UP UP AND AWAY: Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of the late Steve Jobs of Apple, is challenging you to redesign the American high school through the XQ: Super School Project. Announced on September 14th, this $50 million campaign is Jobs’ endeavor to put money into the hands of educators and leaders who come up with new high school designs, from thinking of new ways to integrate technology to switching up high school class scheduling.
Over the next few months, the XQ Project will accept proposals from teams and partner with five to ten winners in August of 2016, offering them support from a fund of $50 million to support at least five schools over the next five years.
“There is a huge gap between what students want for their future and what their schools are offering,” Powell Jobs told the NY Times. “Once you have liberation from a system that was designed for the beginning of the century, there’s nobody to blame.”
According to Times, the XQ project is the “highest-profile project yet of the Emerson Collective, the group that Ms. Powell Jobs uses to finance her philanthropic projects.”