The Education Evolving Blog

EE's Curt Johnson on Public Television
April 15, 2013 · By Lars Esdal

EE's Curt Johnson appeared on TPT's Redesigning MN: Educating the Workforce series on April 5, 2013. Curt says: "big, rapid and inevitable changes" are coming to higher ed due to the converging forces of relentlessly rising cost, and emerging online technology. Also: students are questioning the value of going to college and "collecting credits" as a ticket to the marketplace.

Johnson challenges college faculty saying, "if you can see the future coming and help design it—rather then deny it and rather then...

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Higher Education: Five steps to the future
April 12, 2013 · By Lars Esdal

In his recent Op-ed piece in the StarTribune, “Higher education: Five steps to the future,” EE Associate and former Minnesota education commissioner, Robert J. Wedl, warns if we’re to meet 21st century workforce demands—where a predicted 75 percent of all jobs will require a postsecondary education by the year 2018—we’ll need to stop grumbling about the current tax-and-cut based policy solutions to higher education issues. Instead, we'll need to focus on a large-scale redesign of what is the equivalent of...

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Not a passing storm
April 3, 2013

By Curtis Johnson

Originally guest-blogged on the LearnmoreMN blog, April 02, 2013.

Perhaps the ‘perfect storm’ metaphor is overused. But it’s an apt description of the forces converging on higher education these days. Graduation rates for most institutions remain stubbornly low; employers chronically complain that those who do graduate don’t know what they need to know or have the skills jobs...

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An idea whose time has come: teachers taking the lead
March 29, 2013

By Lori Nazareno, Guest Blogger

A growing movement is spreading across the United States. It involves teachers not only taking responsibility for student learning, but also leading the charge in reimagining what the educational experience and structures should be in order to best prepare our students for the future. This is occurring in spite of a concurrent movement to reduce the teaching profession to a compilation of standardized test scores and evaluation data in order to fire the “bad” teachers.

Despite teacher job satisfaction being at an all-time low (39%...

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Gordon Commission reports offer refreshing thinking on assessment
March 14, 2013 · By Lars Esdal

On Monday, a commission of leading education scholars unveiled a series of reports, which call for a rethinking of the role of assessments in learning. The reports assert that the primary purpose for assessment should be instructional feedback, serving as a tool to improve student learning.

The commission expressed concern over the current usage of assessment as primarily a punitive tool of accountability. One report author asked, in his opening remarks, whether using assessments to score and rank students may be morally questionable, if students of...

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Upcoming NEA webinar on teacher leadership
March 1, 2013 · By Lars Esdal

UPDATE 3/14/2013: You can now view an archive of the webinar.

* * *

Next week the National Education Association (NEA) Center for Great Public Schools is hosting a Webinar to explore the topic of teacher professionalism. All are invited to come learn and dialogue, NEA member or not. Please mark your calendars and join us!

Great Teachers Ensuring Great Teaching:
Teacher Leadership and Teacher-Led Schools

Wednesday, March 6, 2013
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM (...

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Vander Ark on Minnesota & Education Evolving in EdWeek blog
February 26, 2013 · By Lars Esdal

Tom Vander Ark’s recent post in his Education Week blog on innovation is all about the shifting landscape of education in Minnesota. In his blog entry, Vander Ark surveys the advocacy and policy groups working in the state, and even pokes fun at the frigid Minnesota weather (easy for him to say from Phoenix!). Below are his remarks on Education Evolving.

The most interesting national voice is the...

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Ted Kolderie speaks to charter leaders in Nashville
February 21, 2013 · By Ted Kolderie

I made a few possibly provocative observations and suggestions about the 'How' of innovation when talking in Nashville February 6 to the heads of the state charter-school associations and support organizations.

Listen to a short excerpt (about 5 minutes):
Click here to play

In brief, what I said was:

  1. Today...
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The “How” of Trusting Teachers
February 11, 2013

Amidst a chorus of governors ramping up efforts to fix K-12 by controlling teachers, California Governor Jerry Brown sang a different song in his January State of the State Address:

The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to...

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Is Teacher Autonomy the Key to School Success?
February 7, 2013

This post was originally blogged on the Education Week Of, By, For blog.

In the introductory chapter of A Year at Mission Hill, the teachers unassumingly drop a bombshell. They attribute their school's sustained success to a democratic governance structure in which teachers have "freedom and autonomy." Not just classroom autonomy, but the authority to collectively make decisions that influence whole school...

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