Nine years ago, Cory Steiner became Superintendent of the Northern Cass School District, a school system K-12 of 700 students, 25 minutes northwest of Fargo, North Dakota, and brought with him a question:  How can we be a world class education system.  Rallying and engaging the educators, families, and students, they have been forging a new district design.  Fully competency-based, attending to the voice and experience of their learners, engaging their families, and continuously asking how can we do better.  Now one of my favorite stories of innovation and what is possible when an entire system asks … what can we do!  Here, Cory and his colleagues, Tom Klapp and Beth Head, share the story of their evolution and a vision for continually reinventing, building, and designing themselves to do what’s best for their youth.  What a remarkable story.

A Revolution in Education

In this 2nd episode of Season 3 of the A Revolution in Education podcast, Chris talks with Ethan Wiechmann and Nate Clayberg who, with no advanced notice, were asked to get the Cedar Falls CAPS program up and running within six weeks.  Listen to the hilarious adventure as they get it up and running and how they did so – including the story of Ethan going to a regular coffee shop for the first time!
The CAPS (Center for Advanced Professional Studies) network now boasts 100+ programs across the United States, with affiliates in Kenya, Kuwait, and Canada, and was named one of the top 100 scalable education innovations in the world in 2023 by the hundrED organization, and one of only 10 in the United States.
Ethan and Nate not only started the Cedar Falls CAPS program in 2017, they have helped to start and grow seven other CAPS programs in Iowa.  
How do these things get off the ground?   Listen to find out one way to get such an innovation can get up and running!  (Hilarious too!)

A Revolution in Education

In this 1st episode of Season 3 of A Revolution in Education podcast, we talk with Rob Riordan, co-founder of High Tech High and esteemed  President Emeritus of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education (GSE), and Kaleb Rashad, Interim Chief Executive Officer of High Tech High, on the need to create new models of education that value the experience of youth as learners and the need to pursue new communities of equity.  
They speak to the necessity of shining a light on the shortcomings of our current education system and call for education to be centered around freedom, justice, and the affirmation of cultural identities.  Their call for a critical consciousness as to how our systems either limit or liberate possibilities for others runs deep and is borne out of their histories as educators and social activists.
Many of us acknowledge High Tech High for its innovative pedagogy, but here we hear the stories that give purpose to their work.

A Revolution in Education