuperAula. This aptly titled SuperClassroom helps hundreds of economically and educationally needy children receive specialized learning support not available in any public school throughout Colombia. Although the unique features noted above primarily highlight our service-leadership ethic and the academic-learning domain of our program, the next section of this report attempts to showcase the three-pillar balance that CNG purposefully seeks in order to maximize the potential of each student in mind, body, and character.

Section 2: Student Performance

Give a brief description of your school’s vision about students and their performance. What are your goals and how will you know you have achieved them?

As an important outcome of our self-assessment process along with the development and implementation of our School Improvement Plan, CNG created a visual model to represent the Essential Foundations, Strategic Goals, and Vision and Purpose that guide our actions as an institution. Within that model, we clearly state that our foundation as a school begins with our school philosophy, a written statement that best illustrates our vision of students and their performance:

CNG Philosophy Statement: We believe in creating an educational environment in which: Every student is challenged to achieve his or her greatest potential in a system that pro-motes high academic potential. Individual talents and interests are shared and developed through a broad offering of academic, artistic, and athletic programs. Students with special needs and learning difficulties receive support through the intervention of specialists and adaptation by the classroom teacher.

As an outgrowth of our school philosophy, we believe in the importance of preparing students for success across a variety of subject areas and learning domains. Our goal to provide clear, standards-based learning opportunities aligns directly to our prime objective to help indi-viduals reach their potential for excellence. We consider that the holistic 360-degree development of the child not only starts in kindergarten but also extends throughout our program until gradua-tion. Successful performance through standards-based assessment requires college-preparatory programming with an emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving for all learners across the continuum, from those needing learning support to the Ivy-league-bound high flyers.

Yet our vision of successful performance for our students also incorporates a service-learning ethic. Our programming and expectations include strong components in social service, service-learning, Classroom Without Walls experiences, sports and Fine Arts competitions throughout the country, and activities with Hogar and Alianza students from significantly different socio-economic backgrounds. While we understand that much of our Mind and Body focus occurs inside of school each day, we realize that special emphasis must be placed on Developing Char-acter which can often be more effectively achieved with students outside the school by broaden-ing their horizons, opening their minds, and fostering greater empathy though their exposure to the harsh realities beyond the “bubble” that often exists within top-performing private schools. Although our vision for student performance demands a tenuous balance among our three pillars, our performance measures outlined in the next sections clearly demonstrate that we measure what we value in looking to achieve our tri-fold goals.

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Provide a brief summary of student performance in your school.

As the most concise summary of student performance at our school, the visually rich and broad-based descriptive statistics found in our Annual Reports provide the best snapshot of our school year as well as the key historical trend data in our measures of student performance across the three pillars of Mind, Body, and Character. For the purposes of this section of the report, we will attempt to provide a general context regarding our student performance by highlighting some comparative data sets.

Educating the Mind:

In comparison to our sister American-international schools in Colombia, CNG has his-torically ranked #1 in overall student performance across eight subject-area subtests on the Colombian SABER national exam for graduating seniors. Our composite scores on the Measures of Academic Progress (our primary standardized testing tool) have also placed us at the top of this group. On the broader spectrum among international and O/AS School norming populations, our elementary students score slightly higher than the norm on average, our middle school students perform at the norm on average, and our high school students perform better than the interna-tional group but slightly below the A/OS average. Of special note, despite our comparatively large population of students with special needs, CNG does not disaggregate these results in its report-ing of student performance data. In the future with our addition of the Stanford 10 standardized testing tool, we plan to report both aggregate and disaggregated results in order to provide us with “apples-to-apples” comparisons of academic achievement with comparable schools. As a unique feature to our world languages program and as the pioneering international school in the Americas with the first Confucius Classroom, four of our high school students earned full scholar-ships for year-long study in China as the outcome of their Mandarin testing results. The QAR Team will find the complete set of academic testing data, including our strong AP comparative results, located in the Standard 4 evidence binder, published in the Annual Report, and available in the office of our Assessment Coordinator.

