Technology High School's vision is to provide a fundamentally different experience for secondary students. The science- and math-centered, technology rich setting supports team research and application concepts in a project-based environment. Graduates of Technology High School will be prepared to enter post-secondary education and the workforce as independent, critical thinkers, and decision-makers who recognize that learning is a lifelong process.

Things are changing.  Schools used to be able to send their graduates into a world that was well mapped out, where the particular skills needed for success were defined and tested by the generations that had come before.  Schools felt pretty comfortable laying out possible career paths for their students; the jobs of tomorrow looked a lot like the jobs of yesterday.  But things are changing.

Technology High School acknowledges and celebrates this change.  The future demands a different type of citizen, which means that the present demands a different type of education.  The challenges of our time require a multidisciplined perspective, so Tech High integrates our project-based curriculum across the subjects, linking ideas in engineering and science to the skills and philosophy of the humanities.  In a workplace and society saturated with technology, the 21st century citizen must be able to skillfully navigate between systems, leveraging the most powerful tools to creatively solve never before seen problems.  To prepare these future citizens, Tech High fuses all of our instruction with cutting edge technology tools.  This commitment to harnessing the most useful of the new technologies has unleashed the creative potential in Tech High students and has made them true designers of their world.  Technology High graduates are ready not only to succeed in the new world that is emerging, they are ready to lead us to places we still cannot quite imagine.

However, these philosophies perhaps do not show Tech High’s greatest strength, even though they have done much to enable it.  Technology High School is a true community of learners.  We collaborate on our projects and we use the new technologies of Web 2.0 to explore and create our world.  We grow stronger everyday together, and no child, teacher, or parent is left behind.  Together we learn habits of thought, and together we apply this thinking to challenges of our time.

The Technology High School community is proud of its accomplishments. In its short history, Tech High has been selected as a Magna Award winner by the American School Board Journal, received California Distinguished School status in 2005, and was recently recognized as a Bronze Medal winner in the U.S. News & World Report America’s Best High Schools Program.  These awards, displayed in our lobby, remind our students about the benefits of hard work, dedication, and commitment necessary to create a school that makes a difference in the lives of our students.

Why Project-Based Learning?

The most serious of questions almost never exist in isolation; instead they are complex networks of queries and challenges, woven through diverse fields like physics, sociology, and philosophy.  Some of the issues that define our time - climate change, rising populations, demand for resources – will demand much out of the coming generations, requiring that they be skillful scientists, resourceful thinkers, and creative collaborators.  Technology High School has identified Project-Based Learning as one of our signature practices because our students will be tackling projects on the global scale.

In 1995, the Autodesk Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, Sonoma State University, and the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District came together because of a common desire and need to provide more opportunities for students to study math, science, and technology. A feasibility study was conducted among stakeholders and the results indicated the following needs: a math and science college-preparatory program focused on engineering; project-based instruction and integrated, standards-aligned curriculum; a work-based learning component; a faculty made up of highly skilled teachers, professors, scientists, and engineers; and a commitment to enroll.

As a result, the Technology High School Program (located on the Sonoma State University campus) was created in 1999. The partners in this project believed that with the implementation of innovative, standards-aligned, integrated curriculum along with project-based instruction and using high powered technology tools, we would achieve the goal of increasing the numbers of students who enter college and the workforce with a commitment to study advanced mathematics, science, and technology. Using guiding documents such as Second to None and the SCANS Report (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills document entitled What Work Requires of Schools: A SCANS Report  for America 2000),  the project-based curriculum is like none other in the nation. The standards-aligned curriculum was written collaboratively by mathematics and science teachers, university professors, engineers, and representatives from business and industry. The courses were developed so that the curriculum is integrated within and across disciplines. Connections are made between the principles of study in mathematics, science, and engineering, in order to foster deeper, long lasting understanding of the concepts being taught. These meaningful connections through the implementation of project-based learning ensure that all students are engaged, successful learners.

For more information, see How We Practice Project-Based Learning.

Why a Focus on Technology?

To say that our world is changing is now far past cliché.  Technology has become ubiquitous, and everyday new and amazing tools become available to the masses.  A majority of these tools cost nothing and are easy for the non-technician to learn and employ.  This has sparked a revolution in creative expression, efficient production, and meaningful collaboration.  This technological revolution has also created a pressing new “need” for those who wish to be successful in the present and in the coming years.  The successful citizen must be able to skillfully navigate a myriad of ever changing technology tools and must be able to leverage them to their advantage.  Successful 21st century citizens must not merely be competent with specific technologies, they must be well versed in the literacies these technologies make possible.  It is with the goal of creating this successful modern citizen that Technology High School has identified the use of technology as one of its signature practices.

The data found in the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) report clearly indicates that a new type of education is needed to create the competencies, foundational skills, and personal qualities required for success in the 21st century workplace.  This report recommends that effective workers know how to creatively use resources, how to work on teams using strong interpersonal skills, how to synthesize and interpret information, how to understand and improve social and technological systems, and how to employ various types of technology to achieve the ever changing demands of workplace situations.  The SCANS report also recommends that 21st century citizens have a strong foundation in basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities such as sociability and self-management.  Our use of technology at Technology High directly addresses these recommendations and turns this report’s model 21st century citizen into a reality.

Due to the importance of creating citizens that can be successful in the 21st century workplace, the target population for our signature practice “use of technology” is clearly every student that walks through our doors.  However, our use of technology specifically is intended to help close the achievement gap with Tech High’s socioeconomically disadvantaged students and our students with disabilities.  Saturating our program with projects that require technology to be employed and providing students of all socioeconomic groups the access to this technology at school, helps make sure every student that graduates from Tech High is capable of meeting the demands of the 21st century workplace.  Tech High also uses adaptive technologies to help provide equal access to our students with disabilities.

The goal and anticipated outcome of Technology High’s focus on the use of technology is that graduates of Tech High will not only be capable of being successful in the workplace outlined by the Secretary of Labor’s report, but they will be the innovators and leaders of this emerging economy.

For more on information, see Our Use of Technology.