First Class

And now the once-single New Tech High concept has been successfully exported. So far, nine are located in Northern California and five in Los Angeles; six are open in North Carolina; along with a handful in Texas, Louisiana and Oregon; one in Alaska; and about a half dozen on the drawing board in Indiana. It’s more than the people who pioneered the New Tech High movement could have ever envisioned when they began working on the idea 15 years ago.

Susan Schilling, chief executive officer of the New Technology Foundation, which was formed in 1999 to export this educational product, sees no end in sight. “For 2007, we’re engaged with 10 sites in the planning process,” she says, “and we’re targeting 10 to 12 per year from now until forever.” Before she became the Foundation’s CEO, Schilling was general manager for a multimedia educational firm formed by filmmaker George Lucas in Marin County.

“For the community of Napa—this quiet, sleepy town—to get this done and now places like the state of North Carolina want to use us as a model for education? It’s incredible,” says Vincent “Buzz” Butler, a Napa County land developer. “Ask me about this school and I get tears in my eyes.”

Making it happen

According to Butler, New Tech High is the product of necessity as envisioned by a local business community faced with changing economic times at the close of the 20th century, a growing student population and educators willing to entertain the idea of change.

In the early 1990s, Butler was in charge of marketing the 386-acre Napa Valley Gateway Business Park, which was being developed near the Napa Airport at the foot of the valley. Finding jobs was his goal in 1991, a sensitive time for Napa that was seeing the last of the industrial jobs at Mare Island go away as that shipyard began closing down for good.

“My task was to fill up this project with businesses,” says Butler. “Technology was the growth sector at the time, and the idea was to bring those companies to Napa.”

It was a good idea, says Butler, but he soon found that to woo Silicon Valley north of the bay would take more than a great quality of life, inexpensive land and affordable executive housing.

“Our schools and our workforce were pretty weak—California average,” he remembers. “To pull businesses out of places like Palo Alto was a tough sell.”

So Butler brought together business leaders and educators in a series of forums, hosted by the Napa Valley Economic Development Corporation, to begin upgrading the Napa school system in an attempt to convince industry that if they expanded their business into Napa, educators would produce talented and capable workers.

“My big push was, why not teach kids what these companies want?” he says. “And to do that, we needed better schools or we weren’t going to have a vibrant economy.”

A vision was just starting to emerge when the Napa Valley Unified School District—its two existing high schools, Napa High and Vintage High, bulging at their seams—asked Butler to find out if the high tech industry and local business community would support establishing a new high school with a high tech emphasis. It was an easy decision.

That’s the short version of a long and complicated collaboration between business, educators and parents that culminated in the opening of New Technology High on the one-time Lincoln Elementary School campus on Napa’s Main Street. The doors opened in fall 1996, and Napa has been plowing new ground ever since.

Modeling for the future

New Tech High offers a whole new face to the high school educational picture most people remember. Its curriculum and operating procedures help students get a significant dose of the working world and of higher education. This vision is based on research by district officials Robert Nolan and Virginia Rue. It’s designed to produce graduates who are ready to attend college or go to work.

“It blurs the boundary between high school and college or the business world,” says Schilling.
The New Tech High model operates on several basic principles:

•    Schools are small to encourage a positive culture. New Tech High in Napa is designed to accommodate 100 students for each of its four grades.

•    The school uses a project-based learning system that lets students collaborate in teams of four or five to apply course study to real world scenarios and problems.

•    21st century skills—computers, the Internet and all that they incorporate—are used by everyone on campus.

•    Classes are integrated and team taught. For instance, teachers of American History and American Studies combine their efforts and course material into one classroom.

In addition, the school maintains a working partnership with local businesses and community colleges to broaden the high school experience. And there’s a computer for every student; no one waits for an open keyboard. Each student has his or her own campus email address for school purposes. The campus uses Lotus Notes and all the software compatible with that umbrella system.

To accommodate this computer-rich atmosphere, New Tech High has an industrial-strength wiring system and network that ties the faculty and students to a central server. Computer communication cables are encased in a square, see-through conduit that runs overhead and through the maze of corridors and classrooms.

School classrooms, about twice the size of conventional classrooms, are built to accommodate the classic teacher-student setting, but are ringed by banks of computers for individual or group work once students are left to carry out their assignments on their own.

Schilling describes the curriculum as a college-prep plus program that uses technology and is designed to satisfy University of California entrance requirements.

The program requires students to earn at least 12 credits of school work transferable to the UC system by the time they graduate. Students also have to build a digital portfolio that includes a résumé, a personal statement and work samples. And they’re expected to complete a senior project, perform community service projects and work as an intern with a local business during senior year. During their internship, students must perform in a job-like environment that encourages personal responsibility and insists on mutual respect and support.

“We treat the students—and the students treat us—with respect and responsibility,” says Principal Monica Tipton. There are no bells or buzzers announcing the beginning or end of classes. There are clocks, and students are expected to be on time.

“Kids here understand the effects of the mistakes they make,” she says. “Kids in most secondary schools are never taught that lesson.”