Strengthening the Body:

CNG measures student performance in this area through a variety of measures. The Fitnessgram provides us with the primary measure for evaluating the overall level of optimal health for our students. This measure shows that our students perform best in abdominal strength and flexibility with slightly lower results in aerobic capacity and muscular strength. Additional measures in this domain at CNG include participation rates in athletics and after-school sports. Over the past four years, participation by building level has increased on average between 43% to 187%. At the younger grades, student participation in the wide range of Condor Activities has also increased significantly. In competitive athletics, CNG continues its historical trend of either an-nual championships or second-place finishes in the country-wide Binational Games. Of equal note these past years, CNG students also finished in the top three among the 12 schools in vying for the sportsmanship trophy. As a final note in the area of strengthening the body, CNG makes a strong commitment to providing courses and workshops that help educate our students to make healthy choices. We provide a school-wide health curriculum including drug education, sex education, CPR, and risk-management education. We also provide an infirmary with two full-time registered nurses

to serve the needs of our students and staff. Parent-led partner organizations also coordinate their efforts with the school in special programs offering an emphasis on healthy eating habits along with drug and alcohol education.

Developing Character:

CNG demonstrates its commitment to character education through a variety of internal programs and external partnerships. Our school program includes an Affective Education Depart-ment that provides curricular options and activities for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. As mentioned previously in this report, our service-learning program contains activities from primary through high school where our students participate in a wide range of events with peers from Hogar Nueva Granada and Alianza Educativa. Over the past years, our program expan-sion has resulted in an increase of service hours at the high school that extend beyond minimum Colombian requirements. Students also take direct leadership roles in organizing activities and raising funds for programs such as MUN, Leadership, Un Techo Para Mi Pais, and other student-led organizations. As a noteworthy outcome of these efforts, in our Senior Independent Study program that serves as a capstone experience to their final year of schooling, more 12th graders are voluntarily selecting service projects for their year-long activity to demonstrate the results of their learning at CNG. Finally, the notion of developing character also extends beyond our students and their advising teachers. CNG receives direct benefit from the outpouring of parent-community volunteerism in important partner programs such as Restorative Practices, Consentidos, and Proyecto Vida which serve to reflect the significantly high level of parent involvement in student growth and development as clearly reflected in the 73% response survey rate by parents in com-pleting the NSSE Parent Opinion Inventory.

Describe the variety of your school’s student performance assessments.

The CNG Annual Report provides our community with a well-defined “North” in assessing student performance directly aligned with our Vision and Purpose. The annual report highlights our progress through a broad variety of student performance measures along with longitudinal data outlining growth trends. Working with the Board of Directors and our Academic Council, the Administration developed a standing list of the following 12 major performance indicators critical for the assessment of our interventions and improvement efforts embedded within our school-wide goals:

Colombian National Standardized Test (SABER and Pre-SABER)1.

Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT)2.

Preliminary Scholastic Achievement Test (PSAT)3.

Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)4.

Advanced Placement Tests (AP)5.

College Admissions and Scholarship Data6.

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Learning Center IEP Student Success Data7.

Athletic Program Participation Rates and Tournament Results8.

Physical Education FitnessGram Outcomes9.

Condor Co-Curricular Activities Participation10.

Classroom Without Walls Participation Rates11.

National Study of School Evaluation Opinion Inventory Results (NSSE) 12.

As one of the school’s new initiatives that form a central part of our school-wide objective to develop a more comprehensive set of data to improve teaching and learning, CNG identified the need to provide broader measures on student academic performance beyond the MAP test. After a thorough evaluation process to determine the best standardized testing tool aligned to our programs and improvement plan, beginning this coming April, all students from Grades 2-10 will also sit for the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT10) in order to provide us with valuable assessment data in the areas of mathematics, reading, language, science, listening, spelling, lexile measure-ment, and social science. This more robust and broad-based assessment tool will augment the current math, reading, and language usage results from the MAP to allow for more accurate cross-referencing and correlations that can be applied to the improvement of our curriculum and instruction. Finally, the school also collects and evaluates additional student performance results using the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA), the YCT Language Assessment in Chinese Mandarin, the DELF for French, and the CELF-4 for SSL and ESL placement and exit assessments.

