Tag Archives: education reform

Reading Horizons and the Minnesota Humanities Center: A tale of two reform models

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October 7, 2015

Earlier this year, the Minneapolis Public Schools entered into a purchase agreement (contract would not be the right word) with Utah-based phonics and software producer Reading Horizons. 

All hell then broke loose, for reasons I have been documenting on this blog since August. One of those key reasons–beyond the racist, sexist, classist, etc., materials Reading Horizons provided–was the fact that “Faith” is listed as the number one “Core Value” of the for-profit company’s employees:

We believe in a higher purpose to life. We seek to do His will and to achieve balance in our lives.

Meanwhile, a few years ago, in a parallel universe that I definitely want to learn more about, the Omaha Public Schools entered into a long-term relationship with the non-profit Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC). They are still working together today.

Both school districts–Omaha and Minneapolis–have been seeking change, reform, and better outcomes for students, families, and staff, and both have had to grapple with potentially flood-inducing waves of change, in terms of who they serve and how they serve them.

Parallel universes!

Both have been faced with a pressing choice: drown, or learn a new way to swim.

Here’s a study in contrasts: to survive, the Minneapolis Public Schools, has, among other things, chosen to do business with Reading Horizons, a company that many in the community have objected to–mightily.

The Omaha schools, on the other hand, appear to be putting the community at the forefront of their reform efforts, under the guidance of the MHC.

I find this fascinating, and worth watching. 

First, another similarity: both Reading Horizons and the MHC have a list of “Core Values” on their respective websites. Both put these values–either directly or obliquely–at the center of what they do.

Reading Horizons’ Core Values are personal, supposedly, and intended as a reflection of who their employees are. But faith, honesty, service, and so on, are also identified on the website as the “core values that best represent our company.”. Reading Horizons is not trying to hide–anymore, I guess–that they are a Christian company (with a seemingly strong connection to the Mormon church, but that’s for another blog post, or book).

Question: Do Reading Horizons’ Core Values have anything to do with the “promise” (and sales pitch) the company made to the Minneapolis Public Schools?  Here is that promise:

All MPS studenst (sic) will demonstrate higher levels of reading skill in grades K-3. Achievement gaps between white students and students of color will narrow across all grades. MCA reading scores in grades 3-10 will increase over time, presuming implementation of the Reading Horizons program with fidelity.

The goal is to get more Minneapolis kids reading at grade level. That’s an admirable and essential goal. And, the promise is that a product will get us there. The product comes first, then the practice (“with fidelity”), then the boost in reading scores and literacy rates. 

In contrast, the MHC’s Core Values are not personal, nor product based, but rather a short list for how the group approaches reform, as part of its overall “Education Strategy.” From the MHC webpage:

The Minnesota Humanities Center practices a relationship-based approach to engagement and achievement. The Strategy is about restoring relationships: to ourselves, to our students, to each other, to our communities, and to the places we live and work. By embracing and including the Absent Narratives that make up each of us and our communities, we can close the relationship gap of human understanding and empathy between us.

The Education Strategy is experienced through four core values:

  • Build and strengthen relationships;
  • Recognize the power of story and the danger of absence;
  • Learn from and with multiple voices; and
  • Amplify community solutions for change.

Ah! In the eyes of the MHC, what ails our public education system is not an achievement gap, but rather a “relationship gap.”

Think about the “achievement gap” in Minneapolis, and then consider MHC’s fourth core value:

“…the solutions to entrenched problems are in the community”

So…MHC seems to be saying this: solutions to entrenched problems cannot be purchased, nor do they come with a fidelity-based guarantee. Solutions must be discovered within, from the “multiple voices” in the community.

On Friday, October 2, I attended St. Paul-based Parents United’s annual Leadership Summit. Two presenters led the day–Kent Pekel, of the Search Institute, which studies how relationships impact learning, and MHC staff. Both Pekel and the MHC folks, led by CEO and President David O’Fallon, knocked the cynical socks off many of us in the audience, including several Minneapolis parents and community members. 

Fresh in many of our minds was the tension currently hanging over the Minneapolis Public Schools, with one school board meeting shut down (September 29), and the next one (October 13) facing a likely challenge as well, thanks to the district’s continued defense of its relationship with–not the public it serves–but Reading Horizons, the company it has paid to fix our gaps.

No one that I know wants the Minneapolis Public Schools destroyed (I did not say no one, I said no one I know). Most people want the district to survive and thrive, for the benefit not just of their own kids, but for the city as a whole. 

So, what if, in this moment of crisis, the Minneapolis schools did not push the community away, but instead asked to partner with them on identifying our “relationship gaps”? Could this be a way forward, for a district that seems to be struggling to provide both meaningful leadership and sustainable reform?

Shandi DiCosimo

Here’s how the MHC has been operating in Omaha, according to presenters O’Fallon, Rose McGee, and Shandi DiCosimo:

Rose McGee
  • The “single story” creates stereotypes, and robs people of dignity. It also emphasizes how we are different. The “achievement gap” is one example of a single story; it can come across as hollow, and an absence.
  • Instead, let people tell their own stories–of survival and success.
  • Be mindful of this: The only thing that sustains reform is when there is a belief in it, and when communities get to make it their own. It has to come from within.
  • Create story circles, where principals, teachers, and parents can talk, listen, and share stories. People can grow and become more respectful of one another’s voices.
  • Appreciate and value what happens outside of school. Understand where students live. Go on an “Immersion” field trip to the various communities in the city, with eyes wide open. Let parents share stories and bring content into the schools.
  • Recognize the human hunger for “place.” Understand that the question, “where do I belong?,” is central to the human experience.
  • Emphasize engagement over curriculum.
  • Operate on a “developmental evaluation” model, where it is known that the unexpected will happen, and adjustments (in approach) will need to be made.
  • Think about this: new narratives, a new vision, and a new story about education can take us forward.
Photo: Minnesota Humanities Center

And, my favorite lesson the MHC staff has learned in Omaha: Give students voice and power. To illustrate this, O’Fallon shared the story of an “alternative” high school within Omaha, which had become the dumping ground for all of the kids no one knew how to deal with. When MHC came in, with their “Absent Narratives” framework, they put the students to work.

