But looks can be deceiving. Most weeks, this school sends students to work in high-rise offices, tech firms or a coding center it runs downtown.

In fact, the building’s past history as a neighborhood elementary school may be the only reminder of the big, comprehensive and often unsafe public high schools from which it’s often a refuge. 

Offering a dizzying array of internships, college courses and dual enrollment opportunities, Building 21 challenges nearly all of the conventional wisdom about what an urban public high school should do.

Unlike most urban high schools, Building 21 is small: Enrollment is capped at 400 students, with classes of just 25 or fewer.

It operates under a complex set of that stress the importance of relationships. When conflicts arise, teachers must help resolve them quickly, interfering as little as possible as students work things out. The school was among the first in Philadelphia to introduce so-called , an alternative to traditional — often harsh — school discipline. Instead of a lecture or suspension for misbehavior, students often find themselves deep in conversation about what happened, talking with teachers, counselors and classmates to get to the bottom of a conflict and resolve it. These practices, the school maintains, also teach problem-solving skills.

In operation for a decade, it also boasts something most Philadelphia schools don’t: a 94% graduation rate for the past two years. At last count, the district’s four-year graduation rate .

Nabeehah Parker, a 20-year veteran of the district, came to Building 21 in 2022 to run its partnership program. Her goal, she said, was to make it a place where students can have the same opportunities as students at selective schools.

To that end, the school offers a veritable revolving door of experts coming in to teach classes and students heading out for face-time with employers.

It features the kinds of risk-taking and experiences often reserved for students in elite schools. Yet it admits virtually anyone, with open-enrollment policies that match those of the city’s big neighborhood high schools.

Principal Ben Koch started out as a Spanish teacher here, building its world language program around a concept called “.” Instead of memorizing vocabulary lists and conjugating verbs, students act out stories in the language they’re learning. The audience responds to the actors in a kind of interactive linguistic improv. 

“I saw that just take off,” he said. Students took more risks, retained more vocabulary and learned to speak in full sentences. 

Simultaneously, he organized a class trip to Costa Rica, where students hiked the rainforest, ziplined, helped repaint an elementary school and worked at an elder care center. 

Closer to home, students learn bioscience through a mobile program sponsored by the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research and game design with a teacher who created a mobile app to help schools track inventory. In a cosmetology class, teacher Samantha Bromfield focuses on ensuring employable skills, believing that “everyone should know how to do a range of everything.”

The school’s open-admissions policy is a draw for many families, said Parker, the partnership coordinator. The opportunity for any student to attend, no matter their grades or behavioral record, is “something that parents are looking for.”

But it also means much of Building 21’s energy is spent getting students’ skills up to the level where they can reliably pursue their interests. 

That often takes the form of individualizing assignments and basically personalizing student performance levels. In an English class, all students are writing about topics they’re interested in, but one student may be tasked with writing a cogent essay based on a reading, while another may write one that does more with the reading, incorporating specific details or answering complex questions. 

“What we’re trying to find is that sweet spot where you’re not ignoring the truth of what ‘unfinished learning’ looks like in high school — and you want kids to find themselves and get engaged,” said co-founder Laura Shubilla.

If some of that isn’t sexy or new, she shrugs it off. A lot of what works in education, including systemic differentiated instruction, simply isn’t. “I would say probably we’re more intentional than innovative.” 

As a result, while the school gets a lot of visitors, it doesn’t often appear in the news. These days, one of the main things the school is known for in Philly — a district plagued with decrepit building conditions — is its three-month closure last spring after inspectors discovered . In May 2023, one day after it reopened, shut it down again, just hours after a big celebratory barbecue. 

“Four o’clock in the afternoon,” Shubilla recalled, “the ceiling fell in.”

A ‘backwards-mapped’ curriculum

The school offers four years of competency-based learning, in which mastering skills takes precedence over seat time. Since students progress at their own rate, each enjoys what amounts to an individualized education.

It turns the idea of grades on its head, offering students the opportunity to submit and re-submit work until it meets high standards. Assignments are graded on a 2- to 12- point scale. If a student hands in a writing assignment that’s adequate or only touches on a few competencies, it might earn an 8 or 9 or lower. If she wants to earn a 10 or 11, she can refer to a chart that lays out the skills associated with such a piece of writing: It must have a compelling hook and strong point of view, cite evidence and acknowledge other perspectives.

Earning a 10 or higher means it’s as good as something a college student — or at least a college-ready student — might produce.

“We did a lot of studying on what it takes to be successful in college and on a job,” said co-founder Chip Linehan, “and we sort of backwards-mapped from there.”