How does your staff engage in meaningful analysis of student work in order to modify instruction?

Based on the data sets for student assessment, specifically during the past three years, the CNG Annual Report has provided our entire school community with a strong message of our concerted efforts on using data to improve teaching and learning. The assessment measures out-lined in the previous section verify, at the institutional level, the occurrence of a systematic review and reporting of student and organizational performance data. In addition to this school-wide level of analysis, during the past school year our faculty and administration engaged in a major effort to begin drilling down from the executive level of performance into a more detailed analysis of student work at the building levels. Although CNG has historically utilized the MAP and DRA data to examine student performance to inform instruction, more recently our school has engaged teach-ers in a systematic analysis of all performance data at the individual, departmental, divisional, and school-wide levels. As a result, the theme of data-driven monitoring and adjusting of our curricu-lum and instruction has become a key part of our goal to establish and embed a systemic approach to the process. Thus, the following efforts serve to highlight the purposeful and meaningful work being accomplished to implement our comprehensive assessment system:

CNG enters its second year of utilizing our Annual Assessment Calendar to ensure 1. for greater continuity in the systematic review of testing results by teachers and administrators at every building level.

The school employs an Assessment Coordinator who works with teachers and 2. principals at all building levels to develop and present meaningful, consistent, and pre-prepared data for their timely analysis.

Grade-level teams and departments began programmed meetings last year spe-3. cifically to analyze the student performance data and create action plans for interventions.

Using student assessments derived from SABER, SAT, PSAT, MAP, AP and Fitness-4. Gram results, CNG has developed and implemented action plans at the secondary level with measureable goals for improving student learning in the following subject areas: mathematics, science, English/Language Arts, Spanish, social science, Co-lombian Sociales, and physical education.

All subject-area departments have developed additional SMART goals this year to 5. determine key areas for step improvements aligned to their action plans and our School Improvement Plan.

Professional development starting this August began focusing on nine research-6. based instructional practices that help improve student learning. Our PD plans also include increased attention to the critical role of feedback to students through both formative and summative assessments. These initiatives provide our teachers with the tools to inform their curricular interventions and strategies for improvement.

Given this school-wide development and implementation of a systematic process of performance analysis, CNG has now embarked on the next stage of its data-driven mission to improve student learning. Each building level has formed Assessment Teams to analyze and report both team and department data in an effort to provide for the four optimal levels of analysis and intervention: 1) individual classroom level; 2) department and grade level; 3) building level, and 4) school-wide level. Our School Improvement Plan recognizes current strengths in the latter two levels of analysis and also identifies our need to improve at the individual student, teacher, and team/department level, including the analysis of AP Academy results recently accomplished. With all four structural levels involved in this improvement process, our school looks to have a more robust and systematic process embedded within a more comprehensive assessment system for this school year.

Describe the school’s student support programs and services.

The CNG Learning Center and Counseling Support Services provide a full range of aca-demic, emotional, and counseling services for our K4-12 students and their families. A team of diagnosticians administers psycho-educational assessments to help identify the learning profile of students with learning differences. Individual educational plans (IEPs) and curricular modifica-tions are designed and implemented for students diagnosed with learning difficulties. Each IEP team working with an individual student seeks to develop a winning formula specific to serving the child’s needs, which assist our students in developing their full potential for excellence. The school also provides accommodations for students with physical limitations.

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Tier III special educational plans are provided through the following programs:

Inclusion Program: A group of psychologists and learning specialists help stu-•dents diagnosed with severe learning disabilities function in the least restrictive environment.

Learning Center (PS & ES) and Student Support Program (MS & HS): These services •provide support for students who are having academic difficulties or who have spe-cial needs that require one-to-one or small-group support.

ESL: This program is offered for students who need to increase their English lan-•guage proficiency in order to be able to learn and perform well academically within the regular program.

Occupational Therapy: The main objectives of this intervention are to develop senso-•ry motor integration, functional motor output, and adequate perceptual responses in students who present below-average levels of immaturity or skill deficits.