The students–who said they had never before been asked for their perspective–ended up writing a handbook for first-year teachers, to give them tips on how to reach them. The handbook became so popular that it is now shared across the Omaha district, and the students have been asked to lead staff development workshops, too.

The answers lie within the community, not without.

What will happen next, between the Minneapolis schools and those who are asking for the district to sever its relationship with Reading Horizons? 

I don’t know. But, since this whole storm broke over the city, more than one person has sent me the link to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s powerful Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” In her 2009 talk, Adichie describes how “impressionable and vulnerable we are, in the face of a story, particularly as children.”

At Friday’s Leadership Summit, O’Fallon also shared Adichie’s Ted Talk. It’s worth watching, and, perhaps, applying to what confronts us now, in Minneapolis.

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Early Childhood Worker: Shuttled Out the Door After 20 Years

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“Twenty years of experience doesn’t matter because I don’t have a two-year degree.”

That’s the feeling former Minneapolis Public Schools employee Mary Kaasa–a slight woman with a hidden, steely determination–has been sitting with since the spring of 2014, when she was laid off from her job as an Education Assistant (EA) in the district’s Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program.Mary Kaasa 2

“I was shuttled out the door with no chance to say anything. It was a slap in the face.”

Kaasa was laid off, along with 7 of her ECFE co-workers, when the district’s “Human Capital” department decided to phase out the Education Assistant position and replace it with a new job title: Associate Educator.

The only difference, according to Kaasa, is that Associate Educators, called AEs, are required to have a two-year college degree. 

Kaasa does not have one.

What she has instead is 20 years of experience, a stack of glowing references from her supervisors, and the devotion of the families she worked with.  

Example: In the spring of 2014, when Mary informed ECFE parents that her position had been eliminated, parent Anat Sinar says she and her husband were very sad. Instead of returning to the ECFE program, they decided to explore area preschool options for their daughter, saying they would have considered staying with the ECFE program if Mary would have been there.

Mary with kids
Kaasa with kids, 2011

“I have no sense of why these changes were necessary,” says Sinar, “ and I am curious as to why the position Mary had would require a college degree. Why is her experience in the program not equivalent to a two-year college degree? Why not Grandfather people like Mary in?”

Fellow ECFE parent Adam Nafziger also remembers Mary well. He took a “Daytime Dads” class at ECFE, and called Mary a “constant” in the classroom. Nafziger said he was “especially impressed with how quickly she learned the quirks and personalities of the dozen little ones she was in contact with.”

When Nafziger found out what happened to Mary, and her early childhood co workers, he said, “Not only does this fit a sad, broad pattern of destabilizing unions, but specifically, letting go of the most experienced workers (when the early childhood program relies on the experience and wisdom of those who have come before us) seems incredibly short-sighted.”

It’s not as if Kaasa wasn’t “highly qualified” for her job. Literally.

When Kaasa started working for the Minneapolis Public Schools in 1994, she did not need a college degree. Instead, a high school diploma was good enough for her job as a childcare assistant. 

Through the years, Kaasa stuck with her job, because she liked being close to the children and families who came through the ECFE program. While she never pursued a college degree, she did many training courses and achieved stacks of certificates as evidence of her continuing education, which the school district paid for.  Kaasa also says that when the No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2002, a new mandate came with it, which required all school employees to be “highly qualified.”

In lieu of a college degree, employees could take a test in order to meet the highly qualified designation; Kaasa says she passed, and her union president, Linnea Hackett (of the Education Support Professionals division of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers), confirms this. 

But, as an EA, Kaasa had job security. AEs do not.

As an EA, Kaasa says, “as long as there was a position available, we were guaranteed a job.” But AEs work instead on a yearly renewable contract, making them more like adjunct staff members than permanent employees. 

Mary’s union initially tried to fight for her job and those of her co-workers (there were more than a dozen impacted by this, I am told).

In February 2014, ESP president Hackett says she approached the Minneapolis Public Schools’ newly named Human Capital division, which operates within the broader Human Resources department, and offered two pathways for educational assistants like Mary to keep their jobs in the early childhood program. They could become special education assistants, of which the district had a shortage, or complete the coursework—on the union’s dime—to get the credentials necessary for the associate educator position.

The decision lay in the hands of DeRay McKesson, who was then a newly arrived Senior Director of Human Capital. A 2007 graduate of Bowdoin, McKesson had served a two-year post-college stint in Teach for America before rising quickly through the ranks of the education management field. McKesson declined both of the union’s offers. (He has since gone on to a prominent national position in the Black Lives Matter movement.)

The district said later, via email, that the layoffs were necessary in order to provide more flexibility in hiring practices, as the new job title is “not subject to seniority-based layoff and allows for more site influence in the hiring process.” The goal, says the district, is to hire a more diverse workforce. 

Still, the fact that Kaasa had to answer to something called the Human Capital Department rubbed her the wrong way. “It sounds like we are chattel,” says Kaasa,” as if they are saying, ‘What do you bid for this person?’” 

It’s been over a year since Kaasa was let go. She never got a chance to say goodbye. 

