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 (May 15th)
A Simple Legislative Action Now Will Help Spread the Innovation
The 'How' of this is for the Legislature to give the people of the district the option to elect the board chair if they wish. Nothing is mandated.
The Legislature would do for school districts what it did years ago for municipal government . . . which is to give the people the opportunity to move beyond the old 'village government'. That was successful: It gave Minnesota the competent city governments now operating especially in the Twin Cities area suburbs.
The public deserves this option.
PART FIVE
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.
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.
