For over 30 years, Education Evolving has asserted and demonstrated that to make learning more personalized, student-centered, relevant, and engaging, teaching professionals—who know and understand individual student and community needs—should have much larger roles as designers and decision-makers in schools. We now know of over 110 schools in 18 states where teachers do have these larger professional roles, and their network is growing. We call them...
“What does the future of learning look like? And how will we create it?”
Those two questions were posed yesterday at the orientation session for School Design for Individualized Learning, a joint initiative of the Bush Foundation and 2Revolutions that aims to “inspire, equip, and connect educators who want to reimagine the purpose and structure of school.”
Over 120 educators, administrators, and education advocates gathered in St. Paul to learn about the principles of individualized...
Monday was the first, official deadline for states to submit their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) accountability plans. In total, fifteen states and the District and of Columbia (DC), submitted their plans to either the US Department of Education (USDE) or their governor for review. States that submitted the plan to their governor will have until May 3rd to officially turn it into USDE.
The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) did not submit the State’s plan on Monday. Instead, they opted to turn it in on September 18, USDE’s second and final deadline. However, since July...
"What gets measured gets done," goes the old adage. And many of those pushing for deeper, personalized, student-centered learning point to the scope of most current assessments, which cover a narrow set of rote skills in reading and math, as helping to perpetuate an industrial-era model of school.
Fortunately, much progress has been made over the last several years in developing new measures. Projects such as NGLC's Assessment for Learning Initiative; the Gordon Commission...
Minnesota has an extreme shortage of teachers of color and American Indian teachers. According to a recent report by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), teachers of color and American Indian teachers comprise only 4.23 percent of Minnesota teachers, as compared to 31 percent of students.
The severity of the problem is further exacerbated when the data is disaggregated by ethnicity.
In a recent Star Tribune commentary, Education Evolving and several district superintendents urged the Minnesota Legislature to create Innovation Zones. We asserted, “Education in Minnesota badly needs innovation. The question is: When will legislators realize that one size does not fit all?”
The chance came last Thursday when the Minnesota Senate’s Education Policy Committee heard testimony on the Innovation Zone (IZ) bill,...
Minnesota’s teacher licensure system has been a topic of contention for several years, with a March 2016 Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) report finding the system “complex, unclear, and confusing.”
There is currently a bill in the Senate, S.F. 4, which would completely restructure the state’s teacher licensure system. A companion bill,...
Last Thursday, the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Education Innovation Policy Committee and the Senate’s E-12 Policy Committee heard testimony regarding the Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) Policy Bill HF 1376/S.F 1222. While the bill covers several topics that affect public education in general, this post will focus on two of the concerns that...
Since its inception in 1998, Google has grown from two to over just 57,000 employees. In order to maintain their start-up culture and increase staff retention, Google has allowed their employees to design their own desks and workstations, in addition to creating unconventional workspaces that include bean bag chairs, couches, hammocks, and in tents. The result looks a little chaotic but, according to Google, that is how their employees like it.
Walking into Venture Academy, a Southeast Minneapolis middle and high charter school, is like walking into Google. To the outside eye, one...
This post was written by guest-bloggers Carrie Bakken, Program Coordinator & Teacher at Avalon Charter School, and Julene Oxton, Innovation Coordinator for Lakeville Public Schools and a lead developer of Impact Academy. They are ambassadors for the Teacher-Powered Schools Initiative, run by Education Evolving and CTQ.
As long time educators and members of teacher teams that have started teacher-powered schools in Minnesota—Impact...