New Tech Network

In many schools, project-based learning happens in isolated cases: in certain teachers’ classrooms here and there, or in the contexts of specific subjects. But for students to benefit from project-based learning, ideally it’s part of a school’s infrastructure — a way to approach learning holistically.

For one quickly growing network of schools, project-based learning is the crux of the entire ecosystem. New Tech Network, which was founded 15 years ago, is taking its school-wide project-based model to national scale. The organization, which offers a paid program for schools to use its model, began with a flagship school in Napa and has grown to 120 schools in 18 states, most of which are public schools.

The network has not only grown in size, but also in notoriety. President Obama visited Manor New Tech High School in Texas last week, as part of an effort to promote an education agenda focused on producing graduates that can compete in today’s global economy.

The nod from the president comes at a time when New Tech is attempting to position itself as a successful model to follow. But rather than relying on test scores and such quantifiable numbers to prove its value, New Tech’s own 2013 annual report frames success by focusing on deeper learning that can’t be measured by standardized test scores and their college readiness. Yet it’s that lack of emphasis on test scores, an all-consuming worry for many districts, that makes it more difficult for the organization to pin point numbers to tell its story.

Here are a few of the statistics New Tech has gathered from their schools: students graduate at a rate six percent higher than the national average and enroll in college nine percent more than the average. They also persist in four-year universities at a 17 percent higher rate and 46 percent higher rate when it comes to two year colleges. Perhaps most importantly, they claim that students’ higher order thinking skills between freshmen and senior years grow 75 percent more than a comparison group that did not attend a New Tech high school.

New Tech calls itself a school development organization and is a non-profit subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks, another non-profit that acts as a foundation, education policy advocate and on-the-ground work through mergers with groups like New Tech, Strive and EdWorks.

GRAPPLING WITH THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

New Tech offers whole-school change to any school interested in contracting with them, including public schools. It has implemented the model in charter and private schools as well, but the majority of its clients are public schools. “From where we stand, public school districts are as capable of innovative schools as charter schools,” said Lydia Dobyns, president of New Tech Network. But as everyone in education knows, every school and every district has different needs, and the organization’s offerings are changed accordingly.

New Tech schools are entirely project-based and cross-disciplinary. Students take courses like Bio-literacy, which mesh subjects together, emphasizing that disciplines are not stand-alone endeavors. Technology is woven throughout the school day and at home seamlessly. Many New Tech schools have one-to-one programs and all schools in the network use a learning management system called Echo that tracks student progress, is open to teachers and students, and connects New Tech educators around the country.

New Tech Network

Assessments are designed to measure different kinds of learning outcomes. Mike Reed, principal of Columbus Signature Academy in Indiana, said that only 60 percent of assessment is based on content. The other 40 percent is based on what he called “school-wide learning outcomes,” things like written and oral proficiency, work ethic, presentation skills and the ability to give and take feedback. Students can see the project rubric and know where they need to improve their skills.

“Looking at school performance is really different from looking at student growth, which is really what we want to focus on,” Dobyns said. That’s why New Tech doesn’t promise to increase school test scores – it sees that as a separate question, and one that they’re not necessarily interested in.

The schools that have taken on this model don’t seem to mind that test scores aren’t the focus. “A big difference you’d see is student engagement,” Reed said. “Students are working on authentic projects and problems.” He gave an example of a cross curricular physics and environmental science class that studied the physics of power and electricity. “Our students learned those skills and then rewired houses that were destroyed in New Orleans’ 9th Ward. They’re going to remember that far longer than regurgitating a test or a lab.”

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

New Tech works with schools individually, offering professional development as the school gets started. “One of the things we’ve learned and changed is that every implementation is now a custom designed implementation plan,” Dobyns said.

New Tech sticks with a school for five years, spending the first year laying ground work, listening to what schools want and need and garnering teacher buy-in. They offer intensive trainings to help teachers retool skills to teach entirely-project based and cross-curricular classes. Each school is given a coach who visits throughout the school year, checks on lesson plans, suggests changes and helps troubleshoot problems. And New Tech focuses on nurturing the leadership capacity of principals so they can continue to innovate with teachers.

[RELATED READING: Are Teachers of Tomorrow Prepared to Use Innovative Tech?]

