Milestones in the High Tech High journey

Last in a three-part series. Read part one and part two.

The early success of the High Tech High educational model spurred the creation of High Tech Middle School, which opened in a nearby building in 2003, providing a “longer runway toward graduation,” said key founder Gary Jacobs.

One year later, High Tech High International opened. And in 2005, High Tech Middle Media Arts and High Tech High Media Arts opened their doors. Then in 2006, Explorer Elementary School joined the organization.

The Point Loma cluster of campuses now includes three high schools, two middle schools and one elementary school, all operating under a charter authorized by the San Diego Unified School District.

The original High Tech High School now serves 540 students in grades 9-12, with about 2,200 students in all six schools.
Perhaps one of the greatest achievements to date has been the Statewide Benefit Charter granted in early 2006, which allowed the High Tech organization to open charter schools statewide without needing local authorization.
The first of its kind, it was originally restricted to 10 charter schools serving students in grades 9-12, said Jacobs. But this was recently changed “to be a K-12, so [students] could follow completely through. And they also increased us from 10 schools to 48 schools.”

Under the new Statewide Benefit Charter, High Tech High Chula Vista and High Tech High San Marcos opened in 2007, each of which will accommodate 500 students when full. This fall, the organization plans to open High Tech Middle San Marcos, and Jacobs said donors are interested in opening either a High Tech middle or a grades K-8 school in Chula Vista.

This brings the total number of schools under the High Tech umbrella to eight, serving about 2,800 students total, with over 300 employees and $57 million in real estate holdings. All schools are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Funding comes from the state on a per-pupil basis, the same as most other California schools, although Jacobs said the network is a non-profit organization with a private foundation to handle donations.

“But by design we operate the basic program under what the state of California gives us, because we wanted to get away from the argument that … of course you’re doing well [because] you’ve got all this extra money,” Jacobs said. “So we designed the program to operate with what the state gives us.”

Private money, however, is raised to pay for facilities, which is often the biggest obstacle to success for start-up charter schools.

Larry Rosenstock remains founding principal of High Tech High and Chief Executive Officer of the organization. There is one board of directors for the entire High Tech operation, chaired by Jacobs. But every school has its own director who is responsible for his or her own budget, which is approved by the board.

Achievements

Since 2003, the High Tech High schools have graduated 790 students. Last June, about 270 students graduated. Of those, all have been admitted to a college or university and 99 percent plan to attend.

High Tech leaders take particular pride in the fact that the schools graduate and send to college a high percentage of low-income students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college.

Rosenstock said about 40 percent of the High Tech student population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty. Of those who graduated from high school, 88 percent have graduated from college or are still enrolled, he said.
Some High Tech graduates choose not to attend college for a variety of reasons, usually financial, Jacobs said, “but we get them accepted.” And they’ve been admitted to some of the most elite universities in the country, he added, through the services of an in-house college counselor.

“So it’s like a private school,” Jacobs said. “His job is to make sure every student has completed those ‘a-g’ requirements and then to work with them to get them into whatever school they’re interested in going to.” The counselor’s job is also to bring college admissions officers to High Tech High “to make sure they understand why we’re different.”

Last year the High Tech schools had 4,700 applicants for 350 spots. “If a student’s been selected in that kind of lottery, they feel really lucky,” Jacobs said. This contributes to a culture where kids want to be there, minimizing disciplines issues and disengagement from the learning, he said.

There is some attrition, he said, mostly due to student dissatisfaction because the school is too hard, doesn’t offer sports, or isn’t what they thought it would be. But he claims they have few dropouts, saying almost all who leave transfer to other schools.

Ben Daley, High Tech High’s Chief Operating Officer, said only once or twice in the history of the school have there been actual dropouts. Of the students who enter ninth grade, 82 percent graduate from High Tech four years later, he said. And of the 18 percent who leave, Daley said they leave for a variety of reasons, but failure is not one of them.

Students are never expelled for poor academic performance. “Because we’re small, we can catch that much earlier, and we can apply the resources we have available … to get the kids back up to speed,” Jacobs said.

“Our philosophy is that if you’ve gotten into the school and you’re working, then it’s our responsibility to provide the resources needed for you to succeed,” he said. The only reason kids might be asked to leave is if behavioral problems prevent other students from learning.

Discipline

Because high schools by definition serve teenagers, the High Tech schools do have their share of typical teenage problems like alcohol abuse, behavioral issues, drugs and violence. But Daley said the problems are minimal.

“When I first got into teaching, somebody told me that the best classroom management is a good lesson plan – by which they mean that if you’re teaching well, then kids are going to be paying attention and engaged and are less likely, therefore, to be acting out,” he said.

