Marshalltown High School will be the first in central Iowa to launch what’s being called Three Dimensional Education or 3DE this fall, becoming the fourth school in the state to incorporate the innovative program.
It’s being implemented through Junior Achievement of Central Iowa, where Ryan Osborn is president. He says 3DE authentically connects high school education to the complexities of the real-world, while working with corporate partners.
“First and foremost, it was an instructional model developed to answer high school engagement. There are a lot of studies out there that find less than half high schoolers are engaged in their learning,” Osborn says. “The second reason is really out of this need to align high school graduates with the type of skills they’re going to need once they get out to the workforce.”
Osborn says the competency-based approach helps students unlock and develop skills like creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving. The platform includes case studies for ninth through eleventh graders that culminates in a capstone experience senior year where students work as business consultants to real clients.
“They’re working on a case that might be a real-world problem at an existing business, kind of like what you’d see at business school in college, bringing it down to the high school level,” Osborn says. “For a five-week period, those math teachers, English, social studies — all the core subjects — are all talking about that same case.”
The program is taught throughout the day, not as an after-school elective, and of the 375 students who will start 9th grade in Marshalltown next year, as many as 150 are now being recruited for the program.
“We definitely have plans to continue to grow the model here in central Iowa,” he says. “We’re talking with Des Moines and Waukee. They’re actually in the due diligence process now and hopefully, they would be able to launch in the fall of ’26. That’s really kind of our plan. We’re looking to grow it about one or two schools per year.”
Osborn says the 3DE model is proven to decrease chronic absenteeism and increase a variety of student success metrics, including graduation rates, proficiency rates, and self-efficacy.
The program was founded by Junior Achievement in 2015 and has been implemented across 60 high schools nationally. Three other high schools in Iowa are already using the 3DE program: Alburnett High, and Prairie and Washington in Cedar Rapids.