Now, she has been listed as “terminated” in MPS’ HR system. The district’s benefits department told her this: 

“Once it’s in the system, we can’t change it.”

But no termination letter was ever sent to her. 

Her unemployment benefits ran out. Kaasa decided to retire, so that she could start collecting her pension. She knew, after all, that she wasn’t going back to the early childhood program. All of the EA positions were gone, and she was not qualified to be an AE.

She is still fighting to get the sick pay that she says the district owes her.

“it’s a couple thousand dollars, and I earned that. If I had known they weren’t going to pay it, I would have taken those sick days, instead of coming in when I didn’t feel well, like a diligent worker.”

All of this prompted Kaasa to speak out at an October 2014 school board meeting, where she addressed the board and then Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson:

“You may not know how it feels to be so easily dismissed,” Kaasa told the board. “But I can tell you that I feel sad and frustrated and angry and unheard. I still don’t understand why, after twenty years of dedication to children and their families, I am pushed aside.”

In March, 2015, the union filed a grievance on Kaasa’s behalf. It was denied by the district. A resolution will not be cheap:

MFT says the district always disputes a grievance. It may take a few more months before it goes to arbitration, though, and I am ‘the case’ that will determine if I will get my benefits and then see if it applies to any others that have lost theirs over the past few years.

The attorney fees will cost them (MPS) more than just paying me my sick time. Kaasa in Coffee Shop

“I felt strongly about my job and didn’t want it to end,” says Kaasa.

Especially not like this.

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Boston Boondoggle for MPS?

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By Sarah Lahm

The Minneapolis Public Schools has no money; we all know that. It’s in constant belt-tightening mode, with a side of publicly touted layoffs and “right-sizing” to make it all real. 

MPS to Staff

Remember this, from March 2015?

Central office staff at the Davis Center will be reduced by one-sixth, saving the district $11.6 million. The money will primarily go toward reducing class sizes, lowering special education caseloads and additional study time at middle and high schools, the district said.

 

“’We want schools to have the flexibility and autonomy to make decisions at the school level that are in the best interest of their specific students,’” Minneapolis Public Schools spokeswoman Rachel Hicks said.

Hicks is gone, of course, as is most of the rest of MPS’ Communications department.

Maybe that’s why someone forgot to trump up the fact that a cohort of MPS brass, along with a school board member and a state senator, recently went on a $25,000 jaunt to Boston.

Harvard Delegation
Click to enlarge

They were there to study the district’s English Language Learner (ELL) program, under the watchful eye of John J-H Kim. Kim is the faculty co-chair of Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Program (PULP–no, PELP. Sorry).

Pulp: the substance that is left after the liquid (money) has been squeezed from a fruit or vegetable or public school district

Rest easy, everyone. PELP is a joint project between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For $2,800 per person–not including airfare and other transport needs–your local school district dilletantes can drink from the Harvard fountain of knowledge for four or five days, and probably get a handsome, superintendent-worthy stamp on their resume.

I’m imagining PELP 101: How can I run my school district like a business?

It makes perfect sense that John J-H Kim would be helping run the thing. He is not only the co-chair of PELP, which brings in public school district types for an undoubtedly transformational summer camp experience, but he is also the CEO of Boston-based District Management Council (DMC).

Cha-ching.

DMC makes money–a lot of it, I’m guessing–by getting million dollar contracts with school districts around the country. And, they also have a private club for these districts, if they will shell out $25,000/year.

Minneapolis is listed as a member of DMC’s secret club, but I haven’t been able to verify yet whether this is a wish list kind of thing, or an actual list of districts that are paying to play with DMC. (In case you were wondering: membership does include discounts on DMC’s technology products).

DMC has also been quite busy in MPS of late, pushing a special education audit that has put them in the glare of parents with kids in the autism program. DMC’s audit is being used, it seems, as a reason to push abrupt change on MPS’s special ed staff and families. 

Or maybe they just need to go along on the next PELP junket, in order to see the DMC light?

Lingering questions:

  1. What big PELP-y surprises are in store for MPS’s ELL department?
  2. Why didn’t any teachers go? 
  3. AchieveMpls–“As the strategic nonprofit partner of the Minneapolis Public Schools, our shared goal is every student career and college ready. Join us!”–paid for state senator Patricia Torres Ray to go? More on that later.
  4. Budget watch! DMC is also the brains behind MPS’s awkward efforts to implement a “student-based” funding model–watch out, folks. Wonder if that came up at PELP?

I’m no John J-H Kim, but please consider throwing some funds my way. I’ll even make up a certificate for you!

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Will love find a way to save the MTI?

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Could this be the key to education reform, all wrapped up in the words of a Minneapolis high school student named Ja’Meyah? Here, Ja’Meyah responds to a question from one of her teachers, Josh Zoucha:

“When you get to know people, and they make you want to come to school, and they make you want to do right, then you start to do right, and you start to like it, and you start to enjoy coming to the place, and you don’t want to do nothing to lose those people and make them stop liking you, so you gotta be good, you know? And you gotta come to school because they want to see you just as much as you want to see them.”

Image from the Minneapolis Teachers Institute

Josh was asking Ja’Meyah to reflect on why she was coming to school more, and why she had zero suspensions this year, but 14 last year. He also asked Ja’Meyah about her absences: 

“Last year, in the fall, you had 48 absences. And, you had only earned 2.75 credits and 7 days of suspension….This year you’ve earned 14.5 credits…and 0 days of suspension. What’s the difference between last year and this year?”

Josh recorded his interaction with Ja’Meyah, and on the recording, it is clear the two have a bond. Their interaction is casual, familiar. Love-based. 

