Ted Kolderie and Curt Johnson describe a major reform – a "New Schools" proposal - now being considered by the Minnesota Legislature.
By empowering teachers, parents and the community (a) to decide the kind of school and (b) to operate the school, district school boards could create new and different models of schools.These "site-governed" schools would select staff, determine the leadership model, and control the budget. They would be "charter-like" schools, but be within the district framework.
The legislation would also create a new state-level leadership entity called " New Schools Minnesota ." A non-profit organization, its board would be appointed by the Governor, the House and the Senate, and be chaired by the Commissioner of Education.
Speakers
Ted Kolderie, Founding Partner, Education Evolving
Curtis Johnson, Senior Associate, Education Evolving
Superintendent Don Helmstetter, Spring Lake Park
Julie Sabo, lobbyist, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
Ted Kolderie
Need for innovation: We are here to explain why we think achievement requires innovation, and why innovation requires bringing decision-making in the learning program closer to schools and closer to teachers. Start with three simple propositions
• The country needs its learning and learning systems to improve.
• We don’t know how to get all young people to learn
• Normally when we have a problem where we don’t know for sure what to do, we try a number of different things.
So far, an incremental approach: We have been on a strategy for the last 20 years, essentially trying to get better performance out of the existing schools, working for incremental improvement or incremental innovation. But to continue to bet all the chips on that would represent a risk that is not necessary to take. Unfortunately, it is not easy to innovate in public education. It is not as open as you might want to the creation of significantly different forms of school and significantly different approaches to learning.
More charter schools needed: We need an ecology of innovation. Chartering was a step in this direction. It has functioned to some degree as an R&D sector for public education in Minnesota. But there are not enough. There need to be more innovative charter schools if we are going to find approaches that are going to result in better learning.
Curt Johnson
Four bills pending:
• The dominant of the four bills (SF 486/HF751) https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/revisor/pages/search_status/status_detail.php?b=Senate&f=SF0486&ssn=0&y=2009 is the self-governed schools or site-governed schools bill. It would create zones of innovation inside any willing school district. The school district, despite the advent and growth of the charter sector remains where most of the kids are. If you are going to have scalable impact, you have to figure out how to encourage the spread of innovation in the districts. The bill allows districts to strike a new deal with teachers, principals and parents who want to create really different learning opportunities. It extends the rights and the responsibilities that we associate with charter schools to any new school where the board and the union agree to allow it to enjoy radical autonomy.
• The second bill fosters these new district schools with state planning grants and two years worth of start up assistance. It creates a new nonprofit called New Schools Minnesota, a public-private arrangement. It has a nine-member board, three appointed by the governor, three by the Senate, three by the House. It would be free to solicit grants. It would be an advocate and a center of research.
• The third bill responds to the Legislative Auditor’s report critical of charter school oversight. It strengthens sponsorships. It would add a limited number of organizations whose sole reason for being is to sponsor schools. It changes the approval process. The state would approve sponsors and the sponsors would approve schools. It gets the state out of the business of approving schools.
• The fourth bill is aimed at the growing number of small, economically fragile rural school districts, fearing another brutal round of consolidations. It would promote consolidation of back office operations and other ways to reduce overhead, to keep smaller schools that are economically sustainable.
Closing the Gap: We won’t close the gap unless we succeed in creating schools that are different enough that they line up with the differences in today’s kids. The traditional model does not connect with today’s realities.
Superintendent Helmstetter
(Speaking in support of the initiatives proposed)
Parents’ role: Parents are the first, best teachers of their children. So why don’t they have more control and more choice over what their children do? Minnesota is the birthplace of choice, with the open enrollment option, there are still fewer than 4 percent in the entire state that are open enrollment students. Which means many parents are satisfied with the school district. I don’t see that what these gentleman are proposing is contradictory or even competitive with us
Teachers’ opportunity: There are many teachers within the systems that really want to try something new. It is one of the reasons why they wanted to be an educator. They wanted to impact kids. They wanted to do it in a way that suited their strengths and abilities. Often in a bureaucratic setting, that isn’t possible. This is an opportunity.
We set up the environment and the incubation can occur under our jurisdiction.
Julie Sabo
Union support: Maybe it is a surprise that the union is supporting this work. It is consistent with the MFT and the vision teachers have had in terms of self-governance, in terms of being innovative.
Teachers lack control: One of the frustrations we have as teachers, we go in with a passion and drive to educate our kids, and get into a situation where we realize there are so many factors, so much of the power to do what we know needs to be done, is not within our hands. The system doesn’t really allow us to be as flexible as we need to be to get the job done. Unless we get innovation and the radical change, I think it is very likely that the achievement gap will not be closed.
Already a work-in-progress: Five years ago, legislation passed that would allow us to do essentially this, start new schools within the district. It has been a few years of work to get the Bridge Committee together, a combination of parents, teachers and district and the business community. This is something Minneapolis has been working on for a number of years, to get the innovation and flexibility within our schools. However, the bureaucracy that surrounds public schools is tremendous. Even with the legislation and the framework established, it is hard to get off the ground. The Girls in Engineering, Math and Science and Guys in Engineering, Math and Science after school programs are interested in starting a new school and other proposals. The teachers are very supportive of bringing innovation back into the public schools.
