High Tech High began in 2000 as a single charter high school launched by a coalition of San Diego business leaders and educators. The founding group was clear about its intent: to create a school where students would be passionate about learning and would acquire the basic skills of work and citizenship. It has evolved into a school development organization with a growing portfolio of innovative charter schools spanning grades K-12.
Personalized, Project-based Learning
HTH combats the twin problems of student disengagement and low academic achievement by creating personalized, project-based learning environments where all students are known well and challenged to meet high expectations. HTH schools attempt to show how education can be redesigned to ensure that all students graduate well prepared for college, work, and citizenship.
Goals
- Serve a student body that mirrors the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the local community.
- Integrate technical and academic education to prepare students for post-secondary education in high tech and liberal arts fields.
- Increase the number of educationally disadvantaged students in math and engineering who succeed in high school and post-secondary education.
- Graduate students who will be thoughtful, engaged citizens.
Vision
HTH believes that change in schooling does not happen incrementally by adding programs but by generating holistic designs that enable new ways of teaching and learning.HTH is not a model but rather an organization that advocates a set of design principles, recognizing a dynamic relationship between vision and practice.
HTH proceeds via five basic strategies that positively affect students, teachers and leaders:
- Enact change by directly establishing and managing excellent schools.
- Inspire others to implement HTH design principles by encouraging outsiders to visit, speak with the students and teacher, and observe its design principles in practice.
- Enable others to establish schools based on the HTH design. HTH has modeled itself as an “open source” organization, offering institutes, residencies, and a free web-based resource center for educators.
- Develop teachers and leaders in its school network and beyond. HTH’s Teacher Credentialing Program guides scores of HTH teachers through the credentialing process each year.
- Influence policy makers and thought leaders to change public education policy.