The arrangement works. In addition to recording the best test scores and graduation rates in the county, New Tech High has escaped most of the disciplinary problems common at many high schools.

“We’ve had one fight in 10 years,” says Tipton. “The most serious thing we’ve had to deal with here was gay bashing.” Tipton says the students involved in the incident were simply told that type of behavior was neither welcome nor allowed, and it stopped. “If it wouldn’t be tolerated in the workplace, it won’t be tolerated here,” she says.

Getting in

New Tech High was limited to just 240 juniors and seniors when it opened in 1996. The formula eased the stress of opening a four-year campus that would have required food, bus services and high-tech equipment for twice as many kids.

The school went to a four-year operation in September 2004. About 390 students were enrolled this past fall. More students would attend if they could.

The New Tech High model calls for a four-year student body of no more than 400 students. That limits new arrivals each fall to just 100 students who are selected by lottery.

Interested students fill out an application the previous year. Their parents have to attend special meetings and commit to volunteering 15 hours of service time at the school each year. Applicants must attend a freshman “connect day” and follow older students around for a day to get a feel for the New Tech High climate. If they still want to attend and are prepared to commit to serious college prep work, their names are tossed into the hat.

Random selection ensures that not all students chosen are classic “brains” or high-tech geeks. Students with a “C” average or better are eligible to apply, and a mix of kids is produced. Once students are accepted, they’re welcome to stay just as long as they don’t have behavior problems.

When they graduate, they’ll be expected to know how to collaborate, solve problems, speak and write effectively, understand principles of career building, be technologically literate and be good, ethical citizens.

They’re all skills essential for successfully entering college or the workplace—and that’s the product New Tech High turns out.

“Ninety-five to 98 percent of our graduates go to college, junior college, a business school or leave with some concrete business or work plan,” says Schilling.

Word’s out

News that something important was happening in Napa got around quickly.

When New Tech High opened its doors in 1996, the U.S. Department of Education had already declared it a demonstration site for using technology to support academic programs, says Mark Morrison, principal at New Tech High for eight years and a former Vintage High School vice principal.
Tipper Gore, wife of former Vice President Al Gore, toured the campus during its opening week, and “visitors just kept coming after that,” says Morrison.

Morrison says he detected changes in students enrolled at New Tech High almost immediately. He says the students demonstrated stronger and more assertive leadership characteristics and were willing to speak up, share their opinions and take on important school projects.

Outside observers also saw something new, Morrison says. Educators saw profound changes in classroom instruction and practice and how mature and driven students appeared, and business representatives saw an environment very similar to their work environments.

Soon New Tech High started earning awards. In 2000, it was named the first “California Digital School” by the State Department of Education. And that same year, the Napa program was among 29 other schools designated a “new American High School” by the U.S. Department of Education.

Educators from across the country started arriving to look over the program. Every year, hundreds of visitors walk the halls of the school and look through the glass walls to view these New Tech High students in action. Soon, handling the visitors became a job of its own; it was no longer something the school faculty could work into their daily schedules.

In 1999, the New Technology Foundation was established as a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization. Its mission was twofold: To provide supplemental financial support for New Tech High and to deal with visitors from other schools and export the New Tech High model.

The Foundation’s mission was kicked into high gear a year later when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put up a $5 million grant to be used to replicate the New Tech High model 10 times in Northern California. A year later, the Gates Foundation provided another $9.8 million to take the model anywhere in the country. Gates has also provided about $125,000 for organizational support.

Ten years after launching New Tech High and just five since the Gates grants came forward, 24 schools are up and operating, and dozens more are on the way. And the business of marketing a new idea regarding how to reach high school kids has become big business.

The Foundation operates under a board of directors made up of local and statewide educators and representatives of business. Additional oversight is provided by a National Advisory Council that includes John Bravman, vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, and Barry Schuler, former CEO of America Online.

Schuler, a Napa Valley resident and vineyard owner, is an unabashed believer in and booster of New Tech High, which he calls an overdue antidote for an educational system that’s been stagnant for generations. “We’ve failed miserably in the last 30 years to have our education system keep up with the rest of the world,” he says. “I took the tour of New Tech High and thought, ‘Duh, this is absolutely what the schools in post-2000 should look like.’ Then I got depressed: ‘Why doesn’t every high school look like this?’”

Schuler says New Tech might even be misnamed.

“I think it should be ‘Today’s Tech,’” he says. “You can’t even be a car mechanic these days without being adept at technology.

“My view is, this isn’t a situation where every school district ought to have one New Tech High School. I think this is like books—the fundamental tools of teaching in this century. The system should be evolved into something that could go into every high school.”

New Technology Board of Directors Chair Will Wyman, a financial advisor with Merrill Lynch in Napa, says the Foundation operates on a $3.2 million annual budget with a staff of 16 full-timers and five part-timers. While spreading the New Tech High model around the country, it also provides about $300,000 a year to help the Napa campus meet expenses not normally associated with mainline high schools.

In addition to the big Gates grants, the Foundation raises funds through annual requests for support, grant writing, e-scrip, silent auctions and special events like La Strada dell’Arte, an Italian street painting festival that takes place in May at COPIA.

