Northern Cass School District

Hunter, North Dakota

It may be a traditional public school in North Dakota, but the ways in which it meets the needs of rural students is anything but traditional. Northern Cass demonstrates how a small rural district can be innovative to empower students for big things and support the whole community.

Winner of 2022 STOP Award for Transformational Education

About

Among the first to create blended learning models for its students, Northern Cass is reimagining education not only for its students but for all rural districts. The district was featured by the respected “Education Reimagined” as it embarked on an innovative path to ensure every student was given a new path to success with learner agency, providing young learners the opportunity to pursue education in a myriad of ways. Its personalized approach serves students in six rural communities each comprising fewer than 250 people, meeting students where they are and not the other way around. Superintendent Dr. Cory Steiner, bucks the “traditional” moniker developing personalized career pathways for students like medical technicians, nurses, child caretakers, and other in-demand areas for students to help solve problems for those right around them.Our learners have requirements for job shadows/internships and capstone projects to earn their diploma. All of these experiences and initiatives are to provide an education which values every individual learner.

Their Story

Northern Cass demonstrates how a small rural district can be innovative to empower students for big things and support the whole community.

Dr. Cory Steiner

Superintendent

We want to make sure our students have exactly what they need to become who they deserve to be. This award allows us to go faster, bring our students, family and community what they need to not just survive, but thrive.

1 Why they stand out

The District’s leaders began by acknowledging each student is unique and learns differently. They then recognized how disparate needs really are when students live a good distance apart from each other. They got to it and reorganized their District to focus on personalized learning, cultivating community and following others with the same challenges. The District no longer has letter grades and have separated grades fully from behavior. They have begun a teaching pathway for learners and paraprofessionals in their district to address the shortage of educators throughout their state and region and prepares learners to be choice ready for college, career, or military. As they say in their application, “we simply want our learners to have their first choice as a viable option for their future.”

2 How they STOP for education

Created a personalized competency-based learning district and created a policy to allow learning outside the walls of their building to articulate for credit in any content area.

Joined other transformational educators around the country in pushing to utilize a mastery transcript that will ensure a graduation pathway not linked to content but competencies to be accepted by all universities in their state.

Embraces a permissionless environment of education that disrupts the traditional education system.

3 Winning their award

Winning would embolden the leadership to help others reimagine, first by developing a model for a Full Service Community School and then by networking with other rural educators to spread the Northern Cass personalized learning approach like a prairie fire, including the development of a cohort of districts to replicate this model.