Hassan Durant, 17, a senior, said the curriculum is challenging but worth the effort. “It pushes us to think harder and more on a college-based level,” he said

Understanding how to move up the grading scale was difficult at first, but many students now welcome it.

“A lot of people that I know that feel like they should have scored higher go to the teachers and ask, ‘What can I revise? What can I work on? What can I fix and change to take this from an 8 and bring it up to at least a 10?’” Durant said.

After years of traditional learning and report cards, he said it was difficult to get his parents to understand the subtleties of competency.

He recalled telling his parents, “I’m not really failing, and I wouldn’t say I’m passing, but I am getting the work done and doing what I have to do so that I can pass.” 

Roots at Harvard, MIT

Co-founders Shubilla and Linehan created Building 21 after meeting at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in 2011, where they studied with renowned scholar . 

Elmore pushed students to rethink everything. “His question was always, ‘Why does this thing called learning have to take place in this place called school?’” said Shubilla. If not, he would ask, what would you replace it with?

She and Linehan soon realized that they had similar answers: Both believed school should start with an “anchor learning site” connected to opportunities elsewhere.

So they designed a school that both brings in experts from outside and gently pushes students into workplaces. Linehan likes to think of it as making the school “as permeable as possible.” 

Elmore, who died in 2021, also pushed students to confront their biases. More broadly, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education urged teachers to confront bedrock views about their own authority and interact more patiently with students.

“Their saying was, ‘You can’t transform the sector until you transform yourself,’” Shubilla recalled.

Building 21 opened in 2014, and now operates two campuses, one here and another in nearby . Beyond that, its curriculum is open-sourced, readily accessible to other educators wanting to try their hand at competency-based learning. 

The school’s name is a sly nod to MIT’s fabled , which for 80 years served as coded shorthand for a center of innovation. After World War II, it became home to dozens of researchers and technologists, including MIT’s legendary , widely seen as the first group of computer hackers.

Mastering skills preoccupies much of the first two years here, but the final two take on a different cast, with juniors spending large chunks of the day connecting what they’re learning to their interests through internships and senior projects. 

Last spring, Durant, the senior, spent a lot of time downtown at , Building 21’s IT pathway program, to learn the Python computer language. He’s also in the middle of a paid “externship” with , an engineering software company that specializes in infrastructure. The company — one of 83 outside organizations that partner with the school — sponsors five such positions each spring and summer. 

Last fall, Durant was also enrolled in a public speaking class at La Salle University, one of three colleges where Building 21 students can sign up for dual-enrollment classes. Building 21 also runs three dual enrollment classes onsite through Harrisburg University.

Like many schools that emphasize project-based and competency-based learning, it puts seniors through “capstone” projects that often summarize their learning, scratch an itch or answer a nagging question.

In one case, a student who wanted to start a theater program visited stages at nearby schools and returned to Building 21 with a detailed proposal to create a homegrown initiative, complete with budget, staffing projections and recommendations.

Another surveyed the African-American history curriculum and came away with a keen observation: When it came to Black Americans, it relied heavily on “the oppression narrative” of slavery, racism and subjugation, Shubilla recalled. “And her question was: ‘Why is there not more Black joy in the curriculum?’” 

Not only did teachers listen, they spent the following summer staring down the student’s complaint and eventually concluded that she was right. They redesigned it. 

One teacher that teaching about racial trauma opens a wound for many students of color that teachers often fail to consider. So the school added more readings and projects built around “enlightenment and empowerment,” such as a study of the crusading journalist and others.

Taken together, the experiences resonate with students, who mature quickly as they approach graduation.

Aaliyah St. Fleur, 18, a senior, admitted that she wasn’t really focused on the big picture until last fall, when she met a group of Black women doctors from the University of Pennsylvania Children’s Hospital at a medical conference. She now wants to be a neonatal intensive care nurse — or perhaps a gynecologist.

More importantly, she realized that if she wants to be a doctor, she has to get serious about school. 

“I was on my grades, but iffy about it,” she admitted. “But then once I did the trip, I was like, ‘OK, my GPA has to be higher.’”

Most schools might not sympathize with a student realizing in the spring of her junior year that she must focus to get into medical school, let alone college. But Parker, Shubilla and others said she’s got time to begin building a transcript that will help get her there. Likely it will take a big investment in dual-enrollment classes come this fall, when she begins her senior year. 

No one understands that better than Aaliyah, who knows that her time in high school is short. “I’m actually paying attention.”

But a survey by ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ reveals the answer is more complex, that while some schools have revised their acceptance criteria based on the availability of rigorous courses, including calculus, others have not. 

Queries sent to 20 top-tier colleges and universities, many of which are recognized for their strong engineering programs, found that 11 do not require it while six strongly recommend or encourage it.

