Alumni Perspectives: Exploring the Impact of New Tech High Schools on College and Work Readiness

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Although the importance of preparing students for college and the workforce is not a new concept, there has been a resurgent focus on ensuring that students graduate from high school with the skills to successfully transfer to postsecondary educational institutions as well as the world of work. Given recent trends of economic instability, it isn’t surprising that the Obama administration has articulated a vision that every high school student this year enrolls at a college after high school or pursues at least a year of job training.

As high school reform experts debate the most effective pathways to preparing students for college and work, researchers have relied on various metrics to assess the development of 21st century skills. While some studies have relied on traditional measures such as SAT scores, others have analyzed college going patterns, GPAs, and to some extent, assessments of higher order thinking, communication, and collaboration skills (Conley, 2007). With greater access to data from institutions of higher education, several researchers are also beginning to track college enrollment and retention patterns longitudinally.

However, few programs have examined the impact of school development models on students’ lives after high school through ethnographically-informed means. That is, few explorations have been conducted whereby graduates retrospectively reflect on the instructional practices, curriculum, environment and relationships they experienced and the impact these have had at different points in their academic and professional lives.

The focus of the current project, then, was to gain insight into how prepared graduates of New Technology (hereafter referred to as “New Tech” in this report) high schools were for college and work through survey and interview methods. The data collected and the findings from the analysis are intended to provide the organization with learnings to inform program implementation but may also benefit other secondary reform educators with insights into strategies for more effectively preparing students for college and work.