The Education Evolving Blog

New blog series: Spotlight on Chartering
March 25, 2016

This week we at Education Evolving begin a multi-pronged effort to help Minnesotans and others interested in the evolution of school gain a broader understanding of the role chartering is playing in improving public education in 2016.

The effort begins with a white paper revisiting the purpose set out in the original law: to create a new, more entrepreneurial sector of public education that can develop innovative, more effective strategies for educating students, organizing schools and evaluating student...

View Post  »
How is innovation implemented?
February 24, 2016 · By Ted Kolderie

We in Education Evolving (E|E) seem to be identified with ‘innovation’; less, though, with what innovation is than with the thorny question of how to get it to happen. If pressed ourselves to define our role we’re likely to say it’s “to increase the system capacity for change”.

For years those of us involved have worked to improve the incentives in public K-12 . . . defining ‘incentive’ as a reason combined with an opportunity. Success requires both. If organizations get an opportunity to change but no reason to use that opportunity, nothing happens. Give them a reason to...

View Post  »
Report says charters must grow and innovate if America is to succeed in global economy
January 29, 2016 · By John Kostouros

A new research report concludes that while chartered public schools have become a significant force for improvement in public education since their beginning in Minnesota in 1991, the charter sector needs to grow and become more innovative if it is to to help the country raise student achievement to levels demanded by the global economy. Chartered schools now number over 6,700 nationwide, with 2.9 million students in 43 states and the District of Columbia; with waiting lists totaling more than one million.

“Simply put, the sector needs to be better, broader, and bigger, which will...

View Post  »
Chartering: a platform for (disruptive) innovation
December 21, 2015 · By Curtis Johnson

Following several discussions about whether the education ‘industry’ was a suitable object for studying the effects of disruptive innovation, I recall Clayton Christensen showing up in October of 2005 at a breakfast meeting that Education Evolving was sponsoring in a small hotel near George Washington University in D.C..

That’s the morning he proposed writing what became the award-winning book Disrupting Class, asserting an inevitable impact new technology would have on an industry chronically resistant to...

View Post  »
Teacher teams gather in Minneapolis for first Teacher-Powered Schools Conference
November 11, 2015

Across the country, a growing number of educators are transforming student learning and the teaching profession in new ways through teacher-powered schools. More than 220 of these educators representing 23 states gathered in Minneapolis over the weekend for the first Teacher-Powered Schools National Conference.

The conference, produced by Education Evolving and the Center for Teaching Quality, kicked off with a tour of teacher-powered Avalon School in St. Paul, MN. The tour was followed by a mock meeting of the Avalon teacher team to demonstrate how the school is run and a question-...

View Post  »
E|E members to speak at Innovative Schools Network conference in Wisconsin
April 15, 2015 · By Lars Esdal

E|E Associate Tim McDonald will give the keynote address at the pre-conference kickoff for the annual Wisconsin-based Innovative Schools Network (ISN) conference on April 29 in Wisconsin Dells. Senior Associates Curt Johnson and Bob Wedl will join a virtual panel to discuss the Split Screen concept and its essential role as a policy tool.

Tim’s book Unsustainable has become a strategic resource for ISN. The ideas, developed by Education Evolving and applied through this...

View Post  »
Lessons on accountability from experiences in the Army
March 16, 2015 · By Lars Esdal

Last week I was on a call with the leader of a teacher-powered school. She told us candidly about her struggles with “collective autonomy.” On the one hand, she said, she fully wants to let teachers call the shots at her school. On the other hand, she is still formally the principal in the eyes of the district (per state and district rules, many teacher-powered schools are still required to have principals, even though those leaders are usually elected by the full teacher group). It’s hard to let others be in control, she said, when if...

View Post  »
E|E response to proposed federal charter grant regulations
January 15, 2015 · By Ted Kolderie

There is now a live question what priorities the U.S. Department of Education should use in its program of grants to the states for the start-up of new schools in the states' chartered sector of public education.

The Department put out a proposal for comment. Education Evolving's response was not to the specifics in the draft; was general with respect to the policy questions involved.

Essentially we...

View Post  »
Individualization, failure, and fun: A student's experience
November 5, 2014 · By Curtis Johnson

Most commentary about learning methods comes from adults, and most of those are professional educators. What's missing is what the students think. So, to see how learning can be both effective and fun, check this short video of a TedX talk by a 10-year old, Cordell Steiner, telling what it was like being in Ananth Pai's 3rd-grade class in the White Bear Lake (MN) school district.

View Post  »
Why innovation is critical
October 21, 2014 · By Ted Kolderie

Just too late . . . just after my book arrived from the printer's . . . I came across Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory. I would love to have been able to include what he wrote about the critical role of innovation in winning World War II: It is so on-point with what I was trying to say about the need for innovation in education. I did pick up the story in a Commentary I wrote for Education Week, that appeared September 24. Here's an...

View Post  »

Pages

Subscribe to the Blog

RSS Feed