But not accidental.

Josh participated this year in the Minneapolis Teachers Institute (MTI), a year-long, voluntary professional development program for Minneapolis teachers. It was created by long-time education practitioner Lisa Arrastia, and funded by the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Office of Equity and Diversity.

Part of Josh’s task as an MTI fellow this year was to develop a close relationship with one of his students at Minneapolis’ Edison High School, where he works, and that student was Ja’Meyah. Here is how Josh describes the assignment, and its impact:

…(MTI) asked us to partner/adopt a student for the year.  We had guided questions and documented our discussions for the year by journaling, recording, and asking deeper questions about life.  My students name is Ja’Meyah…and she has made some of the greatest gains towards graduation in our program.  As of September no one believed she was going to graduate and as of right now she is at the very least going to walk and most likely graduate, which in her own words is a miracle.  I believe this is not only because of the…program at Edison but also the relationships that were built within the process of MTI. 

Teaching today can seem like a blood sport, with teacher-baiting the main form of entertainment. Politicians and edu-experts everywhere can often be found gleefully smacking their lips and placing bets on this: 

NJ governor Chris Christie, putting a teacher in her place

How much can we belittle and demean those  lazy, union-loving thugs who choose to enter the classroom and work with kids before they cry uncle and limp away? 

Josh even touches on this, in a letter he wrote in defense of the MTI–which is, sadly, on the chopping block in Minneapolis. The district has deemed it “too expensive,” and has shut down the department–the Office of Equity and Diversity–that funded the MTi.

“Education has a high burnout rate, and I have felt it, but after this year (with MTI), I have felt refreshed, renewed, and it has honestly been one of my favorite years in education.”

In place of the MTI, which offers a project-based, love-focused approach to education reform, Minneapolis administrators have proposed a cheaper, faster alternative, using “culturally relevant pedagogy training.”

In response, MTI fellows have flooded the district, and school board members, with impassioned testimonials on behalf of the MTI. Like this, from Minneapolis high school teacher Morgan Fierst:

The stresses, pressures, and violence that students and teachers face on a daily basis are profound and cannot be ignored.  The Minneapolis Teacher’s Institute is the only real professional development that I have come across during my tenure in the profession.  MTI is the only professional development that has stopped me from seeking a new career, but more importantly, the only PD that has rejuvenated my spirit and grounded me so I could reconnect with my passion and energy for this work.  I know many people are concerned about getting rid of the “bad” teachers in our district.  I understand and appreciate this concern.  But I think we need to be just as mindful, if not more, about keeping our great ones.

 I beg of you to reconsider this decision and learn more about MTI and bring it back to our school district. We (teachers, students, administrators, families) need it!

MPS administrators then settled on a form response to these letters from teachers. Here is an excerpt from it:

Thank you for your email regarding the positive experience you’ve had with the Minneapolis Teacher Institute. It’s always great to hear how MPS professional development opportunities impact teaching and learning.

As you noted, MPS will no longer provide MTI for subsequent teacher cohorts. However, MPS is committed to continuing the critical work we’ve been doing to ensure teachers and our school leaders are provided with the skills they need to be responsive to the needs of all our students, and especially our students of color.

Because of this, the district is moving toward a PD model that will reach more teachers, faster. 

In another note to Minneapolis school board members, Minneapolis’s “CAO” (or, Chief Academic Officer) Susanne Griffin told board members about the district’s prefab response to inquiries about the MTI, and prefaced it this way:

Below is a response that can be used for any inquiry into the status of the district’s professional development plans around cultural responsive teaching.

Because the current model for the Minneapolis Teacher Institute is not cost effective, the district has decided to provide culturally responsive professional development in house so that more teachers can be trained faster.

“A response that can be used for any inquiry” is probably not a response that anyone wants to read. And, reaching more teachers, faster, might look good on paper, but will it be satisfying? 

Here’s what one teacher has to say about that:

In my tenure as a teacher, I have attended many PD’s and often after the moment it started wondered when it was going to end, just hoping to get something out of it. With MTI, I was always disappointed when it was over.  I have attended different cultural responsive trainings in the past but have never been a part of anything like MTI.  I know I have been changed through my experience with MTI, I will forever be proud to call myself an MTI alum and I can’t express my disappointment that no one else will have this opportunity. 

I wonder what students like Ja’Meyah would have to say about this, given the opportunity.

What Would Maria Montessori Do?

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With a longer school day now being consistently sold as a key education reform solution, the Minneapolis Public Schools has decided to add more time to the school day for most middle and high school students in the district.

Minneapolis parents found this out in true Minnesota fashion, through passive-aggressive, after the fact letters and Twitter messages, so as not to needlessly upset or antagonize anyone ahead of time. Some messages, like the one below, are best delivered quietly, even subtly, it seems, without community input.

Anthony Middle msg

I mean, how many middle school parents are monitoring the school’s Twitter feed? There’s a good chance a fair number of them won’t realize, until school is about to start again in August, that their kids will be gone longer than they were last year (by about 45 minutes). 

Yay! For some people, this will undoubtedly be good news. Most parents work, and some extra school time for their kids can amount to one less problem to solve (what to do with that in-betweener kid who is too young to be alone every day but too old for a babysitter). 

For other parents, having their kids in school longer will amount to another stepping stone in the Race to Nowhere. More time at school will mean 6-8th graders can now take 7 classes a day, instead of 6! Wow!! That’s such good news, because Junior can now do college level quadratic equations and become fluent in a foreign language all before getting to high school, where he or she will bypass all traditional coursework (a.k.a. High School for Dummies) and head straight to Rigor U. 

