New Tech for schooling

LINCOLN — Michelle Hall is teaching world history here in this rural community 20 miles outside of Fayetteville, but she’s not standing in front of a classroom of 30 bored students sitting at desks.

Instead, she and English teacher Audra Savage are scurrying around a library offering guidance to 60 students who are working on projects in groups using laptops.

This school year, Lincoln High became a New Tech school, a model begun 15 years ago in Napa Valley, Calif. There now are 86 such schools in 16 states, including two in Arkansas: Lincoln and Cross County High, another country school that is south of Jonesboro.

But more districts will adopt the model. In Indiana, 10 percent of the state’s high schools now are New Tech. Arkansas’ STEM Works initiative, meant to produce more high school graduates skilled in science, technology, engineering and math, mentions New Tech as one of two models schools should consider adopting, and they can be rewarded with state and private funds if they do.

School districts clearly are interested. From Sept. 15 through Oct. 19, representatives from 19 Arkansas districts — from Jonesboro to White County’s Riverview to Dumas in the Delta to Little Rock to Russellville — paraded to Manor New Tech High School outside Austin, Texas, to see the model in action.

Manor is among the most visited New Tech schools, with good reason. Well over 90 percent of its students score proficient on state tests, and that’s in all subjects regardless of ethnicity or family income. Almost every student goes to college despite coming from a population where 65 percent are on free and reduced lunch plans and one-third are English language learners.

As principal Steve Zipkes describes it, “I’ve got a 97.4 attendance rate. I can’t get students to go home.”