At Columbus Signature Academy, Reed and his staff discussed the professional culture they wanted to promote and decided they’d make decisions by consensus. “That changes everything in a school,” Reed said. Those affected by a decision get equal say in making it, and that includes students. For example, teachers are in charge of the master schedule because it affects them most, but students can weigh in about how changes affect them too.

If gaining consensus is important in New Tech Schools, so is transparency. Teachers share and vet lessons with colleagues at the beginning and end of every project to learn from successes and mistakes. Teachers aren’t penalized if something they try doesn’t work out. They share their successes, experiments, and failures and everyone learns from the experience. That’s the kind of collaborative learning schools expect from students and Dobyns thinks it’s important that teachers experience and practice it too.

TRANSITION CHALLENGES

Opening or converting to a New Tech school can mean some growing pains.

“It’s almost a month of de-programming,” said Randy Hollenkamp, director of Bulldog Tech in San Jose, one of the few middle schools New Tech has begun to pilot. When kids enter his seventh grade they are so used to the traditional school system, they don’t know how to work collaboratively on projects. “At first their grades go down just because it’s projects. It’s actually kind of harder because you have to be a self-learner.” In traditional schools, kids are constantly being directed, so they don’t have to think for themselves as much, Hollenkamp said.

“Every year, as you grow into it, it’s difficult for the group of students who aren’t a part of New Tech,” said Jason Witzigreuter, principal of Adams Central in Monroe, Indiana. Adams Central is a unique school in the New Tech Network because it is a K-12 school under one roof, but only the high school uses New Tech’s model. Witzigreuter calls his school a hybrid model and a learning experience. The school is three years into the experiment, which means the seniors are the only class without their own laptops and without some of the communication and presentation skills that the freshmen quickly pick up.

“Our kids at a lower grade are able to understand how to collaborate better and use those soft skills, or 21st century skills, better because they’ve been taught that through New Tech,” Witzigreuter said. He tries to use the younger students’ success to encourage seniors into demonstrating the same kinds of higher order thinking and maturity.

[RELATED READING: How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World?]

From New Tech’s perspective, one of the hardest things about working on a five-year timeline can be school leadership changes. And, like any part of the public school system, funding cuts can affect whether a district is able to continue to pay for the program.

COSTS

New Tech’s model is not cheap. It costs about $100,000-$120,000 per year for each school. That hefty fee includes support, training, professional development, and access to the knowledge and experience of all the other schools in the network. Still, to pay for it, districts have done everything from pass school bonds, apply for state innovation grants, apply for private foundation grants and beg districts for the money. In addition to New Tech’s service fees, schools have to pay for the technology that accompanies the program and often facility redesign to foster more collaborative “studio” spaces.

Though it’s a big price tag, the principals interviewed at three New Tech schools thought the money was well spent. Success For All is another school development program that uses a “whole school” model at the elementary school level. They estimate that for 500 students, their program costs $120,000 in the first year and decreases to $50,000 in the second year, finally reaching $30,000 in the third year. High schools programs generally cost more than elementary programs, though.

NEW DIRECTIONS

New Tech has proven that its model is scalable, in part with extra cash from its parent company KnowledgeWorks. Now they’re trying to see if it can work beyond high school. In the past year New Tech has opened 10 middle schools in various states and is dipping into the elementary school scene as well. They’re also trying to find ways for districts to expand the model to other schools nearby on their own. “The first New Tech School can be an anchor in their district and then the strategies can spread across the schools,” Dobyns said. Leaders and teachers at the anchor school could act as trainers and coaches to others, lowering the cost of transitioning future schools.

Lenny Gonzalez

Some might say it’s all well and good to teach responsibility and accountability and self-sufficiency, but what about test scores?

At Napa New Tech, the numbers speak for themselves. The school’s 2009 API scores was 818. (Napa New Tech is the first school in the New Tech Network, and was opened in 1996.) The average score of all the 62 schools in the New Tech Network for 2008 was 691, and the growth in the score between 2007 and 2008 was 10.75.

“In general, our students do better across the country in humanities, language arts, social studies, and science,” said Chris Walsh, director of innovation and design at New Tech Network. “Math is still at average. But in terms of engagement, college attendance, and graduation rates, we’re off the charts.”

