High School Redesign
If we want to prepare students for college, career, and real life after high school, we need to revamp the traditional high school experience. Every community knows what's best for its students, so the specifics of high school redesign will look different from place to place. Yet there are some universal principles that can guide any group of educators, families, students, or policymakers ready to rethink high school.
That’s why we created the six XQ Design Principles, our guiding pillars for rethinking what high school can be. They function as touchpoints to return to throughout the redesign process. Use them to ensure that your XQ high school ladders up to the essential qualities of an effective, 21st century education.
Our Design Principles are not prescriptive; they’re core, research-backed elements that anchor the high school redesign process and support you in creating more effective learning experiences and environments. Read more about how to make these design principles your own.
We also created the the XQ Design Principles Rubric to support the long-term, iterative work of continuous improvement. Developed in partnership with XQ schools and the improvement experts at Springpoint, the rubric helps ambitious high schools understand where they are on the journey to excellence—and how to take practical steps to achieve their goals.
Inside the rubric, teams can review a detailed set of “dimensions of practice” indicators designed to help them place their schools on a developmental scale (from emerging to sustained), picture what success could look like for their school, and chart a path to get there.
Currently a work in progress, the XQ Design Principles Rubric will be further developed in 2022 before being translated into a fully digital format.
