Tag Archives: global education reform

Minneapolis Parent on School District’s Proposed Redesign: Changes Should Not Be Pushed on Us

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May 11, 2019

Sonya Perez-Lauterbach can appreciate the predicament the Minneapolis Public Schools finds itself in. After decades of competition and pressure from school choice schemes, including charter schools and open enrollment plans, the district says its student numbers are shrinking. Any continued loss of students means a drain on district finances, while costs for aging infrastructure continue to rise.

And so, district administrators say they have pulled together a redesign proposal, based on an internal, eighteen-month process of scouring and compiling data. This proposal–framed by the district as “options for a sustainable path forward”–was released to the public in late April and has thus far caused some measure of confusion and uncertainty among the school communities most likely to be impacted by it.

Perez-Lauterbach lives in north Minneapolis and has a child who is slated to enter kindergarten this fall at Sheridan, a K-5 arts and Spanish dual-immersion school in the northeast corner of the city. She says she is certain that “leading a public school district is not an easy job,” and that any attempt to realign the Minneapolis Public Schools will require humility and an understanding of the complexities involved.

Display of support for refugees, Barton Open School

Side note: Dual-immersion schools are a popular choice for many parents but could become more segregated–or disappear altogether for some communities such as north Minneapolis–under the current district proposal.

Still, Perez-Lauterbach is not yet ready to let the district off the hook. In the face of increased competition for students and resources (thanks to the market-based reform model foisted upon public education systems around the world), she argues that changes “should not be pushed on parents.”

Instead, she would like the district to embrace parents and community members as “partners in making a better school district.” After all, Perez-Lauterbach notes, people naturally seek “ways to regain control in a seemingly unstable environment,” and she assumes that the district does not want parents to opt out of the system altogether in search of stability. (The graduate degree she holds in Learning and Organizational Change is likely an asset here.)

This week, Perez-Lauterbach wrote a letter to members of the Minneapolis school board, expressing her concerns with the district’s proposal and arguing for a better, community-focused path to change. She has given me permission to publish her letter, with her original formatting.

Dear School Board –

To what extent is this comprehensive plan and process building trust and confidence in the MPS system?

I am aware that MPS is bleeding students to the many other school options available today. The financial solvency and future of MPS DEPENDS on increasing market share.  But I believe that increasing that market share is not an issue of redrawing boundaries, or moving programs. When it comes to making decisions on behalf of your child it requires a high degree of CONFIDENCE and TRUST in whomever you entrust your child’s education.  Families also want to KNOW with confidence, that their voice and concerns will be HEARD and ACTED upon. In order to increase market share MPS is challenged with the goal of changing HEARTS and MINDS of parents who have and are exiting the system. MPS board needs to take on a full force focus on building TRUST and CONFIDENCE with ALL its stakeholders. Unfortunately the current plan and process has, so far, NOT built trust or confidence.

As the plan stands there is no access to the data that was utilized to create it. The financial numbers on cost savings or implementation are not verified or even available.  Families were not involved in building the proposed plans. And the current timeline for feedback feels completely inappropriate and disingenuous. In May and June, a time when families should be celebrating pre-k, 5th and 8th grade graduations and the continuation of education, unfortunately they have been thrown into a whirlwind of worry and concern not knowing what their child’s future educational options are within MPS.  Teachers who work tirelessly to create a safe, and stable environment for their students do not have answers as to what will happen to their class and are also burdened with the heightened concern for their own employment and future with the district.

Recommendations:  

  1. Release a clear and heartfelt apology to all the students, families, and teachers for the way this planning process has been handled.  
  2. Re-publish the plan and associated communication with “DRAFT” on it. If you truly desire feedback and buy-in from your stakeholders more steps need to be taken to build confidence that this feedback process is genuine and will significantly impact the ultimate plan.
  3. Adjust the feedback timeline  to include the development and response time to feasibility studies. These are HUGE decisions impacting the lives of thousands of children that are being made based on ASSUMPTIONS of cost savings.
  4. Release the data, assumptions, and insights that were used to build the current plan. As well as the selection process of the consultants who built this plan and the criteria and qualifications of that group.
  5. Review every step of the process with a Change Management Professional with a human-centric perspective and approach.
  6. Equip yourselves, principles, and parent advocates with unified talking points and answers. So far every meeting I attended I have found more confusion and questions generated; confidence has not been instilled.

Many, many families want to support MPS because they believe in public education. But the leadership of MPS must take actions to build trust and confidence so that we can feel good about choosing MPS for our children and even work to convince our neighbors and friends to join in the MPS community. PLEASE USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD TRUST by taking corrective steps in the process. I look forward to seeing positive action from the board that radically interrupts the continuation of top down culture and unresponsive leadership that public education is unfortunately known for.

Sincerely,

Sonya Perez-Lauterbach

Public meetings about this proposal are scheduled to take place in May, including the May 14 Minneapolis school board meeting. A final board vote on the plan is currently scheduled for August.

