All posts in the topic Institutional racism & public schools (Short link)
Summary
- There are 3 posts — by 2 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Doug Mann at Jul 18 21:02 UTC
In my opinion, what is usually identified as a
racial achievement gap is really an educational
access gap.
For more than 100 years, the exclusion of African
Americans and other racial minorities from
a quality public education has been
orchestrated at a national level: Racial
segregation, the assignment of students to
watered-down curriculum tracks, allocating
resources more heavily to programs educating
white students, etc.
The 1968 US Supreme Court decision in Green vs.
Kent County Schools, which called for the desegregation
of school districts "root and branch" actually did
made a quality public education more accessible to
African Americans, other racial minorities, and poor
whites, as evidenced by a diminishing test score gap
between whites and blacks, recipients and non-recipients
of free and reduced-price lunches, and urban, suburban,
and rural school districts. For example, on
National Assessment of Educational Progress exams,
the difference in average reading scores for black and
white 13 year olds decreased by about 50% between 1970
and the late 1980s. However, most of the progress toward
closing this racial achievement gap has since been
reversed.
A change from the basic orientation toward "closing
the gap" was signaled by the release in April 1983
of a report entitled "A Nation at Risk," which
argued that the achievement gap was being closed
at the expense of the best and brightest public
school students, without providing evidence that
the quality of education received by the top-tier
of students had actually deteriorated as the difference
in test score averages between top and bottom-tier students
narrowed.
Since the 1980s, a growing proportion of African
Americans in the public school system have been
assigned to schools that few white students attend,
and the quality of education in those schools has
deteriorated by comparison to schools serving mostly
white, middle-class neighborhoods.
"Are you experienced? Teachers with less than three years of experience are
twice as likely to work in schools with high proportions of minority and low
income students, yet students learn better under teachers with five or more
years of experience." [two sources cited] September 2004
Minnesota Public Radio, idea generator: Closing the gap, teachers
In the spring of 2004, about one-fourth of tenure
track teachers assigned to regular education programs
in the Minneapolis Public Schools were on probationary
status (employed by the district for less than three years),
even though about 20% of teaching positions in regular
education programs had been eliminated during the same
time-period, as class sizes increased in all grade levels.
And enrollment in elementary grades began to sharply
decline by 1998.
During a 3 year period ending in 2004, of the 23
regular public schools that few white students
attended in the Minneapolis School District,
the district's 'racially identifiable schools,'
most had 3-year teacher turnover rates ranging
from about 100%. Teacher turnover rates exceeded
200% in 5 schools and 400% in one school.
Of the Minneapolis School District's 23 racially
identifiable schools, 21 made the short list of
Minnesota's worst performing schools in 2005. The
exceptions were two model minority schools, Hall
and North Star elementary schools, where the district
administration took steps to stabilize the teaching
staff, such as by promising no layoffs and no involuntary
reassignments. These two schools, among the district's
worst performing schools before the teaching staff
was stabilized, obtained better than average
results on test scores within a few years.
Curiously, the district pointed to the results obtained
at Hall and North Star elementary schools to show that
a racially segregated school system was not inherently
unequal. However, the school district has not taken
comparable steps to upgrade conditions in other
'racially identifiable' schools.
A reason for the extraordinarily high turnover rates
in the Minneapolis school district's racially
identifiable schools is a long-standing practice of
sending layoff notices to all probationary teachers,
and in recent years to a large proportion of tenured
teachers. Most probationary teachers find new employers,
with suburban school districts becoming the new employer
for about two-thirds of teachers departing from
the Minneapolis school district.
The practice of giving layoff notice to all probationary
teachers, even when the district is not planning to
reduce the size of its teacher force, has been done
to save money on payroll costs. The salary of a teacher
with a masters degree and employed for 10 years in the
Minneapolis School District is almost twice that of
a newly hired teacher.
The District Improvement Plan approved by the Minneapolis
school board in 2002 called for bringing teacher
turnover rates to low levels in all schools, but
did not provide baseline data, and measurable goals
and time-tables. A far more detailed strategic plan
approved by the Minneapolis School Board this year
did not even address the issue of teacher turnover.
However, the strategic plan for the Minneapolis
School district included elements of a corporate
reform strategy, such as basing teachers pay on
'performance,' and measures that water-down or effectively
eliminate teacher tenure and seniority rights.
The strategic planning process was run by a
management consulting firm, McKinsey and Company,
which is known as a cheerleader for corporate-style
reforms and market-based strategies that are embedded
in recent federal education bills, marketed by
the Bush Administration as "No Child Left Behind."
This year, I am standing for election to the Minneapolis
School Board on a different kind of reform program.
The most critical reform being to take steps to
bring teacher turnover rates to low levels at all
schools, the most important step being to end the
practice of sending layoff notices to more teachers
than needed to accomplish a planned reduction in
the teacher workforce.
With less teacher turnover, a school can more easily
provide effective instruction and phase out
watered-down curriculum tracks without
watering down the curriculum in college-bound classes
into which most students will be integrated.
All other things being equal, lowering teacher turnover
rates will increase teacher payroll costs. However,
much of the increased expense can be offset by lowering
some of the overhead costs of a largely dysfunctional,
multi-tiered educational system.