The array of options and courses and advanced this and that available in today’s public high schools, in Minneapolis at least, is astounding. I should know. I once attended a Minneapolis high school, and “minimally” graduated, even though all we had were Math, English, Science, Foreign Language (levels 1 and 2), and a few awkward gym classes that seem to have included floor hockey. I am pretty sure we only had six classes total, but I was much more interested in dissecting Replacements songs than frogs, so I could be wrong. 

I hope these guys will be on the test!

According to middle school parents I know (my own kids go to a K-8, where the school day will stay pitifully short), Minneapolis school officials have an interesting grab bag of reasons why extending the school day is a great idea, such as:

  • More middle school kids can now follow their interests. Huh? In middle school, my interests were cheap novels, taking the bus to the mall, and trying not to fall asleep in English class, as the teacher read Watership Down out loud to us. I’m not clear on how extending the school day will cover this but perhaps today’s middle schoolers are far more advanced than I was. In fact, I know they are.
  • Middle school schedules will now be aligned with high school schedules. I guess this is convenient in some way, although I thought autonomy, not alignment, was our new guiding principle. I am easily confused, though.
  • The International Baccalaureate program–which has an elegant global ring to it, meaning, if they’re doing it around the world, we better do it too, or we’ll be left behind–is most commonly used in MPS schools and apparently really requires kids to take 7 classes a day. 6 is just not enough.  Okay. Besides, with less free time to worry about, kids can take STEM and STEAM classes, and Advanced Geography, along with their other hard-core classes. This’ll be good. Or…will it? Have the kids been asked for their ideas?

I think this whole plan has lengthened the day just enough, but not too much, so that no breach in the teachers union contract was required to make it happen. I think the teachers will just be working more (direct face time with students, unless the school tries out a blended learning model, in which the teaching will be partially outsourced to a computer screen), and praying that their prep hour falls during that fab new 7th hour. 

I have two teenagers. They are nowhere near hyper or super active kids, but still, they complain about having so little free time and access to the outdoors. They miss recess. They miss taking a break during the day. They could be slackers (but they are definitely not), considering my track record, yet even Maria Montessori recognized that, developmentally, young teens are not like everybody else:

Montessori Quote

 

Now that sounds cool. In doing some research I discovered that Montessori-style middle and high schools have been around for almost 100 years, and that they don’t need to be located on a farm to be successful. (There was even one in Amsterdam, which Anne Frank attended until the Nazis shut it down.) Could we not dream big, give our kids some real work to do, and make them not want to leave school? We don’t even have to call it a Montessori school.

Until that happens (?!), maybe a longer school day will have its advantages, in some way. More kids will be occupied and in a safe space until they can be home with an adult. Some kids love being at school. Some kids will apparently be allowed to follow their interests better and take high school classes while rushing through middle school (really?). 

But let’s also be sure that we are not pushing kids and teachers into a longer school day and school year because we somehow fear “The Poor Are Too Free,” as writer and teacher Paul Thomas put it. Or because we assume that a longer day will keep them engaged in the work we have decided is most acceptable for them.

All kids need access to their own thoughts, even if they start by diving deeply into the lyrics of a rock band. Will a longer school day provide this?

 

Tiger Beat: Education Activist Edition

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Quiz: How Obsessed with fighting Education Reform are YOU?

If your answer is a) A LOT, then you were probably in Chicago last weekend, for the 2nd annual Network for Public Education conference. 

I was there too. Wasn’t it just the best ever?!

Sadly, all good things must end. Boo. Just as I was getting used to being surrounded by some of the most incredible ed activists raising hell today,  I found myself back home alone in my little kitchen, chopping onions and sorting the mail.

But I’m not ready to let go yet.  No way. Instead, I am stealing a page from Tiger Beat magazine as a way to capture the giddy joy I felt all weekend, in the presence of greatness.

True confession: Tiger Beat meant a lot to me as a kid,  when we used to have to anxiously wait (what’s that?) for the latest edition to come out. We would then bike up to the local Tom Thumb convenience store and buy it, along with a package of Bub’s Daddy gum. Oh the joy of paging through the mag, highlighting our fave singers and actors!! Now, my attentions have shifted from the big screen to those who occupy school board meetings and fill up my Twitter feed with fighting words, but I still kind of dig the Tiger Beat format. Especially the quizzes!

Quiz: Which education activist is YOUR ultimate soul mate?

A) Diane Ravitch. She’s funny but serious, all at the same time. Diane is smart and not afraid to be seen in a NPE t-shirt! Woo-hoo! She also did a great job with Chicago’s finest, Karen Lewis.

Jitu!

B) Jitu Brown. This Chicago activist is so cool it’s hard to look away (so don’t!). Jitu is super smart and dead on, with loads of practical experience and a tireless commitment to fighting for the community schools all kids deserve. Everything he says just bounces off the walls and sticks right to you. Love it! 

C) Neshellda Johnson. Neshellda is a new activist on the national scene, and she is definitely worth getting to know better. Neshellda is a teacher from Memphis and was caught on tape this year, giving hell to the forces of privatization trying to charterize her school district. Neshellda!! (I can’t find the video; if anyone has it, I’d love to see it again.)

D) The Triple Threat: Jose Luis Vilson (The JLV), Jennifer Berkshire (Edushyster), and Peter Greene (Curmudgication). Don’t try to counsel these three out of their activism! All of them are a hoot, with depth of knowledge and pushback to spare. Smart, funny, and totally rad, their lunchtime convo on Saturday was tasty.

