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Animated by its charismatic middle school principal, ­Nicki Slaugh, Quest offers computer science from first grade; it’s required in sixth through ninth, where students learn coding, digital media arts, and gaming. Students are asked to leave their cell phones or other devices in pockets at the door for the duration of each class period. In each of the half-dozen classrooms that I visited, kids sat facing different directions, doing their own thing on a Chromebook. There is no “front” of the room, though a big-screen monitor on each classroom wall announces the day’s general topic. Students start each period by identifying where they are on a rubric of learning objectives, which vary in level from “emerging” to “mastering” and “extending.” The teacher and teaching assistant move around the room, working with individual students or in small groups.

The setup allows teachers to scrutinize data about students’ performance in real time and allows students to move through some parts of the curriculum at their own pace. “With technology … I’ve been able to customize and personalize my lessons to meet the needs of kids,” Slaugh explained. Seventh graders with higher aptitudes might already be working on ninth-grade math (which will, in turn, free up their trajectory through high school). Conversely, students who struggle are easily identified as needing more remedial work and attention. While Slaugh insists that no shame is attached to this, it’s clear that personalization has the consequence of sorting the highest from the lowest achievers much more efficiently; it makes disparities between students more visible. Each teacher also has discretion over how they program technology into their classroom. Martin Ji, a newish history teacher, explained to me that MagicSchool AI lets him summarize the readings, as well as calibrate those summaries to different levels. Brylee Nelson, an English teacher, uses Nearpod to let students write out their learning objective and then vote on the best version of it. Quest has handily beat state testing averages year after year.

Quest’s successes likely have something to do with the school’s relentlessly upbeat atmosphere: Teachers greet their students at the door for each period, and students who reach proficiency on an educational standard are applauded by the whole school as the fact is announced over the intercom. The optimizing of technology relies on an ethos of cheer that seems borne of both real human connections and an extensive amount of monitoring and data surveillance. Cameras installed throughout the school can zoom in on every sight and sound—which Slaugh says makes disciplinary disputes rarer. Students report on their mood each class period; their report card includes both academic grades and “citizenship” scores for behavior. Parents have online access to their child’s progress. And the predominance of digital assignments means that teachers have instant access to how students are doing and—with a software called GoGuardian—to what they are looking at on-screen at any given moment. Nelson showed me the panopticon of student screens during class. When one of the students opened a tab for non-scholastic reasons, she simply shut it down from her own device. That was that. While students work on their assignments, they will also ask her questions over a chat. “Some of them would rather chat than walk over to me,” she added, smiling. “It’s a generational thing.”