Tag Archives: MinnCAN

Stakeholders, Start Your Engines: ESSA is Coming

July 14, 2016

On Tuesday, July 12, local ed reform group, MinnCAN, hosted a “stakeholder learning and planning event,” in connection to the federal government’s revamped education policy–the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). MinnCAN billed the session as a “chance to learn more about the possibilities under ESSA and hear about the priorities of local community leaders.” (I attended at the invitation of a friend.)

To host the event, MinnCAN presented a united reform front, partnering with Educators 4 ExcellenceStudents for Education Reform and Teach for America- Twin Cities-all national groups with admirable infrastructure and event-hosting budgets. This one–held inside the Minneapolis’s Sheraton Midtown hotel–included muffins and coffee, as well as a smattering of folks from the reform groups listed above, and also from the Minnesota Department of Education and various local political advocacy groups.

While there, I sat next to a friendly young man, who turned out to be a note-taking rep from MinnCAN’s parent company, 50CAN. Aside from a minor scuffle over VAM, or “Value-Added” teacher evaluations–which the 50CAN guy insisted were scientifically valid, and only “politically” unpopular, after I referred to VAM as “junk science“–things went smoothly. Here are some highlights:

Education What?

MinnCAN’s presentation was run by someone named Bill Porter, out of Portland, Oregon. Porter explained that he works for a group called “Education First,” and was brought to Minneapolis by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation.

The Joyce Foundation has a market-based reform rap sheet a mile long, with a list of grantees that include such hat-in-hand (not!) groups as LEE (TFA’s policy offshoot), Minnesota Comeback (sitting on a cool $35 million) and, sadly, the Education Writers Association. Goodbye, Fourth Estate!

Education First has a very attractive, easy to navigate website with lots of handy info. The ESSA bill, which passed in 2015, and is a long overdue rewrite of the toxic, NCLB law, is more than 1,000 pages long. The only person I know who has read it, in its entirety, is Louisiana blogger, Mercedes Schneider. Thus, it would be easy to conclude that Education First is providing a handy service to citizens by condensing the War and Peace-like ESSA into digestible, PowerPoint bites.

But, Education First is an advocacy organization, with a funder-pleasing point of view to sell. Putting that aside, the emphasis of Porter’s presentation was subtle–and focused mainly on “opportunities” for states, the oft-cited need for “stakeholder input” and so on.

Testng

  • Education First, through Porter, clearly supports ESSA’s continued insistence (fought for by Democrats, no less) that all children, in grades 3-8, must be given yearly standardized tests. During his presentation, Porter reminded the audience that states are still supposed to test 95 percent of their students, and he advised Minnesotans to “help ensure students ‘opt-in'” and not out, of testing. Part of the argument, Porter said, is to make it clear that the tests are providing “really rich data, and people shouldn’t have the option to just say they don’t care.”
  • Punishment? When questioned, Porter agreed that there are no known consequences for districts where less than 95 percent of students get tested. (The opt out option lives on!) However, it seems clear that the testing lobby, run mostly by Pearson, has won a victory with ESSA, since districts will still need to sit kids in front of computer screens or bubble sheets in order to prove every one of them is “succeeding.” (Here’s a look at what’s different about testing, for now, under ESSA.) 
  • John King Alert! (This did not come up in Porter’s presentation, but is quite important). ESSA supposedly provides some relief from testing (by allowing states more flexibility with how to use test results, etc.), BUT, United States Secretary of Education, John King, is currently working–through the attempted passage of “regulations” that would go along with ESSA–to force states to comply with the one-off, “summative” test-and-punish system that epitomized NCLB. Example: The language in proposed Regulation 200.15 (find it here) is quite authoritarian, and tries hard to insist that ALL students must be tested, or else. King also wants to judge schools on an A-F scale, according, primarily, to test scores. Disagree? You have until August 1 to read the regulations and comment on them. 

New Money for Teacher “Academies” 

  • Porter’s presentation introduced but did not dwell on this golden ticket, nestled within ESSA. Two percent of a state’s federal money can now flow to start-up teacher training sites, to fill those talent pipelines everyone is so crazy for, Until now, most teachers have had to get certified at an institution affiliated with a university of some sort. Now, this “monopoly” may be on its way out, according to the “elitist” Brookings Institution:

A less-noticed new provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) may be critical to unlocking business model innovation in teacher preparation.

