La Cañada High School is a California Distinguished School and a National Blue Ribbon School that has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for "high achievement and exemplary programs." Uniquely configured as a grades 7-12 school, LCHS has a 7-8 enrollment of about 700 and a 9-12 enrollment of 1300 students. The student population includes a range of ethnic and socioeconomic groups, with "white, not of Hispanic origin" and "Asian" as the most populous ethnic groups. There are four administrators, four counselors, approximately 100 teachers and various program specialists and support personnel. La Cañada itself is a residential city with a population of 23,000 located between Glendale and Pasadena in the greater Los Angeles foothill area.

The strongest challenge facing LCHS is to address student and parent identified needs for increased classroom use of technology, state mandates for language arts and math curriculum standards implementation, national mandates for implementation of workplace competencies and WASC accreditation recommendations for expansion of technology, career preparation, student-active instructional strategies and interdisciplinary curriculum. As the focus of all these efforts, LCHS students create personal portfolios in which they apply organizational strategies, access and synthesize print as well as electronic information, reflect on individual learning plans, demonstrate proficiency in various written composition strategies and evaluate their mastery of the district’s curriculum standards in math, English, science, social science and foreign language.

The digital portfolio program is intended to enhance and improve the current paper-based portfolios. Digital portfolios will motivate and enable students to design more effective portfolios as they learn computer and network skills that are essential for careers and higher education in the Communications-Information Age. Students will meet academic and career standards as they use the digital technologies of the World Wide Web to enhance critical thinking, interdisciplinary and multimedia projects, personal growth over time, organization skills, communication skills and presentation skills in an authentic environment. Digital portfolios have the added advantage of being accessible over computer networks or CD-ROMs. A critical part of our technology plan, the portfolios will be financed through School Improvement funds, contributions from the local education foundation and appropriate grants.

Staff development will focus on the curricular objectives and benefits of career portfolios as well as on the specifics of creating digital portfolios. Evaluations will be based on portfolio assessment rubrics (already created) and student/parent/staff questionnaires and will be formally reported on the district’s assessment. Funding is requested for staff development and technologies for the computer labs. Through in-kind funding the school will provide pupil-free inservice time and three computer labs. Three portfolio mentors will work with staff, students, parents and partners to administer the program. The partners consist of six colleges, ten businesses and the Regional Occupational Program, all of which contribute evaluators for the portfolio presentations, performance assessment opportunities for inclusion in the portfolios and technical as well as human resources advice.