About HTH

High Tech High began in 2000 as a single charter high school launched by a coalition of San Diego business leaders and educators. It has evolved into a school development organization with a growing portfolio of innovative charter schools spanning grades K-12. 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.

The roots of the High Tech High program and curriculum lie in earlier work of Larry Rosenstock and colleagues in the New Urban High School Project (NUHS), an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 1996-99. The aim was to select, study, and assist six inner-city high schools that were using school-to-work strategies, such as internships and other forms of field work, as a lever for whole-school change. The findings were summarized in a practitioner’s guide and a high school planning guide centered on six design principles.

High Tech High has distilled the six NUHS design principles to three: personalization, adult world connection, and common intellectual mission. Responding directly to the needs of students, all three principles connect to the broad mission of preparation for the adult world. Moreover, all three call for structures and practices that schools do not now routinely employ.

The design principles permeate every aspect of life at High Tech High: the small size of the school, the openness of the facilities, the personalization through advisory, the emphasis on integrated, project-based learning and student exhibitions, the requirement that all students complete internships in the community, and the provision of ample planning time for teacher teams during the work day.