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'Life Is Not a Standardized Test'

In this short, powerful paper a former district official and college president argues for re-setting the objectives and the assessment for both college and high school. "We have fallen into the trap of valuing what we measure," he says, "rather than measuring what we value". Education is about critical thinking, analytical reasoning and problem-solving. But these are not things taught in a course. The whole school must be responsible for these 'collective outcomes'.

A Learning Revolution

This remarkable vision of schooling and learning rebuilt around the potential of digital electronics comes from the person in charge of education for the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. In 1990 Mike Smith wrote the initial, defining paper on standards-based systemic reform. This was a talk to the Asia Society in Beijing.

A Model RFP: For "Second Generation" Evaluations of Chartered Schools and Chartering. (pdf)

Traditional evaluation of chartered schools is focusing on the wrong questions. To know 'what's working' researchers must focus on the "institutional innovation of chartering" rather than trying to generalize about the very diverse collection of schools. The RFP is designed to elicit recommendations both on ways to strengthen chartered schools and on ways to improve the state's overall policy framework for chartering. The Model RFP is also designed to gather information on whether and how districts are responding to the emergence of chartered schools.

A viable high school in a small rural district. (pdf)

Nontraditional forms of schooling do exist that are economically and educationally viable at the scale of 120 students in six grades. This has huge implications for K-12 public education in rural America's sparsely-settled areas. The trick is to think differently about teaching and learning. Most of the resources can then be devoted to learning. This is an article in the magazine of the superintendents' association in Minnesota, written for its members.

Academic competitions are a learning experience outside school. (pdf)

What do students' choices for outside-of-school learning tell us about how we could design in-school learning models and education policy? Academic competitions are a largely-unexplored and little-understood aspect of student learning. Such competitions deserve additional attention from academic researchers, professional educators, and education policy leaders to better determine how students learn, what motivates students, and what skills and experiences are most relevant to the real world.

Age3/Grade3 Schools: A new approach to early literacy

It would be wonderful to close the achievement gap...before there is one. Now when children walk into elementary school for the first time the achievement gap is so large that some never recover. The "Age 3 to Grade 3 Model" restructures the school, using existing financing, so that the literacy spans the 'early' years and the 'school' years. The model calls for restructuring child care, Head Start and other pre-K initiatives. Kindergarten literacy readiness is defined based on the "Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDI's)." Grade 1-3 reading targets are based on the AIMSweb passages aligned with state standards (r < .75). Response to Intervention (RtI) is used through the entire school. Training, coaching and mentoring is provided frequently to all staff.

Allocation of General Education Revenue Among Buildings Memorandum. (pdf)

A memorandum to the superintendents of the St. Paul school district regarding the allocation of revenue to buildings in which students who generate the revenue are enrolled. Includes instructions for computing initial general education revenue by building using tools provided by the Department, and instructions for maintaining separate accounts for each building through UFARS.

Alternative-education programs: The quiet giant in Minnesota public education. (pdf)

Even those close to education policy were astonished by the size and growth-rate of 'alternative education'. Districts have been creating these new schools since the 1970s for "kids not doing well" in 'regular' school. This report includes quotes from alternative school students reflecting on their schools.

An Explosion of Pedagogical Agents

The charge to America's public education system has shifted from 'access' to 'achievement.' To meet this challenge education should be open to new professional entrants, open to new authorizers or sponsors of schools, open to new learning programs, and open to all students that wish to attend. This paper, written for Threshold magazine, argues the promise for teacher-led and other innovative schools to better serve student needs.

Best Practices Club. (link)

The Best Practices (BP) club at Lexington High School in Lexington, Massachusetts is a student-run club that works with teachers to improve teaching and learning at the high school. Students created BP as an outlet for providing positive feedback on teaching and learning.

Charter School Dashboard from The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Find national data on the public charter school movement, public charter school data by state, or data for single public charter schools.

Charter Schools: Now What? (pdf)

The (then) executive director Colorado School Boards Association Randy Quinn wondered, after the chartering law passed over its opposition, whether this new idea might not really be “a blessing in disguise” for boards of education.

Chartering Is Succeeding, Even as Some Chartered Schools Fail. (pdf)

This article by Ted Kolderie originally appeared in the January 2005 edition of the Citizens League’s Minnesota Journal. Most often when you hear about 'charter schools' people are talking about the schools themselves. These are growing in number as parents and students select them. But 'charter schools' also means the strategy of chartering, the state's creation of an 'open sector' in public education. This is less visible. But the state's opening-up of K-12 is more important than the schools.

Chelsea Clinton and the D.C. Schools. (pdf)

In response to the Washington Post’s question about the problems in the District of Columbia, this small memo asked: If the local school district is not performing, why don’t residents simply ask Congress, as ‘legislature’ for the District, to “get somebody else who will”? In 1993 the suggestion was dismissed out of hand. Three years later Congress had created a second 'board of education' for the District.

Clayton Christensen Explains Why Organizations Find Major Change So Difficult (pdf)

Clayton Christensen's presentation to a national meeting at Hamline University in fall 2001 shows how hard it is for existing organizations, even in the private sector, to change in more than incremental ways. He explains why significant change requires the creation of new organizations. His research and analysis has huge implications for a K-12 strategy that relies basically on the notion that it will be possible to change and improve the schools we have.

Connected to the Future: a report on children's internet use from the corporation of public broadcasting.

