OLMSTED FALLS, Ohio -- Newsweek recently named Olmsted Falls High School as one of 2020’s Top STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) High Schools.
The magazine partnered with STEM.org to rank the top 5,000 schools, with Olmsted Falls High School coming in at 2,941 in the country.
“It’s awesome,” Olmsted Falls City Schools Assistant Superintendent Kelli Cogan said. “The metrics that they used to determine these top 5,000 schools are the things that we believe in. It wasn’t about test scores. It really was about creating programs (where) students can be successful.”
The methodology for the America’s Best High Schools in science, technology, engineering and mathematics list is based around STEM.org Educational Research’s proprietary scoring logic.
Utilizing the latest in regression analysis, it takes into consideration a broad set of quantitative and qualitative data inputs to determine which primary/secondary institutions in America best offer students experiences while preparing them for post-secondary outcomes.
Additional factors such as affluence and median household income were taken into consideration.
Cogan said it was roughly five years ago when Olmsted Falls City Schools took a deep dive into its curriculum, examining whether it was providing an educational experience that aligned with career choices students were making after leaving the Bagley Road school.
“We really started looking at the degrees and the programs that our graduates were going into, which were engineering, business and mathematics,” Cogan said. “When we looked at our programs of study for the high school, we didn’t have a lot of those classes.
“In 2015, we started a strategic change by hiring a business teacher. She went from teaching two classes to this year, we have two business teachers and seven classes.”
The district also ramped up concepts such as strategic entrepreneurship, principles of accounting, finance and digital marketing. There are also now bio-medical science and engineering classes being taught at the high school.
Being named to Newsweek’s 2020’s Top STEM High Schools confirmed what Olmsted Falls City Schools administrators have already witnessed in various forms since refocusing the high school curriculum.
Cogan said that over the last couple of years, recent graduates returning to the high school to speak to students have touted the rigor of coursework making a big difference in their higher education experience.
“Just last summer, three of our students had paid internships at FirstEnergy and a wealth management company,” Cogan said. “They had these unique opportunities before even going to college because of their experiences in our high school programming.”
Another example of Olmsted Falls High School providing STEM students with unique challenges involves a new collaboration started this year in which business students in a strategic entrepreneurship class take their product ideas to classmates studying engineering.
“The engineering students come up with mock designs, bring it back to the entrepreneur student and say based on what you want to do, here’s what we can do,” Cogan said.
“So just the level of integration between our departments at the high school as it relates to this STEM programming is providing our students with an opportunity that they may not have had before.”
As far as STEM efforts are concerned going forward, Cogan said the district is continually on the search for new student opportunities.
“It’s really just trying to build on what we’ve been able to do over the last five years and hopefully over time being able to add more teachers to our business department and more programming,” Cogan said.
“We’ve continued to add College Credit Plus courses in finance and math, which we feel are very important. For us, it’s always just looking at what are the options out there.”
Read more news from the Sun Post Herald.