Education, Microsoft, and the Individual Entrepreneur

Memo • December 2007

This article discusses the role of large corporations such as Microsoft in partnering with independent entrepreneurs in the classroom. Entrepreneur Bob Bilyk, has created an application LodeStar that, with the aid of Microsoft’s Class Server, enables teachers to more effectively customize learning materials to meet students’ individual needs.

Minnesota’s Charter Law is Providing Significant Innovations in School and Schooling

Report • October 2007

Chartering is hailed as providing a space for innovation in public education. However, research and reporting on chartered schools usually focus on test scores and student demographics, and not on the innovations taking place. This report outlines some of the innovations appearing in Minnesota chartered schools.

Teachers as Leaders: Short on Power, Long on Responsibility

Article • September 2007

Richard Ingersoll argues: to upgrade teacher quality, schools need to go beyond just holding teachers more accountable. They need to give teachers more control.

Staying In: Youth Explain Why Motivation is Central to Learning and Graduating

Report • April 2007

This report examines the experiences of youth who quit school or were on the path to quitting. It describes their human, and democratic, desire to choose whether or not they will learn. It finds that once engaged students learn better and that different things motivate different students; no one factor is motivating for all students.

First Thoughts on Sustainability and Productivity

Memo • April 2007

With the growing concern about rising expenditures—whether it will ever be possible for revenues to keep up; whether, if not, any concept of productivity can be developed—it seemed a good idea to think out the elements of such a discussion. This is Ted Kolderie’s first effort to do that.

Clearinghouse of Links to Student Voices in K-12

Web Resource • January 2007

Standards for Quality Sponsoring of Chartered Schools

Report • December 2006

This guide and self-evaluation rubric is intended to identify the indicators for quality charter school sponsoring in Minnesota, specify the criteria that defines each indicator, identify the incentives for why a sponsor would want to meet the quality sponsoring indicators, and develop a process by which sponsors can ascertain whether they are meeting these quality indicators.

Teachers in Professional Practice: An Inventory of New Opportunities for Teachers (Second Edition)

Report • August 2006

This 2006 inventory of existing and developing teacher professional partnerships (TPPs) documents growing interest in a professional model of teaching. The inventory describes several teacher professional partnership models, offering a useful overview of the many ways in which teacher partnerships are organizing and functioning.

Academic Competitions: A Learning Experience Outside School

Memo • February 2006

What do students’ out-of-school learning experiences tell us about how we could design in-school learning models and education policy? Academic competitions are a largely-unexplored aspect of student learning. Such competitions deserve additional attention from researchers, educators, and policy leaders.

Is Chartering, as a Strategy, Succeeding?

Article • December 2005

It’s time to bury the term ‘charter schools’ and to talk separately about chartering—the state strategy of new-school-creation—and the schools created via chartering. Chartering is succeeding even though not all the schools-chartered are succeeding. Article appeared in the December 2005 issue of UrbanEd.