Calculus may not be a must, but it is still expected at many institutions.

looks for some applicants to complete the class if they have access to it. Likewise, , and strongly recommend or encourage at least some applicants to take the course in high school.

was alone among the 20 in still mandating calculus. In fact, the Ivy League school tells incoming freshmen that at least one of their two letters of recommendation must be from a math teacher and they are “strongly encouraged” to make that person their precalculus or calculus teacher.

Caltech dropped calculus, physics and chemistry from a list of required courses while widening students’ opportunity to showcase their abilities through other means, including the completion of online courses through the free .  

Ashley Pallie, Caltech’s executive director of undergraduate admissions, noted it was a significant shift for the STEM-intensive titan. The school had required a calculus course for decades, she said, despite pushback from applicants. 

“Every year, we would get lots of students who would write in and say, ‘I was on track to take it, but the teacher isn’t able to teach us here,’ or, ‘Not enough students signed up for the class,’ or, ‘The class isn’t offered at my high school,’” she said. “And the answer was always, ‘No. We need to have the course requirement.’ ”

But that changed when Pallie and two faculty members, who set admissions criteria, learned at a February conference on equity and college acceptance the extent to which the course is not available, particularly to low-income applicants, students of color and those living in rural areas. 

Pallie credited Melodie Baker, national policy director at , an organization that promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success, for sharing the information at that gathering. Calculus still has merit, Caltech faculty concluded, but should no longer be mandated. 

“So now it’s less about having taken the course and more about, ‘Can you showcase to us that you have proficiency and mastery?’” Pallie said. 

MIT follows a similar model; it wants incoming freshmen to have two semesters of calculus but allows them to place out of the requirement either through outside credits or by taking an Advanced Standing Examination.

Calculus is not required for admission to any school or college, including the College of Engineering and the Ross School of Business. 

And the same holds true at , , , and Johns Hopkins. 

The explanation is simple, according to one school’s spokesperson. 

“We recognize not all high schools have a calculus course available to students, so it is not required for admission to Johns Hopkins University,” said Jill Rosen.

Baker, of Just Equations, said colleges and universities should always seek to widen the opportunities for bright applicants so they can one day help solve the world’s most complex and enduring problems. 

“When math is used as it was intended, to cultivate and develop talent rather than rank and sort students, the future of STEM looks like a microcosm of the larger society,” she said. “It looks very different from what it looks like today: It looks well-represented.”

The doesn’t demand calculus for entry to any of its undergraduate programs. However, the school does prefer that students study the topic at some stage: It’s mandatory for some majors, though it can be taken at the college level. 

Still, a spokesperson for the five-college system said, “Anyone can get in without it.”

For other colleges, the answer is nuanced. Neither calculus nor precalculus is a requirement for first-year admissions at the , a spokesperson said. 

The vast U.C. system, which encompasses 10 campuses and some , does, however, note that those interested in STEM, data science and the social sciences are “strongly encouraged” to consider a math course sequence that prepares them for calculus — either during high school or in their first year at the university.

Sharon Veatch, school counseling department chair at the rural Housatonic Valley Regional High School in northwest Connecticut, follows college admissions criteria closely. Two of her former graduates are now at Harvard and a couple of others have recently graduated from Cornell. 

She said universities have become less focused on calculus in recent years: Their decision to admissions tests from consideration means they are looking at students more holistically, placing less emphasis on any one class. 

But, Veatch said, many top-ranked universities urge students to take the most rigorous course available. For those at her high school, that means Advanced Placement calculus. The campus hasn’t offered AP Statistics for years. 

“In general, when I advise students, I say, ‘You need to max out on the curriculum,’” she said. “Because that’s what I’m being told.”

Maxing out, of course, means something different from one state to another as several are reassessing their mathematics offerings.

California has tried to broaden high school students’ opportunities by providing other academic pathways, not just those that lead to calculus. 

But there’s been a push and pull between , with the state recently backtracking on a key issue for college applicants: The faculty committee that sets admissions requirements for the U.C. system that data science could no longer be a substitute for Algebra II. The state Board of Education, which oversees K-12 and is looking at reframing math statewide, soon after removed its endorsement of data science as a substitute for that subject. 

, a crown jewel in higher education in that state, recommends four years of rigorous mathematics — including algebra, geometry and trigonometry.

“We also welcome additional mathematical preparation, including calculus and statistics,” its website advises.

Calculus is not necessary for entry to the University of Wisconsin. But spokesman John Lucas said direct admittance to the engineering program is highly selective, “so, it’s rare for a student to not have taken calculus.”

