High Tech High opened in 2000 as a highly successful single charter school in San Diego. Created by a coalition of education practitioners and business leaders, High Tech High (HTH) provides students with an educational experience that sharply contrasts the large impersonal high school model – which is common across the United States.

High Tech High serves an enrollment of approximately 1,040 total students across three schools. The organization’s instructional design features a strong emphasis on project-based learning and on maintaining a common intellectual mission. That way, all students are enabled to complete a rigorous college preparatory high school education.


Organizational Structure
High Tech High is organized for independence, flexibility, and links to the community. HTH operates as a non-profit corporation and series of public charter schools, all under the direction of a five-member board of directors. The organization’s community advisory board includes corporate partners, public agencies, neighborhood organizations, higher education institutions, parents, and other constituencies. A second non-profit corporation, the High Tech High Foundation, is responsible for all fund-raising for the school.

Internally, HTH is structured as a high performance organization focused on personalization, engagement, and achievement.


High Tech High: A Snapshot for 2006-7

• Six schools three high schools, two middle schools, and one elementary school in San Diego.
  
  
• Approximately 2500 students and 200 employees
  
  
• 100 percent of graduates have gone to college, 80% to four-year institutions
  
  
• $45 million in real estate holdings; annual operating budget: $18 million
  
  
• First charter school to be authorized to credential its own teachers
  
  
• Granted first statewide charter in January 2006

Mission
High Tech High’s mission is to provide a diverse student body with relevant academic, workplace, and citizenship skills, preparing its graduates for rewarding lives in the technological society of the 21st century.


Primary Goals of High Tech High

At a school level, the primary goals of HTH include:

• Integrating technical and academic education that prepares students for post-secondary education in high tech fields, as well as other liberal arts areas of study.
• Increasing the number of educationally disadvantaged students in math and engineering who succeed in high school and post-secondary education and who become productive members and leaders in their community.
• Providing all HTH students with an extraordinary liberal arts education.
• Graduating students who will be thoughtful, engaged citizens and who will complete college within six years of graduating from HTH.
• Implementing fully the Design Principles of HTH.
• Serving among the most racially diverse student bodies in communities where HTH operates its schools.
• Residing within facilities that meet the design requirements of HTH.

As a central organization, the primary goals of HTH include:

• Supporting quality replication of HTH schools that meet all goals on a school level.
• Becoming a self-sustaining central organization that offers a comprehensive suite of back office and other supports to HTH schools.
• Enabling students and site-based staff to remain focused on the full implementation of HTH design principles.
• Modeling efficient “behind the whiteboard” management practices that are as exemplary as the “in front of students” programs offered at High Tech High schools.
• Opening two-to-four high quality HTH schools annually.
• Supporting the maintenance and/or furtherance of quality at existing HTH schools.
• Reducing annually the dependence on philanthropic assistance to support the operations of our central organization.
• Maintaining a trajectory toward providing ongoing administrative services at 50 percent of the per pupil rate, which is experienced at school districts across California.

Theory of Change
In order to maximize the impact of its efforts, High Tech High has adopted a Theory of Change, which identifies the four “N’s” of HTH:

• Inspiring others to implement HTH design principles by developing exemplary model schools;
• Enabling others to establish schools adopting HTH design elements by making available tangible tools and support;
• Enacting change by directly establishing and managing new HTH schools; and
• Influencing policy makers and thought leaders to improve the ecosystem within which public schools operate.

Current Replication Strategy
As High Tech High looks to broaden its impact across California and beyond, its staff utilizes a replication strategy, which features an emphasis on the third “N” – Enacting. This new emphasis results from HTH’s recognition of several insights that have emerged during the first four years of replication efforts:

• Quality assurance is best guaranteed when governance relations reinforce adherence to design principles; and
• Efficient central service provision allows HTH replication efforts to benefit from economies of scale.

HTH believes a single cohesive organization can:

• Best provide certain key supports, such as special education assistance, teacher credentialing, and facilities/financing assistance;
• Capitalize on other less tangible HTH assets, such as employee and student culture;
• Best protect HTH’s strong brand identity; and
• Include local school developers and other potential partners that are eager to support replication efforts within the context of a cohesive central organization.

Given the realization of these insights, HTH is committed to supporting future replication within the context of the High Tech High Communities, the school’s charter management organization. HTH is focused on assisting its partners within the High Tech High Learning (HTHL) Network, all of which implement HTH design principles in their local communities.

High Tech High will support a very select number of additional HTHL Network sites outside of California, if school developers can demonstrate the capacity to ensure quality replication.

back to top