🗽 A Spotlight on New York City High Schools

Explore how NYC public schools are revolutionizing high school with career-connected learning and student voice. By Edward Montalvo — Director, Educator Network

Many high schools across the nation face a common, persistent struggle: engaging students in a way that feels relevant and meaningful to their futures. Traditional educational models often fall short, leaving students disconnected and unmotivated. As a former educator at PSI High, an XQ School in Central Florida, I found one particular XQ Design Principle important for establishing my instructional and pedagogical goals—Meaningful, Engaged Learning. 

This Design Principle is successful when:

• Instruction is flexible & interdisciplinary
• Learning experiences are rigorous
• School is structured for deeper learning
• Student progress is regularly monitored
• Students learn about themselves as learners

For this issue of the Xtra, I want to highlight how meaningful, engaged learning is evident in two innovative programs in the nation’s largest school district, New York City Public Schools. These two city programs offer valuable insights and lessons for high school educators across the country. 

Imagine NYC and FutureReadyNYC focus on student-centered approaches to blend academic rigor with real-world applications, providing students with the skills and experiences they need to thrive. But how exactly are these programs reshaping high school education, and what can educators learn from them?

🍎 Rethinking in New York City Schools

In collaboration with XQ, both programs aim to redesign high school education with a focus on equity and excellence, but they approach this goal in distinct ways:

• Imagine NYC Schools is an ambitious initiative to design and redesign innovative, high-quality schools by working closely with community partners and school design teams. Six schools participate in Imagine NYC, a mix of new schools, mature schools with a redesign, and instructional learning hubs. They include A School Without Walls, the city’s first hybrid high school developed with Outward Bound; Gotham Tech, which partners with the robotics-based nonprofit NYC FIRST; and Thomas A. Edison CTE High School, where teachers and students collaborate to incorporate career skills into academic classes. 
• FutureReadyNYC is a larger program that takes a system-wide approach, including large-scale professional development, staffing, and curricular support to bolster current and emerging programming across the city.FutureReadyNYC ensures students can explore their passions and prepare for their futures through rigorous, career-connected courses and real-world work experience. This program has grown from 34 schools in 2022-23 to 100 in 2023-24, reaching over 7,000 students. The schools partner with hospitals, companies, and colleges to provide students with exciting learning opportunities.

🚕 Learning Across NYC’s Five Boroughs

Whether through hybrid learning models or career-connected education (or both!), these programs demonstrate effective strategies for preparing students for future success. Educators can start by understanding how these high schools develop student agency, personalize learning paths, and focus instruction around practical skills for college and career readiness. Recently, our partners at The 74 featured articles about two innovative NYC high schools, Thomas A. Edison CTE High School and A School Without Walls. They couldn’t be more different but each school elevates student voice and creates meaningful learning.

💡 Thomas A. Edison CTE High School combines career and technical education (CTE) with academic learning to prepare students for college and careers. The school is part of FutureReadyNYC and Imagine NYC. Some key elements highlighted recently in The 74:

• Edison offers 13 diverse career tracks, through which students can earn industry certifications and partnerships with higher education institutions like the City University of New York (CUNY).
• An R&D department created by teachers engages students in design thinking and project-based learning. Together, they focus on developing essential skills (also called “soft skills”) in academic classes to make all topics feel as relevant as the CTE classes, including communication, collaboration, and professionalism. The students are critical partners in this work, surveying their peers and sharing their gained leadership skills with nearby schools.
• Projects and internships provide students with hands-on experience and connect academic learning to real-world contexts.

🌳 A School Without Walls (SWoW) leverages a hybrid learning model that combines in-person and remote education. Through flexible, student-centered approaches, SWoW allows students to pursue their interests and meet rigorous academic standards. This one-of-a-kind high school provides a window into how schools can be designed to transition from the confines of the Carnegie Unit:

• SWoW’s model reimagines hybrid learning to provide a flexible, student-centered approach at students’ homes and a central location in lower Manhattan.
• Student involvement is deep as they play a pivotal role in shaping the school’s policies and curriculum, emphasizing another XQ Design Principle: Youth Voice and Choice.
• Similar to Edison, SWoW integrates internships, fieldwork, and early college coursework to enhance students’ practical skills and prepare them for future success.

🎒 How Meaningful Engaged Learning is Approached

In several projects at Edison, teachers told XQ how students developed academic and cognitive skills through robotics, mock trials, and building a student-run community theater. Throughout the projects, students assumed key industry and professional roles, such as shop foreman, defense attorney, and production manager, to better understand the work and how to collaborate with peers in other duties.

At SWoW, 9th graders research a service learning project, choosing topics addressing a wide range of issues, from youth homelessness to the environmental impact of illegal fireworks in New York City. After their first year, each student starts a passion project, formulating a research question through reading materials and interviews with experts, culminating in a spring internship to apply their learning in the real world. By 12th grade, students take on full-fledged independent projects and find internships.

Key Takeaways You Can Try:

• Integrate real-world applications by incorporating project-based learning and internships to make academic content relevant and engaging.
• Foster student agency by empowering students to actively shape their learning, from curriculum design to project execution.
• Embrace hybrid learning models and utilize flexible approaches that combine in-person and remote education to meet diverse student needs.
• Focus on essential skills development for students, including academic, cognitive, and social-emotional skills. Look to the XQ Learner Outcomes and Competencies to guide your projects' rigor and skill development.

Learn more about these inspiring school models and how they’re showing us how to rethink high school here 👉 Read More.

📣 Join the Movement

Share your strategies and successes in creating meaningful, engaged learning experiences for your students in our digital community, the XQ Xchange. In this new Facebook group, you’ll discover diverse perspectives from educators nationwide about PBL and CTE education. Join others to collaborate on ideas and inspiration to bring back to your school teams.

Image at top: Thomas A. Edison High School 12th grader Danilo Martinez shares the result of a recent survey showing changes students want to see at their school, like a mental health room. The school’s R&D department of students and teachers conducted the survey. (Photo by Beth Fertig)

XQ Stories & Updates:

🎥 Watch “The First Class,” our documentary about Crosstown High’s founding group of teachers and students. The school was created by people across Memphis who wanted a new approach to learning, and it comes with resources for educators to replicate some of the exciting examples of project-based learning seen in the film.

🧠 EdWeek’s Rick Hess interviewed Tim Knowles about the Carnegie Foundation’s work with XQ. Learn how the new educational architecture will liberate us from the Carnegie Unit, with examples of our collective efforts to build this new system, as illustrated by Knowles. Hess and Knowles also talked in part two about the challenges of replacing seat time with mastery-based learning.

Share With Us:

Contribute stories and insights about high school transformation with us on social @XQAmerica using #RethinkHighSchool, and we will include them in a later edition of the Xtra.

📬 Or send us a message directly at xtra@xqinstitute.org

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