ANDERSON — There aren’t any bells. Students don’t have to smuggle their cell phones into the classroom. Laptops sit atop the desks. Rows of lockers don’t line the halls; instead students leave their belongings at their desks.
“Our vision statement says that we should be a revolutionary path for education, and we truly believe that,” said Mike Reed, principal at charter school Columbus Signature Academy, one of Indiana’s 16 New Technology high schools. “Our goal is to not look or act like a high school. Instead it is more like a workplace.”
The New Tech approach is just one of many innovative methods being tried by Hoosier educators and those across the country to help a beleaguered public education system.
“I think we will see innovation more and more as models such as New Tech become more widely known,” said David Dresslar, executive director for the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) at the University of Indianapolis. “But more important than that, we are now seeing digital-age teachers working in our schools.”
The traditional model of teaching has educators being the “sage on the stage” — standing before students and delivering lessons. Innovative models take more of a “guide-on-the-side” approach, according to Dresslar.
“The future may not be New Tech, but the technological revolution that needs to take place in the schools is inevitable,” he said.
The New Tech movement, spawned by complaints from employers who said graduates lacked “21st century skills,” began in California in 1996. Nearly 15 years later, Indiana has more such schools — 16, with as many as four to launch next school year — than any other state.
Project-based learning, Reed explained, is at the heart of the New Tech model. In traditional schools, if projects are a part of the learning process they are at the end of a unit. At the Signature Academy and other New Tech schools, projects drive the learning process.
“The students are learning the same information as they would in a traditional school,” Reed said. “They are assessed and are asked to meet the same standards. But they are learning through real-life authentic problems and projects that they solve in collaborative groups.”
New Tech schools focus on those 21st century skills that employers thought were lacking — oral and written proficiency, collaborative skills, work ethics and technological trainings.
Instead of having an English class at 9 a.m. and a science class at 10, students at schools such as the Signature Academy attend integrated courses to reflect the real world, where such skills aren’t separated, Reed said.
The Signature Academy was created three years ago and has 300 students after adding a freshman class of 100 each year. The school will be at capacity with 400 students next school year.
Reed said the New Tech model is the “way of the future.”
“Kids are no longer sitting in rows and listening to lectures,” he explained. “They know how to advocate for themselves; they know what learning style works best for them. The practices that are being used here, we are starting to see some of the methods spill over to the larger, traditional high schools.”
Earning their stripes
While Signature Academy started as a New Tech school, Zebra New Tech — the only high school in Rochester — has converted from a traditional format to a totally New Tech approach to serve its 600 students.
“We are the first rural school in the U.S. that has successfully made the transition,” Zebra New Tech principal Dan Ronk said. “Kids are learning what they did in the traditional way. But instead of using lectures and worksheets, they are learning a lot more about research, technology and collaboration.”
Ronk said he isn’t sure whether the New Tech model, which requires deep change and restructuring, will become the norm over the next decade at Indiana schools. He suspects many schools would be reluctant to change.
“I don’t think any educational style fulfills every student’s needs,” Ronk said. “But if you are listening to what the people out there hiring the students are saying ... then they need these 21st century skills. And if schools don’t change and offer something that appeals to students, we could very well be losing them.”
It is too early to tell the success of the New Tech model in Indiana, said Trish Wlodarczyk, a fellow with CELL who focuses on New Tech highs. She said changes in the way the state performs assessments have also made it difficult to track the success of the program but CELL will continue to research and gather data.
Indiana’s first class of New Tech graduates came last year from Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis. Fifty-six graduated, and the two who didn’t are on track to do so this year, Wlodarczyk said. Each of the graduates applied for college.
Virtual flexibility
The Hoosier Academies, a 3-year-old charter school with campuses in Indianapolis and Muncie, is trying another fresh approach to education — focused on instruction tailored to each student.
The academy has both an entirely virtual school — taught through a computer audio-video link — and a virtual/in-class hybrid program.
The Indiana Virtual Pilot School serves 220 students from across the state in first through sixth grades. The Muncie-based hybrid program, K-8, has 150 students. And the Indianapolis campuses — one is K-8 and the other a high school — have about 625 students combined. The students in the hybrid program meet on campus two days a week and work from home three days a week.
Kathy Brown, Hoosier Academy marketing and enrollment director, said the format enables instructors to modify course work for students testing below or above their grade level.
In the fully virtual program, students work at their own pace and still have teacher-led instruction, monitoring and feedback.
New paths charted
Outside of Indiana, American schools are trying innovative approaches to education that might be applicable for Hoosiers. The U.S. Department of Education featured several charter schools in its “Innovations in Education” series pointing to them as models of successful innovation. To learn more about the series, visit www2.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/charter/index.html.
Time of change
Dresslar argues that a changing world and changing students dictate that Indiana schools must change, as well.
“Our concentration in the past has been on content knowledge,” he said. “But we need to make students successful contributors to our society and successful workers. A high school diploma is no longer a viable terminal education experience. We need to concentrate on getting kids through school but also prepare them for postsecondary education training and the world of work.”