High School Profile

Key Contacts

 

 

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Description / History

Parent-founded New West Charter School (NWC) is a free, independent, high-performing, public charter school that is authorized by the State Board of Education, supervised by the Charter Schools Division of the California Department of Education, and fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. NWC currently serves over 1,000 students in grades 6 – 12 in three programs at two campuses, and was named a California Distinguished School for a third time in the spring of 2019.

The development of NWC began in the year 2000 with a community effort to provide Los Angeles’ ethnically, culturally and socio-economically diverse families with a choice in public education. NWC first opened its doors as a 6 – 8 grade school in September 2003 at its Pico Boulevard campus in West Los Angeles, under its charter granted by the State Board of Education. In fall 2012, New West Charter moved to a larger building on Armacost Avenue to accommodate the addition of grades 9 – 12. The Pico campus was remodeled into a custom facility for grades 6 and 7 in 2018, which opened in winter 2019. That move opened up classrooms at Armacost to diversify course offerings, reduce class sizes, and improve services for students in grades 8 – 12. It also created space for an independent study based program called New West Personalized Learning School (NWC+) to meet the needs of an even more diverse student body. All three of New West’s programs – middle, high, and NWC+ – are committed to serving all students, maintaining the strength of the faculty, and finding ways to make the curriculum as challenging and individualized as possible.

 

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Mission

The mission of New West Charter is to provide an academically-rigorous, highly-individualized education for 21st-century students in grades 6 – 12.

In decades to come, personal success will require increasingly high levels of competency, independence, and collaboration in an ever-changing, progressively complex society, whether individuals choose to manage their own businesses, work in public or private organizations, or raise families. In that context, New West produces extremely capable students by creating a learning environment that promotes academic excellence, strong character development, self-reliance, and the tools of productive engagement.

Our school fosters our students’ intellectual and emotional maturity, and simultaneously inspires and challenges each student to fulfill his or her individual potential as a personal lifelong objective and as contributing members of society.

 

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Enrollment

Class of 2024: 138 (110 in NWC traditional HS, 28 in NWC+)
Grades 9 – 12: 562 (490 in NWC traditional HS, 72 in NWC+)

 

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Racial/Ethnic Diversity

African American 5% | Asian 9% | Hispanic 23% | White 50% | 2 or more races 12% | Other 1%

 

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Geographic Diversity

Students come from 70 zip codes from all over Los Angeles County. 72% of students live in zip codes within five miles of the campus.

 

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Grading Policy

A: 100-90% | B: 89-80% | C: 79-70% | D: 69-60% | F: 60-0%

Transcript represents an un-weighted GPA on a four-point scale, though a weighted GPA that reflects Honors classes on a five-point scale can be calculated and provided upon request. New West Charter does not rank its students.

 

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Honors Policy

New West offers Honors courses at each grade level and does not offer AP courses. Student enrollment in Honors courses is open to all but can be prioritized based on prior grades and performance on standardized tests (ex: SBAC, NWEA, PSAT, SAT, PACT, ACT). Many NWC students looking for an academic challenge take classes at local community colleges as well.

More information about our Honors Program can be found here.

 

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School Schedule

The school year commences the middle of August and ends the first week of June. It includes:

For more detailed information, view our Academic Calendar.

 

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NWC Traditional High School Program & NWC+ Program

New West offers two programs for students in grades 9-12. The traditional program features six periods per day that meets on campus from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm on weekdays. The NWC+ program features a “hybrid” model with classes that meet on campus once or twice per week with a mix of online schoolwork and experiential learning (ex: field trips, work experience, etc).

 

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Distance Learning Summary

All three of New West’s programs pivoted to distance learning in March 2020 faster and more successfully than other schools in the area by adopting the best practices developed in our NWC+ program. Improvements were made in the fall of 2020 to standardize live lessons, reduce screen time, increase support for struggling learners, and enable teachers to collaborate on a regular basis. Assignments and assessments were “chunked” to be easier to complete on the same day. Laptops from classrooms and internet hotspots were distributed to all students who needed them. The school also increased the availability of mental health resources and college and career counseling to meet the social-emotional needs of students and their families. NWC resumed some in-person learning in March 2021 and brought everyone back on-campus in August 2021. As a result of these efforts, New West students had less “learning loss” than those at many other schools.

 

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Course Offerings & Graduation Requirements

The curriculum’s strong foundation in reading and language arts, mathematics, science, and history and social science, is supplemented by a multitude of enrichment opportunities in world languages, visual and performing arts, physical education and health, and information technology. UC-approved Honors courses that come with an additional grade point (five point scale instead of four) are available for nearly every core class. A robust program of community service and extracurricular activities is designed to have maximum synergy with the academic program. The graduation requirements and courses offered being offered in 2023-24 are listed below:

 

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