August 2022 · By John Kostouros and Ted Kolderie
Our series of booklets on Minnesota's chartering program began with the Guide you see above. Within the program set up by that institutional innovation have come various other innovations.
One of these has to do with the process of authorizing schools. Initially, here and elsewhere, authorizers were existing organizations: universities, foundations, districts, large social-service organizations. Then in 2009 Minnesota's legislature created the 'single-purpose authorizer'. This opened the way for the creation of new nonprofits having no other function than to solicit, receive, review and act on proposals for new schools—and to oversee the schools it approved.
This booklet by John Kostouros describes this innovation with particular attention to one of them, Innovative Quality Schools, and to its innovative way of organizing and financing the work of approval and school oversight; simultaneously broadening its competence and reducing its costs.
Innovative Authorizing for Minnesota's Chartered Schools is available as a free PDF here and use this link to send it to others.
