Design High
by Johanna Weber
Blueprints Fall 2008
Volume XXVI, No. 4
What is the design process? At its core it is a method for solving problems. The design process includes identifying and defining problems, gathering and analyzing information, determining performance criteria, evaluating and selecting appropriate solutions, generating alternative solutions, implementing choices, and evaluating outcomes. When used as a teaching methodology, the design process deemphasizes the notion that there is one answer and instead encourages the investigation of multiple solutions to any given problem.
“Design education encourages children to come up with their own answers rather than having them memorize information. It does not teach to the test. Instead, it takes a problem and applies various lenses to it,” explains Sarah Rice, director of Youth Education at the National Building Museum.
The design process is the cornerstone of the National Building Museum’s youth education program. The Museum has taught thousands of design-related school programs and has developed a self-contained kit—Bridge Basics—that teachers can use to teach math and physics through design. The versatility and flexibility of the design process seem to be contributing to its increased popularity as a vehicle for teaching. “There is a growing consensus among educators that design education is the future of [early] education because it is increasingly being linked to standards of learning and it allows teachers to teach across disciplines,” notes Rice. This “future” can be seen nationwide in both elementary and secondary education.
Design Education Within Reach
In October 2005, the American Architectural Foundation (AAF) and the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) established A+DEN, the Architecture + Design Education Network, a collaborative association of organizations committed to promoting architecture and design education in grades K-12. Jennifer Massengarb, an education specialist at CAF, describes A+DEN as a resource for educators looking for information and design curricula.
“We are not asking teachers to do all the research or develop the lesson plans; instead, we are showing them how the design process can be used to teach core academic subjects like math, science, social sciences, language arts, fine and visual arts. We want to help them do what they do, only better.” Organizations like A+DEN and design education teacher manuals like the National Building Museum’s Bridge Basics Program Kit and CAF’s Schoolyards to Skylines are helping to bring design education into the classroom.
The most compelling proof of design education’s increased popularity is the growing number of U.S. high schools offering a specialized education in architecture and design. Two of the forerunners of this movement are the Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH) in Miami, Florida, and the Charter High School for Architecture and Design (CHAD) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These high schools offer design-centric curricula and programming and use the design process to teach across subjects.
Design Appeal
In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, DASH has provided an integrated liberal and applied arts education to artistically talented students since 1990. A public, magnet, designfocused high school—one of the oldest in the nation— DASH’s stated mission is “to educate talented students to become confident and innovative thinkers through interdisciplinary challenges in the visual arts in preparation for college and a career in the design world.” In order to achieve this mission, DASH has created a learning environment with a professional atmosphere, where students are inspired to be active in their own education. DASH calls this approach “Education by Design.”
Last year, not only did 100 percent of seniors graduate, but all of them went on to college, with between 80 and 82 percent of those students entering design and art programs. “To really complete our programs, the students have to go on to a four-year college,” says Dr. Stacey Mancuso, principal of DASH. “We have had great success in the past few years with college admittance and scholarships. Last year 118 seniors were accepted to colleges and received $12.6 million in scholarships.”
This success has made DASH an elite educational option in the Miami-Dade area and has brought the school international recognition, including being listed 8th on U.S. News and World Report’s list of “America’s Top 100 High Schools for 2007.” DASH has a highlyselective admission process—last year, 700 applicants applied for 120 spaces. Prospective students go through a series of portfolio and transcript reviews and must participate in an audition. Although they are selected based on their visual art abilities rather than academic performance, DASH students excel at core academic subjects with 95 percent of 10th graders meeting or exceeding state standards in mathematics and 75 percent meeting or exceeding state reading standards.
The Philadelphia Experiment
In 1999, the PhiladelphiaChapter of the American Institute of Architects established CHAD as part of its Legacy 2000 project. From a rocky beginning, which included the school’s closing for a short time in its first year, CHAD—the nation’s first charter high school for architecture and design—is now confidently entering its 10th year.
As a Pennsylvania charter school, CHAD is required to practice open admissions. Applicants participate in an interview with a faculty member and a current student; submit a non-juried portfolio; and write a brief essay. Principal Peter Kountz notes that “CHAD has been able to reach a very high level of self-selection in their admissions and enrollment program, which is to say that the students who come to CHAD like to draw, are interested in design and/or architecture, and are open to learning the design process.” CHAD receives roughly 300 applications each year—across all grades—and accepts around 200 for admission.