McKinsey & Friends in Minneapolis: Starvation and Strategy

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February 17, 2016

Fourth in a series: While the Minneapolis school board wrestles with an extended, dramatic superintendent search, I am exploring how the Minneapolis schools fell under the influence of today’s pervasive global education reform movement. Click on these links to get to Parts 1, 2, and 3.

“The people who need to know what Itasca is doing are the participants. That’s it.”

–Jennifer Ford Reedy, former McKinsey consultant and Itasca Project advisor, quoted in a recent New York Times article

In 2007, McKinsey & Co. business consultants, in conjunction with the Itasca Project, wrote a new strategic plan for the Minneapolis Public Schools (which was rebranded  as “Acceleration 2020” in 2014). Hardly anyone, it seems, paused to wonder if opening the door to McKinsey/Itasca was a good idea. The plan itself seemed “bold,” according to many news reports from 2007, and loaded with change-making potential.

One 2007 Minneapolis school board member, however, Peggy Flanagan, warned that, unless the state of Minnesota started fully funding K-12 education, the plan’s “ambitious but doable” goals would fall flat. The full funding never came. Instead, state funding for public education in Minnesota dropped precipitously in the 2000’s, just as added pressure on the system was exploding (due to many things, such as a stunning state increase in child poverty). The global education reform movement (GERM) was also fully hitting the United States, after being given a profit-grabbing boost by the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. 

Recent New York Times photo of the Itasca Project at work

Let’s go back to the Itasca Project for a minute. Itasca is a Twin Cities-based group of high-powered business, philanthropic and public leaders who convene regularly to focus on how to maintain Minnesota’s “economic competitiveness and quality of life.” Their mission is noble, and much has been made of their “Minnesota exceptionalism,” while little–if anything–has been made of the fact that Itasca is staffed by McKinsey & Company consultants, who might just bring a certain data-driven point of view to bear on the problems Itasca likes to wrestle with. 

Research in fact shows that, while McKinsey/Itasca was generously offering to “strategically redirect” the Minneapolis Public Schools, many Itasca member organizations were actively lobbying against providing adequate state funds to public education in Minnesota. Wells Fargo and U.S. Banks are two prime examples of this. Progressive group TakeAction MN, along with the local Service Employees International Union, published a 2013 report called “Students v. Subsidies,” which included this declaration:

As Minnesota has faced budget deficits in recent years, policymakers have chosen solutions that impact K-12 students. That’s thanks in large part to corporations and their executives who have spent millions lobbying against tax increases…The consequences for public education have been severe. Instead of requiring the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share, we have disinvested in our kids’ education. 

The report goes on to specifically address the anti-tax, anti-public school lobbying done in Minnesota by such Itasca affiliated groups as the MN Business Partnership and the Chamber of Commerce:

…corporate executives such as U.S. Bank CEO Richard Davis fail to acknowledge their role in the Chamber and the Partnership’s anti-tax lobbying as they call for improvements in education, trumpeting their involvement in civic groups such as the Itasca Project: “One of the failings that the [Itasca Project] report identifies—and an issue that the Partnership has focused on over the past several years—is the fact that 40 percent of the students entering college are unprepared for their coursework … Improving Minnesota’s K-12 system is not only important in its own right, but will have long-term benefits to our state’s higher ed system as well. We need both systems to function effectively and efficiently if Minnesota is going to successfully compete for jobs in the future.” —Richard Davis, U.S. Bank CEO and Chair of the Minnesota Business Partnership10

So, in and around 2007, was McKinsey/Itasca “doing well by doing good,” as their McKinsey-crafted promo materials claim, or was this group actively working to create a crisis situation for the Minneapolis Public Schools, and public education in Minnesota overall? Or, as an experienced MPS teacher and administrator once said to me,

What do you think happens to something when you try to starve it? 

You make it vulnerable, weak. You expose it to the elements, which includes the mounting, often McKinsey-led national efforts to privatize public education, de-unionize the nation’s teaching force (because unions stand in the way of the market-based reform movement) and exploit the racial and economic disparities that impact who gets access to what kind of education. (Read Mike Rose for a historical take on this, and Gloria Ladson-Billings for a current perspective.)

So, why didn’t anybody say anything? 

Many people were probably too busy just trying to survive. For a data-supported look at this, check out Mary Turck’s excellent recent piece on Minnesota’s “assistance gap” for poor families. Turck’s research shows that welfare and food stamp benefits for these families have not increased since 1986. And, if you’ve seen The Big Short, or read this report from the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, you know that the whole post-2008 economic recovery thing has yet to really trickle down.

And some people have clearly fallen for the carefully coordinated PR campaign that has accompanied McKinsey/Itasca’s ongoing attempts to remake the Minneapolis Public Schools.

More on that next, I promise.

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