REDESIGNING PUBLIC EDUCATION
The papers here are not about ‘the issues’ most in the news. They deal with Walter McClure’s wisdom that “Systems and organizations tend to behave the way they are structured and rewarded to behave. If you don’t like the way they are behaving, you probably should change the way they are structured and rewarded”.
They will likely be of interest mainly to those looking to understand what is causing public schools and districts not to do what ought to be done and to do what ought not to be done. And to understand how these behaviors can be changed.
Put another way: The papers here deal with ‘the givens’ seldom questioned in the policy discussion about public education. They are candid about the current system-behavior. They are concerned especially with the ‘How’ of system-change.
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first section focuses on the problems of our century-old system, and the challenge of personalizing learning now that the Internet makes so much information so accessible.
The
second picks up Joe Graba’s conclusion that “We cannot get the schools we need by changing the schools we have”; that the different schools will need to be created new.
The third considers how districts can be stimulated to create different schools.
The last looks particularly at the ‘How’ of personalizing learning and the concept of ‘achievement’.
Strategies for System Change
The first set of papers describes the difficulty public education has had with change and innovation . . . and the difficulty policymakers have had in finding a strategy to deal with the system inertia. The papers offer a few suggestions.
The Split Screen Strategy: How to Turn Education Into a Self-Improving System
This small volume sets out the concept of the system – or an individual district – working simultaneously with a strategy of Improvement and a strategy of Innovation. The former working to make conventional school better; the latter creating for people in the schools “a culture of encouragement” for them to try things.
The Split-Screen Strategy is available as a free PDF and as an e-book on Amazon Kindle , and Barnes and Noble Nook. Hard copies are available on Amazon .
It can be viewed as a PDF ( here ).
Helping All Students To Realize Their Potential
January 2021 · By Ted Kolderie
The central concept in this paper is that, while adults determine what’s taught and tested, students control what’s learned. Any successful effort to improve learning will therefore begin by increasing student motivation.
For this, the strategy must be to personalize learning; to help all students reach their potential. For that to happen, of course, teachers must be able to adapt to the interests and aptitudes of the individual student.
Should Minnesota's Public Schools Be Obliged to Ensure that Students Learn?
June 2022 · By Ted Kolderie
Responsive to the initiative from former Justice Alan Page to create a civil right to ‘quality education’, this ‘amicus brief’ written for legislators argues the goal can be reached without a constitutional amendment.
It underscores the implication of Page’s goal of ‘realizing potential’, pointing out that the ‘achievement gap’ would then be the difference between the potential and the performance of the individual student.
Should Minnesota's Public Schools Be Obliged to Ensure that Students Learn ?
is available as a
free PDF here and use this link to send it to others.
Fixing Schools vs. Fixing School Systems
(McClure, unpublished op-ed, 2017)
Here Walter McClure applies his concept of ‘large-system architecture’ to public education.
Creating Different Schools New
Little-noticed, Minnesota has over the past several decades transformed its public education from a public utility to a broad array of public options.
The appearance of these choices for students and parents has created a new environment for conventional school districts; for their boards and superintendents.
Beside ‘Minnesota Is Creating . . .’
This paper summarizes the options: nonprofit alternative schools, area learning centers, the opportunity for students to finish high school in college, online learning, and chartered schools.
Minnesota is Creating a Self-Improving System
Beginning in the 1960s, ‘alternative’ schools began to appear, most notably in Minneapolis. Steadily through succeeding decades the Legislature continued to expand this new sub-system of public education.
This paper describes this remarkable transformation of the state’s system of public education; from a conventional public utility into a broad array of public options.
Today, a former state commissioner of education says, Minnesota has more ways for a person to finish high school than anywhere else in the world.
Chartering Is a Strategy for Minnesota Public Education
March 2024 - By Ted Kolderie
This small booklet explains the second sector of public education, created by the Minnesota Legislature in 1991, as essentially the state's strategy for change and improvement. Chartering offers districts, teachers, parents and others the opportunity to create new public schools that try and test different approaches to school and schooling.
The booklet describes the program, and the important innovations that have in fact appeared in this new sector over its now 30-plus years of operation. One example is the application of the 'partnership' arrangement to the organization of a school; creating a professional work-life for teachers.
It makes clear that 'charter schools' is far more than the individual schools themselves.
This booklet is available as a free pdf here.
Innovative Authorizing for Minnesota's Chartered Schools
August 2022 · By John Kostouros and Ted Kolderie
Our series of booklets on Minnesota's chartering program began with the Guide you see above. Within the program set up by that institutional innovation have come various other innovations.
One of these has to do with the process of authorizing schools. Initially, here and elsewhere, authorizers were existing organizations: universities, foundations, districts, large social-service organizations. Then in 2009 Minnesota's legislature created the 'single-purpose authorizer'. This opened the way for the creation of new nonprofits having no other function than to solicit, receive, review and act on proposals for new schools—and to oversee the schools it approved.
