SCOTTSBURG, Ind. — School resumes Tuesday for the Phillips brothers, Sam and Adam. Both will be at Scottsburg High.

The similarity pretty much ends there.
Sam Phillips, a senior, returns to the classrooms and hallways he left for summer vacation. Adam Phillips, a freshman, reports to an annex-like building that has been nicely remade.

Adam’s year is to be as novel as big brother’s is customary. Adam is among the charter class of New Tech High, a school within a school.

“Hopefully it will keep more kids in school, more graduating, more thinking about their future,” said Lynda Phillips, the boys’ mother, of the option for which she is grateful.

Schools like New Tech High increasingly pop up in Indiana as elsewhere. They rely on new ways to teach and to learn, new gizmos and gadgets to use, all intended to lead to new peaks of success.

Scottsburg’s venture is for freshmen, for now — as many as 100. That many more are to be added each fall, if all goes well. And those who most pursued this choice feel certain all will go well.

“These aren’t dumb kids. They’re kids who get bored easily,” Bill Graham, Scottsburg’s mayor, said of those most likely attracted to New Tech. “This is a way to engage those students.”