The Hub School
Purpose or Promise
The Hub School exists to address a common and urgent disconnect: too many young people experience high school as detached from real life, disengaging, and insufficient preparation for what comes next. The Hub’s value proposition is a learner-centered, community-connected model that replaces seat time and grades with portfolios, authentic work, and demonstrated readiness. As learners build evidence of growth, they unlock increasing levels of agency through real-world learning experiences and paid community-based work.
- Mission: Create a national network of vibrant hub schools where every learner is prepared for their future and contributes to a connected, thriving community.
- Vision: Agency, belonging, and competency for every learner, for the common good.
- Why it exists: Secondary school too often leaves students feeling disconnected from the real world and unprepared, while schools remain disconnected from the communities they serve. The Hub School is designed as a “connector” model, linking adolescents (ages 14–19) to community experiences, people, and pathways that open doors of opportunity.
Key Measurable Outcomes
The Hub measures success using an ABC Index (Agency, Belonging, Competency) rather than traditional proxies like attendance or standardized tests. Evidence is built through competency-based progressions and a verified portfolio system that makes growth visible, actionable, and transferable into postsecondary and employment contexts.
Desired outcomes for learners include evidence of:
- Agency: growth in critical literacy, executive functions skill development and attainment, wayfinding skill development, and learner self-direction/self-efficacy.
The Hub Schools - Belonging: belonging and mattering, safety and wellbeing, stronger partnerships and networks, and measurable social network development.
The Hub Schools - Competency: durable skill growth (competency growth rates), progress toward postsecondary pathway goals, and learner and caregiver satisfaction.
The Hub Schools
Verified readiness through evidence: a curated Portfolio of Evidence assessed on a 12-point developmental progression and presented via a digital transcript with artifact “drill-down” to the underlying work.
Day in the Life
Learning Environment
The Hub School learning experience is organized around a simple idea: school happens at the speed of learning, not by age-based grade levels. Learners move through a portfolio progression (from Hub Camp through Foundations, Explore, Advance, and Lead) and earn increasing autonomy and opportunity as they demonstrate readiness. Instead of grades, learners build portfolios that document growth across competencies and knowledge stacks, supported by rapid feedback and revision cycles.
Young Person role(s):
Portfolio builder and curator (documenting evidence across competencies and knowledge stacks).
Assessment Philosophy
Active designer of learning pathway (selecting/pitching projects, choosing modalities and schedules as unlocks are earned).
The Hub Schools
Community participant and contributor (through Learn to Earn and community-connected projects).
Adult role(s):
Executive Functions Coach: explicitly supports EF development, planning, self-management, and wayfinding.
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Pod Leader: guides the pod experience, helps learners set goals, structure time, and build readiness for increased autonomy.
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Learning Lab Faculty: designs and facilitates Learning Lab projects and performance tasks aligned to competencies and knowledge stacks, and provides actionable feedback for revision and growth.
Young Person Day in the Life:
A learner begins the year in Hub Camp, meeting their EF coach, Pod Leader, and Learning Lab faculty and learning the core routines of portfolio-based learning. Over time, their schedule blends Learning Lab projects (often grounded in real-world problems and practical domains), pod blocks for self-directed work and planning, and Learn to Earn experiences in the community. As the learner meets portfolio milestones, they unlock increased flexibility—more choice in where/when/with whom they learn, more time for passion projects, and access to paid experiences that help them explore and prepare for their future.
Adult Day in the Life:
Adults operate as a coordinated support team across modalities. They design and facilitate authentic performance tasks, coach learners through executive functions and goal-setting, and assess work against competency rubrics rather than grading for compliance. Their daily work includes conferring with learners on evidence quality, providing rapid feedback, supporting revision cycles, coordinating community placements for Learn to Earn, and ensuring each learner’s portfolio progression is opening doors (not simply recording activity).
Time, Space, and Resources
Key artifacts and systems that express the model:
- Assessment Philosophy (competency-based progression + portfolios of evidence): the “How” (competencies) + the “What” (knowledge stacks), assessed through multimodal evidence on a 12-point progression with revision-to-mastery.
- Portfolio progression and “Unlocks” (Hub Camp → Foundations → Explore → Advance → Lead): milestones unlock agency, flexibility, passion project time, and paid community experiences.
- Learning platform for portfolio praaogress: a digital system that displays real-time competency progress as learners upload evidence from “anywhere you learn.”
- Transcript approach: a Mastery Transcript Consortium-style record that visualizes competency levels and enables artifact drill-down to the evidence itself.
- ABC Index (school quality measures): a model-wide measurement system aligned to agency, belonging, and competency, with defined inputs and measures.
- Governance concept: national 501(c)(3) governance with local board chapters, in partnership with districts, to maintain model integrity and community alignment.