Southern California Private Schools Academic Decathlon

The Southern California Private School Academic Decathlon is a recognized participant under the California Academic Decathlon and the United States Academic Decathlon Program. Academic Decathlon is a ten-event scholastic competition for teams of high school students.

The theme for the 2016-2017 Academic Decathlon season is :

WORLD WAR II

Who we are.

Southern California Private School Academic Decathlon began when a group of parochial schools wanted to participate in the Academic Decathlon experience, but lacked the resources to compete on the same level as the large public high schools.

Permission was given by the California Academic Decathlon to create a separate competition open to all private high schools and magnet schools in Southern California .

The private schools competition winner is invited to compete for the state championship along with the other 49 county competition winners and selected invited teams. The California State Champion competes in the United States Academic Decathlon competition, held annually in April.

A unique aspect of Academic Decathlon is that it is designed to include students from all achievement levels. Teams generally consist of nine members, who are divided into three divisions based on grade point average: Honors (3.75–4.0 GPA), Scholastic (3.00–3.74 GPA), and Varsity (0.00–2.99 GPA). Each team member competes in all ten events against other students in his or her division. Overall team scores are calculated using the top two overall individual scores from each division. Gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded for individual events as well as for overall scores.

The ten events require knowledge in many academic disciplines. Students must take seven multiple choice tests in art, economics, language and literature, math, music, science and social science. These topics, with the exception of math, are thematically linked each year. One of the multiple choice events, usually science or social science, is chosen for the Super Quiz. In addition to the seven objective events, there are three subjective events graded by judges: essay, interview and speech.

The U.S. Academic Decathlon® is excited to announce that the overall curricular theme for 2016–2017 will be World War II.

Following is some general information on the topics in each of the subject areas.

 SCIENCE: The science topic will be an introduction to atomic and nuclear physics and will include a section on the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb.

 LITERATURE: The literature curriculum will include critical reading, one long work of literature, and selected shorter works. The long work of literature will be the novel Transit by Anna Seghers.

 ART: The art curriculum will include a section on art fundamentals and will largely focus on the art of the World War II era.

 MUSIC: The music curriculum will include basic elements of music theory and will focus on the music of the World War II era.

 SOCIAL SCIENCE: The social science curriculum will cover World War II.

 ECONOMICS: The economics curriculum will cover fundamental economic concepts, microeconomics, and macroeconomics and will also include a thematic section on the economic origins and impact of World War II.

 MATHEMATICS: The mathematics curriculum will cover algebra and trigonometry.*