For several years, state and local education officials and public policy leaders have known that North Dakota students’ test scores and proficiency had leveled off but that other states were actively working and improving student achievement. We felt strongly that the issue needed to be addressed. . .but in a bottom-up, not a top-down effort. North Dakotans have always had a very high view of their education system, from pre-school through college, so we knew that people involved in education in some significant way (stakeholders) from throughout the state would need to address issues related to educational adequacy and, hopefully, develop agreements on what has to be done to improve student performance.

Therefore, as part of a joint discussion between the four boards responsible for state education standards, we established a “steering committee” to review alternative possibilities of developing such agreements. One of the organizations we heard from was the Consensus Council, Inc. (CC). We were all impressed not only with their proposal to bring significant stakeholders together but also with the depth of experience they had in North Dakota working on a wide variety of public policy issues in the State and, in particular, education issues. The CC was integral to developing legislation in the early 1990s to enable local and state governments to develop Joint Powers Agreements (JPAs), and the CC utilized that legislation to help local school districts develop 9 JPAs (now referred to as Regional Education Associations) working together to create efficiencies of scale and a better education for all North Dakota students.

The Steering Committee invited 38 stakeholders from throughout the state, linked to all levels of education in the state, together for 9 meetings in 9 months, plus steering committee meetings between each of the larger stakeholder group meetings in a group called the P-16 Education Task Force (ETF). Through an extremely delicate and difficult process during those nine months, the ETF was able to develop 26 significant areas of agreement to improve educational adequacy throughout ND. The agreements are just now beginning to be implemented and, I believe, will receive a boost as a result of the recommendations of the Lt. Gov. led Education Improvement Commission (EIC), which, incidentally, will need to rely heavily upon the REAs I refer to above to help implement these recommendations.