A 2017 law allows districts and charter schools in Minnesota to form an innovation zone in order to try new approaches to learning that will raise student acheivement. The law provides flexibility from state law and rule to try those innovations.
The design of America’s schools needs to shift from adult-centered and standardized to student-centered and individualized. This report examines the academic and historical research that supports the need for the transition to student-centered learning.
A comprehensive review of barriers in Minnesota state policy faced by educators innovating with student-centered learning, and recommendations for removing those barriers.
Where exactly does chartering fit, in the strategy for public education? Across America that question is rising, as in a number of big cities the charter sector gets larger and as the local districts are losing enrollment. In this commentary in the StarTribune, Ted Kolderie looks at four current answers to the question—and suggests a fifth, more practical answer.
The Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs invited Ted Kolderie to discuss how innovation is key to systemic change in public education and how schools must resist 'the pressure for sameness'. Kolderie called upon the 'alternative' sector to share its accomplishments in innovation—thus validating the sector and making clear that what is happening there is essential for change and improvement in the mainline district sector. This is his speech.
For three decades now, the course of action has been to accept the system as it stands and to push its schools and teachers to deliver ‘better performance’. Perhaps not surprisingly, that effort to get an inert system to do-better has not proved an outstanding success. The theory of action should instead be to turn public education into a self-improving system.
Much of the discussion about 'what's working' suggests that students learn because the school is district, charter, parochial or whatever. This is bizarre. Clearly, students learn from what goes on in the school; from its curriculum, pedagogy, materials and teachers. This report begins to sketch a taxonomy that gets at these more meaningful school properties.
A big district like Minneapolis has dozens of schools, and all of them could be innovating. That is, in fact, the strategic plan. But the big brain — the central office — gets in the way. How might the state usefully intervene? A Sunday Commentary for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
An analysis of two innovative chartered schools in Minnesota, including a financial analysis which shows this innovation is possible at a net cost well below district schools of similar demographics. By Charles Kyte, a former superintendent and executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.