He’s right. From the KnowledgeWorks Foundation (which New Tech is a subsidiary of):

Also according to Knowledgeworks:

- 26 of 28 New Tech schools with available data (or 93%) had attendance rates between 90-100% in 2008-09. Almost two-thirds of the New Tech schools had a 0% drop out rate across grades in 2008-09.

- 98% of Napa New Tech graduates surveyed advanced to post-secondary education.

- 40% are in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM) career tracks compared with 7% of high school graduates nationwide.

More numbers to take into account, showing that the New Tech model could work in any setting.

- 1/3 of New Tech schools are in rural areas; 1/3 are in suburban; and 1/3 are in urban neighborhoods.

- Half of the students in the network have free and/or reduced lunch.

But even with such promising scores, the whole assessment issue can stand some serious review, Walsh said.

“We’re trying to redefine what the definition of a great school is. Not just good test scores or great football teams,” he said. “If we had a national assessment around critical thinking, which we unfortunately don’t, you would change the whole dialogue.”

Lenny Gonzalez

For a good idea to truly have a powerful impact, it needs to be replicable. And that’s what the New Tech Network is doing: teaching schools across the country how to scale the Napa New Tech model.

“When you talk about meaningful change that’s sustainable, you’re talking about a system change,” said Chris Walsh, director of innovation and design at New Tech Network, which is a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks. “What the New Tech system represents is [dismantling] the traditional model, then putting back the components so everything meshes together.”

It’s an arduous process, and one that takes a year’s worth of planning and hard work on everyone’s part, and about half a million dollars to institute. For starters, the three non-negotiables that every New Tech school must have are:

- 1-1 computers (that is, one computer for every student)

- Project-based learning

- Team teaching

And the schools must be flexible in reconfiguring the curriculum. “If you have pacing guides, and you have to cover this topic on this day, it won’t work,” Walsh said.

But if and when schools are prepared to move forward, the process goes something like this:

- New Tech Network coaches visit an interested school and show them the master plan of how a New Tech school is put together and governed.

- New Tech coaches shadow the converting school’s teachers and administrators.

- Educators from the converting school are brought to Napa New Tech to see first-hand how the system work in practice.

- Educators from the converting school go through a five-day training process (last year 400 new teachers were trained for 27 new schools), where they’re introduced to a “blitz of project-based training,” according to Walsh.

- When the school becomes part of the New Tech Network, New Tech coaches visit the school up to 10 times a year, keeping close tabs on the rubrics. They also offer them remote support with Skype, e-mail, and lots of phone calls.

- Each year, all the New Tech educators convene at a national conference to get “re-energized,” Walsh said.

One more interesting point Walsh brings up about teacher training:

“Traditional schools of education don’t graduate students who are ready for this, so a lot of time has to be spent training teachers,” he said.

Lenny Gonzalez

What does the high school of the future look like? It’s one that emphasizes useful, relevant skills that can be applied to college and the work world beyond. One that encourages students to be critical thinkers, responsible for their own actions. One that trains them to work collaboratively and push themselves to outside their comfort zones. And one that uses the benefits of technology to reach those goals.

If these are the tenets, then the folks at Napa New Technology High School in Napa, Calif., believe theirs is the model.

One of 62 schools in the New Tech Network, Napa New Tech High has turned the traditional high school model on its ear. Its objective is to deliver responsible citizens who are ready to work or go to college, and learn the skills to be prepared for the world outside the confines of school.

I visited the campus recently and came away with a clear understanding of the school’s vision. There’s a lot to cover, but in essence, I’ve boiled it down to these five ways I consider New Tech a school of the future.

1) Breeding a culture of accountability.

Aligning with the growing movement of teaching 21st century skills, one of the recurring mantras at New Tech High is the pervasive culture of respect, trust, and responsibility that goes both ways between educators and students. For instance, you’ll hear no bells signaling the end of class periods. Students are trusted to keep track of their own time, just as they would as grownups in the outside world, and to show up where they need to at the appropriate times. They can organize independent study projects with teachers and work on their own or in groups in the school’s airy atrium/cyber café.

“How students work here is different from traditional schools,” said Paul Curtis, assistant director of school design at Napa New Tech. “It’s much less about control. Our kids are basically treated as much as possible like an employee in a company. With respect and trust.”

