New England States Team Up on High Schools

The education commissioners of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island today launched a joint effort to remake the high school experience in their states.

News conferences were scheduled in three of the four states today to detail the plans of the newly formed New England Secondary School Consortium . The governors of Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island were slated to appear in support of the project, along with an array of leaders from the states’ education departments, legislatures, and professional organizations.

The consortium aims to create high schools that are “flexible, borderless, multidimensional community learning centers” in which students would have the chance to study at the secondary and postsecondary levels, do research in their communities, build real-world skills through internships, and immerse themselves in technology. This learning would be infused with “21st century skills”—a bevy of strengths from problem-solving prowess to global awareness—and assessments that properly gauge such a diverse set of skills would have to be carefully designed or chosen, leaders...