Changing School Culture Leads to Remarkable Results: A STEM Best Practice
From Mackenzie Hird
This summer, while serving as a visiting scholar at the National Academies of Science Board on Science Education, I was presented with many best practices in STEM education, but one in particular stands out in my mind. Manor New Technology High School (MNTHS), just outside of Austin, Texas, is a STEM school that breaks down the silo walls and integrates curriculum from different STEM subjects both with one another and with other disciplines. Classes are organized entirely around long-term projects, so students might start their day off with a physics/algebra class where they learn a physics concept and the math required for it hand-in-hand. Next, the students move into a history/engineering design class where they are designing and building a renaissance-era castle to better understand the role of castles in shaping the events of the time. These projects would be a daunting task for a single teacher to design, but in MNTHS, teachers are partnered and co-teach classes together. Two or three hour-long meetings are then held every week for teachers to share best practices and design these long term projects.

While the concept is certainly novel, the results that MNTHS has produced are really remarkable. For the three years of graduating classes, MNTHS has achieved testing scores well above state averages and far beyond scores for other schools in the area; remarkable for a school where over half of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. Yet as we all know, test scores don’t hold all the answers. In fact, it was the other outcomes that made MNTHS stick with me. They have had a 100% completion rate for every student that has entered their school. For the last three years, they have had 100% retention with their teachers. Steven Zipkes, principle of MNTHS, credits an overall change in the culture of his school in these retention figures.

Can such a remarkable model be replicated without another Steven Zipkes? We will soon find out, as MNTHS teachers are holding training sessions where they help guide other teachers in the district and around the country in their method and culture. But these are the types of success stories undertaken by teachers and educators around the country that keep me excited about STEM education.

Mackenzie Hird is a Masters student in the Technology and Policy Program at MIT and a research assistant in the MIT Education-as-a-Complex-System Group.

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