LearnmoreMN Blog

College readiness: The foundation of Minnesota’s future

By Robert Jones, April guest blogger

Nearly 34 years ago I arrived in Minnesota as a 26-year-old newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. As the son of a Georgia sharecropper and a product of both a segregated public school system and the Civil Rights Movement that brought about its demise, I had traversed a road less traveled by African-Americans in general and males in particular. I had not only finished high school, but also had obtained an undergraduate and two advanced degrees in science-based disciplines and landed a dream job as an assistant professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota. I chose Minnesota not only for its professional fit, but also for the quality of its public schools — reflecting my desire for my five-year-old son to have better educational opportunities than I had experienced.

Much has changed over the last three decades, not all of it positive. Readers of this blog undoubtedly know that Minnesota has slipped from being a model of excellence in public education to being a state where the academic achievement gap looms largest. The gap cannot be explained by the high performance of our white students. In fact, in many cases students of color in Minnesota score below students of color in other states. On the 2009 national NAEP exam, for example, African-American fourth graders in Texas and Georgia scored higher in reading than their counterparts in Minnesota. Minnesota’s Hispanic students also performed significantly below Hispanic students in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi.

More than 58 years after the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, and in view of all the economic and intellectual resources available in Minnesota, we should all be profoundly troubled by our state’s shameful results.

The social, economic, and moral consequences of the achievement gap should alarm every Minnesotan. The future of our communities and our state depends on ensuring our children are prepared for and successful in some form of postsecondary education. A recent study anticipates that by 2018 — the year today’s sixth graders graduate from high school — at least 70% of jobs in Minnesota will require some postsecondary education. To make sure today’s sixth graders have a bright future, by 2018 we will need to significantly increase the number of students graduating from our community, technical and four-year colleges.

Reaching this goal will be impossible if we do not find a way to close our state’s achievement gap. According to Minnesota’s state demographer, the percentage of residents in the Twin Cities region who are Latino, black, and Asian is expected to increase from 23% to approximately 35% in 2035. The white population in the Twin Cities, in contrast, is not expected to grow after 2015. If nothing changes, we are headed for an increasingly racially, economically, and educationally segregated community. And to quote author James Baldwin, “These are our children and we will either benefit or suffer from what they become.”

At the University of Minnesota, we are deeply concerned about these trends and are committed to leveraging resources and partnering with K–12 schools and educators to prepare students for success in college — and not just at U of M campuses. Our Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) is collaborating with the Northside Achievement Zone and other organizations on literacy and school readiness initiatives that could be models for all economically challenged urban communities. Our College of Education and Human Development is redesigning its teacher preparation program as faculty members advance research aimed at eliminating the gap and improving outcomes for all students.

In my office, the College Readiness Consortium reaches out to schools statewide through Ramp-Up to Readiness™, a school-wide guidance program that helps students master the knowledge, skills, and habits they need to succeed in college — whether at our institution, a MNSCU college, or a private campus.

Many school success and college readiness efforts are going on in schools, colleges, faith communities, and nonprofit organizations across the state, especially in the Twin Cities. A recent assessment identified more than 500 initiatives now working to close the achievement gap. The pressing question is, why hasn’t the work of a multitude of well-intentioned people succeeded in eliminating the achievement gap? And how can we leverage our work to achieve the results our children and our state so desperately need?

I believe the answer is that in the Twin Cites we are “program rich but systems poor.” I also would suggest that a comprehensive framework developed in Cincinnati called Strive may in large measure provide the solution — and will explain why in my next post.

Preparing for and entering postsecondary education

By Lesley Lydell, January guest blogger

As in many other states, Minnesota postsecondary education faces an array of challenges, from decreased funding and rising costs to rapidly expanding worlds of knowledge transmission, the changing demands of the “knowledge economy,” and an uncertain employment world for graduates. Within these challenges, one central concern we focus on in my office is whether students participate in postsecondary education and what helps them succeed, both during their education and beyond. Although students increasingly enter postsecondary education at various times throughout their lives, the transition of recent high school graduates into postsecondary education offers one lens on how educational systems can collaborate to serve students.