  • Think of this as deregulation for the teacher licensure field (long a goal of the privatization-based reform movement). Under ESSA, states can divert federal, taxpayer money to “authorize new ‘teacher preparation academies,'” to be set up and run according to free market rules (or lack thereof). For example, according to the Brookings Institution:

…states that authorize these academies (will be required) to eliminate “unnecessary requirements” for state authorization, such as requiring that faculty hold advanced degrees or conduct academic research, that students complete a certain number of credit hours or sequence of coursework for graduation, or that preparation academies receive institutional accreditation from an accrediting body.

  • The idea for all of this reportedly came from the New Schools Venture Fund, a California-based “venture philanthropy firm” with a penchant for lavishing funds on such “innovators” as TFA, the Rocketship charter school chain, and Match Charter School. From the online journal Ed Week:

    The idea is a bit like the “charterization” of ed. schools. It’s the brainchild of folks at the New Schools Venture Fund, and it has in its mind’s eye programs like the Relay Graduate School of Education, the Match Teacher Residency, and Urban Teachers.

  • The lobbying group that fought for this provision (which debuted a few years ago, as the failed GREAT schools Act) is a collection of nine charter school-friendly groups such as TFA (they’re everywhere!), and the Relay and Match “charter-ready” teacher training programs. (Here’s a 2011 article on this “transformation,” from the New York Times.)

The slideshow Porter gave prompted some discussion and questioning, but was mostly absorbed without comment from the crowd. When he finished, Minnesota Department of Ed employee, Stephanie Graff, whose career path typifies TFA’s reach into policy making positions of power, gave more info about how the Gopher state would begin implementing ESSA with, again, the requisite “stakeholder” feedback.

One woman in the crowd asked for the materials on ESSA to be first translated into Minnesota’s “four major languages,” (which she did not specify)–so that parents could get themselves up to speed on the new law before attending a presentation on it.

This kind of exchange was the most “rigorous” of the day, with staffers from groups such as the Minnesota Education Equity Partnership pressing Graff, et al, to rethink their community engagement plans. Graff took the heat well, and promised to be easily accessible via email and phone. (Participants could, for example, help steer Minnesota towards a broader definition of what success looks like; the state could even choose to implement a pilot program in using alternative, performance-based assessments.)

The best moment for me came when a woman openly questioned ESSA’s emphasis on putting “highly effective” teachers in every classroom, based on student achievement (er, test score) gains. 

She asked if there Is any distinction made between “great” and “highly effective” teachers, before making this point: “Some teachers aren’t great on paper, but are very effective at reaching certain populations.”

Coupled with the continued testing and accountability fetish are dangerous provisions that will serve to diminish the quality of the teaching workforce in favor of a competitive teacher preparation market, whose graduates’ worth will be measured by their ability to raise student test scores, and little else. So although federal education policy now operates under a new name, in the ESSA we still have the same testing, conceived within the same neoliberal framework.

–Wayne Au and Jesslyn Hollar, “Opting Out of the Education Reform Industry

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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Minnesota Comeback: Nexus of Influence for School Board Race?

July 5, 2016

Will Minnesota Comeback play a starring role in Minneapolis’s 2016 school board race?

In Nashville and Indianapolis, Minnesota Comeback’s brothers-in-arms, known as “Nashville RISE” and “The Mind Trust,” have attempted to do just that, in their own cities’ elections. On June 16, education policy analyst, Andy Spears, wrote about this for his blog, Tennessee Education Report. In his posts, Spears tries to devise just who and what Nashville RISE is, and why they have jumped into the Metro Nashville School Board (MNSB) race. In so doing, he cites Minnesota Comeback and The Mind Trust as reference points. 

Must-read: “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools”

Quick overview: Nashville RISE, Minnesota Comeback and The Mind Trust are three of the twenty-four splinter groups–or “harbormasters“–under the wing of the Memphis-based reform outfit, Education CitiesEducation Cities is funded by the usual billionaire suspects, yet its overlord-like connection to all of these offshoots is not exactly well-known. Instead, each group–Minnesota Comeback included–maintains an image of homespun helpmate for their city’s ever-struggling public school systems. (Background on Minnesota Comeback can be found here.)