This booklet by John Kostouros describes this innovation with particular attention to one of them, Innovative Quality Schools, and to its innovative way of organizing and financing the work of approval and school oversight; simultaneously broadening its competence and reducing its costs.
Innovative Authorizing for Minnesota's Chartered Schools is available as a free PDF here and use this link to send it to others.
Teacher-Centered + Student-Centered: a Case Study of Two Minnesota School Districts
July 2020 · By Charles Kyte
Charles Kyte’s case study describes an ingenious approach to personalization and to teacher-professional autonomy taken in two Twin Cities area as a result of superintendent initiative and board decision.
The case study can be read, and can be forwarded to others, from the pdf available at this link. If you received a printed copy, which did not include the goals for graduates adopted by the board of the Farmington district in its strategic plan, you can see those here: Appendix: Farmington Board Lifelong Learner
Helping Districts Respond
The papers here describe two different ways a district go about creating more successful schools – or might. The change might be an act of leadership by the board and superintendent . . . or might come as a result of the Legislature opening the way to an alternative form of district organization.
Conventional School Is . . . Obsolete
December 2023 - By Ted Kolderie
Our discussion about 'the schools' tends to accept the current way of doing things as 'right' . . . when the question needing to be asked about the institution is whether it works.
Many institutions did great things in their time. Times change; new things appear, making obsolete what was there before.
Public education did great things in its time. Now a new technology of education is developing, making obsolete the traditional form of school and the approach to teaching and learning long accepted as 'right'.
This small booklet describes this innovation. It puts squarely to those in the district sector the question of adopting this 'fundamentally different' model of schooling. It suggests this can be done if the process begins with those now ready and is spread -- diffuses -- gradually.
Conventional School is . . . Obsolete. is available as a free pdf here.
How the State can Deal with the School Boards' Inertia
March 2018 · By Ted Kolderie
Districts operate today under a standard plan of organization: an administrator appointed and overseen by an elected board that has no defined political leadership.
The paper explains how municipal government after World War II got itself organized to deal with the coming suburban expansion by getting the Legislature to create a set of ‘optional forms’ that village councils and the public could adopt.
It can be viewed as a PDF ( here ).
Organizing Districts to Enable Schools to Motivate Students
A draft bill setting our four optional forms of district organization appears here, for consideration by the Legislature – and by the associations of school boards and administrators.
It can be viewed as a PDF ( here ).
Personalizing Teaching and Learning
Papers in this section go into more of the specifics about the ‘How’ of those shown above: the need to engage students, the concept of personalization and how to implement it, and the rethinking of the definition and measurement of ‘achievement’, of ‘performance’, for both students and schools.
Engagement Drives Achievement
June 2018 · By John Kostouros
“Nobody ever asked me why I left high school.” Let’s ask them
October 2020 · Based on interviews by Wilder Research and High School for Recording Arts
Here are interviews with 70 young people who had left conventional school; voluntarily, or ‘pushed out’, or because they had been caught up in the juvenile-justice system. Two local organizations – Wilder Research and the High School for Recording Arts – collaborated on the study and produced this report.
Districts do not seriously and systematically ask their students’ opinions of the schooling being offered: It is considered to be the student’s job to relate to the school; not the other way ‘round.
Had they been asked, these students would have been both critical and constructive. That is; would have explained why conventional school did not work for them . . . and would have offered their suggestions about curriculum, about teaching and about relationships that would make compulsory schooling work better for others, like them.
Conceptualizing Personalization
October 2021 · By Ted Kolderie
Personalization obviously departs from traditional schooling. It adapts to the differences among students; in their interests, motivations and aptitudes; concentrates on making sure each child masters the material.
This first paper sets out the essential concepts in the process. It shows how far Minnesota has gone already in creating schools designed around the reality that students control what’s-learned. It explains the different ‘pathways’ available to the young people for whom conventional school does not work well. . It then describes the variety of ‘practices’ of personalized schooling that students can now find along the different pathways.
Pathways to Personalization in Minnesota Schooling
October 2021 · By Michael B. Lipset and Sophia Mathies
This paper, written by Michael B. Lipset and Sophia Mathies, enlarges on the remarkable transformation of Minnesota’s education worked by the Legislature over the past generation.
It describes the pathways in more detail and makes a first effort to attach enrollment numbers to the various pathways.
Improving the Definitions and Measures of Student and School Success
January 2022 · By Michael B. Lipset and Sophia Mathies
Clearly the effort to personalize learning implies an effort to think through different concepts of ‘achievement’; requires some willingness to contemplate what might be a significant departure from the uniform, and limited, definitions and measures of ‘performance’ being used today.
Math and English language are basic for elementary students; at the secondary level ‘achievement’ can go in many directions. A discussion is under way in Minnesota about ways to identify and to credit these new and broader measures.
More titles will be added as we continue to review our catalog of manuscripts.