In the revised edition of Minnesota Measures: 2011 Report on Higher Education Performance, data on students’ preparation for and entrance into postsecondary education illustrate positive trends but also point to ongoing challenges.

Growing Participation

Postsecondary Preparation: Minnesota high school students overall have strong participation and achievement in challenging academic courses and assessments. Minnesota students received the highest scores in the nation on a standardized college entrance exam, and increasing numbers of students are participating in college-level courses through Advanced Placement courses, Postsecondary Enrollment Options, and other programs. The number of students participating in Postsecondary Enrollment Options programs has more than doubled since 2000, and the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams rose 8% between 2009-10 and 2010-11.

High School to Postsecondary Transition: Compared to the national average, Minnesota high school students have a high four-year graduation rate at 76% for 2010. Minnesota also has a higher-than-average percentage of high school graduates who go on to enroll in a postsecondary institution within a year of their graduation.

Unlike in states with a high percentage of high school graduates who enroll in a postsecondary institution but also a higher rate of students who drop out of high school before graduation, a larger proportion of Minnesotans stay in high school, graduate, and enter directly into higher education. For all Minnesota high school graduates, the number going on to college has increased by 15% between 1996 and 2010 to 71% of recent graduates enrolling in college. There have also been sizeable increases in the numbers of recent Minnesota high school graduates of color enrolled at a Minnesota postsecondary institution, with a 49% increase in enrollment between 2004 and 2010.

Achievement Differences

• Although all groups of students had higher graduation rates in 2010 over the previous year, with a 1% increase in high school graduation rates for white students and a three percent increase for students of color, the four-year graduation rate for students of color was 30 percentage points lower than the rate for white students.
• State-level proficiency exam scores in 2011 for 10th and 11th grade students indicated achievement differences for students from low-income backgrounds and some students of color, with approximately three-quarters of students from low-income backgrounds and American Indian, Hispanic, and African-American students not fully meeting grade-level standards in math.
• College readiness benchmarks on the ACT college entrance exam indicated just over one-third of Minnesota’s ACT test-takers for 2010-11 scored as academically prepared to succeed in higher education. Although there has been some improvement in ACT benchmark scores since 2007, Minnesota students of color overall scored as less prepared than the state average.
• The percentage of Advanced Placement exams that received scores eligible for college credit (scores 3-5) increased at a higher rate between 2010 and 2011 for Minnesota test-takers of color than the state and national average increases, with the largest increase in higher-scoring exams taken by Hispanic test-takers. Overall, however, the percentage of exams taken by American Indian, African-American/Black, and Hispanic test-takers receiving a score eligible for college credit was below the state average of 65% of all exams taken.

Although there are positive trends in improving preparation for and participation in postsecondary education for all students, there are areas for added focus and collaboration as we work to better serve students and smooth the transitions between high school, postsecondary, and the workforce.

What are the most promising strategies you’re aware of in improving students’ postsecondary preparation and participation — locally, nationally, internationally?

Eliminating a "wait to fail" culture

By Sarah Dixon, December guest blogger

Say what you will about No Child Left Behind, it has shown us two things: a stubborn achievement gap between students of color and white students and the value of data in helping students achieve. It has also taught us that one assessment at the end of the year is too little, too late — a "wait to fail" culture that often leaves students too far behind to catch up. I am convinced the next great step in education is a model that meets the needs of struggling and at-risk learners proactively, long before students take that spring high-stakes test.

This model is Response to Intervention (RTI), and it's been around for a few years. According to a 2008 study by the University of Colorado-Boulder, every state in the U.S. and the District of Columbia "indicated some emphasis on RTI either in current practice or in development." In Minnesota school districts, some are in year one, two or three of implementation and are just starting to see results.

