This year’s legislative session is sure to throw curveballs. But not all our priorities require urgent legislative action—we’re also working with state agencies to see through student-centered policy already on the books.
Below are a few of the top policy priorities we’re working on right now.
Student-Centered Learning Designs
OUR ASK: Enable, encourage, and equip educators to shift learning from one-size-fits-all, to personalized, learner-driven, and culturally affirming.
- Ethnic Studies & Academic Standards: Teach a more honest & inclusive shared story.
Support schools and districts as they prepare to implement high quality ethnic studies learning experiences starting in 2026—so that students are better able to see themselves and their peers reflected in what they learn.
- Personalized, Competency-Based Education: Prioritize outcomes & growth, not ticking boxes.
Develop a model state “Portrait of a Graduateˮ that centers future-ready knowledge and skills like collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. This would assert the stateʼs support for such skills, and provide a grounding framework that could be adapted at the local level.
Educator Talent Pathways
OUR ASK: Advance policies, programs, and pathways that recruit, prepare, and retain innovative and talented educators who reflect the communities they serve.
- Teacher Licensure: Clear barriers to licensure for talented, diverse teachers.
Preserve and improve the new cohort-based licensure pathway for heritage language teachers (created in 2023). The pathway removes systemic barriers and recognizes the expertise and lived experience for immensely talented educators. Expand the cohort-based pathway to other fields.
- Teacher Preparation: Build innovative & accessible on-ramps to teaching.
Fund and clear barriers for innovative preparation models like Apprenticeships, Grow Your Own programs, Teacher Residencies, and Microcredential-based programs. Preserve and support Alternative Teacher Preparation (per § 122A.2451).
Outcomes That Matter
OUR ASK: Push schools, districts, and states to define, measure, and be accountable for broader forms of student academic, social, emotional, and civic success.
- Better State Assessments: Provide more timely, actionable data on deeper student learning.
Make the MN Comprehensive Assessments a more equitable and relevant tool. Score it on a “vertical scaleˮ and measure granular, off-grade growth to value the learning of all students, involve youth in test development and prioritize cultural relevance of content, and accelerate the user-friendliness and release timelines of results. Pilot a “Badging Systemˮ that covers deeper, applied skills—and helps students gain access to college credit and employment post-graduation.
- Broader, Richer Data: Capture a more holistic picture of student experiences & development.
Improve the MN Student Survey—a key tool for elevating the voices of youth and a source of data on factors like school culture, student engagement, safety, mental health, and social-emotional growth. Make it shorter, focused on topics that matter to youth and educators, given more frequently, more quickly available, and easily digestible.
Autonomy & Shared Power
OUR ASK: Move decisions closer to students and support educators sharing power with their teams, students, families, and communities.
- Autonomy Inside Large Districts: Enable school communities to be drivers of change.
Help school districts shift power to school communities. Create frameworks for autonomous schools where power is shared among students, families, and educators (for example, by building on § 123B.045).
- Equity, Innovation, and Quality in Chartering: Preserving an important space for educator and community led schools.
We support a high quality, charter sector thatʼs rooted in communities, centered on students, and driven by teachers—and works in partnership with the district sector.