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Academic Excellence

St. Catherine students consistently score among the top schools in Seattle on standardized tests.  Our graduates have an excellent record of admissions to private and parochial high schools. Most graduates go on to college.

Our multi-arts program integrates music, and the visual arts into the curriculum to develop student appreciation of the arts and awaken the creative potential and talents of our students. Using a multimedia approach, our faculty combines videos, computer programs, hands-on demonstrations and library and Internet research to supplement textbooks and lectures. Students learn to work alone and in groups, developing their critical thinking skills as well as the social skills so important in today's world. 

Our classrooms each contain computers networked to each other and to our technology lab with 28 computers.  Essential computer skills are taught in the lab to each grade and the lab is open before and after school for student use.  The library catalog is online and technology resources are regularly updated to utilize the potential of the computer lab and the internet.  

Graduation Requirements

In addition to satisfactory completion of all coursework students are required to present a culminating project and to complete 20 hours of service learning.

Culminating projects are developed according to pre determined standards and monitored by the middle school staff. Students will be expected to make a formal presentation of their culminating projects to a panel of community representatives prior to the end of the school year.

Service learning projects must be pre-approved by the principal and signed off by the supervising adult. Students can commence with projects following the final day of their seventh grade year. The service requirement is to be completed by June 1 of the eighth grade year.

Graduation requirements must be satisfied prior to the issuance of diplomas. More detailed information can be obtained here.

Standardized Tests: What Our Test Scores Tell Us

Our students continue to perform very well on both the norm-referenced Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and the standards-based Washington Assessment of Student Learning. As a school, we rank well above the majority of schools administering these tests. What do these scores mean for our students, and what do they tell us about our curriculum at St. Catherine School?

As you know, we use these test results primarily for the improvement of the instructional program. Individual student results are shared with parents and can be helpful measures of a child’s performance at a single point in time. No one test or test score can tell the whole story of a student’s ability or a school’s performance. We use multiple methods of assessment in order to gain as complete a picture as possible.

Testing is a big topic in the media with many political ramifications. As we review our scores, we need to keep in mind a few key points:

• ITBS scores are reported in percentile ranks, comparing individual students with a national sample of children the same age. By contrast, the WASL scores are reported to parents as a standard score (400 is passing) and the school scores represent the percentage of students in the class who passed each test.
• Our small class size can dramatically affect overall scores because the performance of one or two children may represent a significant percentage change in WASL scores from one year to the next.
• We may learn more from comparing the performance of the same group of students over time, on both the ITBS and the WASL, than from comparing different groups of students at the same grade level in successive years.

Last year we set specific goals for improving the performance of third grade students on the ITBS. In particular, we provided additional practice on the format of the test, as well as increasing the kinds of problem solving experiences students had in math. Although we administered a new form of the test in grades 3 through 8, our students performed very well. .

For more information regarding the WASL click here.