Last week the Hechinger Report profiled an innovative charter school in San Diego called High Tech High (insert surfer jokes here) that follows an active, project based learning (PBL) model. The school doesn’t use textbooks, and they don’t base the curriculum on testing. The question they ask is whether this approach prepares students for college.
As a result, for [former HTH student Grace] Shefcik, college – with its large classes and lecture-based materials– came as a bit of a shock at first. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, she is one of more than 15,000 undergraduates, her assignments now usually consist of essays and exams. At High Tech High, Shefcik had just 127 students in her graduating class, allowing her to form close relationships with peers and teachers.
The premise of the article is that PBL prepares students for life but maybe not for college. Grace described the big difference between high school, with constant feedback and encouragement, to college, where you rarely get feedback. Other students describe their frustration in not knowing how to study for tests once they get to college.
After a recent screening of “Most Likely to Succeed” at the New Schools Summit in Burlingame, California, High Tech High CEO Larry Rosenstock told an audience, “We actually find that many of our students find themselves bored when they get to college.” (more…)