Q&A
Q: If the legislation passed five years ago, why hasn’t that caught on, and what is the difference between that proposal and the current one?
A: KOLDERIE: The distinction I make, the prior bill set up a process for creating a process. It said that through the Bridge Committee, people could get together with the district and set up a procedure by which teachers or others can come in with proposals. For reasons that people on the Bridge Committee can speak to the process for creating the process was never implemented. Then, the superintendent left and the board turned over. The union president who had been supportive, Louise Sundin, lost her reelection and the person who replaced her was unfamiliar with the proposal and not necessarily supportive. There was about three years of it being dead in the water. The new union president is quite supportive. The new bill would put the process for proposing the school right in the law, just like it is in the chartering law. The district’s decision is a simple policy decision, are we going to do it or not?
Q: I look at your documents and I don’t see parents mentioned, nor the role of the public. What is the role of this new model of parents?
A: JOHNSON: You found a glaring editorial flaw. I think we would say that the push—the pressure for change for having different kinds of schools—would come from parents. The aim of this kind of legislation is to keep parents pushing, or combining with teachers to say we want to start a new school.
Q: 1) Where is the opposition? 2) It seems like what you are proposing, with decentralization, there should be a significant reduction of funding, as oversight is diminished and moved down, how much money will we have left over?
A: JOHNSON: The surplus is an illusion, not likely to be realized in fact, despite the sound theory. Regarding opposition, I don’t know that we have opposition as much as we have nervousness. There is a certain discernable anxiety on the part of some superintendents, not all, about relinquishing day-to-day control. As one superintendent told us, why would I encourage a school to be created that might succeed that I didn’t have anything to do with controlling? And the people who advice superintendents, such as attorneys, will constantly raise liability issues. On the union side, it is understandable that Education Minnesota would be giving a lot of serious thought about what this might do to seniority. That creates a certain amount of nervousness as well.
HELMSTETTER: My biggest objection to the charter schools is that many times there are well-intentioned people involved with almost no fiscal or practical experience in schools. This proposal removes one of my concerns. I do think sometimes there are expectation for administrative savings. In our district, less than 4.5 percent of our dollars are spent on administrative costs.
Q: Your book with Clayton predicts that 50 percent of high school education will be virtual. There are already private sector parties offering virtual courses. This program could change the entire nature and economics of education in Minnesota..
A: JOHNSON The clear message is that no change is not an option. The assertion we make in the book is the movement to the online platform for the majority (at least of the secondary enrollment experience) is not just a possibility; it is inevitable. It is already happening. If you think of education as an industry, why wouldn’t it be subject to the same dynamics as any other industry as a disruptive innovation occurs? We are just about to the take-off point. What we are arguing as a matter of public policy, let’s open the doors to innovation, let’s not be fearful.
Q: (Baris Gumus-Dawes, Institute on Race and Poverty) Despite claims that charters innovate, research shows that most of the educational innovation comes from public schools. They explain it by saying for small schools in a highly competitive environment, your chances are surviving a better if you mimic successful institutions. Most small charters mimic traditional schools. Most are only innovating in administrative terms, not necessarily in curricular terms or educational terms.
A: KOLDERIE: The charter sector, while to some degree functioning as an R&D sector, has not generated nationally that many innovations. There have been some significant ones in Minnesota. There is no kind of school that is a charter school. It is a platform from which people can create certain kinds of schools. It is quite true, most of them have not been particularly innovative. This is why we are now trying to extend the opportunities for innovation.
Q: (Follow up) Why would the market force that you are talking about generate the kind of innovation that we want, the educational innovation?
A: KOLDERIE: Innovation is letting people try things when you don’t know what they will try. If we are going to have that as an element in the public education system, clearly you have to maintain at the same time, traditional, conventional schools. The concept that is at work is a split screen arrangement. Education proceeds in two different forms at the same time, one open to innovations. Who could say ahead of time what kinds of things are going to be tried? We have to find out.
Q; (Follow up) Most charter schools are using innovations generated by public schools. Nobody shows strongly that charters are performing any better than any other school.
A: JOHNSON: The charter sector, when it emerged in 1991, the real innovation that appears when you look at it in retrospect, it is not so much in the achievement area. You are right, many of the schools, maybe the majority, sort of did pluck from what the other public schools were doing. The innovation achieved by most of the charter schools was culture. They managed to generate a different kind of culture, something the parents bought into better. Whether it was scale or the learning strategy or the atmosphere. Only now after the first 17 or 18 years is the charter sector beginning to wake up to the need to be more innovative about achievement.
Q: (Follow-up) When charters were promoted, it was for the performance gap. Now it is closing the culture gap?
