Brittany, a student at Urban Academy Laboratory HS on the Upper East Side, approached a new playwriting course with skepticism; she was certain she would be bored — a most undesirable fate for any teenager. What she found was unexpected.

Her teachers taught the craft of writing plays not by simply surveying playwrights or reviewing genres, but by leading the students through the steps of developing their own stories and creating works that could be read and performed.

Brittany’s experience reflects Urban Academy’s approach to teaching through inquiry-based learning.

Urban Academy is one of 26 New York City schools in the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a group of high schools that have received state waivers exempting students from nearly all Regents exams.

The school extends a special invitation to its faculty to innovate their teaching practice while focusing on depth rather than breadth of coverage. Those of you who joined my workshop at this year’s UFT Spring Education Conference had the opportunity to hear firsthand the rich experiences of Ann Cook, Urban Academy’s co-director and the executive director of the consortium, and Urban Academy teacher Avram Barlowe, together with Brittany and three other outstanding students.

Cook explained that the inquiry-based approach leads students through a discovery process that fosters their ability to view and articulate an issue from multiple perspectives, including controversial ones, and not simply master a pre-set universe of facts.

The schools in the consortium, Cook said, are all “teacher-directed and student-focused.” Plus, she said, they are able to keep the teacher-to-student ratio low by concentrating school funds on the classroom.

Barlowe, also a UFT delegate, said the consortium schools provide teachers with the professional time they need to create an exceptional academic learning community. “We spend more time with each other on collaborative planning, weekly community service and creating classes,” he said.

Since its inception, our union has advocated for greater teacher voice, respect and a seat at the table in school decision-making. I believe the consortium schools align with the guiding principles of the Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence (PROSE) program negotiated in our new contract. Urban Academy and its peers in the consortium already exhibit a high degree of collaboration and trust. These are school communities where innovative methodologies are embraced and where performance-based assessments gauge authentic student learning.

Assessments are facilitated by teacher-developed rubrics. These rubrics guide the work of students in consortium schools so that they are writing more as well as developing the ability to defend their work through oral arguments. Equally important, the rubrics set expectations for both students and their teachers. Research papers, projects, portfolios, presentations and the like provide the evidence and the basis for evaluating student work.

The school engages experts from each field of study who offer an objective external check and balance to validate faculty assessments. Freed from state standardized testing requirements, the performance-based assessment model expands the landscape for how to measure student learning and growth and how to hold everyone, including students, accountable.

The real bonus is a laserlike focus on instruction, with fresh course offerings every year that mirror the depth of college-level offerings and raise complex societal issues. This year, for example, Urban Academy offered “Dexter and Dostoyevsky,” an inquiry challenging students to apply their analytic skills to both the popular television show and the works of Dostoyevsky.

Other notable courses include constitutional law; modern South Africa; and U.S. gay and lesbian history. Raising academic standards while endowing students with a lifelong love of learning, all without relentless test prep — now that excites me.

These schools show strong results across the spectrum of student ability. Cook reported that the consortium schools’ graduation rate is double the citywide average for English language learners and special education students.

International students have thrived at the schools. Eva, an Urban Academy student who was on the Spring Education Conference panel, recounted her experience as a recent immigrant from Spain who initially spoke and read only in Spanish. Eva said she was grateful to learn through diving deep into subjects rather than through rote memorization; she is now an A student.

The performance-based assessment model is the future for high-quality secondary education. Expanding this model would require a major cultural shift. I invite you to reimagine what is possible. This is what education can look like — inside a high school classroom. In the words of Ann Cook, “Teaching is a political act.”

I’m game.