Some complain the school year ends and watching movies begins after standardized testing season, but you would never know it at Rogers' newest and smallest public high school, Rogers New Technology High School, now closing out a good first year.

With three open-enrollment charter schools full and more on the drawing boards, plus Springdale's School of Innovation opening this fall, I recently checked out Rogers' New Technology High School, a district-run charter school, to see what kinds of out-of-the-box options public schools can create.

I spoke with 13 students and staff during a half-day visit and came away impressed.

Like a regular school, New Tech kids work in class, but unlike other schools, students do schoolwork on their laptops at the school café and in the hallways. Each student is issued a laptop. Students get to wear a "Trust Card" enabling them to move around the building so long as they have no academic or disciplinary issues. Few do.

Students acting like grownups in a workplace is central to this school. As Principal Lance Arbuckle explains, when the Rogers School District considered a range of possibilities for the mostly vacant building that once housed Kirksey Middle School, "we just kept coming back to the New Tech model."

New Tech started in 1997 in California after-high tech businesses complained schools just weren't producing graduates ready for grownup work. The network now includes 135 district schools, charter schools, and school programs in 24 states and Australia.

When Arbuckle, a seasoned school administrator, visited the New Tech High in Cross County School District in the Arkansas Delta "the thing that was most impressive was the general preparation level of the students, the way they would walk up to you, introduce themselves, and look you in the eye. The school had a grownup student atmosphere." The Rogers New Tech copies that atmosphere, meaning among other things, no bells: "They just go in and go to work just the way you and I do. The same thing their parents do. They are professional students who have a job to do, preparing to graduate in four years."

The school is also small enough, 300 kids currently, that no student falls between the cracks. It goes without saying that New Tech is high tech. Most schoolwork is collaborative, with kids sitting together in groups at dry-erase desks they can write on, next to dry-erase walls and windows they and their teachers can write on.

Since work is assigned and returned online, there is no dog-ate-the-homework excuses. Parents can check out what their kids are doing and when they are doing it, leading to some interesting conversations. ("Johnny, why did you turn in your homework at 3 a.m. when you are supposed to be sleeping?")

New Tech's Rogers campus seems to work well. Attendance is high, just 2 percent of students left mid-year and initial assessments predict strong standardized test scores. New Tech headquarters staff periodically survey students anonymously, and that data also indicate success. The kids seem geekier than usual, but the poverty, special education, and English Language Learner rates resemble those for Rogers as a whole.

New Tech is definitely not for everybody. The hand-picked teachers love the school, but all say they are working very long hours to get the hang of high-tech teaching in a brand new school. As in anything new, if you fear making mistakes, you can't teach at New Tech. It's the same for students. Teachers say the kids who love the model are up for a challenge, not students who, as one teacher put it, "like to get the answer, give it back, and get their pat on the back." At least a few New Techies will transfer back to the regular high schools come August.

But no school works well for everybody. If we want to help the 20% of students who currently drop out or flunk out, not to mention others who limp through school in a state of quiet desperation, new options like New Tech are part of the answer.

The Rogers School District deserves a lot of credit for giving this option a try.

ROBERT MARANTO IS THE 21ST CENTURY CHAIR IN LEADERSHIP AT THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION REFORM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS. HE HAS DONE FIELDWORK IN MORE THAN 150 PUBLIC SCHOOLS.