The initial Napa model that was developed by the city schools staff is being constantly refined and perfected by two key Foundation and education professionals—Morrison, who left New Tech High as principal to become director of leadership development at the Foundation, and Paul Curtis.

Curtis is a former social studies teacher at Napa High School and now director of curriculum for the Foundation. He’s actively engaged in replicating the Napa model nationwide. Together, Morrison and Curtis, products of the “old school” school system, are ardent proponents of the Napa model and critics of mainstream schools. “That system is completely broken. It’s lost its purpose,” says Curtis. He also continues that students enrolled in Napa’s two conventional high schools “are being left behind, absolutely.”

David Brown, who was superintendent of Napa city schools when New Tech High (NTHS) was developed and remains on the New Tech Foundation board of directors, thinks that’s a little unfair. “That the ‘old model’ doesn’t work is an unfortunate exaggeration,” Brown wrote in an email. “Quality teachers with sufficient instructional supplies and students with an interest in learning have always been successful with the ‘old model.’ I like what NTHS is doing, but to condemn what others do is disappointing.”

Brown says, “Most ‘old model’ schools have also made significant changes and progress even though they haven’t adopted all the elements of general reform and/or those utilized at NTHS.”

Brown’s comments ring true with Nancy Sutton, the educator in residence at Indiana’s University of Indianapolis Center of Excellence in Leadership Learning. Sutton says Indiana has been working on major high school reform for several years. During the first phase of the work, she says, the program centered on reforming the existing high school model. In the course of establishing 18 new “startup” schools, the state looked at several models from across the country and specifically decided against following New Tech High’s lead.

But several school districts in Indiana did choose the Napa model, she continues. “We’re really a local-control state. We had to look across the state at what people wanted.” The result, she says, was that about five schools will open in 2007 using the Napa model, and two or three are also headed in that direction in 2008. “The skills we know kids will need are all 21st century learning skills, and they’re in the New Tech High framework,” she says.

A similar story comes from Raleigh, N.C., where the North Carolina New Schools Project is three years into an ambitious five-year program to build 100 new and redesigned high schools across the state.
Marshall Matson, program director, says North Carolina is spending $20 million to produce high schools that can prepare students for the future. “North Carolina has lost nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years, and the economy is shifting to a high skill knowledge base that requires more of all high school graduates,” he says.

Matson says the Napa model figures prominently in the North Carolina plan by providing “an instructional platform that will allow the accelerated development of innovative high schools that can serve as examples to the state.”

The formula for North Carolina’s version of the 21st century high school could come right out of the New Technology Foundation playbook. Six of the New Tech High look-alikes opened in North Carolina this past fall, including one on a Cherokee Indian reservation. Another four schools are in the planning stages.

Financial measures

Going down the New Tech High road is an expensive venture.
Bob Pearlman, former president of the Autodesk Foundation in San Rafael, is director of strategic planning for New Technology Foundation. Operating out of his home office in Tucson, Ariz., he helps identify regions of the country and school districts that are both interested and show the most promise and capacity for adopting the New Tech High format. Money is a big consideration.

Pearlman says operating costs of running a New Tech High School are about the same as a conventional school. But there are additional expenses. “To do it right, they need to make an investment by refurbishing old facilities or building new buildings with double-size classrooms,” he says. “That could cost anywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars up to $15 million.”

Pearlman says providing the required technology is another big ticket expense. “That might cost $200,000 a year more than a school would normally pay for these things,” he says.

The New Technology Foundation charges a $400,000 “fee for service” to help a school copy its program. For $350,000, the Foundation provides a year of planning and training, both in Napa and at the site of the new school, as well as three years’ support. The additional $50,000 is to make sure the school district doesn’t lose heart during the conversion.

Given the chronic financial straits school districts operate under, Foundation CEO Susan Schilling says the Foundation adds the $50,000 to manage professional development classes for teachers once the replicated school is in operation. “We found that if we rely on the district to provide that money, it often finds all kinds of reasons not to let the teachers come to training,” she says.

The commitment to training is appreciated. Sutton in Indianapolis says commitment by New Technology Foundation to provide long haul assistance and direction is one of the primary reasons communities in Indiana are choosing to adopt the Napa model. “The network that’s best supported is the New Technology Foundation support system. They’ve been tremendous to work with,” Sutton says.

Making it work

The Foundation’s success goes back to the core product it has to work with, New Technology High on Main Street in Napa, where students come from five counties—and one from as far away as Los Angeles—and where almost nine out of 10 graduates go on to junior college or four-year schools, according to board chairman Wyman.

“New Tech High is like an oasis in this school district,” he says. “It’s full of energy, and the kids work together and teach themselves.”

“It’s a lot different from a normal high school,” says Molly Levine, a 16-year-old NTHS junior from Napa. “It was a big transition, but I think it’s better,” she says. “You work in a collaborative environment where everyone is a lot closer. It’s really hard to be a slacker in this school because, if you don’t do your work, you’re not just letting yourself down. You’re letting your teammates down.”