Speech and Language Therapy: Primary and Elementary students, who present •speech, language, cognitive, communication, or other related disorders, are diag-nosed and provided with specialized support services.

Spanish, Math, and Literacy Support Services: Remediation and intervention pro-•grams are offered in Spanish to students with learning disabilities. In addition, the school provides math and literacy support for students requiring stand-alone sup-port classes.

Tier II interventions include programs such as Read to Succeed, Lectura Exitosa, and FastForWord to help students reach grade-level expectations. As a key program addition, coun-selors teach classroom groups how to deal with the problems associated with normal childhood development and spend time supporting individual students and their parents. Extending this em-phasis on serving the emotional health and well-being of our students, CNG employs two full-time counselors at each building level with the added benefit of two college/career counselors at the high school. This group works closely together with our infirmary staff to cover the full range of our students’ physical and emotional needs.

in what ways does your school ensure community/parent involvement in the life of the school?

CNG believes that parent participation plays a crucial role in two distinct facets of school life: 1) involvement in their children’s learning, and 2) involvement in our school’s continuous im-provement. As a brief summary which attempts to streamline the more extensive preponderance of evidence available in the Standard 6 Assessment section of our self-evaluation, the following list highlights our programming and facilitation of parent involvement in the life of the school:

Involvement in Student Learning

Online academic software system that allows parents to track the progress of their 1. children across all subject areas;

Extensive web site information including SharePoint communication where teach-2. ers post assignments for students and parents to jointly review;

Annually programmed school events such as the All-School Opening Assembly, Open 3. House, Parent-Teacher and Three-Way Conferences, Coffee Mornings with the Prin-cipal, Learning Nights, Evening of Lights, and the Annual General Assembly;

Special events such as Information Nights to showcase new initiatives and cur-4. ricular materials as well as the bi-annual PTA Festival; and

Weekly newsletters from principals along with newsletters from classroom 5. teachers.

Involvement in School Improvement

National Student of School Evaluation (NSSE) Survey: completed bi-annually by par-1. ents and evaluated by groups of parent volunteers to ensure the accuracy of their voice and vote in school improvement feedback;

Board of Directors: elected annually from the parent community to serve as the 2. decision-makers for strategic planning, policy, and finance as well as to provide oversight on improvements recommended for the learning program;

CNG Parent Council: comprised of annually elected representatives from each grade 3. level that meet monthly with the Director to discuss school improvement plans and also meet with the Building Principals to share grade-level specific concerns;

PTA: annually elected parents who provide support for community-building events 4. and wide-ranging activities that benefit the learning program for students and teachers;

Standard Assessment Teams: two parent representatives participate on each team 5. to review, analyze, and evaluate all standard indicators as well as develop action plans for the improvement of the standard;

School Improvement Task Forces: voluntary parent participation on the four major 6. Task Forces assigned to monitor and evaluate the success of interventions based on the School Improvement Plan; and

Partner Organizations: voluntary support of CNG programs and services in the 7. areas of service-learning, drug and alcohol education in Proyecto Vida, and Re-storative Practices training to help students and staff learn strategies for resolving interpersonal conflicts.

The above list highlights a few of the many ways that parents can make a positive impact in their children’s learning today and for their children’s children tomorrow.

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Section 3: Challenges and Opportunities

What are the major challenges your school has faced in the last 3 years and how have you addressed those challenges?

Major Challenge/Opportunity #1: Addressing the challenge of reaching our en-rollment capacity as an institution coupled with a city-wide building moratorium for “heritage” facilities located on the eastern mountainside of Bogota.

Similar to a growing number of international schools around the world, CNG has been confronted with the proverbial dual-edged sword of strong net enrollment growth. On the posi-tive side, this increased student population provides our school with robust funding to offer an extremely comprehensive program. Yet, this growth also generates significant stress on our ability to accept all of the highly qualified students, a fact that brings political pressures from every con-stituent group. In the past four months alone, CNG has experienced a 40% increase in the number of applications. Over 800 prospective candidates contacted our school last year from which we received close to 500 formal applications. From this applicant pool, CNG could only offer admission to 44% of those applying compared with 68% the prior year. On the plus side of the ledger, the increased demand along with limited space availability have provided us with the opportunity to raise our entry standards by applying higher academic and behavioral expectations, and we have leveraged this upshot to our short- and long-term benefit.

