Solution: 5–16 Continuum™: Opening a New Learning Organization in the Twin Cities

The plan now is to initiate a community school grounded in learning, family engagement, and powerful outcomes. The origin of Rondo Academy: School of Communication Arts and Literature (RASCAL). The school my team and I envision, RASCAL, could not operate like a conventional secondary school; that structure might be familiar, but familiarity should never be confused with effectiveness. The data tells me we need something new, better, moving towards the best. 

For years, I told myself, “If I were just a little smarter, I’d eventually open the school I’ve always envisioned.” But the more I reflected on that belief, the more I realized it wasn’t really about intelligence at all. Minnesota is filled with talented educators, dedicated leaders, and passionate policymakers whose primary concern is our children’s future. The problem isn’t a lack of smart people or good intentions; it sometimes falls to the gatekeepers in the system who currently will not dare to have a courageous conversation about what the data is telling us—no, screaming. 

At some point, we have to stop asking whether the system is doing enough and start asking whether it is working. Complacency cannot be our strategy, and good intentions cannot be our measure of success. Our children deserve an educational system that delivers.

Admitting that is not an act of surrender; it is an invitation to create something better.

So it is not only about opening the school; I want to create an organization that meets students in the fifth grade, accompanies them through high school, and stays involved during their first four years at university. This is how The 5–16 Continuum™ appears. Its principle is pretty simple – Prepare. Graduate. Follow. Measure. Improve.

For years, one question has tormented me: Why do we always create schools that meet adults’ requirements but not our children’s developmental needs?

The Data Tell Us Why Something Different Is Needed

This project is not a product of my personal belief that there are no good teachers or successful students in Minneapolis Public Schools or Saint Paul Public Schools. There are lots of them. Nor do I believe that the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) is a perfect measure of our children’s intelligence or the work of schools. The Minnesota Department of Education itself claims that assessment results should be only one measure of student learning. 

I see serious partnerships between educational institutions and the private sector, and five major Minnesota companies in different economic spheres will be involved: UnitedHealth Group in the healthcare sector, Target Corporation in retail, U.S. Bancorp in banking and financial services, 3M in manufacturing and industrial products, and General Mills in food manufacturing and consumer products. This intentional targeting also includes forming relationships with the advertising agencies that design and deliver messaging (ads, commercials, promotional materials) to the masses. It’s an invaluable skill to learn organizational health and mass communication. 

And yes, Target. No, I am not boycotting Target; there’s nobody in Minnesota’s Black community that has Target money… another uncomfortable truth. 

The point is larger than corporate partnership. I want students to learn about financial systems from people who understand banking, study supply chains with people who know them, explore the healthcare system with people who work in it, explore product development and manufacturing with people who do engineering, and learn marketing, logistics, food science, consumer behavior, artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity, and organizational leadership from real-life cases.

If businesses want better-prepared employees, they should be involved in the educational process long before students are 22.

Families Should Receive Excellent Customer Service

The 5–16 Continuum™ will also use one of the terms that makes educators uncomfortable – customer service. The public education system will not transform into a business only because we will admit that families deserve excellent customer service. Parents should get returned calls. Emails should get answers. Families should know who is responsible for the problem. Academic information should be understandable. Students should know what they should learn, where they are now, what they have already learned, and what they should learn next. Parents should not need an advanced degree in educational bureaucracy to find out whom to call to help their child.

This system will be designed to be convenient for students and families, not vice versa. That does not mean that we lower the educational standards – it means that we raise organizational standards.

The Most Important Figure Is 16

The intellectual center of this project is not the building, corporate partnership, technology, or customer service structure. It is the number 16.

Traditional K-12 accountability focuses on whether students graduate. In the case of the 5–16 Continuum™, the question is: what happened after students graduated?

That makes a huge difference.

A school can be proud of a 95 percent graduation rate, take beautiful photographs at commencement, publish scholarship statistics, and send students into the world. Then, the institutional relationship largely ends. However, what happens next, when students graduate to college? Can they write a ten-page analytical paper? Can they read complex texts independently? Can they deal with college mathematics? Can they defend themselves to professors? Can they control deadlines without daily reminders? Can they communicate professionally? Can they use artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly? Can they differentiate between evidence and nonsense? Can they overcome failures?

We will establish relations with four local universities and follow participating graduates through their postsecondary experience. The purpose will not be surveillance – the purpose will be organizational learning.

The feedback loop will look as follows: Prepare → Graduate → Follow → Measure → Learn → Redesign.

Suppose our graduates fail to cope with first-year writing; that will inform our middle school and high school writing programs. If students are underprepared mathematically, we will check our mathematics sequence. If they know everything about academic subjects but fail to show executive functioning and self-advocacy skills, we will redesign the systems. If they are successful, we will learn why and try to repeat the experience.

This is how The 5–16 Continuum™ becomes a longitudinal research-and-development organization.

Then Come the Gatekeepers

Building such an organization intellectually may be easier than getting the permission to build it institutionally. There are lots of gatekeepers in the educational system – authorizers, regulators, boards, foundations, universities, licensing structures, political interests, district bureaucracies, funding systems, organizations interested in maintaining the status quo.

Some of the gatekeeping is necessary. Children deserve a safe environment. Money allocated for public use should be accounted for. Schools should be transparent. Educators should be competent. Organizations responsible for children should prove they can govern themselves.

However, legitimate gatekeeping should not become institutional protectionism

Suppose a new educational organization must prove its efficiency; that is quite normal. But existing systems should face the same intellectual standard. If students’ proficiency levels remain low year after year, the answer cannot be to add new initiatives to the same organizational architecture.

35 percent proficiency in reading and 27 percent proficiency in mathematics in the 2025 numbers of Saint Paul – this figure should make the point impossible to ignore. (Saint Paul Public Schools) The question is not whether SPPS or MPS employ dedicated people. They obviously do. The question is whether dedication alone produces the desired results for Twin Cities children.

It does not.

This Is Why I Want to Open the School

I do not want my name on the building. I want to test an idea.

I want to know what happens if students combine rigorous academics with authentic professional experiences, longitudinal mentoring, excellent customer service to families, a flexible learning environment, corporate partnership, technology, communication training, financial literacy, research, public speaking, writing, mathematics, science, and creating things that really matter.

Then, I want the courage to evaluate whether it worked.

If something failed, change it. If graduates told us that we did not prepare them properly, listen. If university faculty pointed out some weak spots, investigate them. If employers found gaps, examine them. If families said that we have created a bureaucracy, fix it. And if our students performed even better than expected, learn why and repeat it.

That is what the adaptive organization should do.

For years, I have been joking that if I were a little smarter, I would open the school. Perhaps intelligence was not the real problem. Perhaps the real requirements are having a team dedicated enough to challenge the educational orthodoxy, disciplined enough to build a financially and academically sustainable organization, humble enough to follow the evidence regardless of its origin, and brave enough to tell the gatekeepers that unacceptable outcomes cannot be protected because the institutions that produce them are familiar.

Twin Cities families do not need another educational experiment based on slogans. They need another option based on accountability.

The 5-16 Continuum™ would make a promise extending beyond commencement – we will prepare students, graduate them, follow them, measure what happens, learn from the results, and improve the school for the children who come after them.

Prepare. Graduate. Follow. Measure. Improve.

This is why the school should exist.

This is why I want to build it.