Trace Pickering, associate superintendent of the Cedar Rapids Community School District, founded Iowa BIG, a district program that gives students an alternative to the traditional school day. The district, located about two hours’ drive northeast of Des Moines, is the second largest in Iowa (after Des Moines), with more than 17,000 students. And parents had to be convinced that it was worth trying something new because schools there already had a good reputation. The district’s students score well above the state average on college admissions exams, even though it has more minority students than the state average. Pickering oversees innovation, school improvement and technology in the district.

Iowa BIG is our most innovative, transformative program. We basically took all the traditional assumptions about school – about how we spend our time, space, curriculum, assessment – and we just challenged every one of those assumptions. We built a school that’s focused on student passion, authentic projects and community partnerships. Our students earn core academic credit, in the four core areas, by engaging in projects they care about with our community. The role of the teacher changes dramatically, from delivering content to understanding where these projects will go and what the student needs to know next to get there … We don’t have a curriculum because there’s no curriculum in life. You build it as you go. That’s what our teachers have really become adept at – identifying what does this group of students or this particular student need to know next to move their project further.

But we also survey pre- and post-[course], like the Gallup survey that measures growth and well-being and sense of efficacy and ownership of learning. Students at Iowa BIG are dramatically stronger than their traditional high school peers in those areas. They understand what their passions are, they understand how to advocate for themselves, they have a sense of efficacy over, “Hey, I can control my own learning and I can create a future for myself.” For me, those measures far exceed, “Oh, I got 80 percent on this math test.”

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