As a further challenge exacerbating our enrollment growth, unlike other international schools in our region, CNG has some current limitations to its expansion capabilities. The district of Bogota placed a moratorium in 2005 on new construction in the mountainous area that includes our campus site. As a result, despite our 10 hectares of usable space, we have not been able to obtain building permits for any major construction projects. Our Master Facilities Plan developed several years ago provides us with a carefully considered blueprint for future construction, but our major projects continue to remain in a holding pattern until the moratorium gets lifted or CNG finds another type of solution through political or legal means. Given this fact, our Board of Directors and Administration agreed last year to set optimal enrollment at 1,800 students for our school in order to manage enrollment growth without taxing our current facilities limitations. This decision has created the opportunity for us to focus on program quality rather than enrollment quantity. Yet, as a corollary to this decision, our executive leadership team needed to face the following challenging question: Who will now get into CNG? Tackling this issue also provided us with the opportunity to generate and reach agreement on a well-defined philosophy for admissions.

In attempting to address our enrollment challenges, the Board of Directors charged our CNG’s Administration with conducting an extensive benchmarking study to compare admissions policies among the highest performing international schools in the region. The result of this study was the development and implementation of a new admissions philosophy and set of procedures as determined by the Administration and Board Policy Committee before final approval by our Board of Directors. Since CNG continues to receive high applicant demand, our Admissions Com-mittee carefully tracks important data on each incoming student as well as a broad range of indicators such as the number of students per class, demographic diversity, and the percentage of

students needing individualized learning support. By analyzing these data points, CNG has capital-ized on the opportunity to make highly targeted and well-informed admissions decisions aligned with the vision and mission of our school. Although competitive admissions will continue to chal-lenge our institution, the establishment of a clear philosophy, transparent policy, and defined set of procedures provide our school community with the assurance that CNG will continue to make decisions aligned with our vision and purpose in support of the holistic educational goals that our community values.

Major Challenge/Opportunity #2: Addressing the “five schools within a school” syndrome that inherently afflicts institutions with over 1,800 students and 300 teachers.

As part of the QAR report from the 2006 accreditation visit, the Visiting Team offered the following recommendation: Emphasize the importance of establishing an institutional focus for selected school activities in avoidance of considering academic divisions as autonomous entities. This statement echoed the strong perceptions of stakeholder groups who have articulated a com-mon notion that CNG might be best described as five schools within a school: Primary, Elementary, Middle, High, and Learning Center. Although organizational size certainly contributes to some of the school’s inherent challenges common to larger institutions, our school took the opportunity to begin a concerted effort to examine the factors within our control that could provide us with more effective measures to moderate the negative influences of school size. In the resulting process of conducting our self-assessment and analyzing NSSE Opinion Inventory results, we began to identify some of the root causes which allowed us to target a few critical objectives to help us better address the issue.

More than any other piece of evidence in support of our actions to address the syndrome of multiple schools within a school, our School Improvement Plan verifies the concrete outcomes derived from our analysis. The following verbatim words summarize the nature of our overall strategy within the broad set of objectives: all operational areas, comprehensive, all members, school-wide, all handbooks and policies. We fully realize that our battle to overcome the inherent factors related to school size must be won using a similar strategy employed in a jujitsu match – to use your challenger’s greatest strength as the primary weapon against itself. CNG understands the need to make optimal use of our effect of size to coordinate the collective efforts of the group in order to turn this challenge into an opportunity for success. In specific terms, our Annual Report notes the following tasks to spearhead these unifying efforts:

Restructuring the organization in order to separate academic and organizational 1. functions while increasing a team approach to decision making;

Systematizing processes by streamlining school improvement and quality assur-2. ance systems into one unified system;

Establishing a common framework for continuous improvement based on research 3. in the educational and organizational domains;

Reviewing and refreshing our Vision/Purpose and Mission Statement to refocus 4. efforts on the same school-wide goals;

Surveying stakeholders to identify areas of common ground for improvement 5. efforts;

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Formalizing the process of systematic data review and curricular action planning; 6.

