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Tomorrow morning will bring a flood of children into the hallways of Fergus Falls Public Schools once again. The start of a new school year is always filled with anticipation, high expectations, and the shared excitement of what lies ahead.
Whether we are welcoming our youngest learners as they take their first steps into Lincoln School or supporting our seniors as they embark on their final year, our commitment remains unchanged: to create a learning environment where every student is valued, supported, challenged, and empowered to succeed. Real growth occurs when we intentionally challenge our students to stretch beyond their comfort zones. Learning requires curiosity, perseverance, and hard work—and our dedicated staff are ready to set high expectations while providing the support our students need to meet them.
I am often reminded of a quote from one of my former teachers: “Your education is one of the few things in life that can’t be taken away from you.” Possessions can break, trends fade, and circumstances change, but the knowledge, critical thinking skills, and character developed through education stay with our students forever. Education is a lifelong investment, but to gain its full benefit, students need to be present.
Read more: Supt. Drake: Launching a Positive Start to the New School Year
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By the end of this week, we will have waved goodbye to the underclassmen to enjoy summer and bid farewell to the graduating class of 2026. It has been an extremely successful year for the district, with numerous accomplishments in academics, the arts, and co-curricular activities. We have much to be proud of.
The world we are sending our graduates out into is full of both opportunities and challenges. I have always viewed education as a partnership between school, student, family, and community. With that, how have we equipped the class of 2026?
The default outcome most people have for the purpose of education is, rightfully, that students will have acquired a good foundation of knowledge. Our students should be strong readers, have good fundamental math skills, and possess knowledge in social studies and science. In addition, our students have, at minimum, exposure to vocational courses and the arts. With our Otter Scholars program at the elementary level and near alignment for an Associate of Arts degree at the high school, our curriculum offers enough challenge and variety to meet the needs of all students.
Knowledge in and of itself doesn’t do a lot of good if you can’t do anything with it. We want our students to experience using their foundational knowledge to solve problems—and, in particular, we want them to solve problems that have an impact on their lives. It promotes better student ownership and engagement and answers the question, “Why do I need to know this?” Knowledge is applied using higher-order thinking skills to include inductive and deductive reasoning, scientific reasoning, and the principles of engineering. While it may sound counterintuitive, we want students to experience failure and frustration at times. Pushing through, developing “grit,” and persevering are hallmarks of the learning process.
Read more: Supt. Drake: The Otter Standard – Shaping the Leaders of Tomorrow
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It is fair to say that the classroom looks vastly different today than it did when I was a student. I still vividly remember the tactile click of an abacus in elementary school—a "cool" little device that was our first window into organized calculation. By high school, we had moved past the slide rule era. Even in Deer River, a community of modest economic means, we were early adopters. My first real brush with the future was an Apple IIe, where I learned to code in BASIC—a massive leap from playing "Hunt the Wumpus" on the mainframe at my father’s workplace.
We watched as the world shrank while its processing power exploded. As machines became smaller and more potent, the once-mighty Cray supercomputers became relics. To put that pace of change into perspective: the first iPhone in 2007 held more computing power than the Apollo Guidance Computer that landed Neil Armstrong on the moon. Today, even the chip inside a standard USB-C charging cable likely possesses more processing power than the technology that fueled the 1969 lunar mission. It is a staggering reality to wrap one’s head around.
Naturally, public education followed this trajectory. We moved from specialized computer labs to mobile carts, eventually arriving at the "one-to-one" model where every student is assigned their own device.
Read more: Supt. Drake: From Abacuses to Algorithms – Finding the Balance in the Digital Age
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A recent TED Talk set the scene. The speaker was riding on a public transit bus. She watched with interest as two attractive twenty-somethings sat next to each other. Neither was communicating. Both sat transfixed by their phones. The speaker leaned in to see what held their attention. Ironically, each was on a separate dating app looking for companionship. The two happened to get off the bus at the same stop and proceeded to walk away from each other. The opportunity to form a meaningful connection was lost.
I thought technology was supposed to make life easier.
Over the years, life has taught me many lessons. We were living out in the rolling hills of western Wisconsin thirty years ago. It was a warm spring day and I wanted to burn a small pile of brush. I had a burning permit and thought I was well prepared for a simple job. I could not have been more mistaken.
I started the fire and things seemed to be going well. Eventually, the flames licked at some dry grass and it didn’t take long before the grass was on fire. It was a tiny patch. I attempted to stomp it out with my boot, but the flames would immediately spring back to life. And they spread. Quickly.
It quickly became apparent that this was more than I could handle on my own. The fire department was called. Through some type of miracle, we managed to have things under control by the time they arrived, but under the right conditions it could easily have spread all the way to the St. Croix River, about a mile to the west. I haven’t looked at brush burning quite the same way since.
Sometimes a spark creates something that gets away from us.
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As the snow finally recedes and we look toward the final stretch of the school year, our hallways at ISD 544 are buzzing with a different kind of energy. It is officially "MCA season." While standardized testing can often feel like a hurdle to be cleared, I want to take a moment to pull back the curtain on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs)—why we take them, where they came from, and how they actually serve our students beyond a simple score.
A Brief History: Why the MCAs?
The MCAs were born out of a movement for educational accountability that gained momentum in the late 1990s. Following the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001 and subsequent "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), Minnesota developed the MCAs to measure student progress against the Minnesota Academic Standards.
Unlike the tests of decades past, which often compared students to one another on a curve, the MCAs are "criterion-referenced." This means students are measured solely on whether they have mastered the specific skills—like algebraic functions or reading comprehension—that the state has determined are essential for their grade level.
How the Data Moves: From St. Paul to Fergus Falls
The results of these assessments are used by two primary entities: the State and the District.
Read more: Supt. Drake: Navigating Spring MCA Testing with Purpose