E) Tanaisa Brown from Newark, New Jersey. All year I have been bowing at the feet (virtually, of course) of Tanaisa and her fellow student activists, who got big props at the conference for occupying the office of Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson! Tanaisa opened the NPE conference with a soul-stirring speech that included the chant, “I believe that we will win!” With Tanaisa in the lead, I totally agree!

Tanaisa and her activist crew!

Poll: Which national union leader is your fave? Randi Weingarten or Lily Eskelsen-Garcia?

Both promised not to accept any more “funny money” for the AFT or the NEA, respectively, so it’s kind of hard to choose. This one might be just too hot to handle, so maybe we’ll let our good friend Mercedes Schneider advise us this time around…

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Where do Randi and Lily stand on the Opt Out movement?

QUOTE-WORTHY! Jesse Hagopian, Seattle high school teacher extraordinaire, led a super inspiring breakout session on testing, opting out, and the connection to the Black Lives Matter movement, along with his fellow Seattle education activist Rita Green, education chair of the Seattle King County NAACP. 

At their session, someone floored the room with this tidbit:

Testing has become a cover for society’s inability to deal with poverty and inequality.

Feel it, and watch this:

 

So accountability should start with politicians fully funding our schools, huh? BREAKING NEWS!

Hope to see you next year! Until then–carry on, everyone.

 

All That Glitters: Top Down Change in Minneapolis

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Top down reform is all the rage in education these days, from Arne Duncan on down to individual districts, like Memphis (taken over by the state), Little Rock, AK (wrestling with an attempted takeover by the Walton family and their Wal-Mart money), and New Orleans (all charter schools, all the time). 

Panic button? Image from Alternet

And, it is set to sink in further, here in Minneapolis.

Under the guise of wanting to provide schools “more autonomy,” the Minneapolis Public Schools is set to roll out four “autonomous” Community Partnership Schools (CPS), including north Minneapolis’ Nellie Stone Johnson (NSJ) K-8 School. In this CPS model, traditional schools will become more “autonomous,” and partner with a community organization. In Nellie Stone Johnson’s case, the presumed partner is the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), which is run by school board member Don Samuels’ wife, Sondra (lingering question: will Don recuse himself from the school board’s vote regarding this intended partnership, from which his wife’s organization stands to gain?).

Autonomous schools–which promise greater freedom and independence to a school, in theory, in exchange for more “accountability”–do have an appealing, “rugged individualism” sound to them. Many schools, in Minneapolis and beyond, are of course being suffocated by too many mandates, while simultaneously being starved by too little funding (public funding for schools in MN has declined significantly, since 2000, when, surprise!, demands for greater accountability began ramping up).

And, I can imagine that many schools desperately want and need greater flexibility in how they run things, given the constantly shifting demographics and needs of today’s public school students, staff, and families.

Thus the PR appeal of Minneapolis’ intended shift to a decentralized school district, with the big dream of lots of empowered, individualized school sites throughout the city. The problem, however, is that in an era of school district CEOs and politician-friendly top down management schemes (and “what if we dismantled the Minneapolis Public Schools” queries), this proposed push towards “independence” may not be as liberating as it seems.

Case in point: Nellie Stone Johnson. This K-8 school, which serves a population of “high needs” kids, is slated for big changes next year: 

Nellie Stone Johnson demographic info from ProPublica
Nellie Stone Johnson demographic info, from ProPublica
  1. It is supposed to become a Community Partnership School (the school board will officially vote on this at an April 14 meeting; let’s hope we see democracy–and not rubber stamping–in action).
  2. It will become a K-5 school, and will therefore lose staff members and send older students to a different site. (This is it’s own form of upheaval, of course).
  3. It will also have to pilot a new, more “autonomous” funding model, called Student-Based Allocations (this has connections to an ALEC bill, where public school $$$ is supposed to “follow” a student–this is ALEC’s way to undercut funding for public education). 

All of these changes are to be made all at the same time, and a clear question that should be asked is, “Whose idea was all of this?” The Community Partnership Schools’ “MOA” (Memorandum of Agreement) between MPS and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers states that a key purpose of CPS sites will be:

Creating conditions where mutual respect is demonstrated by local decision making, effective collaboration, shared trust and meaningful relationships.

The MOA also states that any school wishing to become a CPS site must submit a detailed plan that documents the following:

Parent and community involvement in developing the plan; (ii) Staff involvement in developing the plan; (iii) Collaboration to establish buy-in and commitment to the model;

Recently, however, an email written by a Nellie Stone Johnson employee was sent my way, and it definitely raises serious concerns about whether or not Nellie Stone Johnson staff and community members were actually involved in the decision to become a Community Partnership School. (The email was also sent to school board members, I have been told.)

This could deal a serious blow to the claim that the Community Partnership Schools model is being designed from the ground up for all four of the schools slated to try this model on for size next year.

Here are some excerpts (tweaked by me, for clarity and privacy) from the email, which outlines concerns about the CPS model and how it landed at Nellie Stone Johnson school (NSJ):

