year's city school board race between me and whoever else stands for election
to the two at large seats. The Minnesota Supreme Court has chosen to hear an
appeal of the appeals court decision to dismiss and deny a petition by Forslund
et al vs MN to find that the states teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional
because they protect "ineffective teachers" and that students of color are
heavily exposed to ineffective teachers because of the tenure laws.
As I will show, Forslund serves a labor relations agenda that is actually
at odds with a genuine civil right agenda and Forslund's stated goal of
reducing racial disparities in access to a quality, public education.
Forslund seeks to void the state's teacher tenure laws, 122A.40 and
122A.41. The latter applies only to school district's serving cities of the
first class (population > 100K ). Forslund contends that job protections which
kick in after 3 years protect the jobs of "ineffective" teachers, that children
of color are overexposed to "ineffective" teachers, that 3 years is not long
enough to determine whether a teacher will become an effective teacher,
therefore tenure laws cause racial disparities in educational inputs and
outcomes.
One major flaw in Forslund's pleading it that both teacher tenure statutes
state that school school districts may fire teachers for misconduct and poor
performance. Both teacher tenure laws forbid termination of a teacher's
employment without a good reason related to conduct or performance except in
cases of layoff for fiscal reasons.
The difference between the teacher tenure statutes is that 122A.40 (which
applies to all districts except those serving first class cities) gives all
teachers the right to recall in case of layoff. A laid off teacher cannot be
replaced with a new hire without first being offered continued employment. The
tenure law that applies only to first class cities, 122A.41 allows districts to
replace laid off probationary teachers with new hires without first offering
continued employment to the laid off probationary teacher. The former statute
gives recall rights to all teachers if laid off before a district can replace
them with a new hire. The latter tenure law for big city school districts
stipulates that a lay off notice terminates the employment of a teacher who has
not yet completed their 3 year, post hire probationary period. This difference
between the statutes explains why big city school district can maintain bigger
pools of probationary teachers to whom students of color are inevitably more
exposed than their white counterparts.
Teacher turnover rates and exposure of students to inexperienced, newly
hired and provisionally licensed teachers are much higher in the first class
cities than elsewhere, on average. Disparate outcomes are strongly correlated
with disparate inputs between first class and non-first class city school
districts. Protection against being "laid-off and replaced" causes retention
rates for newer teachers to be much higher than in school districts where
teachers may not be laid off and replaced by a new hire without first being
offered continued employment.
Experience tells us that when school district are given the power to
arbitrarily "lay off" and replace teachers, the districts so empowered do so,
resulting in the establishment and perpetuation of a large pool of low-paid
probationary teachers. The fiscal based motive for doing this has gotten
stronger over the years as pay differentials related to length of employment
have increased. But even in Minneapolis, with a long and steep pay ladder for
teachers, it is doubtful that maintaining a big pool of probationary teachers
is a very effective cost containment strategy. In general, the higher the
teacher retention rate, the lower the special Ed placement rate, especially
placement of student in special Ed for "emotional-behavioral disorders."
Special Ed is blamed for the higher cost of running a school district in
Minneapolis than in St. Paul and in cities not covered by the Tenure Act for
cities of the first class. Retention rates for newly hired teachers is higher
in Minneapolis than in St. Paul and even higher than in school districts that
do not serve first class cities, on average.
In conclusion, it is evident that tenure laws and other laws that protect
teachers from being fired without good cause related to conduct or performance
also protect students by reducing their exposure to inexperienced, newly hired,
and provisionally licensed teachers. The ability of big city school districts
to maintain a large pool of probationary teachers is a major underlying cause
of systemic racial discrimination that will surely get worse rather than better
if the Forslund plaintiffs prayers to the court are answered affirmatively and
tenure rights are taking away from teachers. Tenure law is the basis of due
process rights, i.e., the right to a fair hearing if accused of misconduct
and/or poor performance. Progressive disciplinary procedures were established
to allow teachers an opportunity to correct identified problems with their job
performance before their employment is terminated for poor performance or minor
misconduct.
I do not expect the defendants or any intervening parties to argue in
support of teacher tenure rights along the lines set forth above, based on past
pleadings in this case. However, the trial and appellate courts did not find
arguments for a causal link between the tenure laws and racial disparities in
access to a quality education to be very compelling. However, Minnesota Supreme
Court review is discretionary, which may justifiably raise the hope of those
fighting for tenure law repeal.
