Public education now has two sectors: a district sector and a chartered sector. Chartering—and this two-sector arrangement in general—needs to be thought of as a strategy for change, not just a set of schools. Given flexibility, the chartered sector can and does generate the needed innovation, the necessary improvements in learning.
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.
A back page Education Week commentary from September 2014 in which Ted Kolderie asks: why don't we get education changing the way successful systems change?
To get innovation in K-12 we need to free those closest to the action—the teachers—to innovate and meet the needs of their students. Ted Kolderie draws lessons from World War 2 to make this argument, in a commentary in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
"The Futures of School Reform" is a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, coordinated by Jal Mehta. In October 2013, E|E invited Mehta to Minnesota to talk about the five alternative futures. Here are notes on the project from E|E's Ted Kolderie, and on what he thought was most significant for the education policy discussion in Minnesota.
A Minnesota teacher took initiative to reimagine what "school" could be. His students seem engaged, and are performing highly. But can his innovation spread in our current education system? Will it even survive?
Detailed notes on the Finnish schools and education system, from Ted Kolderie's visit to Finland August 20-24, 2012. Ted was part of an American delegation assembled by the National Public Education Support Fund. The meetings were arranged locally by Pasi Sahlberg from CIMO.
Pasi Sahlberg had a day of conversations with Minnesotans on July 19, 2012 about the schools in Finland. An official in the Ministry of Education and Culture in Helsinki, Sahlberg is probably the person most involved with explaining to countries around the world about the education system that Finland developed beginning about 1970.
The key question of education innovation is whether schools and teachers will be free to adapt to the needs, aptitudes, interests, and motivations of their students. Ted Kolderie in Education Week, November 2011.
E|E's Ted Kolderie explains why sound policy requires true innovation, followed by “continuous improvement”. The two must exist together; we may not be able to afford a 'monoculture' in education policy.
