Education Evolving is working to finalize two papers that we will be releasing on October 2nd. We will be taking a hiatus from regular blog posting as we finish those papers, and will start posting regularly again in early October.
MDE published the ESSA state plan on August 1st, and is hosting a series of public commentary meetings from August 15-26th. Read here to learn about some of the changes that MDE has made to their plan, some of the concerns that have been raised by the public, the locations for where they are hosting their public commentary hearings, and how you can submit public comment.
Of the 23 Charter-District Collaboration Compact cities, the Center for Reinventing Public Education has identified five cities—Boston, Central Falls, Chicago, Denver, and New Orleans—where charter-district collaboration is thriving. Read more about the key takeaways that Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities can learn from these collaborations.
Over the past few weeks, the growing animosity between different education organizations and advocates regarding the merits of charter versus traditional district schools has dominated the news cycle. However, in recent years, a growing number of districts and charter schools have put aside their political differences and worked together in order to do what’s best for students. Read here to learn about these district-charter collaborations.
Yesterday, a 12 member task force convened by the NAACP issued a report on "Quality Education," which provided a set of five recommendations for improving the quality of public charters. Upon its release, the report elicited scrutiny from several education advocates, who questioned the authenticity of their public hearings.
Yesterday, the Minnesota House and Senate’s Education Policy Committees held a joint hearing on the state’s ESSA accountability plan. At the hearing, MDE provided an overview of the plan, which they have developed over the past year in community with a wide variety of stakeholders. Read here for some of the concerns that legislators and testifiers raised.
On July 4th, the vast majority of the 7,000 delegates from the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new charter school policy statement. The new statement is an overhaul of NEA’s former charter school policy statement that they had adopted in 2001. Read more about the statement and the response from NAPCS and NACSA here.
Over the past 20 years, the number of EL students in Minnesota has increased by 300 percent, making them the state’s fastest growing student group. However, despite the rapid growth, their academic progress, as compared to their non-EL peers, has plateaued. The Minnesota Multilingual Equity Network proposed seven recommendations to MDE for ESSA implementation.
Last Thursday, about 100 attendees gathered to hear and learn about New Hampshire’s first-of-its-kind Performance Assessment of Competency Education state accountability system from two of its architects—Deputy Commissioner Paul Leather, and the state’s PACE curriculum director, Ellen Hume-Howard.
This past week over 4,200 advocates, teachers, policymakers, administrators, consultants, and board members attended the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The conference boasted over 135 sessions, Betsy DeVos spoke, and Success Academy won the prestigious Broad Prize.
