The XQ: The Super School Project of Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, is placing $10 million bets on 10 high schools over the next five years designed to spark experimentation nationwide, reports USA TODAY. Powell Jobs will be in Washington on Wednesday evening to unveil the 10 lucky schools funded through her charity, The Emerson Collective.
On the XQ home page it states: “We’ve gone from the Model T to the Tesla and from the switchboard to the smartphone. Yet high school has remained frozen in time.”
In an interview with USA TODAY, Powell Jobs said she was “humbled” by the response to the competition, which received about 700 applications. She and others spent a year working with 348 teams in 98 districts nationwide, many of which will push to complete their work even without XQ’s funding, she and others said.
Powell Jobs said she hopes the 10 schools, as well as others that XQ plans to honor Wednesday, will serve as new models for next-generation U.S. high schools. “There’s enormous capacity for creativity within districts,” she said.