Georgia Tech is a bit more explicit. Laura Simmons, an admissions counselor there, said in an , that students should take the most challenging courses available to them. If that means seeking out a dual enrollment math class at the local college, they should choose wisely.

“We’re never going to pretend that college algebra is the same as a calculus class,” she said. 

From Aug. 16 through 27, two groups of rising sixth- through ninth-graders embarked on a weeklong intensive STEM camp dubbed DynaMIT, a play on the school’s name. Founded in 2012 and now organized by about 15 students enrolled in perhaps the country’s most premier tech university, the free program brings critical thinking, design, science and engineering concepts to life for young people who have never participated in STEM programs before.

Each afternoon, campers worked on individual capstone projects. Boston Latin’s Steven Miall coded a roleplay game in where a traveler decides between paths in the jungle, ultimately making it out safely or perishing by tiger or hunger.

“I didn’t know how to do any Scratch before the program, and at the end, I was really, I guess fluent,” Miall said of his 2019 cohort experience. “Knowing how to use Scratch could help with other different languages of computer science in the future.”

“We have a lot of access to technological resources and education,” DynaMIT’s 2021 co-director and MIT senior Daniel Zhang said. He described their mission as utilizing their school’s resources to “bring excitement about STEM” to students who don’t have the economic opportunity to participate in similar paid programs.

Roughly of Boston Public School students are low income, and many of the were cancelled this year out of caution for the pandemic’s changing conditions. The decision to make the camp virtual for the second summer in a row was made in accordance with MIT policy, and enabled 10 out-of-state students to participate for the first time.

Jacksonville, Florida 9th-grader Emma Lee found DynaMIT in an online search for summer opportunities where she could try her hand at all STEM subject areas, hoping to hone her interests. She said that this summer was the first time she’d been in an environment with so many kids with similar interests to hers.

“Here in Florida, I don’t think there are as many opportunities from the colleges because they’re mainly up North,” Lee said. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always been pretty interested in STEM. I really want to be one of those pioneering females in the future.”

Throughout the academic year, MIT student board members write grants, develop curricula and recruit and train 40 mentors to maintain their 2-to-1 student ratio. In Zoom breakout rooms, no more than two to three mentors and four to six students form a “family” for “personalized guidance and attention” and deeper relationships, Zhang said.

Programming begins with icebreakers and time for students and mentors to check in, and each day focuses on a new subject: math, astronomy, biology, chemistry and finally mechanical engineering. DynaMIT also hosts career panels, inviting scientists and researchers from the university to talk about their professional journeys.

In-person cohorts from past years have witnessed a in action — the conductive box redirects electric charges away from whatever’s safely inside, much like a car in a lightning storm. Until 2019, students also toured a pharmaceutical laboratory, Novartis, where many used pipettes for the first time. The company is one of DynaMIT’s local partners, and provided some materials for this year’s 116 at-home science kits.

Mentors prepared and mailed the packages, which included popsicle sticks for mini hydraulic lifts and modeling clay for human organ simulations, to students’ homes. For some activities, students also experimented with objects around the home, like trying to determine the acidity of cleaning fluids in a pH scavenger hunt.

DynaMIT’s smaller class sizes and final projects, which encouraged students to lean into their interests, helped them stay engaged via Zoom after another virtual school year. When comparing 2019 and 2021 test scores across the country, education researchers estimate deep learning losses in math, with low-income students appearing more adversely affected than their high-income peers.

From space camps in Texas, where reach grade-level thresholds in science, to video game coding programs, families sought out STEM opportunities to try to mitigate learning deficits and re-engage the younger generation this summer.

In Massachusetts, summer school as a way to boost STEM mastery — the state even committed . And Boston students are eager for more opportunities like DynaMIT, to replace Zoom lectures with project-based learning.

“It was just more personal. The way that it was taught was more of a pick your route, and choose how you want to do things, which I like a lot more than the traditional science class where it’s like, ‘This is your assignment, this is what you learn about,’” said 8th-grader Hannah Steves, a 2020 virtual alum interested in pursuing environmental engineering.

The organization is in the process of surveying alumni from the past decade to measure impacts. Of the 70 alum respondents, roughly 63 percent say DynaMIT has had a strong or very strong influence on their future career aspirations, according to survey results.

Willers Yang, a first-generation college student and 2021 co-director, said they try to excite an interest in all kinds of science — from coding and psychology to chemistry — before students internalize ideas about the difficulty or accessibility of those careers. fields.

“DynaMIT is probably a good program to lead students back to school in the sense that we’re not structuring our days as lectures, we’re structuring our days as a sequence of activities and experiments that they can have fun building …,” Yang said. “Showing them that they can have a place in STEM in the future as a scientist or engineer, giving them a closer look.”