After graduating from Carleton College and Princeton’s University’s School of Public Affairs, Ted Kolderie was successively a reporter and editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, executive director of the Citizens League and a senior fellow in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Through the 1960s and ’70s Ted worked mainly on urban and metropolitan affairs. Early in the ’80s he moved to the redesign of public education. He is best known for his involvement with the idea of chartering as an ‘R&D sector’, in Minnesota and nationally. In 2011 he received the James Bryant Conant Award, given by the Education Commision of the States for “Outstanding contributions to American education”.
His book, The Split-Screen Strategy: How To Turn Education Into a Self-Improving System can be read on this website. His recollections about education and public affairs more generally in Minnesota, Thinking Out the How, is available on the website of the Center for Policy Design.