We have by now visited several career-track high schools and community colleges around the country here, here, and here, but have never seen a school quite like CART. The 1,300 students in grades 11 and 12 and CART split their school day between CART and their traditional 15-home high schools in Fresno or Clovis. They spend the morning or afternoon on most of their academic courses at their local schools, and shuttle in buses or their own cars for the other half of the day at CART.

CART students choose among 16 different career tracks, many more than we have seen offered in any other school, from forensics to game design to law and order, robotics, biotech, engineering, business and finance, environmental science, psychology and human behavior, and many more. Each track, or “lab” as they are called at CART, is taught by a team of three educators, who have a range of work experience in their fields, from TV to graphic design, to pharmaceuticals and more.

Subjects like English, science, and math are folded into students’ CART curriculum, which is largely designed around teams doing industry-based projects. I heard about cloning carrots, making movies, designing online games, and making toys. There are field trips to world agriculture expos, aviation companies, and dairies. Students do internships or projects that take them to hospital operating rooms, senior centers, and wildlife refuges. You can catch a lot of CART's spirit from its Facebook page.

From the beginning, the real world of Fresno businesses have stepped into the lives of CART students. A long list of big names have helped CART from the beginning.

One that caught my eye is the Haworth furniture company of Holland, Michigan, which was an early donor of furniture to CART. We visited early in our American Futures journey, and which Jim wrote about here. It’s nice to see American Futures coming full circle!

Another full-circle moment reflects how local institutions are pulling together (a favorite American Futures theme) to build a new Fresno. CART and the young, leading-edge tech incubator Bitwise, which Jim introduced here and will say more about soon, are partnering. CART students in the Web Design lab will work onsite at the programming-training Geekwise Academy inside Bitwise, taught by a pairing of a CART English teacher and a Bitwise professional web developer. And for real-world projects, students will also have a chance to work with the 40-some hot new tech companies located at Bitwise.

CART’s home is a renovated airy, open former factory of the Danish water pump manufacturer Grundfos, whose U.S. birthplace was Fresno, in California’s agricultural heartland. The broad halls, big staircase, two-storied common space, and big-windowed classrooms create a space where kids can move freely and loosely. Banners of heros and inspiration decorate the halls: Eleanor Roosevelt, Bill Gates, George Lucas, John Glenn, among others.