This year the Minneapolis School district is asking the
voters to approve a referendum to increase the district's
revenues by about 30 million dollars per year, which
will certainly help the district deal with the overhead
costs of down-sizing, such as rapidly rising per-pupil
expenses for teachers and central office operations.
I am calling for a vote against the referendum unless
the School Board approves a plan to rapidly achieve
low teacher turnover rates in all of the district-run
schools. Such a plan is certainly a necessary step
toward making a quality education accessible to all
on an equal basis. Also, such a plan would help to
bring the district into compliance with Minnesota's
Desegregation Rule, which allows the district to
have 'racially identifiable schools' so long as education
inputs (like teacher staffing) in racially identifiable
schools are comparable to those in schools that are not
'racially identifiable.'
Education is a right, not a privilege!
-Doug Mann, Minneapolis School Board candidate
Mr. Mann cites North Star as an example of a school that as of 2005 had
better than expected achievement (as measured by test scores) than
comparable schools.
The Center for School Change worked with North Star faculty (along with
several other Mpls district schools) for 4 years, beginning in 2001. I
agree with Mr. Mann that North Star had a number of terrific senior faculty
who provided marvelous modeling and mentoring for younger teachers.
The teachers tried very, very hard to do the right thing and succeeded in
increasing family involvement (many more families attending conferences,
attending sessions about how to help their kids at home).
Their reward was that the school was continuously threatened with closure,
and efforts to keep staff together at another school did not succeed. They
also asked for a few modest improvements in the building which were
rejected.
We had a ceremony at Cargill (which funded these efforts) in which faculty
were honored (and the school received an extra $11,000 from Cargill to
thank them for a wonderful record of improvement. Many of the teachers
cried, saying that this was the first time in 15-25 years that they had
been formally thanked for progress of their students.
Senior faculty and younger teachers at North Star did the right thing for
many years, but ultimately, their reward was the school was closed. Some of
the finest teachers I ever worked with or learned from retired - not
because they had to, but because the system did not seem to value their
success.
Any major progress with inner city students will need to, in part, find
ways to encourage and honor progress.
Joe Nathan
Center for School Change
Humphrey Institute
Univ of Mn
In a message dated 7/13/2008 5:29:38 PM Central Daylight Time,
<email obscured> writes:
> The Center for School Change worked with North Star faculty (along with
> several other Mpls district schools) for 4 years, beginning in 2001. I
> agree with Mr. Mann that North Star had a number of terrific senior faculty
> who provided marvelous modeling and mentoring for younger teachers.
I never said that North Star had a number of terrific senior faculty
who provided marvelous modeling and mentoring for younger teachers.
Though North Star's senior faculty may be deserving of praise, it wasn't
their modeling and mentoring that rapidly improved the quality of
instruction at North Star, according to a report to the Board several
years ago, from a North Star teacher who said that the key to turning
things around at North Star was keeping the team of mostly young teachers
together for a few years. The district did get a commitment from teachers
at North Star and Hall elementary schools to stick around for at least a
few years, and the district supported these teachers in ways that
helped motivate the teachers to not leave those schools. Success
was also a great motivator: Teachers became more satisfied with their
jobs as they became more effective, and student outcomes improved.
The district needed a couple of model minority schools to demonstrate
that schools attended by very few or no white and middle class
students could educate 'at risk' students as well, or even better
than the district's other schools. Why? The NAACP lawsuit against
the state of MN argued that high-poverty, high-minority
schools were inherently inferior. As former Board member Ross
Taylor put it, black kids don't have to sit next to white kids in
order to learn. And Ross Taylor was right. However, racial
segregation is clearly a means by which black students can
be deprived of an 'adequate' education.
In theory, school don't have to be racially integrated in order provide
an education of comparable quality to all students, regardless of
race. However, in practice, the Minneapolis Public Schools have
failed to provide more-or-less equal accommodations to a majority
of black students who are concentrated in schools that few whites
attend.
Once the NAACP settled its education adequacy lawsuit with
the state in 2000, the school district no longer needed any model
minority schools, and soon began to signal its intention to
shut down North Star school. North Star's attendance area
was shrunk and parents residing outside the attendance area
were discouraged or prohibited from enrolling their children
in North Star as an alternative to their neighborhood school.
Another example: In 1998 Sheridan Fine Arts school posted
impressive results on the Minnesota Basic Standards reading
exams. The eighth graders taking the test at Sheridan had
scores comparable to those registered by schools in Edina
and Minnetonka. That raised the district average a good bit.
You might think the district administration and Board would
approve of that, support it, and try to make the same thing
happen in other schools. Instead, the district quickly moved
to shut down an after-school tutorial program set up by the
teachers on their own initiative (and on their own time). The
teachers who played a key role in strengthening the schools
program of reading instruction were dispersed.
Why would the district want to shut down or sabotage programs
that work for so-called 'at risk' students, such as low-income black
students? The district gets compensatory money from the state
and federal government, based on the idea that its designated
at risk students are hard to educate. The at-risk students are
damaged by poverty, a cultural of poverty, and other things, or so
the argument goes. What happened at North Star, Hall, and
Sheridan suggests that most of the so-called at-risk students
are really not so badly damaged as the district administration contends.
-Doug Mann, MPS Board candidate, King Field neighborhood