What is RTI?
Put simply, the RTI model is an educational approach that provides a standards-based curriculum to all students and additional, progressive help (interventions) to students that are falling behind. While this sounds a lot like the way education has been delivered for generations, it differs in two ways:

1. It's about constant monitoring. According to the National Association of School Psychologists, parents and school staff agree that RTI's student progress monitoring techniques provide more instructionally relevant information than traditional assessments.
2. It's about effective help. The interventions used in RTI have been demonstrated to work in randomized controlled trials.

How does RTI work?
RTI has three basic components: school-wide screening, progress monitoring and tiered service delivery, and fidelity of implementation.

Every student is tested at the beginning of the school year to find out where they are at in relation to the curricula. Additional monitoring of student progress on assignments, quizzes and exams occurs constantly. When students show signs of lagging behind, teachers and other staff provide extra help. If progress isn't made, more frequent, more intense help is provided, sometimes including special education services. Critical to student success is the fidelity of implementation — or the commitment to having the RTI program in place and the teachers' ability to use the process in his or her instruction.

But it's hard. Implementing RTI in a way that becomes ingrained in the culture of a school, where teachers understand how to read the data and then apply a menu of interventions with individual students takes training, coaching and time. In addition, cash-strapped schools face major hurdles when proper implementation means hiring extra staff.

Some organizations, including the one I lead, Minnesota Alliance With Youth, are offering schools assistance in implementing RTI. The Alliance facilitates an innovative community approach to provide support to students falling behind that complements what the school is doing. We place AmeriCorps Promise Fellows in schools that meet a number of criteria in a competitive grant process. The AmeriCorps members build capacity by involving community members — something schools don't have time to coordinate. This partnership encourages student achievement through service learning and civic engagement opportunities, stressing high quality in- and out-of-school activities. The essence of our approach is this: providing the right support to the right youth at the right time, with the right scale, intensity and duration.

Later this month I'll post another blog that delves deeper into the benefits of community engagement in the lives of our youth. If you are interested in helping youth reach their full potential, please let us know at www.mnyouth.net.

Fixing Minnesota’s achievement gap requires reform

By Vallay Varro, November guest blogger

Minnesota’s achievement gap is a disservice to Minnesota students. Its implications on our economy today and tomorrow are irrefutable and enormous. By the numbers, we have the second-largest gap in the United States. The good news: We know what we need to do to reform our public schools.

Thirty-two years ago, amidst war and chaos in Laos, my family and I relocated to the United States as political refugees. We arrived with nothing more than the clothes on our backs; our perseverance and will to seek out the American dream was unstoppable. We left Laos for our safety and chose the United States for opportunity, and our vehicle to achieve the American dream: education. My parent’s convictions inspired me to graduate from high school and college, and attain a master’s degree in education policy. I share this anecdote because, with the circumstances I faced as a child, I should be a “face” of our achievement gap.

Minnesota’s achievement gap wears many faces, but the life a child is born into should not dictate his or her education opportunities. I was lucky. Education is learning, teaching and parenting. It’s also the preservation of the foundational and fundamental values that encompass our democracy, the fuel for our economic engine and the guarantor of knowledge and impact. Our collective future hinges on our ability to educate all children today, and educate them well.

We are a state rooted in progressive education policies and investments in young people. This is credited by, for example, innovative charter school laws and Post-Secondary Enrollment Options. While past achievements alone are not sufficient, they can serve as the launch pad for reform. Despite our unrivaled legacy of education innovation, we have the second-largest achievement gap in the country  between black male and white male students. Recent MCA-II (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment) results and national reports indicate a troubling picture:

• For five consecutive years, 20-40% more white students have passed the MCA-II test in reading and math compared to black and Hispanic students.
• In 2011, only 17% of black students and 23% of Hispanic students passed the grade 11 MCA-II mathematics test compared to 56% of their white peers.
• Also this year, 83% of white students passed reading, whereas 54% of Hispanic students and 48% of African-American students met state benchmarks.

The truth is, Minnesota’s achievement gap is only widening. It requires our immediate attention.

We must adopt an environment in which teachers use different teaching strategies, increase time on task and innovations that incorporate technology, critical thinking and a multidisciplinary approach to learning. Fortunately, many schools are beating the odds and effectively teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is in our best interest to make these best practices common practice.

