Philosophy and Policy

With the bigger picture of preparing all our students to be college and career ready, science teachers at Mission San Jose High School collaborate to create a wholesome curriculum within each content matter and within each level of a course. Embedded within our curriculum are the  science and engineering practices of  NGSS and soft skills.

Although each individual teacher within a content matter will have his/her own style of teaching and assessing, we strive to ensure fair expectations and assessments to all students. Based on students’ collective ability and composition, each teacher achieve a balance through different forms of assessments, including but not limited to, diagnostic, norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, formative, summative, confirmative, and ipsative.

With over 200 years of collective experience, our common goal is to enhance students’ long-term and deeper learning.  We collaborate on a regular basis to create a fair assessment that commensurate with the level of each subject matter. The collaboration entails analyzing the results, using the data to meaningfully adjust instruction, and bettering our support for student learning.

The result of any form of assessment is shared with all the students and only with the students. Review of the assessment will enhance students’ deeper and long-term learning. We continually encourage our students to develop their self-advocacy and communication skills. With this in mind, we expect all students that need additional review or clarification to contact their teachers directly.