El Camino Real Charter High School is a public secondary school located in the Woodland Hills district of the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California. The school, founded in 1969, was designed to emulate a small college campus, with a large central "quad" and an open campus policy .ECR serves portions of Woodland Hills and West Hills and also maintains a sizable "traveling" student population from other areas of the district.ECR's Academic Performance Index was 832 out of 1,000 in 2012, a leap of 28 points over the previous year's mark.From March 31, 2009, El Camino Real High School became a California Distinguished School. In December 2010, the teachers and staff at the school voted for it to become a charter school. This change took effect in the fall of 2011.Academic competitionsAcademic Decathlon teamThe school's Academic Decathlon team won national titles in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2014 (a national record).Science BowlECR's Science Bowl competes in one of the most difficult regions in all of the United States. In recent years, they have made it to the semifinals and placed in the top 4 four times in recent history. In 2001, they placed fourth; 2006–2nd place; 2007–3rd place; and in 2009–4th place.The King's CourierThe King's Courier is El Camino's award-winning school newspaper. The paper is student run and published every two weeks. Members of its staff return every year with trophies from regional, state and national competition, and its editors have moved on to positions on newspapers at schools such as Ole Miss, Harvard, Cornell, UCLA and Columbia. Its partner in journalism, "El Camino Reality," is a biweekly webcast news show. The show's predecessor, "ECEye," was removed from its weekly airing at El Camino in 2008 after a successful two-year run.