If there is a lawsuit that needs to be filed to address racial
disparities in access to a quality, public, education, it would be a lawsuit to
challenge the provision of the tenure law for big cities that stipulates that a
lay off notice terminates the employment of teachers who have not yet completed
their 3 year, post-hire probationary period. As far as I can tell, this special
tenure law dates back to the 1950s and at that time applied only to the cities
of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth. Until the 1970s, few Black lived outside
of those cities. The effect of the special tenure act on teacher turnover rates
was predictable. The Special Teacher Tenure Act for Cities of the First Class,
as it has been titled, has long had a disparate impact on people of color and
poor whites in the big cities. It is part of the legislative legacy of the Jim
Crow era. Re-segregation of the public schools since the 1990s has increased
the disparate impact of maintaining a large pool of probationary teachers in
Minneapolis.
In Minnesota, a doctrine of Separate but Equal in the field of education
arose from the ashes of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown. A 1999 revision
of what was then known as the Desegregation Rule, Minnesota Administrative
Rules, Chapter 3535, which allowed school districts to run racially segregated
public school systems if "educational inputs," such as teacher turnover and
retention rates were roughly equal, except that differences in teacher
qualifications alone would not be considered sufficient evidence of
"intentional discrimination." I have referred to the 1999 revision of Rule 3535
as the voluntary segregation rule.
On paper, Rule 3535 requires school districts which operate "racially
identifiable schools" to monitor differences which might exist with respect to
measurable education inputs, such as years of experience of teachers,
participation in gift and talented programs, etc. In practice, monitoring was
focused on teacher qualifications that alone are not considered to be
sufficient evidence of intention racial discrimination. Reporting requirements
were partially enforced for several years, and then ignored. Even though racial
disparities in exposure to inexperienced, newly hired and provisionally
licensed teachers was not considered sufficient proof of "intentional"
discrimination, such disparities were deemed to be systemic racial
discrimination by a disparate impact analysis and must be corrected, according
to a draft of the statement of need and reasonableness of the 1999 revisions of
Rule 3535. That is why in 2002, the strategic goal of the Minneapolis School
District's District Improvement Plan was to increase teacher retention rates
and thereby bring teacher turnover rates to low levels in all schools. The
annual ritual of firing probationary teachers and then selectively rehiring or
replacing them ensured the plan's failure. At the same time, the Minneapolis
School District's reports to the Minnesota Department of Education that were
mandated by Rule 3535 lacked the required content.
My platform as a candidate for school board includes the following
Increase teacher retention rates in order to shrink the pool of
probationary teachers and reduce racial disparities in exposure of students to
inexperienced, newly hired and provisionally licensed teachers. The district
should lobby to repeal the Special Teacher Tenure Act for cities of the first
class and establish policies that forbid replacement of any laid off teacher
with a new hire before they are offered continuing employment with the
district. Even probationary teachers should be given a reasonable opportunity
to improve their job performance before being terminated. Teachers in
dysfunctional schools should get the extra support needed to help their
students thrive while making jobs at their schools a desirable, long-term
career move.
Eliminate watered-down curriculum tracks. Programs designed to enrich the
curriculum and enhance a teachers ability to assist students with diverse
interests and aptitudes work best in conjunction with a stable team of
teachers. Approaches to teaching advocated for the gifted and talented also
work well for the general student population, such as having well-trained,
experienced teachers in good supply, curriculum enrichment rather than an
emphasis on "drill-and-kill," rote memorization, and filling out work-sheets.
Minnesota is exceptional in the degree to which its school districts resisted
and still resist the ability-grouping model. There were and perhaps are still
many districts which based instruction for the general student population on a
college-prep curriculum, such as the North Star Standard, which was Minnesota's
only K-12 curriculum for many years. In the Twin Cities and Duluth, Blacks and
poor (working class) Whites generally got a watered-down curriculum, which was
incoherent and didn't mesh well across subject areas. There were widespread
efforts to transition away from "ability-grouping" students into either
college-bound or into watered down curriculum tracks in the 1970s and early
1980s, which included establishment of "open schools" and increased interest in
Montessori Schools and other alternatives to ability-grouping. College Prep
schools generally regard all their students as gift and talented and do not
ability group students into watered down curriculum tracks.