  • This movement was forced from the district down. From a Union meeting I attended at NSJ, it should have come from the community up. It did not.
  • The principal sent in the letter of intent without direction from her staff. Less than thirty minutes after introducing it to the licensed staff, she told them she was going to send in the letter of intent. She asked for no discussion or feedback on this decision.
  • This CPS “opportunity” was announced at the very same time that the staff was told their school was going to go from a K-8 to a K-5. This information shocked staff, as they dealt with the blow that half the members would be gone at year’s end. (Several of those teachers were tenured teachers,  removing even more teachers of experience.)
  • The only people that the principal consulted with (on the CPS proposal) were licensed staff members.  Non-licensed staff members had little opportunity to discuss this plan or have a say in it.  
  • The CPS design team consisted of primarily new staff members, and some have questioned whether they were given all of the information to adequately understand the CPS model.
  • NSJ staff were told that the school was going to be a CPS no matter what and that questioning the plan would cause undue unrest amongst teachers.
  • At least two staff members were reprimanded for asking questions.
  • Most of the staff members can not adequately tell you what it means to be a CPS or autonomous school.
  • The principal told the staff just prior to the vote that if they voted No, she and the design team would revise the plan and hold another vote and another until they voted yes.
  • Many are worried about the quality of the Scholar coaches that NAZ will bring to the table. They are worried they are going to be in their way.  They will have to train the NAZ members. They worry about the school not having any say in who NAZ hires.
  • There was little to no parent involvement in the plan.  
  • No public/parent meeting was held that was specifically about CPS. A survey given to parents had questions that led to positive answers.
  • There is no parent/staff site council at NSJ. Community Partnership Schools are supposed to be parent and community focused and should have strong community support.  

I wonder if these concerns will be enough to stop the “autonomous” PR machine and compel the school board to pause and consider this: What will a Community Partnership School that has been designed without community input look like?

Danger! More autonomy straight ahead

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Today I got a notice from Pinterest in my email. It’s tagline goes like this: “Boring living room? How to liven things up.” 

Immediately, it struck me as an apt parallel to the attempt to introduce “Community Partnership Schools” into the Minneapolis Public Schools. (I am imagining a behind-closed-doors PowerPoint pitch that went something like this: “Boring public school system? How to liven things up with autonomous schools!”)

The PR promise of the school district’s community partnership plans drips from the MPS website–“Community Partnership Schools are collaborative, innovative, site-based, educational models that meet the unique needs of their students, accelerate learning, and prepare them for college and careers”–but will it be able to deliver on this promise?

The concept for this new model of public school was cemented during 2014 negotiations between MPS and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. The idea was that school communities could choose to become “partnership” schools, and become more autonomous, in exchange for “greater accountability.” 

These schools are supposed to be designed with lots of community input (meaning actual parents, teachers, maybe even some students) and fresh ideas (just like the Pinterest email) for how a newly liberated, autonomous school will be able to quickly boost student achievement.

That mostly means test scores, in the parlance of MPS’ new strategic plan, Acceleration 2020 (buckle up, kids), which is calling for all schools–autonomous or not–to produce large gains in student test scores:

  • 5% annual increase in number of students meeting or exceeding state standards on standardized reading & math tests
  • 8% annual increase in the number of “low performers” who meet or exceed state standards in reading and math

So, the district sets the overall standardized test-based targets for each school (this may be the “bonded” part of autonomous schools that former Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson used to talk about), and the Community Partnership Schools get to…innovate on their way to achieving those goals, while other schools do not? I am not entirely clear on the promise and premise of this new way to jazz things up in MPS, or why a school would have to become “autonomous” just to do what it thinks is best for its students and staff.

How does one “unlock innovation”?

Also, MPS already has an “autonomous” school model in place, which the teachers’ union brought to the table, back in 2009-2010, after getting legislation passed allowing for “Site-Governed Schools.” The language surrounding the purpose of Site-Governed Schools is almost exactly the same as that being used now for Community Partnership Schools, and focuses on greater “flexibility” for these schools in several areas, such as how budgets are spent, what curriculum models are used, and who works at the schools. 

Since the Site-Governed Schools law went into effect more than five years ago, MPS has–or had, rather–just one such school: Pierre Bottineau French Academy (the school will no longer exist next year, as I understand it, and will instead be absorbed into Cityview Elementary School). The story of Pierre Bottineau, which started with the glow of community-led innovation, is a troubling one, and calls into question MPS’ ability to carry out such autonomous schools that have been “freed” from district-created shackles. (I did a whole series about Pierre Bottineau for the Twin Cities Daily Planet last year; the articles can be found here.)

MPS’ “Office of New Schools” was originally tasked with running the Site-Governed Schools and bringing greater autonomy, as well as market-driven choice and competition, into the district, under the guidance of the Center for Reinventing Public Education (MPS–like Memphis and New Orleans–is one of the Center for Reinventing Public Ed’s “portfolio“ districts).

In fact, the Office of New Schools was created within MPS when the last strategic plan–written by McKinsey and Company consultants back in 2007–promised to bring accelerated success and greater flexibility and freedom to the district. Since then, the Office of New Schools has had at least five directors–most of which have had a charter school background but little else in the way of public education experience. Today, it is being run by 2009 Rice University graduate Betsy Ohrn, who is a TFA alum and now serves on the board of directors at Venture Academy (a “blended learning” charter school in Minneapolis) with Jon Bacal, who was the first director of the Office of New Schools.

These days, the Office of New Schools has been tasked with implementing MPS” latest push to bring “innovation” into the district, as it has been overseeing the Community Partnership Schools application process. So far, the first round of contenders for this more autonomous (I must remember to get that word accurately defined) school model are:

  • Ramsey Middle School (which, by the school’s own admission, already enjoys a fair amount of autonomy)
  • Bancroft Elementary School (which would like to go further in its mission to become an IB school)
  • Folwell Arts Magnet (also would like to go further with its magnet school mission)
  • Nellie Stone Johnson Elementary School, which is currently a K-8 school in north Minneapolis, but will become a K-5 next year.

All four of these schools–should the Minneapolis school board allow them to become partnership schools at the board’s April 14 meeting–will also be expected to pilot MPS’ new, more autonomous and decentralized funding model, called “Student-Based Allocations.” (This topic requires its own separate blog post). Why should they have to become Community Partnership Schools and try out a new funding model at the same time? Good question.

