How Chartering Can Build a Better Future for Students, Educators, and Communities
A Tribute to Ted Kolderie at 95
By Jim Goenner, Ph.D.
Everything Becomes Obsolete
Everything that stops growing and adapting eventually becomes obsolete. Not because it fails, but because the world keeps changing.
The horse did not fail; the car made it unnecessary.
Candles did not fail; electric light changed what was possible.
Blockbuster did not fail; streaming changed what we expected.
Kodak did not fail; it protected the past instead of embracing the future.
This is how systems lose relevance and become obsolete: by being unwilling or unable to evolve. Today, our traditional system of education is facing the same fate. But before explaining why, I want to honor a true visionary who saw this coming over 30 years ago.
A Tribute to Ted Kolderie at His 95th Birthday
I first met Ted Kolderie in 1995 when the idea of chartering was still new and uncertain. Ted didn’t talk much about schools. He talked about systems. He said we had a design problem, not an effort problem. Ted taught me that the biggest barrier to improving public education was not the people, but rather the system itself.
Ted saw that the district system could take families for granted, treat teachers as labor, and reduce students to numbers. In July 1990, he wrote a persuasive article titled, The States Will Have to Withdraw the Exclusive, which urged lawmakers to withdraw the territorial exclusive franchises given to school districts and open public education to new schools, new operators, and new ideas.
Ted saw chartering as an institutional innovation. Not a program or reform, but a redesign of public education itself. He believed the best ideas would emerge when teachers became trusted professionals, free to design learning, make decisions, and take responsibility for results.
Ted’s legacy reminds us that improvement and innovation do not come from mandates or management. They come from empowering those closest to the action and those committed to ensuring the promise of public education rings true for every student.
The best way to honor Ted on his 95th birthday is not with admiration, but with action.
The Promise of Public Education
From the start, public education in America has been a civic project. Thomas Jefferson believed that educating “the people at large” would prevent tyranny and ensure leaders were selected by talent rather than birth. As the early pioneers moved west, Congress embedded schooling in the nation’s expansion. The Northwest Ordinance declared that “religion, morality, and knowledge” are essential to good government and that “schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Public education was designed to prepare citizens for self-governance and to keep the promise of the republic strong. That purpose endures. America still needs an educated citizenry, and justice still demands that every child has the opportunity to learn and pursue their dreams, no matter who their parents are, where they live, or what they look like.
The System Problem
Recent headlines capture the frustration with public education. Test scores are at historic lows. Progress is uneven. Too many students feel unsafe or unseen. Half of all teachers leave the field within five years. Frustration is growing and trust is fading.
Why is this happening? Because the system we rely on was designed for a different era and struggles to evolve. As W. Edward Deming observed, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” And, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
The problem is not the people. It is the design. Like Kodak, too many defenders of the old model protect the system instead of its purpose. Kodak’s mission was never film; it was helping people capture and share life’s moments. That mission endured even as its medium became obsolete. The same is true for public education. Its purpose still matters, but its structure must change.
The Promise of Chartering
The promise of chartering is, at its heart, a renewal of the public promise that freedom and flexibility in education can inspire excellence and lead to better outcomes for all. It began as a bold idea and a breakthrough in how we think about public education.
Chartering does not see freedom as a prize to be earned but a responsibility to be exercised. It calls people to learn, adapt, and improve in service of students, not because they are being measured or managed, but because they are motivated by purpose and the public good.
Chartering was never about designing a new kind of school. It was about creating the conditions for people to try new and different things. When Minnesota enacted the nation’s first charter law, it did not prescribe; it permitted. It did not say what a school must be. It said, “Go try.”
Before chartering, states and districts tried nearly everything to force improvement: more money, new funding formulas, performance pay, test-based accountability, rewards, recognition, even public shaming. None of them worked. Chartering offered a different path. Instead of mandates, it relied on a coalition of the willing. It invited those who wanted to make things better to step forward and propose new ideas.
The strategy was straightforward: allow anyone with a sound plan to present it to an authorizer, showing how they would organize and operate a new public school. If approved, and if families chose to enroll, public funds would follow the students. The old system would then face a new kind of pressure, not imposed from above but created by the energy of ideas and the power of voluntary action.
Chartering also carries a promise to families and communities: meaningful choices that reflect the hopes and aspirations they hold for their children. It shows that diversity of design can coexist with unity of purpose. At its best, chartering embodies continuous improvement, fostering trust and responsibility over control and compliance.
Authorizers: Stewards of Possibility
Chartering introduced new players into public education: the entities called authorizers or sponsors. Authorizers stand at the intersection of policy and practice. They are the ones who make chartering real. Each state charter law gives one or more entities the authority to approve and oversee charter schools. Some entities voluntarily choose to become an authorizer, while others are forced to.