The goal is to provide a school where kids are “doing meaningful work that feels real to them,” said Daley, who believes that many of the problems high schools typically confront can be traced to students having to sit in chairs and listen to lectures “seven times a day for 60 minutes at a time.”

Providing a different kind of learning environment “changes the whole dynamic and the atmosphere for us right off the bat,” he said.

“And then I think kids feel that it’s an honor to come to our school,” he said. “It’s not that we’ve never had kids come to a dance having been drinking or ever had a kid get into a physical altercation. We’ve had some of that. But … we’ve done a pretty good job of creating a culture where kids feel like this is something special and [they] don’t want to mess it up.”

Even an action that might result in an automatic expulsion or suspension in traditional high schools is handled differently at High Tech schools, where there is no zero tolerance policy.

Instead, Daley said they look at each student as an individual and try to understand each one’s particular circumstances before handing down uniform consequences. The message that certain behavior is not acceptable, and may even result in a suspension, is important, he said, “but so is that we still love you and want you to come back.”

Daley said the school’s philosophy of respecting students and their ideas also contributes to lower disciplinary problems. So instead of yelling at students or treating them disrespectfully, teachers are trained to talk to kids in polite, quiet, respectful ways.

“If they’re frustrating us, we get softer, not louder,” Daley said. “There are techniques that we’re using that can diffuse the situations versus making them worse.”

Cheating, a common occurrence that plagues most other schools, happens at the High Tech schools as well, but, again, to a lesser extent.

The temptation to cheat is greater, Daley said, when homework becomes burdensome or tedious, or when the assignment is to write a standard essay of a popular book, 500 versions of which can be found on the Web. But these kinds of lesson plans run counter to the overall philosophy of the High Tech vision for learning.

“The idea of cheating is not the issue for us that it is for other schools I’ve worked at, because we’re not really giving the kinds of assignments that one can cheat on,” he said.

The key is to hand out assignments that are unique, involve the student’s own perspective, or entail hands-on projects like creating a documentary film or building a robot, Daley said.

The model for the future

When it all began 10 years ago, Rosenstock said he never envisioned operating a network of schools, being chartered by the state, running their own teacher certification program, or opening a graduate school of education.

Today, the schools have achieved national – and even international – recognition.

“We’ve had visitors from all over the world – 2,000 to 3,000 a year – who come on their own to visit the school,” Rosenstock said. They come from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Jordan, Israel, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

California Charter Schools Association’s Jed Wallace said the High Tech High model offers a starting point for many organizations hoping to transform the state of public education. Other charters, most of them funded in part by philanthropic foundations, are also generating good results for kids, he said.

“But philanthropists, no matter how deep the pockets, can’t sustain forever that level of investment that should be undertaken by society,” Wallace said.

Business and civic engagement in public education in San Diego, so well exemplified by High Tech High, was the start of a healthy movement that is having an unprecedented impact on education policy, Wallace said.

Los Angeles, which he called the most important charter school market in the country today, is “lifting a page that was first learned in San Diego, when the civic community came together and said, ‘We’re going to get something done.’”

Wallace said other urban cities across the state and the nation once regarded San Diego as a model for the successful alliance of education, private industry and public agencies.

“A lot of people sat up and paid attention to what happened [in San Diego],” he said. “They all got inspired. And they quickly passed San Diego, which for whatever reason got complacent.”

The overwhelming success of the High Tech schools is the direct result of this kind of engagement, said Wallace, who lamented the retreat of San Diego’s business and civic leaders since that time.

“The possibilities for reform in San Diego are just so promising,” he said. “I would love it if the civic and business community could come back together in a really constructive way … [and] step back up and take that leadership that they rightly earned about a decade ago.”

Wallace said more and more people are realizing that “the charter school concept is the healthiest context from which to nurture and grow basically whatever reform effort in public education you would want to grow. And High Tech High is certainly among the organizations that has made great progress.”

However, he’s skeptical that regular public schools can replicate the kind of revolutionary vision that defines the High Tech schools.

“They might be able to take aspects of it,” he said. “But … school districts and district-managed schools are not set up to be organized around a principle or around specific ideas, and that’s what charter schools are.”

Rosenstock credits a “fantastic staff and gifted teachers” for much of the success of the High Tech schools. But clearly, there is more.

“We needed to bring the pedagogy of technical education to the content of academic education,” he said, of the High Tech founding principles. “It was fairly organic. I think the things we do are obvious, to tell you the truth.”

Marsha Sutton is a freelance education writer who has been covering education issues in San Diego County for the past 14 years. She can be reached at SuttComm@san.rr.com.

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