In 2009 the Minnesota legislature created a new statewide platform for the creation of new schools. The Site-Governed Schools law allows for the creation of schools inside districts that enjoy the same autonomy and exemption from state regulation as schools in the chartering sector.
Education|Evolving contends that placing this authority in state law is critical to sustaining a district’s commitment to new and...
Perhaps the best of the interviews with outgoing Minneapolis Superintendent Bill Green was the one by Beth Hawkins, which appeared in the online newspaper MinnPost. Beth's story headlined Green's comment about the need to vary the approach to learning—by school or even by student.
MP: Is there any tightly held belief you have...
Carrie Bakken is a member of a teacher professional partnership (TPP) that runs Avalon High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Through a TPP teachers run the school themselves much as partners do in law, medicine, and other professional industries.
This compelling article discusses a...
With the launch of iPhone 4 this week, we move one step further along in the growing disconnect between the capabilities of technology and their prohibition in traditional factory-style of schools.
This cover of Education|Evolving strategy paper illustrates well the progression of telecommunications compared to the progression of school design:
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These two articles from the Dallas Morning News explain Reasoning Mind, a program for teaching math that aims to personalize learning while increasing the interest and motivation of students, and changing the role of teacher from presenting information to guiding and tutoring.
The program individualizes pace and uses artificial intelligence to respond to student performance in real time. Problems come with step-by-step tutorials, and interactive exercises. Its founder argues that in one semester the...
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
This is a post by guest contributor Tim McClung, a member of West Virginians for Education Reform.
What is Possible in Public Education?
In West Virginia, I don’t know the answer to that question. It is not possible to spend any more money, regulation and legislation that we have tried has proven to be ineffective as a change agent, teacher...
By their early teens many young people are already living quite adult lives—in the home, on the street—looking not only after themselves but often siblings, neighbors, and their parents. Is it any wonder that young people in this situation act out, and check out when they go to school? Any school model that 'infantilizes' these young people—treating those who have essentially adult characters (or at least adult responsibilities) as...
There has been a lot of coverage and argument around Abby Sunderland’s attempted voyage around the world in a sailboat. All the 'reality show' questions aside, the societal debate seems stuck on whether or not a teenager should be allowed to sail a dangerous voyage. What if, instead of using age as a qualifier, we evaluated Sunderland’s competence...
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
This is a post by guest contributor Paul Hill of the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
With colleagues at the Center on Reinventing Public Education I am studying how big city school districts are pulling together many of the best ideas in education reform—small schools, chartering, more spending at the school level and less in the central office,...
This week Charles Lane wrote an interesting piece in the Washington Post skeptical of the terms being used to sell an administration proposal to spend $23 billion backstopping sliding school revenue. The administration hopes to save 300,000 teaching jobs and prevent dramatic increases in class sizes—both of which Lane argues are overblown.
The costs of running schools have gone up by 2-4 percent, but tax revenues have gone down. So there is disconnect. In the short...