The cause of our achievement gap isn’t a lack of knowledge. We know what we need to do, but we lack the bold leadership and political will necessary to advance the policies we know make a difference in children’s lives. Our strategy must be a multi-pronged approach to organize and mobilize ordinary people, practitioners, community leaders and policymakers to achieve the wins necessary to reconstruct public education. Luckily, many Minnesotans recognize this. Reform is on its way.

For more information, visit www.MinnCAN.org and follow #MinnCAN.

Middle schools: linking Minnesota learners to future success

By Sally Wherry, September guest blogger

We’ve fortunately come a long way since I was a middle school-aged student. My school-directed experience with high school and postsecondary planning was limited to taking the Kuder Vocational Preferences Test. Upon reviewing my results, a well-intended counselor sternly announced, “Well, Sara…it looks as if you have no interests at all.” Although this was not exactly the guidance I needed to encourage me to enroll in rigorous high school courses or to inform college and career planning, I was lucky to have a family that did! For some educators, middle schools have long been considered as merely a bridge between the elementary and high school years, serving to link one educational institution with another. Focusing on the two sides of this educational bridge has diminished the importance of the link, often leaving middle school students and parents inadequately informed about how to prepare for the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead, and sidelining middle school educators from critical alignment efforts.

My years teaching middle school students served to underscore for me the complex needs of this age group. I learned not only how important it was to engage them in their learning, but also that if engagement was the sole outcome of a lesson, it was comparable to having them jump up and down in place…active, but going nowhere. I also learned the importance of collaborating with fellow educators, but my network, although extremely valuable, was small and narrowly focused. Middle school connections to elementary curriculum and awareness of the strengths and skill gaps of individual students, as well as opportunities to collaborate with high school staff, were limited by the length of the school day, differing schedules, contractual issues, the lack of time dedicated to professional development, and the challenges of data sharing and technology. Like most Minnesota districts, our student body was also rapidly changing; many of our kids no longer fell into the white/middle class/English-speaking home demographic. How could we build a strong connection that supported the growth of all students if our one-size-fits-all structure had limited knowledge of where our kids came from or where they wanted or needed to go?

Whether you love it or hate it, the accountability requirements of NCLB have laid bare Minnesota’s dreadful Achievement Gap between white students and students of color. Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and Governor Dayton’s seven-point plan has targeted “Raising the Bar — Closing the Gap.” In order to reach this critical goal, it is imperative for us to build a stronger bridge...or middle school...that supports all of our students. It has baffled me when high school principals have confessed to limited initiatives, programs and information sharing with their feeder middle schools. We need to start amplifying our efforts to promote and support policies, such as individual learning plans (Governor’s Workforce Development Council — “All Hands on Deck”) for all students. We must partner and collaborate with other educational and community organizations to develop comprehensive strategies (P-20 — “The Road Map to College and Career Readiness”) and share resources that redesign or develop stronger middle schools…schools that provide a firm foundation that enhances individual student growth and informs decisions leading to postsecondary opportunities and success.

What strategies or efforts have you tried or observed that strengthen our middle schools?

Beating the odds

By MayKao Hang, June guest blogger

If we are going to improve the quality of education of all children, we need to think about the achievement gap as an opportunity gap and become highly dissatisfied with the status quo. The source of power to fuel the economic engine of our community lies on more than the wonderful commercial products we create to improve the lives of people; it lies with growing, and then retaining, all the talent and creativity that exists within all of us. Regardless of background, we must believe and expect that we can unite and work to fill the opportunity gap that is eroding the ingenuity that has created companies such as 3M, St. Paul Travelers and Best Buy.

Back when Amherst H. Wilder was still alive 105 years ago, the majority of residents within the City of Saint Paul were immigrants. Most came to seek a better life in Minnesota and were able to turn challenges into entrepreneurial enterprises. According to a recent study commissioned by the Minneapolis Foundation and completed by Wilder Research, immigrants start businesses at three times the rate of those who are native born. In the City of St. Paul in 2010, 45% of the children were English Language Learners. While this may be down somewhat from Amherst’s time, the fact is that somehow throughout our history we have figured out how to get ahead.

