Academic Program
Personalized Learning
Plumas Charter is a K-12 personalized learning school. This means that curriculum, instruction, organization, and pacing are considered in the planning of each student's personalized learning plan. The student’s interests, goals, strengths, challenges, optimum learning style, and personality are all taken into consideration when student, family, and teacher meet to plan the course of study.
PCS offers a variety of curricula and instruction: a selection of state-approved textbooks, classes, tutoring, online courses, literature and original sources, and customized combinations of the above. A careful selection is made for each student and fine-tuned, if need be, as the year progresses.
Plumas Charter School’s entire academic program is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Because PCS is a California public school, our curriculum is built upon the California Content Standards. We encourage parents to familiarize themselves with the standards in order to gain insight into their students’ educational path.
High School
Earning a Plumas Charter School diploma requires the accumulation of 220 units. In order to graduate from PCS, a student must fulfill the California mandated requirements for high school graduation. PCS transcripts bear the WASC accreditation seal.
Parent Involvement
Plumas Charter School has a staff of outstanding California credentialed teachers, but we consider parental support and involvement to be an important component of student success. We encourage parents to take an active role in their children’s education, and we welcome parent questions and requests for clarification of their child’s academic program. We will also provide training to interested parents. Parents are not expected to be experts—a willingness to be involved is what is most important to your child. There are many ways to be involved and show your support, and PCS will help you to find the best way to be part of this exciting
CAASPP Testing
All California public schools, including charter schools, are required to administer standardized tests. The State of California ties our funding and the renewal of our charter to the participation of our students in the annual California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) tests. For this reason, all Plumas Charter School students agree, when signing their master agreements, that they will take the tests in the spring (except those in grades not included in the testing). We make every attempt to ensure that testing days are relaxed and positive times when students can enjoy a change of routine. Most importantly, PCS works to make sure that students are given ample opportunity to acquire the skills and become familiar with the concepts on which they will be tested. Students who understand the material on the tests tend to feel proud and successful rather than anxious or frustrated.
Please reach out to your child's teacher for information and guidance on helping students prepare for testing. Lots of rest the night before and a healthy breakfast the morning of test day are very helpful!
School History and Philosophy
What Is A Charter School?
The Charter Schools Act was passed by the California Legislature in 1992 in order to give California communities the ability to create self-governing, publicly supported schools that have the flexibility to meet locally identified needs. Since then, parents, students, teachers, and community members have collaborated to create a variety of schools across the state that are innovative, flexible, and responsive to the conditions and aspirations of their communities. California is home to over 1,300 charter schools, including seven all-charter districts, serving nearly 630,000 students statewide.
Plumas Charter #146
Plumas Charter School was founded in 1998 and became California Charter #146, operating for its first two years as a subsidiary of Plumas Unified School District. In 2000, PCS became an independent, or direct-funded, charter school. PCS was originally designed to serve the needs of the local homeschooling community, but in the school’s 25-year history, it has evolved to serve a broader spectrum of students and families and now identifies itself as a personalized learning school and operates learning centers in Quincy, Taylorsville and Chester.
Personalized Learning
Personalized learning refers to Resolution 36 of the California State Senate, adopted in July 2004. Under this learning model, each student’s program is tailored specifically for him or her, using curricula, instructional strategies, settings, and pacing that have been selected to suit the student’s academic strengths and challenges, goals, interests, and personal situation.
Among the available components for a PCS academic program are classroom instruction, tutoring by teachers, web-based skill-building, online courses, independent study courses, extracurricular workshops, elective instruction from qualified enrichment teachers, and a wide range of texts and curricula.
PCS is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).
Accredited is a term that originally meant trustworthy, and the original purpose of accreditation in the United States was to encourage the standardization of secondary school programs, in order that colleges could trust that high school graduates had mastered a particular body of knowledge. Today, the accreditation process developed by WASC has dual purposes: first, to ensure that schools will be worthy of the trust placed in them to provide high quality learning opportunities, and second, to see to it that schools engage in a continuous process of self-improvement. Ultimately, the accreditation process is about fostering excellence in educational programs. PCS has been WASC-accredited since 2006.
PCS is a member of the Charter Schools Development Center (CSDC).
CSDC is a nonprofit organization whose activities are supported by grants from foundations and individuals dedicated to helping public education change from a highly regulated, process-based system to one that allows and encourages schools to be more creative, performance-based centers of effective teaching and learning. CSDC provides advocacy, training, resources, and expert technical assistance to charter schools and the charter movement in California, nationally, and internationally.
PCS is a member of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).
CCSA is a professional organization serving charter schools in California, which leads the nation with 1,306 charter schools. CCSA advances the charter movement through state and local advocacy and leadership in building educational quality. They offer extensive resources for member schools and are a trusted source of data and information for parents, authorizers, legislators, policy analysts, foundations, the press, and other interested groups.
The California School Dashboard is an online tool that shows how schools are performing on indicators included in California's school accountability system. Parents/guardians, educators, other stakeholders, and the public are encouraged to can use the Dashboard to see how local educational agencies and schools are performing. Note that the Dashboard displays the year-to-year CHANGE happening at schools, not how they measure up to an objective standard. Use the button below to access the Dashboard, where users can view PCS data and compare it to data from other California schools.
California School Dashboard