As the clock ticks on, and the days of the Bloomberg administration dwindle, it is still creating new schools.
The latest innovation is called the School Without Walls. Kids will spend their high school years without a high school!
Lisa Fleisher reports in the Wall Street Journal:
“Microsoft will partner with New York City to create what schools officials describe as a high school without walls – perhaps the city’s most extreme departure yet from traditional high school. Lisa Fleisher reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.
“New York City is planning to open a new high school next year—but it won’t have a gym, library, science lab or even a math classroom.
“The city wants to open a so-called school without walls, one where students would take courses that combine online and classroom learning, while giving them more time for internships.
“Microsoft Corp. will help coordinate internships and industry mentors for students, who could receive certificates showing they have mastered Microsoft Office programs. The company also will train teachers who need a digital reboot and help place students in internships in areas such as computer science or coding.”
A new idea?
No. The city had a School Without Walls decades ago. But since the Bloomberg administration wiped out all institutional memory, it was completely forgotten. And every thing old is new again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The great benevolent philanthropist Bill Gates as delivered his true purpose. As Microsoft’s market share withers, because its products are obsolete and poorly conceived, he will transition into the vast edumarket landscape of opportunity. This landscape is noted for the high profitability of poorly designed software and products that Microsoft has become so well suited to deliver. Its a win win!
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You have to read the proposal to get the full flavor. This is a school completely designed by a corporation as a new product.
Why don’t we just skip the elected/politician middlemen and outsource our entire public education system to corporations? I have no earthly idea why I’m paying politicians when obviously they have no input into any of this. If we cut out the middlemen we might be able to squeeze out some funding for existing public schools.
Click to access WSJ_NYC_DOE_Innovation_Zone_Alliance_Microsoft.pdf
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“The city might have to work through regulatory hurdles, such as state requirements on how much time students must physically spend in class.”
It’s kind of quaint that the WSJ reporter is wringing her hands over possible “regulatory hurdles” Hah! Has any politician anywhere in the country not given Gates exactly what he demanded? They hand over entire school districts. Is there a single example where a state, city, or district said “no”?
I have the feeling those pesky state laws will fall in short order.
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There is still an actual School without Walls in Rochester, NY, and the school has been a leader in developing alternatives to the standardized test model.
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I attended the School Without Walls in DC back in the …lets say- day. It was based on the Philly PA school, Parkway. This SWW is nothing like the DC version or the Philly version. This school seems more like a Microsoft voc/tech school. Oh well, what can I say.
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Would you be willing to share more about your experiences at the Philly SWW? What worked well? What if anything concerned you about the school. Thanks
Joe
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When the Di Blasio administration takes power, what are the chances that the new mayor will deep-six the Bloomberg/ Microsoft Tech idea before it takes on a life of its own? One can hope for good news.
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This supports my belief that our kids are going to be used to fill positions in the billionaires club businesses. They are preparing our kids to work in Walmart and now Microsoft. Microsoft jobs will then no longer be good paying jobs. Mark my word!
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Very fitting for the crumbling walls of the Bloomberg Administration.
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Actually, New York State’s oldest, public, progressive, “alternative” high school is the Rochester City School District’s School Without Walls, which began in 1971, and is a member of the New York State Performance Standards Consortium. Rochester’s School Without Walls (SWW), however, is based on strong personal student-teacher relationships vs. “on-line” connections, as well as community service, community decision-making, student interest-based classes, evaluation as a learning experience, project-based learning, and performance-based assessments. I think NYC’s DOE should seriously explore the success of other “on-line” schools, before creating and implementing this version of a School Without Walls.
Dan Drmacich, Retired Principal
School Without Walls
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Nice to hear that your school is still going strong, Dan. Also good to hear that the school is using multiple forms of assessment to help measure and share student growth.
Same is true of what used to be called St. Paul Open School. The (district) public school opened in fall, 1971. It’s still around, now called Open World. http://open.spps.org/
It’s a great reminder that some one people do far better in a more hands-on, applied environment that uses the broader community as a place in which youngsters can learn.
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Why reinvent the wheel if Rochester has a working model. It can be tweaked to fit the needs of NYC.
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This is probably not the School Without Walls from the past. These students will be Microsoft robots who basically are there to make sure Microsoft products are used in the future.
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“It’s important to have experiments like this where we try to take a look at what kids’ lives are like, what kids needs are like, and try to respond,” he said.
It’s an experiment and the kids are the guinea pigs.
It is not developmentally approriate for 14 year old kids, most of them, to participate in this kind of experiment. Let’s remember, high school starts with grade nine. Ninth graders need structure, they need to be known, they need to be cared for by adults in a consistent, meaningful way and they need to learn how to interact with their peers in a positive manner. They do not need ” to experience, live and learn throughout the city”. It’s the same kind of inappropriateness that appears in the K – primary levels of the Common Core. That’s because the folks who come up with this nonsense don’t teach, never have and never will.
If you want a look at what real public schools do for the students in New York, take a look at the series the NYT has been running this week on one of the 22,000 children whose family has been homeless:
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/#/?chapt=1
Can’t get that at Microsoft.
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The school that you refer to is called City as School and it still exists. It has 2 buildings and students report there for some classroom instruction or processing of internship experience every week. It is not a new model and it works for kids who have completed most of their Regents requirements before starting at the school. If a student can master the high school curriculum online, I would suggest a GED. Unfortunately for Microsoft and Mayor Bloomberg, students learn far more than academics and job skills during their 12 years of public schooling. They learn about what it means to be a citizen or resident of the U.S. and what our responsibilities are to ourselves, our communities, and our country. I don’t think Microsoft is certified in that!!!!!
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Jean McTavish, thanks for reminding me that the school whose name I forgot is City As School, that it still exists, and that it is not a handmaiden for employers.
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City as School sounds like a good model. I agree with your ideas about the GED and the concept of citizenship.
Great answer!
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Here’s a link to an article I wrote last fall for Cincinnati Magazine about the New Morning School, a school without walls I started in 1971, which we modeled after the Philadelphia Parkway Program. http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/features/2014/01/02/schools-far-out.
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