SYPartners is proud to have helped create XQ: The Super School Project, a bold new effort to tap our nation’s collective ingenuity and rethink high school.

In a year-long competition, XQ calls on America’s students, teachers, administrators, civic leaders, businesses, entrepreneurs, artists, and designers to come together, rise up, and meet the challenge of designing the new American high school.

Because today, American high schools aren’t adequately preparing young people for the modern world.

We’re living in an idea-driven economy and an information age, but the design of our public high schools is stuck in the past. We’re asking kids to memorize and repeat, but our challenges increasingly require critical thinking and collaboration to crack new and complex problems.

While other countries have invested in education, America lags behind—we’re ranked #17 in reading, #20 in science, and #27 in mathematics.

XQ asks teams to scrap the existing blueprint, which clearly isn’t working, and start from scratch, harnessing the power of experiential design and innovation to build a super school. We’ve lent our design and innovation expertise to this aspect of the project, and will be helping to guide the process as teams invent new ways forward.

To learn more, follow the movement, and join the challenge, click here.