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MinnCAN: The Minnesota Campaign for Achievement Now yesterday released its ‘Road to Success: Tales of great schools’ report, detailing its fall 2013 statewide listening tour. In it, MinnCAN reviews themes, best practices and policy recommendations from changing-the-odds classrooms in 19 communities across Minnesota.
“With focus and persistence, many Minnesota public schools are reversing our state’s nation-trailing graduation rates and achievement gaps,” said Daniel Sellers, MinnCAN executive director. “We set out to find these schools, to learn from them what works and to help those lessons inform policy.”
The new report outlines MinnCAN’s visits to 47 classrooms across Greater Minnesota. “Through conversations with more than 400 teachers and community leaders, we learned what’s working in our state’s top public schools,” Sellers continued. “We hope that what we saw and heard in Minnesota's leading classrooms will inform smart policy during the 2014 state legislative session and beyond.”
MinnCAN shares overarching observations from the tour—including the effective use of teacher evaluations, data-driven instruction and immediate interventions for struggling students–as well as detailed notes from each stop:
Finally, the report introduces several policy opportunities for Minnesota–some of which have informed MinnCAN’s 2014 policy platform, which the nonprofit will release in the near future.
For more information, interviews or photographs from the tour, contact Nicholas Banovetz: 651-815-5999 or nicholas.banovetz@minncan.org.
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About MinnCAN: Launched in 2011, MinnCAN: The Minnesota Campaign for Achievement Now is an education reform advocacy nonprofit. MinnCAN is a movement of 11,000 Minnesotans–and growing–dedicated to creating the political will to enact smart public policies to ensure that every Minnesota child has access to a great public school. Learn more at www.minncan.org.