Ironically, or perhaps, forebodingly, the Office of New Schools was rated MPS’ least effective department by district principals very recently. Just 22% of MPS principals–who are slated to become the “entrepreneurial” leaders of their schools, as the district tries to become more decentralized–identified the Office of New Schools as satisfactory; in contrast, the English Language Learner department was considered the most useful, according to 79% of principals.

If the Office of New Schools could not effectively manage the one site-governed, autonomous school it has authorized, and today’s principals do not consider it an effective department, how will it handle implementing the Community Partnership School model?

And how will any of this serve the district’s most vulnerable students and schools, who are perhaps in need of more support and less autonomy?

Could it be…?

Love Pedagogy: The Future of Education Reform

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Rendo assembly line
Robert Rendo’s “Assembly Line”

I have seen the future of education reform, and its name is the Minneapolis Teachers Institute.

At least, I hope it is the future of education reform.

The Minneapolis Teachers Institute (MTI) is a four-year old professional development program for Minneapolis teachers. It is funded by a grant from the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Office of Equity and Diversity, and coordinated by the University of Minnesota’s Department of African and African-American Studies. 

But it is so much more than that.

The MTI is a hidden gem in the pocket of an urban school district that often seems stuck in a gap-filled narrative of failure and dysfunction. It brings public school teachers together for a year-long, project-based study of what it means to be a teacher today. I have seen it in action, and it is a beautiful thing.

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MTI designer Lisa Arrastia

The MTI grew out of the passion and experience of Lisa Arrastia, a writing teacher and PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota with an intriguing background and a lovely vision for her work in education:

 “In all of her work with schools, Lisa focuses on the development of empathic  communities where young people demonstrate the freedom to think, question, and innovate as they wrestle with the tangled complexities of self, other, and difference.”

Arrastia has a lot of experience working with schools, as a former principal and school director, but says her view of education changed when her own daughter started school in St. Paul (Arrastia and her family now live in New York, where she and her husband, poet Mark Nowak, both teach).

As a public school parent, Arrastia was asked to sit on a school committee, and began to get a clearer view of the restraints teachers face on a daily basis, as they work to meet the needs of their students. Efforts to reduce homework or bring innovation into the classroom often seemed to get lost in a sea of mandates and No Child Left Behind, test-driven limitations.

That is when Arrastia started to develop a “passion for what teachers were doing,” and the MTI began to take shape. 

In 2011, she heard through the education grapevine that the Minneapolis Public Schools was looking for a different kind of professional development opportunity for district teachers, and she put the MTI in motion, through her other project, the Ed Factory.

So far, Arrastia has managed to get support from MPS each year for the institute, which serves Minneapolis teachers in grades 5-12. Interested teachers apply to be MTI fellows, and then embark on a year-long, project-based study of their work. This includes monthly seminars and workshop sessions, with visiting scholars and experts from the arts and sciences, and a $1,000 fellowship upon completion of the program. Last year, featured guests included writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and social cognitive neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman. Why? Because, Arrastia says, “teachers have to be artists and scientists simultaneously.”

Beyond this, the MTI’s broader vision and purpose is to treat teachers as the “intellectual workers” they are, according to Arrastia, and to “creatively push back against the limitations of high stakes testing.”

This, I believe, is the asset-based, love-focused, relationship-driven future of education reform. As opposition to restrictive, top-down education reform builds (locally, nationally, and globally). the MTI is busy crafting an alternative vision of reform that “emphasizes the humanity of both teacher and child.” This has seemingly struck a nerve, as Arrastia says another state has expressed interest in the MTI’s work.

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Poet Patricia Smith will perform at the MTI’s March 6 event

But don’t take my word for it: come to the Capri Theater in Minneapolis on Friday, March 6 for a closer look at what the MTI does. There, a manifestation of the institute’s current theme–“Love Pedagogy: Disrupting the Violence Against Young Bodies”–will be on display, as MTI fellows showcase the work they’ve undertaken this year.

Here is a detailed description of the Capri event, from the MTI:

Our seventeen teaching fellows have each chosen one student to get to know as an individual and as a learner. We’ve asked fellows to call this student “my child,” and we have asked them to encourage the student to study them as well. Fellows and their students are studying each other in order to get a sense of their common humanity, something which the institute’s research demonstrates has, unfortunately, deteriorated under the pressure of current education reforms. Applying theories based on the science of social connection, using photographer Dawoud Bey’s Class Pictures and the prose poems “Stop the Presses,” by Patricia Smith, and “Capitalization,” by Mark Nowak, as models, throughout the fellowship term fellows and students have been photographing each other, writing about each other, talking about what they fear and love, what makes them angry, and what they hope for and desire.

I have been a lucky fly on the wall at two MTI events this year, when educator and activist Bill Ayers came, and then, just recently, when poet Claudia Rankine and novelist Marlon James read from their recent books and offered insights on everything from James Baldwin to the importance of recognizing the “danger of a single story.” (Arrastia introduced both Rankine and James, and led with this radical notion: “Our students need relationships and love, not discipline and tests.”)

Most MTI sessions are in fact free and open to the public, and well worth attending, in order to see, up close, the good work being done with support from the Minneapolis Public Schools–whose challenges, and critics, often seem endless.

“I would say that right now there is only one way we can remake public schools; that is, we have to make them welcoming and beautiful places. We have to spend as much money on schooling as we do on the Stealth Bomber. What we have to do is to buy all the resources necessary and give everyone the maximum number of chances to learn in ways in which they choose to learn.“

–educator Herbert Kohl, one of Arrastia’s inspirations for the MTI