On Tuesday, the Senate voted 51-50 to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary, after much debate. A lot of the controversy was due to DeVos' support of school vouchers. Learn more about school vouchers, and how a tax credit proposal active in Minnesota relates to the concept.
Over the weekend, 275 educators and advocates from 22 states gathered in Los Angeles for the second Teacher-Powered Schools National Conference. Practitioners from both district and charter schools gathered to network and share lessons about how they collaboratively design and run their schools.
On January 18th, the Minnesota House of Representative’s Education Finance Committee convened to hear an overview on Minnesota charter schools. This was the first time since 2009 that the Committee had a meeting dedicated to the state’s charter schools. Read on for a summary of the hearing.
Why doesn't Minnesota have more CMOs? Read our post to learn about the state's policies and barriers that inhibit CMOs from choosing Minnesota for expansion.
Minnesota Department of Education continues work on their ESSA school quality/student success indicator. A constant question has been—What are other states doing? This posts explores the different school quality/student success measures other states have proposed.
Two articles published by Education Next earlier this month draw attention to the fact that parents seem to be happier with their children’s schools when they are able to choose them.
On December 15, the US Department of Education announced the launch of the Education Innovation Research (EIR) grant competition for 2017. The purpose of the grant is to support state and local efforts to develop, implement, and bring to scale innovative and evidence-based projects.
This post is the third in our series on the progress that the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has made developing the state’s new accountability plan, as required under the year-old federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The two ESSA Accountability Committees—Technical and Advisory—have continued to meet and develop recommendations to submit to Commissioner Cassellius.
On December 6th, the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools (MACS) honored the winners of the first Minnesota Charter School Innovation Awards. The award program, which is the first of its kind in Minnesota, was created to showcase some of the most innovative practices being used in Minnesota’s charter schools.
In 2016, Friendship Academy of the Arts was recognized by the US Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School for their academic excellence. Threatened with closure in 2011, FAA has been able to turn around their school through the power of student-teacher-family relationships.
