An Innovative Model for Deeper Learning in NYC Public High Schools

Q: Tell us about your schools and what makes your approach distinctive.

Our district was intentionally built to reflect a different approach to public high school—one that is learner-centered, equity-driven, and scaled across a complex urban system. We prioritize deeper learning through project-based, interdisciplinary work that’s meaningful and connected to real-world audiences. Students present their learning through thesis-like defenses, exhibitions, and portfolios, not just exams.

These aren’t boutique pilots; they’re system-level models serving diverse populations. Together, our schools serve over 22,000 students across all five boroughs in New York City.

Q: You mentioned that some of your students don’t take traditional standardized tests. How are they assessed?

Many of the schools in our district are part of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which received a state waiver from Regents exams in favor of performance-based assessments. Students demonstrate mastery through long-term projects, analytical essays, oral presentations, and science experiments defended before panels of educators and external experts. The work is assessed using peer-reviewed, normed rubrics, which we’ve refined over decades.

This approach is rigorous and aligned with the skills students need in college, the workplace, and civic life—skills like analysis, communication, and sustained inquiry.

Q: How do your schools support newcomer immigrant students and multilingual learners?

About one-third of our schools are part of the Internationals Network for Public Schools, designed specifically for newcomer students. But even beyond those, we’ve seen strong outcomes for English learners across our schools—graduation rates for English language learners are roughly 15 percentage points higher than citywide averages. That’s a testament to inclusive design, not exclusionary supports.

We intentionally treat linguistic diversity as an asset. Students engage in collaborative projects where language is acquired through purposeful, content-rich tasks. In some schools, ninth graders produce documentary films on community issues or create bilingual children’s books for elementary students—projects that connect academic skills to lived experience.

We’re also responding to linguistic complexity: Many students speak indigenous languages like K’iche’ or Fulani in addition to Spanish or French. Our schools are structured to invite and sustain those languages through curriculum, peer mentoring, and cultural celebrations.

Q: What role does technology—especially AI—play in your schools?

We’ve approached AI not as a tool to automate old models of teaching, but as a catalyst for new ones. Students aren’t just using AI—they’re designing with it. In recent build-a-thons, students developed AI-powered tools to help newly arrived immigrants access housing and medical resources in their native languages. They utilized natural language processing tools without requiring fluency in coding, allowing for design in English, Spanish, Wolof, or Arabic.

Meanwhile, we’re supporting teachers to co-design AI tools trained on their own curriculum, values, and classroom philosophy. The point isn’t personalization for efficiency’s sake—it’s using technology to deepen human connection and expand student agency.

Public schools remain one of the last civic institutions that can rebuild trust from the ground up. When students come home saying, “I learned something new,” or “I made a friend who sees the world differently”—that’s powerful.

Q: Many of your schools serve as community hubs. Can you say more about that?

Absolutely. Especially for newcomer students and families, the school is often the most trusted institution they encounter. Our buildings host food pantries, mobile medical units, clothing drives, legal clinics—you name it. We keep our doors open on evenings and weekends, hosting ESL classes, immigration workshops, and tech help for families.

It works because students go home and say, “These adults care about me.” That trust radiates outward. It turns a school into a true anchor for the neighborhood.

Q: How have you scaled these models system-wide—and what policy conditions made that possible?

We’ve grown by building trust, investing in principal leadership, and documenting successful practice across schools so others can adapt, not replicate.

Two key policies helped:

1. State-level flexibility through the Consortium waiver, which lets us move beyond test-based accountability.
2. Weighted funding formulas in NYC, which ensure resources follow student need. For example, if 60 percent of your students are in temporary housing, you need the discretion to hire more social workers or bilingual staff.

Crucially, we’ve also built a district culture that values variation. When COVID forced remote learning, some schools built virtual models that later informed new hybrid designs. We created the space for local experimentation—and then shared the learning system-wide.

Q: How do you recruit and prepare educators for this kind of teaching?

We don’t have a separate certification pipeline, but we’ve built strong conditions that keep great teachers. We’ve seen how culture and purpose drive retention.

In addition:

1. We run early-career teacher fellowships focused on deeper learning and inclusive practice for teachers in years 1-5.
2. We’ve hired over 200 alumni—many of them multilingual—to come back to work in our schools as staff, mentors, and community liaisons.
3. We’ve launched a principal pipeline in partnership with a university. Sitting principals and district leaders serve as adjunct instructors, blending theory with on-the-ground insight. We’re trying to build a distributed model of leadership—growing our own talent from within the communities we serve.

Q: What would you say to policymakers who are skeptical of alternatives to standardized testing?

It’s an understandable concern: People want to know how we ensure quality. But we need to shift the question from “What’s measurable?” to “What matters?”

We’ve partnered with the City University of New York to study our graduates’ long-term outcomes—enrollment, GPA, leadership roles, use of office hours—and found that students from performance assessment schools are not only succeeding, but often outperforming peers.

If you ask employers or college faculty what they want, they’ll tell you: problem-solving, collaboration, curiosity. These are the very skills performance-based models build—and test scores simply don’t capture.

Q: What gives you hope?

Public schools remain one of the last civic institutions that can rebuild trust from the ground up. When students come home saying, “I learned something new,” or “I made a friend who sees the world differently”—that’s powerful.

My family immigrated from Taiwan before there were free and fair elections. I believe deeply in the promise of democracy and the role schools play in realizing it. If we can help students feel seen, empowered, and capable of making change today—not just tomorrow—we’re doing more than educating. We’re building the future we want to live in.