The Minneapolis Public Schools lost, and continues to lose its "market
share" of students that it doesn't want to educate. For those who can't afford
to flee to private schools, there might be the options of 1) moving to another
district, 2) enrollment in a suburban district school via open enrollment, and
3) enrollment in a Charter School.
How do those options work for students fleeing the Minneapolis Public
Schools? I have heard mixed reviews. Moving to another district often works out
just fine, but during the past 16 years, most of the suburban are going out of
their way to segregate the student population by race. Charter schools are
possibly even more segregated than public schools. I hear about African
American students going to the suburbs and getting a "basement education" via
curriculum tracking systems, which get more popular with white folks, the more
African Americans there are in a school district. Charter schools for Blacks
often have different goals for students than charter schools for Whites, with
longer school days and a narrowed, watered-down, test prep curriculum being
promoted. White Charters are more likely to have a standard school day and
enriched curriculum that better prepare students for "career and college."
In 2003, the Minneapolis School Board applauded the idea of its
superintendent, David Jennings, of getting out of the business of running
schools directly, and sponsoring charters to do the job, except in SW
Minneapolis and some of the schools elsewhere that work just fine, thank you.
But rather than keeping David Jennings on, beyond his first year, the Board
hired from a pool of more than 100 applicants in a nationwide search in which
all 3 finalists were supplied by the Broad Foundation Superintendent School.
Charter-izing the public school system is part of the Broad Foundation agenda.
In 2003, the Broad Foundation web site also boasted that the president and a
few board members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers were assets of the
Broad Foundation-sponsored Teacher Union Reform Network, which aspires to do
away with trade unionism that is focused on protecting the rights of its
members.
In recent years, the district began to openly promote and sponsor charter
schools. The teachers' union even joined in on the fun, and sponsored a charter
school of its own. Schools have been given greater autonomy, in theory, at
least in the area of hiring teachers, and are permitted to pass over
experienced teachers excised from a position due to layoffs at a school, and
hire an inexperienced teacher who just completed an 8 week teacher training
course offered by the University of MN in collaboration with Teach for America
(the teacher training course was only 5 weeks long until recently). And where
do teachers with little training and no experience get assigned?
The Minneapolis School District kept teacher turnover very high, and
teacher experience levels very low in high poverty schools (some more or less
than others) by firing all probationary teachers every year and selectively
replacing or rehiring them. This happens because there is a special teacher
tenure law for cities of the first class that allows a school district to
"layoff" and replace teachers during their first 3 years of employment. The
teacher tenure act that covers all other school districts in Minnesota does not
allow a school district to "lay off" and replace a teacher, without first
offering to continue the employment of the "laid off" teacher. In all MN school
districts, a teacher may be fired for good cause, including poor performance.
That is why only in cities of the first class, can all probationary teachers
get fired and replaced every year.
In recent years, the Minneapolis School District stopped firing all of
its probationary teachers every year, and began to selective "lay off" teachers
based on performance: A "performance layoff" as well as "economic layoff." Why
call a firing for cause a layoff? Is the cause often unjust, or what? There is
supposed to be performance evaluation for all teachers, and especially for
those let go for poor performance based, in part, on student test scores. The
test scores give the evaluations some semblance of objectivity, I suppose, but
I ask you: Are variations from "predicted" student test scores entirely a
reflection of the quality of instruction and of the potential growth of teacher
as a teacher? The use of student test scores to grade teachers is going to
encourage less experienced teachers to rely heavily on scripted, ready-made
lesson plans, especially if assigned to a school with a long school day (more
hours directly working with students) and a long school year.
If you consider the provision of unequal conditions of learning for
students by the school district by race and family income to be wrong, and
perhaps a factor contributing to the "achievement gap," then you might want to
know if, and how conditions of learning vary within the district, and why. And
it happens that under Minnesota Administrative Rules, Chapter 3535, related to
equality of opportunity of Education, approved by the legislature in 1999, the
commissioner of education is supposed to ask school districts which operate
"racially identifiable" schools to prepare an annual report that compares
"measurable educational inputs" between schools that are "racially identifiable
and schools that are not "racially identifiable." A school is "racially
identifiable if the enrollment of students of color is more than 90%, or more
than 25% above the district average for grade levels served. Measurable
educational inputs include teacher experience and training, teacher turnover,
and curricular and extra curricular offerings (and student participation rates)
and conditions at school that would logically effect the quality of education.
But the Minneapolis School District has never produced a report that conforms
to requirements of Minnesota Administrative Rules 3535.
From the mid-1970s until 1999, a school district in Minnesota was deemed
to be not in compliance with Civil Rights laws if it operated any school where
enrollment of students of color was greater than 15% above the district
average. The Minneapolis School District was never fully in compliance. In
1995, there were 8 schools in Minneapolis deemed to be unlawfully segregated.
In 2005, 23 schools were "racially identifiable," with enrollment of students
of color being more than 20% above the district average (the threshold was
later raised to 25%), or more than 90% of the student population.
Basically, racial segregation of students is OK now, so long as
"measurable educational" inputs are more or less equal. If that was the case,
the increased racial segregation of the Minneapolis school district wouldn't be
so bad. But, that is apparently not the case because rules that require
Minnesota school districts to show whether segregated educational facilities
are equal are not enforced, and the Minneapolis School District has not
voluntarily complied with that rule.
Racial segregation and inequality in the public school system is
re-enforced, and reinforces racial segregation and inequality in housing and
employment. There has been token enforcement, at best, of laws prohibiting
racial discrimination in education, employment, housing, banking, law
enforcement, and public accommodations. Racial discrimination in the schools
is, to a large degree, a matter of systemic discrimination secondary to policy
decisions with a disparate impact on students of students of color. In my
opinion, systemic racism is maintained, and can be abolished through the
exercise of political power. It happens that modern racism was established by
and for the benefit of wealthy, propertied classes. Racism nourishes, and is
nourished by a class system based on economic exploitation. Both major
political parties, the Democratic and Republican parties alike, are controlled
by people who have no interest in abolishing racism.
-Doug Mann, Folwell neighborhood,