Operational Components: Key Strategy

We recognize that a school district must be the unit of change, not just an individual school. The history of educational reform is littered with useful school-level changes that were incompatible with the rest of the school district and consequently were gradually forced to revert back to the industrial-age paradigm. Transformation must occur on the district level and in all schools in the same feeder system (all elementary and middle schools that feed into a single high school) for paradigm change to endure.

We further recognize that school districts (local education agencies) need support for paradigm change to be successful. They need both expertise and money. These resources must come initially from state education agencies (SEAs). Therefore, the FutureMinds strategy is to start by recruiting two SEAs that are at a high level of readiness for transformational change, and enter into a contract with each to build their capacity to support districts in paradigm change. The contracts will include FutureMinds’ involvement with districts that each SEA is supporting, both to coach the SEA personnel who are working with the districts and to provide strategic guidance for the transformational change process. We will help the SEAs and LEAs approach foundations for additional support as each project matures.

For further information
Overview of FutureMinds (880 KB PDF)