I admit I am one who is dissatisfied with the seeming complacency with the fact that we are far behind other states and regions that we have long outperformed. If we expect to regain our standing, we must close the achievement gap that continues to be the overriding issue for Minnesota’s schools.

On May 31, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Dayton’s Bluff Achievement Plus School, a school that, until bold steps were taken, had only 12% of its students at proficiency. Today, Dayton’s Bluff performs to state levels despite despite high mobility, high poverty (more than 90% free and reduced lunch) and many from non-English speaking homes.

How is Dayton’s Bluff beating the odds? Achievement Plus began in 1997 as a model of comprehensive school reform that would develop, test, and disseminate more powerful instructional programs, effective student and family support services that address barriers to learning and extended learning strategies. No experiment can be without failures and successes when working to ensure excellent outcomes for children living in the lowest socio-economic areas of our city. After nearly 15 years of doing this, we share a few of our learnings:

• Perhaps nothing has been more fundamental to success than setting explicit and high academic standards and providing rigorous instruction.
• Providing teachers with the support and training to teach effectively to these high standards is essential.
• Evidenced-based practices that target and effectively mitigate barriers to learning for children and families are available. It pays to intervene early.
• Extended learning opportunities must be targeted to the specific gaps in childrens' knowledge and be tightly aligned with the school curriculum in order to show any effect on student achievement.

As we move forward with the Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood initiative, an effort to create cradle to career success for children living in a diverse, high-poverty, 250-block area of Saint Paul, we will weave what we’ve learned from Achievement Plus into the effort. And, we are learning from residents, subject matter experts, institutional leaders and other stakeholders what they see as essential investments in our children. We must commit to making those investments.

The only way that improvement of the human condition has ever occurred has been the belief that as a community we have what it takes to hold onto the promise for achievement and greatness in all children and then to act as adults to make it happen.

I hope you will all be with us as we work together even more closely to ensure that we stay a vibrant and productive community.

Transforming education so all kids succeed

By MayKao Hang, June guest blogger

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls education the civil rights movement of our generation. "I think the dividing line in our country today is so much around educational opportunity. And we have to close that divide." In Minnesota, we pride ourselves on being progressive, focused on academic success, and being ahead of the curve. But, we are doing worse than other states in closing the achievement gap. In fact, recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show Minnesota has the worst gap in the U.S. between white and African American students, falling behind Washington D.C., Alabama, and Mississippi.

One of 21 cities across the nation to receive a federal Promise Neighborhood Grant, Saint Paul is working to close the divide by organizing the community toward one common vision: that children are successful from cradle-to-career. We decided to look at the achievement gap as an opportunity gap. Let’s start with the premise that all children can be successful academically and work from there by setting the expectations high.

The Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood is a transformational opportunity to remove school success barriers. Spanning a 250-block area in the Frogtown and Summit-University neighborhoods, including two public elementary schools — Jackson and Maxfield, the area is young, with 32% of residents under age 18. It is poor; 56% of households have incomes below $35,000 and 89% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Poverty is a leading indicator for who will fall into the achievement gap. Children who are sick, tired, hungry or fearful are not able to be attentive in the classroom.

Our approach with the Promise Neighborhood is to organize the community and create the will and means to realign education, health, public safety and human services to create an environment that supports all our children to achieve academic success. We have conducted a community assessment, and since fall, six Solution Action Groups — each made up of 20-25 Promise Neighborhood residents, service providers, educators and others — have been developing a plan of action.

We have learned from years of delivering direct services and through research that none of us can do this work alone. We must integrate the assets of the private and public sectors and use them to fuel academic success. Addressing the needs of a child is not enough — to be successful we must address the needs of their families, neighborhoods, and the environment in which children live and grow.

