Publications

Teachers in Professional Practice: An Inventory of New Opportunities for Teachers (Second Edition)

Report • August 2006

This 2006 inventory of existing and developing teacher professional partnerships (TPPs) documents growing interest in a professional model of teaching. The inventory describes several teacher professional partnership models, offering a useful overview of the many ways in which teacher partnerships are organizing and functioning.

Academic Competitions: A Learning Experience Outside School

Memo • February 2006

What do students’ out-of-school learning experiences tell us about how we could design in-school learning models and education policy? Academic competitions are a largely-unexplored aspect of student learning. Such competitions deserve additional attention from researchers, educators, and policy leaders.

Is Chartering, as a Strategy, Succeeding?

Article • December 2005

It’s time to bury the term ‘charter schools’ and to talk separately about chartering—the state strategy of new-school-creation—and the schools created via chartering. Chartering is succeeding even though not all the schools-chartered are succeeding. Article appeared in the December 2005 issue of UrbanEd.

Tech-Savvy Students Stuck in Text-Dominated Schools: Summary of Research

Report • December 2005

A summary of available literature reporting student attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors regarding digital technology, particularly for learning. Describes our nation’s increasingly tech-savvy students, the ways in which they use technology, and their frustrations with our text-dominated schools. Students suggest how education policy and school designers could better meet their needs.

Clayton Christensen on “Disruptive Innovation” in Education

Video • July 2005

Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School Professor, speaks on “Disruptive Innovation” in education, at the ECS conference in 2005.

Listening to Student Voices: Students at Avalon High on School Design

Memo • July 2005

Much might be learned about effective school design if researchers were to listen to what students say. In this report, student researchers at Avalon High School in Saint Paul challenge adults to allow consumer input to be a driver in efforts to increase students’ motivation to attend, to learn and to graduate.

Response to Intervention: An Alternative to Traditional Eligibility Criteria for Students with Disabilities

Report • July 2005

This report describes and provides a review of the research on a learning model called Response to Intervention (RTI). Under this model, student performance data are gathered frequently and immediately made available to teachers, psychologists and others to evaluate the instruction strategies being used and spur modifications if need be.

Ray Budde and the Origins of the ‘Charter Concept’

Memo • June 2005

In 1988, Albert Shanker began to float the idea of “letting teachers start schools within schools.” But, he acknowledged he picked up the term “charter” from Ray Budde, from a paper titled “Education by Charter”. Ted Kolderie recounts Budde’s reaction to chartering, with lessons for today’s policy leaders on the virtues of diligence, patience, deference and humility.

Cost of Sponsoring MN Charter Schools

Report • February 2005

Chartering cannot work without quality sponsoring/authorizing. Quality sponsoring requires good systems, competent people and time. That means: money. We studied what it cost three Minnesota sponsors to review applications, develop contracts and oversee schools, over a three-year period.

District-Initiated Chartered Schools: New Opportunities for District Boards and Teachers

Memo • February 2005

Some districts see chartering as a part of their strategy for change and improvement. Here we review three Minnesota districts that authorize chartered schools: Faribault, Hopkins and Waseca. The ‘common market’ approach of pooling courses, facilities, programs and transportation of district, chartered, private and home schooling in Faribault is particularly striking.

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