I came across this article this morning...Sigh...if only...Reinventing High School
Education infused with technology
Forget tests and papers. These students are doing documentaries and books.
By Dale Mezzacappa
Inquirer Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO - Chandler Garbell got straight A's but was still restless at suburban Rancho Bernardo High School. She was tired of textbook exercises, even in Advanced Placement courses.
"I realized there was something missing in my education," she said. So, in her junior year, she transferred to High Tech High.
Brandan Johnson had a different kind of restlessness. A black male living in a rough section of town, he knew too many kids who wound up in prison or working at McDonald's. With a push from his parents, he, too, signed up for High Tech High.
In this innovative charter school, in a converted warehouse, students don't take tests or write papers. Instead, they use the latest technology to produce documentaries, books and presentations.
The brainchild of lawyer-turned-educator Larry Rosenstock, High Tech High is one of many attempts nationally to reinvent high schools. The burgeoning movement is fueled by growing alarm over dropout rates - especially among blacks and Hispanics - disengaged students, and a decline in American competitiveness in science and math.
The quest is attracting millions of dollars from entrepreneurs and philanthropists, led by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who earlier this year told the nation's governors that the traditional large urban high school is obsolete.
High Tech High is one of the models attracting the most attention and support. Gates' foundation has given Rosenstock more than $10 million to expand, and San Diego real estate magnate Gary Jacobs gave $6 million for startup.
"This is a very impressive school," said Betsy Brand, director of the American Youth Policy Forum, which promotes initiatives that benefit adolescents. Brand is taking state legislators from around the country on a tour of the school in February. "It's very youth-oriented, and students who have a lot of interest in an area can pursue it."
High Tech's model is to locate small schools with no more than 450 students each on the same campus.
In San Diego are High Tech High, two other specialty high schools, two middle schools, and an elementary school.
The schools are more like college than high school, with students taking responsibility for their own learning through interdisciplinary projects and internships.
Unlike many charter schools that target low-income students or minorities, High Tech High seeks students of all backgrounds on the conviction that they learn best together.
Its student body is about 55 percent white, 15 percent each black and Hispanic, the rest Asian and Filipino. About 15 percent are poor enough under federal guidelines to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
And while it's nontraditional, it delivers on traditional measures. There's no test prep, but it scored in the top 10 percent among high schools in the California academic improvement index, which includes test scores. That's among all high schools, not just those with similar demographics.
Higher percentages of students of all ethnic groups at the school passed the state's graduation tests in English and math than in the state as a whole.
What impresses philanthropists and educators most is that all of its graduates in three classes have gone to college - more than half were the first in their families to do so - and 80 percent to four-year schools.
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High Tech High, with its high ceilings, exposed ductwork, and glass-walled offices, doesn't look like a school.
Student work clogs the classrooms and hallways, everything from computer-altered photographs to a human-powered submarine, the work of a physics class. While every moment is abuzz with activity, there is very little disruption. The curtained, gray-carpeted oval in the center of the one-story building, called the common space, sometimes is used as a classroom, sometimes as a meeting place, sometimes for quiet study.
It is "high tech" not because it trains students to fix computers and write software, although some do, but because technology is infused throughout the curriculum. Students work on networked laptops and maintain digital portfolios.
Some travel; this year, 12 seniors went to Baja California for eight weeks to study marine life, including plankton, whale sharks and sea turtles, as well as the area's history and culture. They not only collected specimens but also created poetry, a documentary, a mural, and a novel.
In the last two years, Jay Vavra's junior biotechnology classes designed, wrote and photographed a field guide to wildlife in San Diego Bay, with a foreword by anthropologist Jane Goodall.
This year, Vavra's class is compiling a book and DVD on the history and changing ecology of the bay, covering such subjects as abalone and kelp farming, the salt industry, and the role of Native American and Chinese fishermen. They tracked down original sources - former saltworks managers, fishermen, and scholars.
Each group of six students divides the duties: interviewing, research, computer design, video, and devising a timeline. Teachers make sure each group has students with different skill levels.
Chandler Garbell helped edit the field guide. "We delve into it, we learn all the facts of a particular project. That's where true learning comes from," she said.
Brandan Johnson isn't sure he'd be applying to college if it weren't for High Tech High. "The transition was difficult," he said. "I didn't do that well in ninth grade. I was used to just 'study this, do this.' " Now he wants to be a psychologist.
Most of the teachers come from nontraditional backgrounds. Erika Page, a lawyer who spent a year with Teach for America, will be a founding faculty member at High Tech High-Austin, Texas, when it opens in September.
"This is a teacher's dream," she said. "The students are much more invested. I won't say there are no behavior problems, but that tends to go down because every type of learning modality is used. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to teach like this unless they were invested in the traditional classroom."
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Rosenstock, the former principal of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge, Mass., plans to open more school campuses in California as well as Texas. He formed a charter-management organization to control the design of future schools.
Mastery Charter in Philadelphia was affiliated with Rosenstock's original network but broke away so it could group students by skill level.
That concept is verboten to Rosenstock, who doesn't want to duplicate the tracking that he said consigns many students in urban high schools to low standards and expectations.
"We felt so strongly that was the way to go, especially for students who were significantly behind, that it didn't make sense to affiliate," said Scott Gordon, CEO of Mastery.
Mastery, which is seeking to open another school in Philadelphia and one in Chester, has shown success in its own right. It serves a much poorer population than High Tech High - 75 percent qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch vs. High Tech's 15 percent - yet has graduated more than 90 percent of its students and sent three-quarters to college.
In California, High Tech High has won the state's backing. It now has the right to train its own teachers and open charter schools anywhere in the state without local approval.
Rosenstock first opposed charter schools, but came to see them as the only way to force change.
"If something is not working, we have to be intellectually honest and change it," he said. "Here, teachers meet one hour every morning, 180 days a year. In a typical school, they may meet a few afternoons a year. They have no capacity to work for change."
It's not easy to break the mold in creating a school, with parents are wary of a school different from what they remember.
"When I first opened up, people said I was crazy," Rosenstock said. "Usually parents will tell me that their high school experience is alienating, but still they want the same for their kids. But now that we're getting all our kids into college, they feel more comfortable."
Contact Dale Mezzacappa at
dmezzacappa@phillynews.com or 215-854-5112.
How is High Tech High Different?
Design principles: "Personalization, adult-world connection, common intellectual mission."
Technology is not a subject, it is the primary mode of learning.
All students have access to a laptop computer for at least half a day.
No more than 450 students in any school.
Assessment is through presentation and performance, not tests.
Final senior projects are graded by committees of adults from the school and community.
No formal sports, arts or music, although there are student-run activities in these areas.
There is no tracking. Students of all abilities learn together and are often on the same project teams.
Admission is by lottery.
Student-teacher ratio is 20:1. Each student has the same adviser for all four years.
Less than 1 percent of students are suspended. While some students transfer to different schools, the dropout rate is negligible.
All graduates have been admitted to college; 58 percent of those are the first in their families to go.
It is a charter school. In addition to taxpayer dollars, it is supported by grants from corporations and foundations.