Reviewing and revising all handbooks, policies, and procedures, and communicating 7. those documents to the stakeholders directly impacted by those processes;

Maximizing the utilization of the ISO Quality Assurance Process to ensure the sys-8. tematic implementation of established policies and procedures; and

Developing, implementing, and publicizing the School Improvement Plan to ensure 9. that all stakeholders align with and contribute to its success.

Although much additional work still remains in creating a unified K4-12 institution, our new CNG Code of Honor and Discipline Policy, our revised Faculty/Staff Handbook, our Community Handbook and Manual de Convivencia, our upgraded Board Policy Manual, our Annual Assess-ment Calendar and Textbook Selection Cycle, our standardized curriculum maps, our updated IEPs, and a growing list of other joint efforts clearly demonstrate CNG’s commitment to analyzing root causes and working diligently to find, within these challenges, the opportunity to create stronger coherency in purpose.

Section 4: Conclusion

What is your school most proud of and why? is there any other information you would like to share with the public and the school community?

We believe at CNG that if we are truly aligned in both word and deed with the unique fea-tures that describe “the story” of our school community, then our proudest moments as an institu-tion should directly reflect those same key features. In Section 2 of this report, we described our strong commitment in service-leadership to the greater community through the establishment and support of Hogar Nueva Granada and Alianza Educativa. We continue to feel a great sense of col-lective pride in these major projects that positively impact needy children and their families every day of the week. Yet beyond the significant scope of our work to help those in dire need surround-ing us, CNG also takes special pride in our own “Big Picture” which to us signifies maximizing the potential of each individual student. Therefore, we would like to share a couple of simple vignettes that help speak to the true story of what constitutes our notion of success as a school.

Two decades ago, a learning support program did not exist at the high school. The unfold-ing story at that time of two students in particular caused us to reconsider and rethink our role as educators in helping struggling students learn more successfully. Both of them were months away from failing out of our school... but then a shift occurred in our overall mindset. We began to believe that if they were falling short of success, then somehow we were falling short as an institution. As a result of wanting to take direct action and greater responsibility in addressing their unique needs, the student support program began at the high school aligned to our support network provided at the younger grades. If we fast forward to today, then we find the following

success stories that bring great pride to our school. Notably, their stories merely reflect the first in a substantial list that has grown in scope over the intervening years. Of these two students, one finished his Master’s Degree in architecture at a highly regarded university in the United States, and he currently works as an urban planner designing low-cost housing – a true model of our CNG ethic of service-leadership. The other student remained in Colombia and found his specific calling after successfully graduating from CNG against the odds. With the tools and strategies acquired from our learning support program, he enrolled in law school at a top university in Bogota and served as a practicing attorney in our city before becoming a successful entrepreneur.

For good reason, international schools take great pride in the success of their top gradu-ates. At CNG, we indeed offer the full range of Advanced Placement programs that allow stu-dents to achieve the highest SAT and SABER averages, to attend the most competitive colleges and universities around the world, and to enter life well equipped for leadership and service. Yet sometimes in the quieter moments as we ponder our CNG story, we take heart in the possibility that many of these outstanding students who take full advantage of every opportunity provided for them would probably achieve high-performer status regardless of their particular school setting. Although we certainly take pride in their remarkable accomplishments, the fact exists that our fundamental narrative at CNG is the story of a school community that takes equal pride in the journey of a student who enters our school with major brain damage and almost no ability to talk and then walks across the stage to receive a certificate of attendance with plans to enter a career in the music industry. When this exceptional student along with the lauded valedictorian cross the stage, then we celebrate with parallel joy their unique and noteworthy journeys facilitated by CNG to maximize their unique individual potential for excellence. That’s our moment of greatest pride, and that’s our central story to tell.