Beth Hawkins:
Mayoral candidates on education
The second event I’d like to draw your attention to actually sold out in record
time — so quickly, in fact, that its organizers have arranged for The Uptake to
stream the event live. Taking place Monday, Sept. 16, it’s a forum focused on
the education platforms of Minneapolis’ leading mayoral candidates.
Entitled “Education and the Opportunity Gap,” the forum has a long list of
sponsors, including the African American Leadership Forum, the Chicano Latino
Affairs Council, the Community Justice Project, the Minnesota Minority
Education Partnership, Teach for America, the Organizing Apprenticeship
Project, Students For Education Reform, Students First, MinnCAN and Put Kids
First Minneapolis.
[Source] Education events: Emily Bazelon on bullying, mayoral-race forum, ed
access and more
http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2013/09/education-events-emily-bazelon-bullying-mayoral-race-forum-ed-access-and-more
Doug Mann did not get an invitation.
I recognize most of the organizations sponsoring the Sept 16 mayoral forum as
supporters of an agenda that includes corporate-style reforms and
charter-ization of the public school system.
In my opinion, K-12 students of color generally do not have access to a quality
public education to the same degree as white students because of systemic
racial discrimination. The public school system is racially segregated and
unequal. Unequal conditions of learning include the much heavier exposure of
students of color to inexperienced teachers and watered-down curriculum.
Certainly, unequal conditions of learning can explain a significant part of the
gap, and should be addressed.
Until recently, the Minneapolis School District fired all of its teachers
who had not completed their 3 year probationary period every year, and replaced
a large percentage with more new teachers. Under Minnesota administrative rules
related to equal opportunity and non-dicrimination, the Minnesota Dept. of
Education must ask the Minneapolis School District to collect and disaggregate
data on teacher expertise, including years of experience, as well as many other
factors that would reasonably affect the quality of instruction and the overall
quality of education. Huge disparities were noted in the area of teacher
expertise during a period from 2001 to 2004, including a very high
concentration of the district's least experienced teachers in schools that few
white students attended. There has never been a plan of correction. Monitoring
was discontinued prior to 2006.
Lawyers advising the Minneapolis School Board asserted that the district
is legally obligated to fire all of its probationary teachers every year, and
may selectively rehire. I went to school board meetings and asked what law
requires the district to fire all of its probationary teachers every year. I
never got an answer because their is no such law. The Teacher Tenure Act for
Cities of the First Class arguably allowed, but did not require the school
district to fire all of its probationary teachers every year.
There is a Teacher Tenure Act that applies to the rest of the state that
generally does not allow the firing and replacement of any teacher except for
cause related to job performance and conduct. Teachers who get lay-off notices
are not fired, and do not have to re-apply for their jobs. Technically they are
on a unrequested leave-of-abscence. They have recall rights.
The Minneapolis school district opted to fire and replace most of its
probationary teachers, resulting in a very large pool of probationary teachers
who are heavily concentrated in schools and classrooms where students of color
are heavily concentrated. A policy such as this, which has a disparately
negative impact on students of color is properly called "racial discrimination"
under Minnesota and Federal law.
Under taxpayer standing rules, any citizen of Minnesota can file in Ramsey
County District Court, a petition for a writ of mandamus commanding the
Minnesota commissioner of Education to perform a duty required under Minnesota
Administrative Rules,
section 3535.0130: To request data on measurable educational inputs from the
Minneapolis School District and other districts that operate "racially
identifiable" schools, to include the distribution of teachers according to
experience and education as measured by step and lane data, provisional
licensure, and first year of employment as a teacher under a Minnesota teaching
license.
The biggest obstacle to filing a writ of mandamus is the level of legal
expertise required to see it through. It typically costs a lot of money to hire
a lawyer to help out with this type of legal work. If elected Mayor, I would
have the resources necessary to go that route. This is really the sort of thing
that a Civil Rights organization like the NAACP should do, and I will ask for
their support of and /or involvement as parties to such a lawsuit.
THE OPPORTUNITY GAP
In my opinion, racial disparities in access to education, employment, and
housing are related to public policy decisions that promote and / or permit
illegal discrimination in education, employment, housing, and the criminal
justice system.
There is widespread, covert, racial discrimination in employment and housing,
yet no government agency has ever been empowered to detect and prosecute those
responsible for it. Currently, complaints are generally taken from those who
believe they were harmed by illegal discrimination and have some proof to back
it up. However, most people who are harmed by unlawful discrimination in the
housing and job markets can not be certain they did not get a job or housing
unit because of illegal discrimination. The discrimination is done covertly. A
different approach is needed: Anyone with knowledge of unlawful discrimination
should be encouraged to file a complaint, even if they are not directly harmed
by it. Equal Opportunity employers who hire just enough members of protected
classes to stay out of trouble should be subjected to greater scrutiny.
Employers who hire their quota of people of African descent, but no
African-Americans, should be subjected to greater scrutiny. One method of
gathering evidence of illegal discrimination that has been allowed by the
federal court system is the fielding of survey teams, consisting of job seekers
/ housing seekers, pairing, for example, black and white job seekers, with the
black job hunter fully meeting advertised job requirements, and the white job
hunter falling short. A survey team program, operating on a large scale, and
properly targeted, would likely cause employers and actors in the housing field
to try a lot harder to comply with anti-discrimination laws, especially the
worst offenders.
In the criminal justice system, racial disparities in arrests, prosecution, and
imprisonment is mostly a reflection of unequal administration of the law,
especially in the area of drug law enforcement. The so-called war on drugs has
been extremely effective in criminalizing, disenfranchising, and marginalizing
people of color. I favor legalization of marijuana, and decriminalization of
other recreational drugs. Lethal drug overdoses are generally a consequence of
people not knowing what they are taking and how much of it they are taking. The
cost of supporting an illegal drug habit is a driving force behind a large
proportion of burglaries and robberies. The illegal drug trade is connected
with violent gangs and the corruption of police officers. Ending the drug war
shall be part of my legislative agenda. Until we decriminalize drug use, I want
to reduce criminal prosecution of drug users, and some of the dealers to the
extent possible through the use of diversion programs, etc.
Doug Mann for Mayor
http://mann4mayor.blogspot.com
Mann for Minneapolis Mayor (Facebook)
http://facebook.com/mann4mayor
-Doug Mann, Folwell neighborhood / lower Camden, north side of Minneapolis