When an Internet entrepreneur took an interest in local schools, the results went viral.
First came Blue Oak School. Then, Napa’s New Technology High School education model started opening a new frontier in learning.
Today, there are 40 schools across the nation based on the idea that 21st century kids deserve 21st century schools. Next up: American Canyon High School.
“We’re on the cusp of being the national leader in innovation in education,” said Barry Schuler, the Internet mogul and Napa vintner who’s currently lending his Midas touch to local schools. A 56-year-old New Jersey native, Schuler’s no stranger to innovation. As the chairman and CEO of America Online from 2000 to 2003, he’s largely credited with the Internet giant’s massive success.
Yet Schuler said his knack for novelty was lost on teachers in public schools as a kid.
“I went through school completely and totally bored,” Schuler recalls. “My favorite day of school was my last day of school.”
The young Schuler was forced to find amusement elsewhere. He turned his family’s basement into a darkroom; and he helped his father, a warehouse owner and part-time repairman, tinker with TVs.
It took years before Schuler realized school could be more than just rows of desks and clanging bells.
“Flash forward to the late ’80s, early ’90s when I was in the software business,” Schuler said. “I did a lot of work for Apple and their education group, and I was exposed to independent, progressive schools. All of a sudden I got to see the schools which taught in a completely different way.”
Since then, Schuler has dedicated himself to bringing education into the 21st century one school at a time.
“That’s how you have to make a difference,” Schuler said.
He added that changing public schools is like innovating in the technology sector. “The hope is you try to create a lot of little fires that change education, then you wake up one day and everything is 21st century education.”
Blue Oak beginnings
Schuler’s first project started 10 years ago with the opening of Blue Oak Elementary School in Napa. With the help of his wife Tracy and a group of other parents, Schuler launched the small private school based on the key premise that “one size does not fit all.”
“The emphasis isn’t drill and kill,” Schuler said. “It’s not about pounding it into a kid. It’s about a lifelong love of learning.”
Students at the private school — including two of Schuler’s children — don’t see tests until middle school, and they learn primarily through projects and collaboration. There are computers in every classroom, and by middle school, every child has his or her own laptop.
With its first class of students two years from graduating the K-8 school, Blue Oak has in been in large part a success.
But now, think bigger.
“As we developed Blue Oak School, we started thinking about ‘what happens in high school?’” Schuler said. Sure, he could start up a new private school, but how far-reaching could that be?
“We have a situation where there are parallel universes of schools in this country,” Schuler said. “There are people who can afford to send their kids to private schools, and there’s everybody else. … The end game is, if you can reintegrate the stratification, you don’t have to think about a Blue Oak. You want to send your kids to public school.”
Enter Napa’s New Technology High School.
The small public school in downtown Napa looks a lot like a grown-up version of Blue Oak, with computers in every classroom and an emphasis on project-based learning. It has been so successful, dozens of other New Tech high schools have cropped up across the country.
Schuler doesn’t take any credit for starting New Tech back in 1996, but he sits on the national advisory board for the New Tech Foundation, which recently merged with the national organization, Knowledge Works.
He has also taken it upon himself to make sure all of Napa’s schools look more like New Tech.
“This is replicating all over the country. Why do we only have one?” Schuler asked. “I’ve been relentless at poking (local school officials) that we can’t just let the status quo be.”
With Schuler’s support, Napa Valley Unified School District launched a revolutionary program two years ago aimed at applying New Tech’s principles to all of the district’s high schools. Schuler gave the program $1 million as a challenge grant, hoping to draw other community donations.
“I would love to see (Napa Valley Unified) become the country’s first wall-to-wall New Tech system,” Schuler said. “On a national scale, this has potential to have more impact on anything in education than what we’ve ever seen.”
What it all boils down to is an obligation to the future, Schuler said.
“There was my parents’ generation, the immigrant generation,” Schuler said. “It was all about their kids. I was the recipient of that, and boy did I run with it — the toys, the planes, the vineyard, not paying attention so much to other generations.”
Now, he said, “I’m waking up and realizing we could be the generation that history writes about. This is Rome at its end, and I refuse to believe that. I don’t want to be the generation that was on watch when that happened. It all comes back to education.”
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