The Manor Model: Bogalusa new tech schools adapted from Texas example

MANOR, TEXAS -- The school was alive with creative energy. In every classroom, students were not only awake and involved, they were fully engaged in the learning process. None were confined to desks arranged in rows in front of a blackboard. They were on their feet, at computers, in small groups researching and discussing. And any member of the diverse student body was ready, willing and able to answer questions and to articulate with unhesitating confidence.

A group of 11 representatives of the Bogalusa City School System, including eight educators and three business partners, took a trip to the Austin area last week to check out a school with a program and a success story the local system intends to reproduce in its own technology high and middle schools, due to open in the fall.

The Bogalusa team spent a day at Manor New Technology High (MNTH), a New Technology Foundation (NTF) school.

The NTF is a school development organization that assists communities across the country to create schools modeled on the Napa New Technology High School, an internationally recognized public school in Napa Valley California, which was selected as a model for national replication by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The model also meets Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek’s call for innovation in state schools.

Three of the 40 schools in the New Tech network this year are in Louisiana, and representatives from a school in Rapides Parish joined the team from Bogalusa and one from a private Texas school at Manor this week.

MNTH Principal Steve Zipkes said his students are not selected high achievers. They reportedly “came from a low performing middle school and were in a low performing high school.” The students were chosen by lottery and represent a demographic similar to that of Bogalusa.

But in just its first two years, the school has already demonstrated success. State test scores for 2007-2008 were the highest in the district and generally well above the state average. MNTH students scored 91 percent in Reading, 69 percent in Math, 95 percent in Social Studies and 80 percent in Science.

The school’s attendance rate was 97 percent. And of the four students who did not return for a second year, three moved out of the district and only one returned to a traditional school. The school retained 100 percent of its teachers.

Although the word “technology” is part of the name, NTF schools are not just for young techies. They can be science, technology, engineering and math schools. But the focus could also be the arts or “green” living. They can be geared to meet the needs of specific types of local business or they can be wide open and unlimited in focus.

Regardless, all NTF schools offer project-based learning with a stress on “relationships, relevance and rigor.”

To find out more about how that works, check out Part II of this series in Wednesday’s Daily News.