NYS Education Commissioner Richard Mills said, "Which includes not only the traditional subjects, but also communication skills and technology skills and a kind of working together type of skills."

Mills paid a visit to Tech Valley High to meet with students and teachers for the first time. He said there's a network of these type of schools developing across the country, pushing this approach forward even more.

Tech Valley high creates skills for the 21st century

The name reflects the changing times in the Capital Region -- Tech Valley High School. Opening last September, the approach is to create skills for the 21st century.

Here you don't see rows of desks, but an office-like setting where students are giving real-life problems to solve. Their classes are also combined.

Tech Valley student Timothy Tobin said, "Science and math are combined making up environmental analysis and writing language arts is combined with social studies making global analysis media explorations."

Tech Valley student Olivia Richards said, "If you go to a traditional high school, you get the social aspects of high school, and here you just get the education, so you almost have to decide which aspects of high school are more important to you."

Last September, Tech Valley High School started with 40 students. Beginning in the fall of 2009, each class will have up to 100 students, and now the school is looking for a permanent location in Rensselaer County along the I-90 area - all indicators that this type of education may a strong future in the Capital Region.

Mills said, "All the youngsters here have the opportunities to right now in the ninth grade engage with people in the business community, people who might later hire them, people in the higher education community who might admit them to college. It looks like a complete education system here, it's quite powerful."

A new wave of learning for the future.