Nashville RISE has landed in some hot water lately, by trying to insert itself–in a less than transparent way–into Nashville’s school board race, according to Spears:

The involvement of Project Renaissance/Nashville RISE in this year’s MNPS school board races has been the source of a bit of controversy, from promoting (then deleting) an event with Stand for Children to a Phil Williams story raising questions about the source of funding and lack of disclosure.

As the Phil Williams story points out, Nashville RISE is incredibly well-funded, backed by money from philanthropic interests and by supporters of the charter school movement. Also backed by some donors who don’t want their identities revealed.

Nashville RISE has, among other things, produced slick video ads for its own forum on the Nashville school board race, with a promise that the group is all about building a “network of engaged parents” who will help advocate for high quality schools for all. Sounds great, as does Nashville RISE’s further mission of working to help schools “care for students and families holistically,” and so on.

But, as Spears’s blog posts point out, the group is aligned with Education Cities and its politically savvy funders, who must know that describing one’s mission as “holistic,” and “parent-driven” provides safe cover for other, more nefarious goals. Also, Nashville RISE is directly connected to Stand for Children–an organization whose transformation from legitimate advocacy group to mostly corrupted outlet for ALEC and Teach for America, et al, should serve as a warning for anyone tempted to fall for Nashville RISE’s flowery, pro-family rhetoric.

But why is Nashville RISE involved in that city’s school board race? And why might Minnesota Comeback attempt to wield influence in the 2016 Minneapolis race? 

Whitney Tilson

For answers, look no further than The Mind Trust. This Indianapolis-based group was featured in a May, 2016 American Prospect article called, “Hedging Education: How Hedge Funders Spurred the Pro-Charter Political Network.” In the article, writer Justin Miller describes how TFA alum and hedge fund success story, Whitney Tilson, started the pro-charter political action committee, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER):

Straight out of Harvard, Tilson deferred a consulting job in Boston to become one of Teach For America’s first employees in 1989. Ten years later, he started his own hedge fund in New York. Soon after that, Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp took him on a visit to a charter school in the South Bronx. It was an electrifying experience for him. “It was so clearly different and so impactful,” Tilson says. “Such a place of joy, but also rigor.”

When Tilson observed pushback on the growth of KIPP, a charter school chain often linked with the “no excuses” model, he rallied a cadre of like-minded hedge funders, and started DFER:

,,,Basically, if you were anybody who was anybody in hedge funds, you probably chipped in. Tilson called the group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and set it with a mission “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.”

Early on, DFER identified then-Senator Barack Obama and then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker as promising politicians willing to break with teachers unions. DFER was instrumental in convincing Obama to appoint charter-friendly Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan as secretary of education, and it spent a lot of time and money lobbying the administration to pursue reformist education policies like Race to the Top and Common Core. Tied to Obama’s coattails, DFER was now one of the most influential political players in the ascendant education-reform movement.

It’s not hard to believe that Tilson’s group, DFER, has had tremendous success shaping federal education policy. It has. But that’s not enough. Hedge funders don’t rest with one victory, or one successful fund. They want more. And so, Miller writes, DFER expanded:

As it found tremendous success at the federal level, DFER tried to maximize its newfound influence to leverage reform in local politics.

Here’s where Indianapolis comes in. Beginning in 2010-2011, as Miller notes, The Mind Trust used grant money to bring in “DFER, the advocacy group Stand For Children, and the network of political money that came with them.” With new political and hedge fund-fueled financial muscle, The Mind Trust helped flip the 2012 and 2014 Indianapolis school board races, stacking the board with hand-picked reform advocates, such as DFER national board member, Mary Ann Sullivan. Under the influence of DFER and its acolytes, the Indianapolis school board brought on a “friendly” superintendent, Lewis Ferebee, who has overseen the expansion of neoliberal education reform strategies. (Important note: Indianapolis, like Nashville and Minneapolis, is under the policy influence of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, or “CRPE.”) 

