Microsoft’s ‘School of the Future’ sees first class graduate

Four years ago, the Microsoft-designed School of the Future opened its doors to Philadelphia high school students with the goal to serve as a model for 21st-century learning communities around the world. This week, the school graduated its first class with a 100 percent college acceptance rate. Some believe, however, there is room for improvement at the multi-million dollar partnership between Microsoft and the School District of Philadelphia.

Many have paid very close attention to the 750-student high school during the past four years to find out whether or not Microsoft’s intent to help reform public education would succeed. The 117 students who graduated were all accepted to colleges, which says a great deal about the school’s achievements, but the students also got disappointingly low scores on their first standardized tests last year. Rosalind Chivis is the school’s fourth principal in as many years. Chivis says there have been various reasons for the high turnover of principals since the school opened but “for any large urban high school, a person leading the organization has to have a cultural intelligence.” Chivis says there were expectations that all of the students would come in performing at “grade level,” which was not the case.

Students at the $63 million School of the Future benefit from Microsoft’s technological influence, of course. They are all issued laptops upon entering the school; their texts are entirely electronic and each classroom has a webcam and projector, among other advanced technologies at the school.