High-tech education still a high priority in Colorado

Denver’s first High-Tech High School –
aimed at getting more low-income kids into high-tech careers- should open
as early as 2003, state officials announced here Monday.

By Jennifer Beauprez
Denver Post Business Writer

The school will enroll just 400 students, who will get close mentorship from
teachers, study up on tech careers and even carry wireless laptop computers
to class, said David Greenberg, one of several officials who updated 250
business, university and government officials gathered in Aspen for Gov. Bill
Owens’ annual high-tech winter retreat.

The idea is to encourage high-tech careers among minorities and
low-income kids who may otherwise drop out of school. One teacher would
be responsible for coaching 15 students, including visiting them at home.

"If you walk into the door at ninth grade and stay the course, you will walk
into a scholarship at CU when you graduate," Greenberg said.

One of four similar schools planned for Denver, High Tech High will be built
from the ground up at the former Lowry Air Force Base using private money
– in particular $6 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and
the Bill Daniels Foundation, and $2 million in cash and computers from
Compaq Computer Corp.

Greenberg said students must apply to attend the school, but they probably
won’t be able to do so for another year. For more information, visit
http://www.newschoolsdevelopmentcorp.org.

The Governor’s Commission has also made progress with its Colorado
Institute of Technology, a plan generated in 1999 when the industry was in
dire need of tech workers. CIT has changed leaders and dropped plans to
issue its own certificates to students. But the program still aims to address
the state’s shortage of high-tech workers. The United States is not graduating
enough of them; 6 percent of college grads are engineering majors
compared with 60 percent in China. And executives at the summit told
Owens that tech education was a top concern.

CIT has given away $2 million in grants to support 4,300 new university
students who will major in high-tech careers. CIT has also put together a
joint program with the University of Colorado and Colorado School of Mines
to create an online computer science degree and has helped to establish a
new entrepreneurship program with the CU School of Business.

The Governor’s Science & Technology Office is also midway through its
plans to wire the state’s outlying counties and bridge the so-called digital
divide between people in rural areas who can’t get high-speed Internet
access and people in urban areas who can.

The state subsidized a $50 million fiber-optic network by promising to
include some of its own wires in the pipe, which now reaches state and local
government offices, schools and libraries in 47 of the state’s 70 counties.

But true high-speed access beyond those key locations will require private
businesses that want to invest to build the so-called "last mile" of pipes to
people’s homes and businesses.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,33%257E471658,00.html