The open admission process is one of the key differences between CHAD and DASH, because while the students who attend CHAD love to draw and have an aptitude for design, their test scores in reading, writing, and arithmetic are generally well below grade level. Overcoming this learning curve requires additional focus on core courses; therefore, students take eight credits in English and math each year. Also, during the 2008-09 school year, CHAD will employ two full-time tutors to work with individual students during the school week and on Saturdays. For Kountz, the tutors are an important addition: “We are getting great drawers but they are not where they need to be, i.e., at a college level, once they leave the school. This will help get them stronger in the…core curriculum.”
While the impact of the new tutors is not yet clear, CHAD’s approach to education seems to be working. CHAD’s graduation rate ranges between 92 and 95 percent with 63 percent of the school’s graduates going on to schools of design, architecture, or art in 2006. Furthermore, CHAD outperformed 88 percent of nonmagnet high schools in Philadelphia. Still, the “learning curve” has impacted CHAD’s ability to formalize the use of the design process across the curriculum.
Designing Design Education
Design is the word of the day, every day, at CHAD and DASH. Each school integrates a design program with a standard high school curriculum to prepare students for professional design careers. Kountz explains that “‘a design-focused’ education allows [CHAD’s] students to learn in a very different way....[they] learn to see [and assess] things differently. In many respects, CHAD students are generally ‘more alert’ and more able to manage very complicated learning projects, many of them driven by visual engagement.” By encouraging students to “see things differently,” CHAD and DASH push students to become less focused on the answer and more concerned with the process.
In addition to the design and core curricula, fine arts training is a crucial component of CHAD and DASH’s programs. DASH’s requirements are very rigorous: all students take Advanced Placement (AP) Studio Art in their junior and senior years and must take the AP test. In their sophomore year, DASH students select their design concentrations from five professions: architecture/interior design, fashion design, industrial design, communications design, and entertainment technology. Architecture is the most popular concentration with about a quarter of the student body in the program. CHAD does not offer traditional electives because of the additional core curriculum requirements.
Seniors in both DASH and CHAD’s programs are placed in local design firms where they experience a real-world application of their education. “We do a lot of critiques where we invite local architects, engineers, and designers. It makes the experience more meaningful,” explains Principal Mancuso. Ninety percent of DASH seniors have internships in local firms and have the opportunity to work one-on-one with mentors. “We hear from the internship mentors that they love the students, that the students are so dedicated at this early age. In fact, sometimes they say that they are better than their employees.” At CHAD, the involvement of mentors in the classroom is still unrefined and needs improvement, but the school’s internship program has proven extremely successful.
Implementing the Design Process
Both schools openly embrace the design process in their teaching and approach to learning. For DASH the integration of the design process is a natural one that, according to Principal Mancuso, is not “predetermined or mandated.” CHAD’s intention is to formalize the use of the design process across the curriculum as a vehicle for creative and analytical thinking.
“We haven’t yet formalized the use of the design process in all subjects, i.e., math, because so many kids are performing below grade level,” explains CHAD’s principal, “[but] everybody uses the design process and the steps, even if they don’t necessarily call it out. Part of it is nomenclature and part of it is usage, but all of our teachers have a basic understanding of the process and [use] it whenever possible.”
This approach to education is crucial to the success of both of these institutions, because the design process encourages active learning and student involvement. More importantly, it results in a flexible institutional structure that embraces change.
The Future of Education?
For CHAD and DASH, using the design process as a mechanism for educating the leaders of tomorrow is not something far off in the future. It is a philosophy that is central to their missions and identity. Over the next few years, both schools will continue to focus on increased student interaction with professional designers. Furthermore, both schools stress the importance of institutional growth without increased enrollment, a goal that will be challenging in light of looming state education budget cuts nationwide.
These two schools recognize that their approach to education is both a success story and a work in progress. As DASH’s Mancuso notes, “[DASH’s] curriculum is evolving. There is no book to tell you how to run the school.” Ultimately, CHAD and DASH are practicing what they preach and using the design process to improve their schools and prepare their students for their future careers. Already, the design education model embraced by CHAD and DASH has been replicated at public design high schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Washington, D.C to name a few. Although DASH and CHAD are “young” in the world of public education, what they offer is an approach to learning that nurtures inquiry and rewards experimentation; two skills that will be invaluable in today’s increasingly complex world.
Johanna Weber is a former marketing and communications manager at the National Building Museum.