This 2002 report examines both the trends and implications of children connecting to the internet.

Cost of Sponsoring MN Charter Schools. (pdf)

Chartering cannot work without quality sponsoring/authorizing. Quality sponsoring requires good systems, competent people and time. That means: money. We studied what it cost three Minnesota sponsors to review applications, develop contracts and oversee schools, over a three-year period. The financial commitment varies as the functions performed change from year to year. We believe that when it was completed this was the only study of its kind in the United States.

CPRE's School-Finance Research

Over 100 years, Allan Odden says in this paper for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, the increases in spending on K-12 public education have averaged 3.5% per year. And consistently 60% of that has gone to teacher-instruction. Basic data, for a discussion about costs, adequacy and productivity.

Creating the Capacity for Change. (pdf)

Ted Kolderie's book expands the 'theory of action' for state policy leadership... explains why governors' and legislatures' effort to open a new-schools sector is imperative for public education, to enable it to do the job it has now been given to do. To view the first chapter, click the caption above. To order the book from the publisher, Education Week Press, click here.

Democratic Learning and Leading: Creating Collaborative School Governance. (pdf)

The above link is an excerpt from this book. In selections from this title, Ronald J. Newell and Irving H. Buchen describe the collaborative culture and democratic-governance structure embodied and promoted by EdVisions Cooperative—a teacher professional partnership. They describe how the collaborative school governance model works in practice, the critical success factors, and the perceptions of teachers who are actively engaged in the democratic practice.

Describing Schools as Schools

Education research has had no way systematically to describe and classify schools. Now a researcher at the University of Minnesota is developing a framework for such a taxonomy.

District-Initiated Chartered Schools. (pdf)

Some districts see chartering as a part of their strategy for change and improvement. Here we review three Minnesota districts that sponsor chartered schools: Faribault, Hopkins and Waseca. The 'common market' approach - pooling the courses, facilities, programs and transportation of district, chartered, private and home schooling in Faribault is particularly striking.

Education, Microsoft, and the Individual Entrepreneur

This article discusses the role of large technology corporations such as Microsoft in partnering with and enabling independent entrepreneurs in the classroom. Bob Bilyk, former director of Cyber Village Academy in Saint Paul, MN, has created a computer-based Rich Internet Application lodeStar that enables teachers to more effectively customize learning materials to meet students' individual needs. With the aid of Microsoft's Class Server, lodeStar has been able to fully integrate with online resources while maintaining the functional benefits of a desktop application. The result is an uncommon, tangible step forward in realizing the capacity for technology to bring increased customization and personalization to classrooms.

Electronics Technology for Public School Systems: A Superintendent’s View. (pdf)

As long ago as 1981 George Young, then superintendent of St. Paul public schools, foresaw technology as a tool not to replace teachers, but to help them better carry out their role as educators. Using technology to individualize education is a way of reforming an archaic system where students are lumped into grades and instructed as a group regardless of their learning style and abilities. System-incentives, however, work against change. Prophetic.

Essentials of the Charter School Strategy. (pdf)

A quick summary of the essentials of the charter idea, written in 1994, is still basically applicable today.

Facilities Financing: New Models for Districts that are Creating Schools New. (pdf)

Many of the dramatic reforms school districts are undertaking involve a significant facilities component. As districts pursue strategies such as opening new schools, breaking up large schools, and renovating buildings to provide safe and effective learning environments, they often incur substantial bricks-and-mortar expenses. Since these expenses may well outstrip funds available through traditional sources of facilities financing, districts and individual charter schools have increasingly sought innovative ways to meet their facilities needs. This report outlines the most promising emerging solutions.

First Ask, Then Listen: How to get your students to help you teach them better

This short manual offers a starting place for those interested in finding out what students have to say. Using the same questions that prompted the discussions leading to Fires the Bathroom (New Press, 2003), teachers can begin for themselves the honest dialogue from which both students and adults so richly benefit. Whether gathered through student writing or transcribed conversations, the responses will begin to build a base of mutual confidence that students have something valuable to contribute to their own education. As teachers hear their own students speak their minds in a structured and respectful setting, they can begin to adapt their practice to meet their learning needs more effectively.

First Thoughts on Sustainability and Productivity

With the growing concern about rising expenditures—whether it will ever be possible for revenues to keep up; whether, if not, any concept of productivity can be developed—it seemed a good idea to think out the elements of such a discussion. This is Ted Kolderie's first effort to do that.

Freeing Teachers: The Promise of Teacher Professional Partnerships. (link)

In the April 2004 American Experiment Quarterly, Ted Kolderie wrote that virtually all of our discussion about improving teaching occurs within the traditional assumption that teachers are employees managed by administrators, rather than professionals in control of their work. Current efforts to train teachers, to improve teacher practice, to recruit teachers, to retain teachers and to change the way in which teachers are compensated need not take place within this boss/worker, master/servant framework.

How a Public School Looks When Managed by a Teacher Partnership

There's growing interest in improving (as some say) the "management of human capital" in education: teacher recruitments, teacher-retention, teacher compensation, teacher accountability. Usually this suggests 'better administration' in the standard boss/worker model. Yet it's possible these decisions might be made with greater integrity by teachers themselves within the framework of a professional partnership. This interview with Carrie Bakken is the most revealing look we've ever had at the way a teacher partnership handles the professional and the management issues in running a public school.