Based on extensive stakeholder engagement, we identified nine areas that we recommend the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) strengthen or add when drafting Minnesota's new teacher standards.
Answers to frequently asked questions regarding competency-based education, including a thorough definition of CBE, its advantages over traditional approaches, the role of teachers, and legislation to enable and support CBE.
The new four-tiered teacher licensure system was created by the legislature during the 2017 legislative session. This FAQ covers the new system and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board.
This brief provides a historical overview of the impetus for Minnesota's change to a four-tiered teacher licensure system, as well as the transition to the new system. This is a living document that EE will update as needed.
The School Quality or Student Success (SQ/SS) indicator was one of the most talked about decisions that fell to the states in drafting their new ESSA accountability plans. This memo summarizes the chosen SQ/SS measures for each state.
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.
What most people call 'charter schools' is in fact system change. With a new, second, charter sector, public education can be a self-improving system. Success for the district sector might depend on its picking up innovations from the charter sector. Ted Kolderie explains.
On April 3, 2017, fourteen states and D.C. submitted their draft ESSA state accountability plans. This memo contains one-page summaries of each state's plan, focusing on four primary areas or “big decisions” that ESSA requires each state to address.
Having good definitions of the terms "student achievement" and "school quality" is important in our nation's quest to improve public education. But the two terms are often defined too simply, too narrowly, too controversially. This working memo puts forth our own deeper and broader definitions of these two important terms.
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.