Authorizers review proposals from those who want to start a school and decide whether to grant them the opportunity to try. Once approved, the authorizer is responsible for upholding public trust and ensuring that each school fulfills its legal and educational obligations.
Authorizing is both an art and a science. The science involves clear expectations, transparent processes, sound measures, and reliable data. The art requires professional judgement and discernment — knowing when to encourage and when to intervene, when to protect innovation and when to protect students.
The best authorizers hold schools accountable without stifling their spirit. They understand that data informs decisions, but judgment gives them meaning. Above all, they are guided by purpose, not power.
The higher calling for authorizers is to be stewards of possibility. Oversight is the floor, not the ceiling. Stewardship is the work that matters most. When done well, authorizers stay focused on their two-part mission: successful students and a strong republic.
The Danger of Misguided Accountability
For chartering to fulfill its promise, authorizers must resist drifting from stewardship to control. Too often, well intended efforts to ensure quality end up turning into calcified systems of compliance that mirror the bureaucracy chartering was intended to leave behind.
After A Nation at Risk was issued in 1983, policymakers believed they could mandate improvement through accountability. The logic seemed sound: set standards, test performance, and impose consequences. But accountability leads to what Deming called “management by inspection.” It happens after the fact and comes too late to change anything.
Today, the triad of compliance, oversight, and accountability dominates the conversation about authorizers and authorizing. This is concerning for a movement that promised freedom and flexibility. Layers of regulation, reporting, and fine print are distracting people from their core mission: educating students. The vocabulary of accountability is drowning out the language of possibility.
Ironically, momentum is growing for “permissionless” education as evidenced by the Center for Education Reform’s prestigious Yass prize, while many inside the charter schools movement are feeling the burden of being permission-bound.
This is troubling because Deming warned against “gotcha systems” that rely on inspection, fear, and after-the-fact judgment. He said, “Real improvement comes from feedback that informs, not fear that enforces.”
Timely and reliable feedback turns judgment into learning and “gotcha” systems into growth systems. Accountability looks backward. Feedback looks forward. The faster and clearer the feedback, the faster the learning — and the stronger the trust.
For chartering to stay true to its purpose, it must protect and promote a culture of learning. The work ahead is not about tightening control but deepening trust, creating systems that help people see, reflect, and improve in real time.
Excellence Through Ownership
Excellence does not come from enforcement. It comes from ownership. You do not hold Tom Brady accountable. He holds himself to standards no coach or board could impose. He is known as the G.O.A.T because of his unmatched Super Bowl victories and the responsibility he took for his preparation, mastery, and purpose. Schools need that same culture. One that listens and learns rather than inspects and blames.
As America approaches its 250th year, the founders’ insight still guides us. They built a republic on freedom, responsibility, and checks and balances to ensure power remains distributed and accountable to the people.
Ted carried those same principles into chartering. The charter defines the promise. The authorizer safeguards the public interest. The board governs. School leaders run operations. Families provide feedback through their choice and their voice.
This is freedom in practice, responsibility in motion, and self-governance made real. At its best, chartering reflects the same design that sustains our democracy, a living system of checks and balances that keeps the focus on both students and the public trust.
It’s Time to Be Bold
It’s time to be bold again. The system we inherited was built for a different time and a different America. But the spirit that created public education, the belief that every person deserves the chance to learn, grow, and contribute, is timeless.
The future of public education depends on people who are bold by choice: educators, authorizers, and community leaders willing to take risks for what matters most. These are the stewards of possibility who understand that oversight is not the goal but the guardrail; that compliance is not the measure but the floor. Their work is to create environments where curiosity thrives, ideas are tested, and learning never stops. Ted told us that chartering is not a destination, but a design for a continuously self-improving system.
The purpose of public education is not obsolete and never will be. The challenge before us is not to preserve what was, but to build what can be. If we are bold by choice, if we act as stewards of possibility, and if we keep proving the promise of chartering, we can create a system worthy of our students and our country.
The Moral of the Moment
Ted Kolderie gave public education permission to learn. He showed us that renewal is not about tearing down what came before but about building what comes next.
He taught that the system problem is not a defect; it is an invitation. If one design no longer fits, the public’s duty is to make room for others to try.
We honor Ted not only with admiration, but with action. The system we inherited was built for control. The system we must build will be built for learning.
Deming gave us the method of continuous improvement. Kolderie gave us the mechanism of chartering. Now it is our turn to supply the courage.
The promise of public education is not obsolete. The real question is whether chartering can serve as the new design that continuously evolves to ensure that promise rings true for students, families, and communities.
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