A: JOHNSON: You don’t know what you are going to unleash
Q: Regarding size, small school size is not the silver bullet. It doesn’t translate into educational gains. And regarding teachers, our experience with these market structure, in charter schools, turnover is really high on the national level, especially at the beginners level, 40 percent teacher turnover is pretty high.
A: JOHNSON: Your 40 percent figure refers to all schools everywhere in the first five years, 40 percent of the teachers disappear in the first 5 years.
SABO: I love the points you are making. They are right on. What we don’t have right now is the flexibility to respond to some of your concerns. Our hope is that this could provide us with some flexibility, to do some things that are not just replicating things that are already happening. We don’t have the ability to change the structure of our day, how we work with one another to make it more collaborative, make it the way we know keeps people there.
Q: (follow up) When they ask teachers why they are leaving the charters, they said they hoped they would get more flexibility, but found out they were getting less pay and not much flexibility.
A JOHNSON: To emphasize again, autonomy is what we are talking about. In teacher-run schools, people will tell you they are working hard, but most will tell you, “don’t you try to take it away from me. It’s the first time I feel like I am a real professional.” There is some turnover there. I bet research would show that it is less than normal.
Comment: KATE TOWLE: I am serving as a lead on the Bridge team. There are 12 members, four from MFT, four from our district and four from the community. I had my daughter in a charter for two years and have been an active MPS parent. The reason I am serving on this committee, I saw the limitations of both scenarios .. Bridge Committee has a dialog on innovation. Every organization needs an incubator. We are competing against charters and private schools. That is a reality. … We run the risk of creating a two-tier system here. I believe many of the teachers in MPS have been suppressed and repressed by mandates and work rules. At the end of the day, they know what works for their students. They need an opportunity to innovate. At the same time, we are facing huge restructuring in Minneapolis and budget cuts. We are talking about taking away some of our magnets that have been incubators of innovation. People say, How can you talk about this stuff and new schools when we are going to merge and cut schools that we have? I think that is a very important discussion. Do we want to go back to all community schools, when our city is one of the most segregated in the country?
Q: How do you measure success and how do you decide when to end an experimental school?
A: JOHNSON: This bill contemplates that discussion occurring between the people in the community who want to start the new school, including the teachers, and the board and superintendent. They would have to have the discussion. How will we define success? How will you assess it? When are we going to know?
Q: Don’t you want these innovations to be based on research rather than somebody’s hot idea?
A: JOHNSON: I don’t want to be disrespectful of research. The research in the education field is notorious for its paradoxical findings, its contradictions, its looseness of causality. That is where this conversation too often leads, getting into an argument about my research is better than your research.
SABO: A lot of the best educational research happens in the classroom with the kids in front of you—teachers being able to try things and know how a child has responded. That is often the frustration for teachers, because of the standardization of education, we are losing that.
Q: I am very respectful of the work and sincerity and the thoughtful composition of your ideas. I would encourage you to hear what someone said at the beginning. That is the substantive parent involvement. I think that is the part that you need to bring in. It is not about parents making choices, it is about informed parents making better choices.
A: JOHNSON: Advice taken.
Q: Teachers would remain employees of the district. Elaborate on how that would work.
A: KOLDERIE: They would This is drawn from the developments of the last 20 years in Boston and Milwaukee. The teachers in Milwaukee remain in union membership, except they have substantial waivers from the provisions of the master contract. The union will grant flexibility to its members that it will not grant to administrators. This contemplates the same thing here in Minnesota.
Q: Say something more about the budgeting? Are there things off the table? Could this change teachers salaries or hiring new people?
A: KOLDERIE: Stay with Milwaukee, for any given position, teachers are paid what the contract provides. It is established that the school selects and can preserve over time its own faculty. The union had to face the question, as the district went into enrollment decline and had surplus teachers, how it would react to “bumping” in one of these partnership schools. As the outcome was explained to me, the union agreed it would respect the desire of its members at the school in question to keep the integrity of the teaching philosophy of the school.
……
KOLDERIE: Years ago when St. Paul was going through a superintendent change, the head of Council of Great city Schools said the average tenure of superintendents in his membership (the 100 largest school districts) is 2.7 years. He looked at the St. Paul Board of Education and said “no significant progress on the problem of achievement is possible as long as that situation continues.” Why does the community continue to run a system that bets so much of the chips on having a superintendent, a leader, given the instability of that leadership position? St. Paul is a stepping stone. It will always be a stepping stone. You want to build the strength down in the base of the pyramid of the organization, at the school level or the subdistrict level, so you don’t’ go through this continuing cycle of exhilaration and despair, associated with the superintendent.
I see this thing that we are talking about as building strength at the base of the organization. I hope we can do that.
Q: What I hear you say is that you and teachers need freedom from things that are impeding you from teaching well. But I don’t know what the analysis of all of this is? I don’t know all of the facts. It seems like we are looking for a solution for a problem that has not been publicly identified enough, so that as a citizen I can be outraged but know where to send that rage. What needs to change?
Generally recognized as a good question, which would take another session to answer.
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