December 8, 2019

In 2017, New York University professor Elise Cappella made this point, in reference to a study she had just helped conduct regarding middle schools and their impact on students:

“Research broadly supports the idea that K-8 is a better choice, overall,” Cappella said in an interview with Joshua A. Kirsch.

You would never know that by looking at the latest iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive District Design plan.

On December 8, the district released its latest teaser, offering a look at the direction it is headed while claiming no ownership over the ideas. “It’s just a study,” district representatives keep insisting, regarding the information it has been releasing lately–all while simultaneously outlining a rapid timeline for a final school board vote.

• Public engagement regarding the district’s various design studies and models will take place in January and February, 2020
• The school board will be asked to vote on a final Comprehensive Design plan on March 10, 2020
• The December 8 document is called “Phase 2 Boundary Study Presentation,” to be shared with the school board during its December 12 Committee of the Whole meeting. (There will be no public input at this meeting; those wishing to speak up will need to do so at the December 10 school board meeting.)

The presentation is framed as simply a “what-if” scenario, designed to see the “impact on integration and transportation if all K-8 students attended their community schools.”

And those community schools are only either K-5s or middle schools serving 6-8 grade students. All existing K-8 schools, including Marcy Open, Seward Montessori and Barton Open, are reconfigured in this PowerPoint as K-5 sites, although Seward retains its Montessori programming.

All three schools currently serve 700 or more students from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. Under this MPS plan, or study, those schools would shrink in size and arguably become more segregated.

While the December 8 document is being pitched as just a study–as in, nothing to see here, folks–it fits into an ongoing pattern. Over the past 18 months, MPS administrators (mostly Eric Moore, Chief of Accountability, Research, and Equity) have created and shared PowerPoint presentations that offer a skewed perspective on district data, with information either missing or inaccurately presented.

For an example of this, review either the documents or video from the school board’s November 23 half-day retreat. There, Moore offered a lengthy look at how the district is configured, from a school boundary perspective. (One data point that was missing: the highest concentration of enrollment losses at MPS occurs from 5th-6th grade–but not at K-8 schools.)

Many of the PowerPoint slides he shared, however, were less than fulsome. Slide number 17, for example, bears the label, “Lack of Effectiveness of Magnet Schools, and then notes that “1/3 of MPS magnets lost students of color from 2013-2017.”

But 2/3 of magnets gained students of color–even if these gains were “inconsistent or minimal,” as the PowerPoint slide claims. The gains must mean something–but what? There was no analysis of that, only the perception that magnets–which MPS has routinely claimed–are not working, either for integration or improved student outcome purposes.

Another example comes from the zig-zagged transportation routes shared at the November 23 retreat.

Only magnet school routes were included, making it look as though magnets are an outsized burden on the district, while open enrollment routes (where kids are bused to community schools outside of their own neighborhoods) were absent–even though we know that, particularly in north and northeast Minneapolis, students are bused all over the place as a retention and enrollment strategy.

The key thing here is, as a friend advised me, to think about what story the district is trying to tell, and what conclusions they are working towards. Going back just until the summer of 2018, when the district’s initial comprehensive redesign plans were publicly presented, there is a consistent through-line:

• Magnets are not working
• K-8s are not a worthwhile investment
• The district is easier to map out and, perhaps, manage, using a K-5, 6-8 only plan
• Shrinking the number of magnets and moving them will save MPS money and naturally promote integration (assuming all kids currently in the system stay in MPS, no matter which school they are assigned to)

It is impossible to say what the purpose of all this is. MPS appears poised to claim that eliminating K-8 schools, greatly reducing magnets (and replacing them with nebulous “specialty schools,” in a nod to the “coordinated uniqueness” pitch that once accompanied these plans), and concentrating greater numbers of students in large middle schools will save money and improve transportation, if not student, outcomes.

But, as far as I know, there has been little if any input here from front line staff, including teachers, support staff, and site-based administrators.

This is a problem.

Without ground-level guidance, this runs the risk of being little more than another top-down, hit and run way to hobble already-strong (or newly emerging) programs rather than learn from them.

Many MPS veterans, including students, parents, teachers, and administrators, have battle scars already, thanks to previous plans that promised big things while failing to adequately consider the insights of those who will be held accountable when things veer off course.

Knowing that middle schoolers, even eighth graders, are still the children who played tag at recess a mere three or four years before, is not infantilizing, but humanizing to the young adolescent.

—Claire Needel Hollander, New York City public school teacher