Joel Herbst, Superintendent of Schools, FAU – Alexander D. Henderson University School

In an interview with Invest:, Joel Herbst, superintendent of schools at FAU’s A.D. Henderson University School, discussed educational innovation, access, and real-world learning, including financial literacy. “We treat education like a business, where outcomes matter,” Herbst said.

What is your overview of the primary K-12 education landscape in Palm Beach and South Florida?

The region stands out for its wide array of educational choices, including Palm Beach County, Broward, and Dade School District schools, magnet programs, publicly funded charter schools, private schools, and other alternative models, including our laboratory school.

We’re one of four lab schools in Florida, located at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, alongside FSU, UF, and FAMU. As a lab school, we develop and often test educational trends and programs that impact both school and contextual factors. We accomplish this through the utilization of analytics, particularly predictive analytics; this platform allows us to measure outcomes of both student and teacher efficacy. These findings are used to inform the direction and the strategy used to develop educational programming. The use of predictive analytics provides the basis to practice both program expansion as well as the organizational abandonment of programs that do not provide a return on investment. Finally, these initiatives are assessed for broader application across all educational settings.We serve students from kindergarten through 12th grade and are the only dual-enrollment program in the nation where high schoolers can earn both a high school diploma and a cost-free bachelor’s degree simultaneously. Starting the summer before ninth grade, students are immersed in university life and can later choose from 102 different majors. Additionally, they have over 170 undergraduate and graduate degree programs across 10 colleges. We supplement these opportunities at our school through the use of curriculum and competitive clubs, including an onsite archeological dig site, a fully functional surgical suite, research labs (ocean sciences, neurophysiology, microscopy, therapeutic rapid design, robotic agriculture site, and aerospace programming)

We treat education like a business, where outcomes are measured on the micro and macro levels. If a program doesn’t deliver, we refine or discontinue it, always prioritizing student-centered, data-driven impact.

Our success is driven by analytics similar to what is used in finance and professional athletics. We refer to our analytics process-driven decision-making much like the principles and practices outlined in the movie “Moneyball.”

How are demographic shifts affecting student enrollment and composition at the University School?

Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of school choice both in Florida and throughout the nation. These include public, private, charter, home, and micro schools. I am a firm believer in choice options for families. Our school represents one of those choice options. As a legislatively designated research school, our mission is to research educational programs and practices and share our findings with the aforementioned options. Our findings inform educational practice throughout our state and nation.

Our Center for Educational Strategy and Innovation serves to scale our model by directly impacting those serving students.

How are you promoting affordable and accessible education, particularly for students who need it most?

Our schools are public and provide accessibility to all students through a lottery within our geographic region. Additionally, we host a Bezos Academy on our campus, supporting three and four-year-old students whose families’ gross annual income can be up to 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). As a laboratory school, we are steeped in our purpose, which is to create, test, and disseminate programs and processes that work. Impact and accessibility are provided through the Center for Educational Strategy and Innovation. We have trained over 700 teachers, impacting in excess of 100,000 students.

Our goal is to address the national decline in student performance. The NAEP or  Nation’s Report Card shows consistent declines in both math and reading scores, some pandemic- related, but not all. International comparisons, such as PISA, reveal similar patterns.

I truly believe we are at the precipice of international economic competitiveness, and I believe the only cure is a great education. The opportunity to receive a great education mitigates many, if not all, of our societal ills. Historically, I believe we are at our generation’s Sputnik moment, when the United States had to reignite investment in science and technology. Today, private companies lead in areas of science and math, but public education must also rapidly evolve to prepare students for a fast-changing world. Our Center for Education Strategy and Innovation is responding directly to impact what and how we teach, and our insertion point is the classroom teacher. Additionally, we focus our efforts on informing policymakers, public and private corporations, families, and those public and private educational companies that create and deliver educational programs, technology, and other ancillary products.

How are you leveraging technology and innovation to prepare students for the future workforce?

We’re focused on developing educators who approach instruction through the lens of innovation while utilizing technology as a tool. The best model we have created is early innovation through tech exposure, such as utilizing drag-and-drop code and green screen presentations created by kindergartens to high school students, utilizing terabytes of data for the development of their peer-reviewed published research. This approach makes learning “sticky”. One of our many initiatives is the development of our robotic agriculture program. While agriculture might seem outdated, it’s crucial, especially with persistent food insecurity across the United States.

Students use robots and drones to code, plant, irrigate, and harvest. They apply hyperspectral analysis to track plant health and identify issues like pest mitigation and water conservation. It’s a blend of agriculture and advanced tech.

We’re building 18 garden pods, two are already in use, and each classroom manages one. Students learn programming, engineering, aerospace, and agricultural skills. The program is one example of utilizing technology to innovate, incorporating coding, analysis, logistics, and outreach. We push students to tackle challenges, creating innovative solutions agnostic of age or grade level.

What is in the pipeline for AD Henderson and FAU High School?

Our original facility, constructed in 1967, due to deferred maintenance and structural restrictions, was beyond repair and well past its lifecycle. With support from the state legislature and private donations, we utilized a public-private process of funding. Phase 1 is complete, and Phase 2, much like Phase 1, reflects our vision of what public education should be: open, lab- based environments designed for exploration.

The new labs include advanced microscopy, a surgical suite, a prototyping room with resin, hydrogel, 3D printers, and a neurophysiology space with tools for brain research. It’s not unusual to see kindergarteners using scanning electron and confocal microscopes.

We’re expanding our science-through-art course into a Da Vinci and science, history, and math series, leveraging archeology for our K-8th-grade students. These classes connect anatomy and physiology, simple machines, and artistic design, showing how creativity and science intersect, as they do in companies like Apple and Microsoft, where artists and engineers collaborate to create new technology. Our collaborative teacher environment, which we have created, encourages teachers to explore and create a variety of insertion points into our current curriculum while developing new curriculum to prepare our students for the future, ever- changing workforce needs of tomorrow. Our most significant investment is the Center for Education Strategy and Innovation. The Center will provide a map for those who impact education to explore and create programming that will ignite student curiosity and innovation.

What is your outlook for the next two to three years?

Our immediate priority is moving into the new facility and expanding our Center for Education Strategy and Innovation. We will continue to develop current industry partnerships and seek out other opportunities to work with industries to ensure our practices are meeting and exceeding the future needs of industry.  Once there, we’ll refine our programs and determine which to phase out through the process of organizational abandonment and which to develop to ensure we are combating complacency in our classrooms. As we discussed throughout this interview, our practices are guided by industry, and our success is measured by industry standards.

This means we must continue to jettison outdated educational constructs and push the limits of projecting industry needs.

Robotic surgery is a prime example. It’s rapidly advancing, which is why we built a surgical suite and partnered with industry leaders to expose our students to new surgical technology while providing our students the opportunity to develop surgical tools and research-based approaches to add value to the medical space.

We will continue to track industry trends closely. Our educational leadership team receives weekly updates from business journals as we focus on the ever-changing landscape of economics with the intent of predicting and implementing new curricula and teaching practices to meet the needs of an ever-changing business landscape, which in turn informs our teaching practices. Our faculty embraces this informed process, and our students thrive in a fast- moving, future-focused environment. For me, seeing it all connect is deeply rewarding.