Individual learning, community relationships key to private school education

While the vast majority of students are enrolled in public schools, private schools provide an alternative type of education that also holds a unique role in the community.

"If we're doing our best, we have an essential role in the community -- any school does," says Russell Grammer, founder and director of Prodigy Leadership Academy in Cape Girardeau, which educates students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Grammer and his wife, Amy, started the Christian school four years ago with 19 students in the basement of a local church. The school quickly outgrew that location, and the next, and now enrolls 111 students in its new location at Red Star Baptist Church.

Skill development and independent learning are paramount at Prodigy, along with creativity, responsibility, family, leadership, faith and innovation. The curriculum is based largely on the Socratic teaching method, and field trips near and far enable real-world learning and application.

"The traditional format of learning works very well for a number of people, but it doesn't work well for some people," says Grammer. "We pay attention to the whole child. We think of the child in terms of their intellectual, emotional, relational and spiritual depth."

The school is funded by tuition, donations and an annual auction fundraiser, and student success is measured in quantitative as well as qualitative formats unique to the school -- Prodigy students do not take standardized state tests like the MAP tests, Grammer says.

Each student at Prodigy has a sense of personal responsibility and direction in his or her education, a principle shared by students at Notre Dame Regional High School in Cape Girardeau.

A new curriculum this year expanded the number of disciplines and the number of academic classes students can take, according to development director Tony Buehrle. The parochial high school now offers the option of a "floating schedule," allowing students to take multiple classes, especially at a higher level and with more college credit opportunities.

In addition, all students and parents are actively involved in fundraising at Notre Dame, says Buehrle.

Activity Week, held the week of homecoming, is one of the school's biggest fundraisers all year, he says. All 575 students and their parents work on fundraisers at least one day that week, and alumni, community members and benefactors are all invited to the festivities. Activity Week raised about $250,000 last year, says Buehrle, allowing the school to earmark funds for technology and other needs.

Each student group or team does its own fundraising, with help from the Booster Club, and chooses a community project, or Christian service, says Buehrle. For example, the Athletes for Life work with Dig for Life at Saint Francis Medical Center to raise funds for mammograms for women in need.

"One of our main missions is that you give us your child and we return an apostle. We provide Catholic-centered children to the community," says Buehrle. "Forty percent of the graduating class will end up back in the community. Some go away to college, but typically about 40 percent end up back in the area."

Buehrle says student education is the same among public and private schools, but it's measured differently. Notre Dame is accredited by the Missouri Nonpublic Schools Accrediting Association.

"Our teachers are educated in the same public and private colleges around the country that every other teacher has been trained," says Buehrle. "Teachers come in the same, but it's a different atmosphere and ambience."