Since 1997, The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation has been a key partner with the Saint Paul Public Schools on the Achievement Plus program where we have successfully developed a standards-based curriculum, extended learning opportunities for students, and offered learning supports for students and families. At Dayton’s Bluff Elementary School, one of our Achievement Plus schools, Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) test scores rose from 12% to over 60% in a 10-year period. The investments we make now in programs like Achievement Plus and Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood help remove barriers to learning and build a stronger Minnesota with well-educated and engaged citizens and a productive workforce. Children are our future; they deserve our best effort.

Calling it as I see it

Why the use of the term “achievement gap” makes a bad situation worse

By Nekima Levy-Pounds, May guest blogger

For years, we have invariably used the term “achievement gap” to describe educational disparities between white and black youths in Minnesota. It occurs to me that this term fails to accurately articulate the truth of why children of color are falling through the cracks within our public education system. For one, the term “achievement gap” is deficit-based language that implies that blame for children’s failure to “achieve” falls upon their own shoulders and is a result of their unwillingness or lack of motivation to work hard in school. (It is the Horatio Alger “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” myth in disguise.) However, for many children who struggle in school, external circumstances like chronic poverty and marginalization often hinder them from obtaining equal opportunities to achieve success.

For example, a child who has attended school in a wealthy suburban area typically receives advantages to which a poor child would not ordinarily be privy. The child in the wealthier community will likely gain access to more highly qualified teachers, newer textbooks, access to the latest technology, smaller class sizes, privately-financed extra-curriculars and inside knowledge of the unwritten customs and rules of mainstream society.

Meanwhile, a poor child of color is forced to contend with less qualified teachers, used or even no textbooks, lower teacher expectations, over-crowded classrooms, and a lack of racial diversity and cultural competence amongst teachers. Further, the recent report entitled: "Double Jeopardy: How Third- Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation" (Annie E. Casey Foundation) establishes that “children whose families live in poverty often lack resources for decent housing, food, clothing, and books, and they often do not have access to high quality child care and early education... .”

Rather than labeling the cumulative effects of these conditions as an “achievement gap,” I prefer the analysis provided by Carter G. Woodson, who wrote a book describing these issues in 1933, aptly called, The Mis-Education of the Negro.  Thus, I see the educational disparities as the result of “mis-education” or an “opportunity gap” experienced by poor children of color. In order to tackle these issues effectively, we have to provide equal access to educational opportunities, teachers qualified to teach poor children of color and language that accurately identifies the issues. In essence, the “achievement gap” rhetoric is a misnomer that sets us back, rather than pushes us forward in creating equal opportunities to succeed for all children.

Looking to the Mayo Clinic, and the "village" of Cincinnati, for comprehensive and collaborative models of education success

By Dane Smith, April guest blogger

As we strive toward our goals of much higher post-secondary attainment and reducing our racial and income achievement gaps, let’s consider the Mayo Clinic. This world-famous institution, a point of pride for Minnesota, might seem like a strange model for school improvements. But health care and medicine, like education, is fundamentally a human-helping-human enterprise. And the concept of healing is fitting as we try to address what ails our education system.

"The Mayo" earned its reputation by: considering the whole health of each patient in the most comprehensive way possible, dedication to the principle that "the needs of the patient always come first," coordinating the efforts of its entire group of doctors, and devoting much of its resources toward research and evidence, according to Wikipedia. (As the father of a daughter whose life was saved by Mayo’s collaborative expertise, I actually have firsthand knowledge of the Mayo formula.)

Similarly, we strongly believe that the ideal strategy for improving education investment in Minnesota must be comprehensive, student-centered, collaborative and evidence-based.

There actually is  a growing consensus nationally that the entire cradle-to-career pathway must be tended and improved, as outlined in a national "Broader, Bolder Approach," with its guiding principles for educational redesign. While we should demand improvement in K-12 teachers and principals and administrators, we are missing the boat completely if we neglect the fact that about half our kindergartners, mostly from low-income families and disadvantaged minority neighborhoods, are not fully ready to learn when those professionals first see them. And education must begin by better equipping new parents for their weighty responsibilities.

