Benchmarks Overview
Benchmarks are an important part of student academic life at Irvington High School. Currently IHS has three Benchmarks, one at the 9th grade level, one at the 10th grade level and the culminating one, QUEST, for seniors. Each of these benchmarks has had a long history of success at Irvington. Visit the links on the left-hand side of this page to learn more about each benchmark.
At IHS, a benchmark is a long-term project that allows students to demonstrate progress toward or mastery of the four (4) School Wide Outcomes (SWO'S). These four school wide outcomes are: Communication, Critical Thinking, Personal Responsibility, and Social Responsibility. Benchmarks are intended to be consistently evaluated, "authentic" assessment projects which provide students, parents, and teachers information about student achievement across a range of important life-long learning skills. We call these "authentic" assessment projects because these valuable skills (the 4 SWO'S) are evaluated in "real-life" tasks as opposed to a test with many multiple choice questions which often only evaluate a student's memory. At IHS students are workers and demonstrate their skill(s) development through actual performance of the skill(s).
- Change Project (9th Grade Benchmark)
- World Issues Project (10th Grade Benchmark)
- QUEST (12th Grade Benchmark)
Washington Post Article on effectiveness of Senior Projects such as QUEST by Jay Mathews
