The International High School is a multicultural alternative educational environment for recent arrivals, serving students with varying degrees of limited English proficiency. The school's mission is to enable each of the students to develop the linguistic, cognitive, and cultural skills necessary for success in high school, college and beyond.
Professional development is built into everything the school does.
The curriculum and assessment committee, which includes student representatives and teachers from every instructional team, leads the development of assessment standards and rubrics for assessing student performance, organizing teacher meetings to test the rubrics on actual student work, supporting team efforts to revise curriculum to ensure that every students has adequate learning opportunities to put together a satisfactory senior portfolio, and preparing guides and protocols for faculty mentoring seniors and chairing graduation portfolio panels. Monthly faculty staff development meetings are devoted to working back from exit criteria to evaluate and improve instruction. Faculty systemically compare school curricula and student work against state content standards and performance standards contained in the New Standards Project. The interdisciplinary instructional teams carry the greatest responsibility. At their regularly scheduled weekly meetings, team members revise student assignments to better prepare all students for their senior portfolio and employ a case management approach to adapt those assignments to the needs of specific students.