This or that "silver bullet" — school uniforms, alternative teacher licensure or merit pay, all-day kindergarten — are not likely all by themselves to move the needle dramatically on educational outcomes. And we simply can’t hope for this or that individual miracle-worker in the school system to save our struggling students. Rather, the African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" comes to mind. And although that phrase might be a little overused in recent years, this very comprehensive and collaborative mindset was crucial to success over the last decade in Cincinnati.

The graduation rate for Cincinnati Public Schools district increased from 51% in 2000 to 80% in 2009. And the graduation rate differential between African-American students and white students not only narrowed to nearly equal standing in that time but has remained at similar levels since 2006. Achievement scores for the district improved significantly. And perhaps most important, college enrollment and readiness have bumped up too: colleges in the Cincinnati area are reporting that more of the city’s high school graduates are enrolling, and more students from the local area are entering academia prepared for the challenges — and staying in college.

The Cincinnati story truly was a group effort. Cincinnati’s success involved multiple interventions along the entire pathway, from cradle to career launch, not just one or two of those "silver bullets," such as lower class sizes, aggressive testing or assigning pass/fail grades to schools. And the overriding lesson is that the school district was not alone in its efforts to reform schools and improve achievement for all students. The local business and philanthropic community, parents and community groups, teachers unions and even national experts on school change (including Minnesota’s own Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College) played a key role. More about the Cincinnati experience is available on our website at Growth & Justice, which also features our own Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students agenda and project, detailing a comprehensive, evidence-based strategy for driving Minnesota toward a 75% higher education attainment rate by the end of this decade.

Education has always been a public responsibility in Minnesota and the United States, for the very good reason that it is essential to our common good, our economy and the quality of life in our community. Education really is everybody’s business, extends well beyond the school and before and after the school day. Mayo and Cincinnati teach us that comprehensive and collaborative are the right way to meet this responsibility.

Calling for a constellation of ideas on closing the achievement gap

By Margaret Anderson Kelliher, January guest blogger

I will not pretend to be a professionally licensed educator, but I come from a long line of teachers starting with my great grandmother. She was educated at what was then Mankato Normal School, now Minnesota State Mankato, and taught in a one-room school house. My mother was an art teacher at North St. Paul High School for a stint in the late 1940s. And I have developed and taught a course at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs on negotiation for the last couple of years.

Having teaching in my genes often makes me wonder what exactly makes a great teacher. How does innovation in teaching and learning happen?

This question has led me to an author who has written on the topic of innovation. Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come from: a Natural History of Innovation, contains lessons for educators, parents, students, inventors and entrepreneurs. Johnson lays out a few important concepts that are important to the genesis of good ideas and how good ideas grow, improve and take hold. I think one of the most important points of the book, which is applicable to teaching and learning, is “idea as a network” and the expansion that takes place when an idea is networked. Johnson calls this chapter “Liquid Networks.” He lays out key components of a network: it needs to be densely populated — like the billions of neurons in your brain; and plastic — able to adjust to new situations. When an idea is alone it is likely to die — it needs other ideas and concepts to crash into to form more fully.

The work of McGill University psychologist Kevin Dunbar is highlighted by Johnson. Dunbar went out and watched scientists in their labs and conducted interviews. He refers to this approach as in vivo (in the wild) — the wild of science labs. His findings are striking. He found that it was rare to have discovery happen in a single moment with a single scientist, but that the most important ideas emerged at the conference table where ideas were shared.

To improve teaching and learning we need more shared moments of ideas, observations, data and connections. To close the achievement gap in Minnesota we need more master teachers sharing their ideas with one another school by school. Too often we over-emphasize the individual teaching star or student, but what we really need to create is the conditions for the Milky Way — constellations of ideas that create the network of success for teachers, and ultimately for students.

For Minnesota to have the next breakthrough in medical devices, genomics research or food science we need more conference tables. To improve the outcomes in teaching and learning we need more time together and less time apart. If we care about the good ideas and innovation — we can start today. Circle the chairs around the table and discuss the ideas, theories and outcomes and we can leap forward.