St. Paul schools team up with nonprofit to give students real-world challenges

How to boost student attendance has been a hot topic for state lawmakers and community advocates — and beginning this school year, for 244 high school sophomores at Washington Technology Magnet School in St. Paul, too.

The students surveyed classmates, and researched attendance improvement strategies, and came up with a range of ideas that include offering more field trips and artist or author visits, as well as $25 gift card incentives — and boldly enough — a shift to a four-day week.

The brainstorming came about as part of a national learning model, 3DE by Junior Achievement, which calls for students to work as teams to tackle real-world challenges posed by businesses, nonprofits and government institutions — including St. Paul Public Schools itself.

The program, now operating in three high schools in the state’s second-largest district — the only school system in Minnesota with the program — is a partnership with Junior Achievement North. Six times a year, students take on a case, and at its conclusion, present their findings, most recently at the Landmark Center downtown.

“They’re working with their peers and they’re working with professionals,” said Diana Brown, principal of Como Park Senior High, where the project-based challenges are in their second year. “I don’t know of any other program that does that for that amount of time and that consistently.”

The case studies are conducted and graded as part of the Freshman Focus and AVID electives — college and career readiness classes — for ninth-graders, and the Career Seminar and AVID electives for 10th-graders. The plan is to add a grade per year so students will have access to the coursework throughout high school.

“It’s not just about getting students to go out and work with any one particular place,” said Leah Van der Sluis, director of 3DE school partnerships. “It’s getting them to see the range of different opportunities that are out there.”

“Interested districts can reach out to our team,” she added.

3DE launched in Atlanta in 2015 and now serves students in more than 50 schools nationwide. According to data from the program, school districts have reported increases in graduation and college enrollment rates, and decreases in chronic absenteeism.

Data gathered thus far in St. Paul show a growing number of students saying they find school more relevant and feel accepted and respected in school, Junior Achievement North states in its “year one” report for the 2024-25 school year, when the challenges first were conducted.

Not that all kids embraced it straightaway.

Teyla Matlock, a sophomore at Como Park High, took part in the recent Landmark Center event and was asked if she could recall last year’s first challenge: “No, sadly, I do not,” she replied, adding it took until the midpoint of second quarter to have a full feel for what was required.

Black Men Teach, a local nonprofit aimed at getting more young Black males into the teaching pipeline, asked students this fall to design a breakout session for one of its conferences. Markus Flynn, the group’s executive director, served as a coach working with students on the case.

“I could just see how much energy that gave students to be talking to the guy who runs this organization,” said Kumar Balasubrahmanyan, vice president of innovation for Junior Achievement North. “It was really, really powerful.”

Marcel Bolden, a Como Park High sophomore, is a 3DE ambassador and also a member of the school’s Black Men Teach student group. It meets weekly to “talk about how we can be better as Black men in the community and become teachers one day,” Marcel said.

Black Men Teach is expected to return with another challenge next year.

As for the St. Paul school district’s response to Washington students’ attendance-boosting ideas, Andrew Collins, executive chief of schools for SPPS, said: “The students demonstrated their creativity and analytical skills and gave us a lot of good ideas to think about.”

Collins helped judge the case studies — with grades given not for the proposed solutions, but the ways in which students went about their work.