Provide education to special Ed students in the least restrictive environment
possible. Minneapolis and St. Paul have a history of segregating students
labeled as having emotional behavioral disorders into separate classrooms, and
many are later placed in detention facilities within the school district, such
as River Bend, after their behavior worsens. Segregating EBD students in not
good educational practice, it generally leads to worse outcomes than
mainstreaming EBD students. I worked as a substitute educational associate in
the Edina and Richfield public schools and was quite impressed with the results
gotten by keeping EBD students in mainstream classrooms, with in-class support
from EAs and therapy for emotional issues if needed. For those students can be
disruptive, their plans in place to deal with the disruption, though I had
occasion to intervene only once to prevent a student in my charge from
disrupting a classroom. The Public Schools in Edina and Richfield have a more
stable teaching force and stronger general Ed programs that are less likely to
engender Emotional Behavioral Disorders and which are more suitable for the
integration of EBD students. In the year 2000, the Federal government reported
that 25% of African American students were designated as having
Emotional-Behaviorial Disordered, two grade levels behind academically and
enrolled in special Ed. Lot of these students ended up in EBD rooms and then
the detention centers for dangerous students.
More racial and socio-economic integration of the student population. Short of
cross town busing and the sort of choice programs in place in the early 1980s,
and without eliminating the "community school" model, much can be done to
desegregate the school system. Back in the 1980s, the desegregation plan
emphasized "magnet school programs" which attracted white middle class students
into programs housed in the same schools as watered-down curriculum programs
for a poorer and darker complexioned student population. The goal was to get a
certain racial mix without racial equality.
In 1995 the school board adopted a resolution entitled "Closing the Gap:
Ensuring that all students can learn." The plan was to increase and improve
parent involvement and reduce time spent by students on buses and to take money
from transportation and spend it on improving the district's struggling
schools. However, an enormous amount of money was spent to maximize racial
separation, such as hundreds of millions spent on grade level reconfiguration,
such as eliminating K-3 and middle school in favor of K-8 schools which much
smaller enrollment areas and a more racially homogeneous student population.
In 1997 the district began to "ability-group" students into separate classrooms
for reading ability in grade one or kindergarten, with the curriculum
watered-down to varying degrees. This was a disaster for black students, whose
parents pulled them out in large numbers. Reading is a foundation for other
academic subjects. We saw widening racial disparities in many education-related
outcomes besides test scores.
In the 1990s and beyond there was a Zero-tolerance discipline policy that drove
up suspension rates, even in elementary schools, and especially for Black
students. The district adopted a very strict attendance policy, and so
aggressively referred Black families to the court system in the early 00's that
Hennepin County couldn't handle the load placed on its social service
providers. It was hardly surprising that a large proportion of Black people
were fleeing the district, especially pulling their kids out of the district's
schools during early elementary grades. There were much bigger year-to-year
declines in the number black students as they moved up the grade levels during
and after grade 1 than for their white counterparts. Attendance dropped from
50K in 1998 to about 26K. In the near north side of Minneapolis, fewer than 25%
of K-12 students attended Minneapolis Public Schools by 2010.
At mass meetings organized by the NAACP in 1998, a lot of parents voiced
opposition to the district's ability-grouping policies, but that issue was
buried via a guided facilitation process often used by the school district to
guide a planning process toward predestined outcomes. I was joined by Evelyn
Eubanks and a majority of the NAACP education committee, branch executive
committee and general membership in 1999 in opposing the "School Choice" Plan
advanced by the NAACP lawyers as the solution to students getting an inadequate
education in Minneapolis. I objected to a settlement offer than didn't address
much less propose remedies for policy-driven systemic racial discrimination
within the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The Choice plan was supported by a DFL-friendly faction of the NAACP branch
aligned with The Links, a club for college educated social climbers and the
DFL, who with help from the national NAACP took over the NAACP branch. The
NAACP eventually settled with the state for a "choice plan" that would "solve
the problem of children getting an inadequate education." Then came the payoff
in the form of a contract between the Minnesota Department of Education and
NAACP for parent information centers, which placed the NAACP in the awkward
position of being a plaintiff getting money from the defendant to run parent
information centers while looking the other way when the legislature violated
the terms of the settlement by failing to provide agreed upon funding for bus
transportation. The NAACP had the opportunity to allege violations of the
settlement agreement and have the lawsuit dismissed without prejudice, allowing
the NAACP to return to court another day to sue the state over the same issues.
The NAACP gave up its right to intervene in education issues in the Minnesota
Court system in exchange for a school choice plan that did not resolve the
problem of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools getting an inadequate and
inferior education.
-Doug Mann, Folwell, lower Camden, north side.