Cambridge College: 2002 Annual Report

Profile: Larry Rosenstock

What do you get when some of the biggest names in technology combine resources for public good? If you say "charter high school," you're right.

Welcome to High Tech High (HTH), a tuition-free San Diego charter school with an array of big-name backers, including Qualcomm Inc. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Housed at a former Naval Training Center, the school is designed upon three elements: personalization, including small classes and strong advising; adult world immersion -- students participating in structured internship programs; and a common intellectual mission.

"Technology is not a subject here, it's just a tool that you use to help create things," says Larry Rosenstock, the principal and CEO of HTH. Students, for instance, can't play video games at school -- unless they're non-violent, educational, and were created by fellow HTH students.

His concerns are more educational -- reforming vocational education, to be precise. Larry's work at HTH parallels his earlier reform efforts as principal at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mass.; Staff Attorney for the Center for Law and Education; and director of The New Urban High School, a national project that discovered how kids in structured internship programs are much more likely to attend college, because they're engaged in real-world activity.

"We're trying, trying in terms of federal policy, to deal with this false duality that [John] Dewey identified 100 years ago between those who were being prepared to use their hands versus those who were being prepared to use their heads," he says.

Not surprisingly, Larry has extensive experience with both. In fact, he was working as a carpenter (and single parent) in the late 1970s when he opted for a change. "I wanted to teach, left my day job, and did my teaching as a carpenter under desegregation in the public schools," he says.

By the mid-1980's, he went shopping for a graduate education program. On a dare, he had also re-enrolled in law school to finish a degree started 15 years earlier. He chose Cambridge College because of its location, reputation, and because he wanted an older student environment akin to that of his night-time law courses at Suffolk University. "I wanted something comparable in an education school, and I found it in Cambridge College. The population was older, experienced, and they were working full time, as I was," he says.

Larry says Cambridge College helped him get to where he is now. "Remember, here I am, a single parent at the time, and I am working full time and trying to get two degrees, so there are not a lot of places where you could make that work," he says.

But there was a big difference between many of his fellow students at law school and Cambridge College, he remembers. A prerequisite at Cambridge was being passionate about what they pursued. "The other thing I liked and respected was that I had a purpose for being there, and I'm a big believer in intentionality in public education," Larry says. "That's why I'm leading a school of choice now."

His leadership is paying off. In 1999, HTH's first year, it had the highest test scores for comparable socioeconomic status schools, and any high school overall is possible, in the state of California. Vocational indeed.

(Note: No photo runs with this profile because I contracted a San Diego photographer to take the required photos; he retains copyright.)

Next: Linda Nathan