Lenny Gonzalez

When, for example, it came time to nail down a policy about video games – whether non-educational games should be allowed on school computers or only on personal computers, whether headphones should be required, whether some games should be barred completely at school – administrators included students in the decision-making process.

“Rather than come up with rules to control behavior, we give them as much freedom as possible, but give them norms and behaviors for work we want everyone to do. It’s the idea of ownership of community,” Curtis said.

2) Project-based curriculum.

Put simply, project-based curriculum emphasizes learning through doing classroom projects that address a specific issue or challenge. Students typically carry out the projects in groups, and teachers guide them along.

At Napa New Tech, you’ll hear very little lecturing and see few teacher-led activities. For this school, the decision to use project-based curriculum was based not only on what topics students should learn, but also what skills they should acquire in school.

Lenny Gonzalez

“It came from a fundamental belief that we have a set of skills we want to teach kids,” Curtis said. “Critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. There are two approaches you can take: create electives that teach these skills, or embed them into every single class. If you do the latter, it leads to project-based learning.”

And in this era of high accountability, the New Tech team recognizes that the curriculum must be tied to standards. (More on the school’s assessment scores in an upcoming article.)

“We have to train teachers to look at standards that states derive, where there’s meaningful application of that knowledge,” Curtis said. “So now we start with standards and build curriculum around them. And at the same time, we provide deeper a learning experience that also teaches 21st century skills.”

3) Smart use of technology.

You can’t escape computers at Napa New Tech High. They’re everywhere. Students sit grouped together at round or long conference tables, working in teams, each one armed with a computer. The point, though, is not that they have these computers, but how it helps them become self-sufficient learners.

“Kids are finding the path to knowledge their own way,” Curtis said. “They become empowered and no longer have to raise their hand to ask a question unless they’re really stuck. This pushes them to become lifelong learners. It happens every time as long as you have access to information and technology.”

To that end, every student has access to a computer, whether it’s brought from home or provided by the school, whether it’s a Netbook or a desktop. For those families who can’t provide laptops for students, the school offers desktops. But according to Curtis, 93% of students bring their own laptops, though 33% are on free or reduced lunch.

4) Test scores based on more than knowing just facts.

In most schools, if a student turns in a project or paper late, her entire grade is typically lowered. And as a result, that one grade doesn’t accurately indicate other important factors, such as quality of work or amount of effort. With New Tech’s “gradebook” system, a student is graded on four different criteria: content, written communication (even in subjects like math), critical thinking, and work ethic.

And sometimes to surprising results.

Lenny Gonzalez

“Some kids who struggle the most are bright kids who’ve always gotten A’s but now are not necessarily getting the grades they’ve gotten,” said Howard Mahoney, principal of Napa New Tech High School. “When it comes to things like collaboration, critical thinking, pushing above and beyond, they don’t know what to do when they’re graded on those things and sometimes they get a D on an assignment. Other kids who’ve never been successful are doing great.”

Every student has access to how they scored in the rubric, and can easily identify what part of their project can be improved.

5) Providing a framework for other schools to scale.

You’ll find pockets of innovation all across the country, examples of progressive schools or programs that could be replicated, but often are not for a long list of reasons. But New Tech Network is scaling its program all over the country.

Napa New Tech High is the first of a proliferating network of schools that follow the same ideals and mission. As of now, 62 schools across the country are replicating the New Tech model (and that number grows).

What does it take to become a New Tech school? First and foremost, it’s the willingness to embrace absolute change in school culture.

“If you don’t have this atmosphere, it’s hard to think about academic achievement. Even in urban schools, we focus on culture as the primary piece, because until that gets established it’s hard to do anything else,” said Chris Walsh, director of innovation and design at New Tech Network, which is a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

Also, it takes many months of planning, about $450,000 to $500,000, a lot of intense teacher re-training, an entire project-based curriculum, and possibly the biggest challenge — an understanding that the model has to be embraced in its entirety.

“It doesn’t help to try to piecemeal your way to change,” Walsh said. “Each of those small changes are seen by the rest of the system as cancer. The whole system fights against that change.”

And they’re pushing for even further growth. To really get traction and for communities to benefit from all the advantages of New Tech schools, the network’s goal is to create entire districts with their model.

“We’ve figured out the school part,” Walsh said. “But the big challenge for us is to create a district that supports the infrastructure like this.”