WELCOME
You'll find this website optimistic about the future of public education in Minnesota . . . explaining the important innovation in schooling that has appeared here and how it now should and can be extended.
NEW (JULY 3rd)
Two simple actions by the Legislature can greatly improve Minnesota's program of educational innovation
The first of these is for the Legislature to give the people of the district the option to elect the board chair if they wish. Nothing would be mandated. The Legislature would simply do for school districts what it did years ago for municipal government . . . which was to give the people the opportunity to move beyond the old 'village government'. Making available the city-administrator plan and the city-manager plan as 'optional forms' was an ingenious and successful legislation: It gave Minnesota the competent city governments now operating, especially in the Twin Cities area suburbs. The public deserves this option now for the organization of its local public education.
The second is for the Legislature, out of its own interest in modernizing public education, to arrange for the evolving 'innovation sector' to be overseen by an entity whose mission is to encourage innovation . . . with the Department of Education continuing to oversee, to regulate, the 'standard plan' of district schooling.
PART FIVE
As to the first recommendation for legislative action . . . It is ineffective —and unfair—to leave the responsibility for major change with the superintendency; with an appointed individual whose legitimate concerns about job and career are bound to limit the willingness to propose and the ability to secure substantial change in the district organization and its schools. Vesting the responsibility for policy leadership in an elected board chair will produce far better results.
As to the second . . . The nature of an administrative bureau is to regulate, to control, to standardize. It makes no basic sense to expect it to welcome in the organizations it oversees changes that depart from the uniform arrangement. The innovation that is now essential will develop only when innovation is affirmatively encouraged in schools willing to try the new and different. These today include some but not all of the chartered schools; some of the 'alternative schools and now a few of the districts. Part Five suggests where the Legislature can find entities to provide this encouragement.
Not to change is itself a major decision . . . one now carrying a substantial risk that a public system continuing to resist change will find itself quickly bypassed by private education and commercial digital schooling.
PREVIOUS
Here are the earlier Parts in this series. A new Part in the series will appear each Monday and Thursday. Over the next couple of weeks the entire series will be available here.
PART ONE
This small series aims to outline a strategy for disseminating the ‘new technology of schooling’ that has appeared in Minnesota.
Related
Schooling hasn't kept pace with the rate of change in the other systems with which young people learn
The first of these documents (PDF here) explains the 'local option' approach to strengthening political leadership; discussing also how the Legislature can get the state itself to support innovation.
The one below is a rough draft of a bill to implement the local option for school districts (PDF Here).
The two documents below describe the innovation sector of Minnesota public education, and explain how it developed
Memo 1
How a 60-year-long 'R&D project' has created a New Technology of Learning in Minnesota's public education
Memo 2
Two routes to improving public education—
Which One Works . . . and Which One Doesn’t
ABOUT
This website continues the thinking about public education in which I've been engaged since 1982. Something of my experience appears here.
Much of this work is collected on the website of the
The Center for Policy Design
LARGE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE:
Policy Design for Public Education, Healthcare, and Government
YOUR THOUGHTS
I welcome your feedback and thoughts.