Outgoing Minneapolis Foundation head, Sandra Vargas, is the board chair of 50CAN

In 2011, the reform landscape shifted in Minneapolis, too, when the local RKMC Foundation, started by attorney Mike Ciresi, provided seed money to outside education reform outfits, such as Teach for America, Educators for Excellence, MinnCAN and SFER (Students for Education Reform). The RKMC Foundation, which is closely aligned with the Minneapolis Foundation and its market-based reform priorities, is also a strong supporter of Minnesota Comeback. (Amy Hertzel, McKinsey & Co. alum and former education policy person for the Minneapolis Foundation, is now a “Partner” at Education Cities.)

In 2012, just like in Indianapolis, Minneapolis saw the most money ever spent on its once-lowly, but suddenly high stakes, school board race. Teach for America alum and new Minneapolis resident, Josh Reimnitz, won a spot on the school board with a little help from well-connected friends. Here’s a taste of that simpler time, when a five-figure race (Reimnitz raised close to $40,000 in 2012) was considered extravagant and shocking:

An example of how the TFA network helped Reimnitz was an October fundraiser that raised about 15 percent of his campaign treasury. It was held at the Edina home of Matthew Kramer, TFA’s national president, who is married to a TFA alum who works for a group that promotes high-quality charter schools.

An independent expenditure of about $6,000 for a mailing sent by the political arm of New York-based school reform group 50CAN, for which Kramer is board chair, also drew complaints. It was the first school board donation by the young group, which has focused on legislative contests in the East.

–Minneapolis Star Tribune, November, 2012: “Minneapolis school election has national implications

Fast forward to 2014. Then, outside investors such as Michael Bloomberg and California venture capitalist and TFA board member, Arthur Rock, deluged the Minneapolis school board race with an eye-popping $250,000 in campaign funds. 

What can I do for you?

That money was funneled through a pop-up PAC, the “Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund,” led by TFA alum and MinnCAN boss, Daniel Sellers. (MinnCAN is a franchise of 50CAN, also started by East Coast hedge funders.) This fund famously backed two candidates (from afar, of course, thanks to Citizens United)–Don Samuels and Iris Altamirano–and attempted to defeat incumbent Rebecca Gagnon. 

In a 2014 interview, Sellers downplayed the mountain of outside money shadowing the race, saying the contributions from people like Bloomberg were nothing more than an “indication that they care about Minneapolis.” (Sellers is now the policy chair for Minnesota Comeback’s “coalition.”) 

The money helped land Samuels on the school board, but Gagnon made it anyway, while Altamirano did not. Perhaps that is why this year’s school board race has, thus far, been relatively quiet. Will investors squander more hard-earned, hedge fund dollars on the 2016 Minneapolis race, if their estimated ROI is minimal?

Enter Minnesota Comeback. This group, like its counterparts in Nashville and Indianapolis, has the bank account and political connections to make a big splash in this year’s race, albeit from a dignified, Citizens United distance (for a primer on how this is done, look to 2014). While no candidate forums appear to have been scheduled, yet, (unlike August 2014, when, for example, the dubious “People’s Forum” was held in Minneapolis), the first round of campaign finance reports for school board candidates is due on August 6.

Those reports should reveal which Minneapolis school board candidates are getting what money–asked for or not–from the cabal of DFER-like reformers in Minnesota and beyond.

Thus far, there is no real contest for the one citywide spot, which is likely to go to incumbent, Kim Ellison. Seats in districts 2, 4 and 6 are being contested, with incumbents Josh Reimnitz (4) and Tracine Asberry (6) running despite failing to secure the endorsement of Minneapolis’s Democratic party (both had said they would not run without this endorsement, but later entered the race at the last minute).

School board seats secured with reform resources could help Minnesota Comeback achieve its goal of bringing “30,000 rigorous and relevant seats” to Minneapolis by 2025. (The focus on “high quality seats” rather than students or schools is a popular Education Cities marketing pitch, perhaps meant for venture capitalist ears.) In an era of low funding and high expectations for public ed, anything seems possible. 

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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Parents United Says Goodbye and Good Luck

June 6, 2016

Who would have guessed that Muhammed Ali and local education advocate Mary Cecconi would have something in common? Ali, of course, died on June 3, at the age of 74. He is most fondly remembered, by many, as a true champion–of human rights, that is. More than just a swift pair of hands in the boxing ring, Ali was a radical advocate, or, as Dave Zirin put it in The Nation recently,

“What Muhammad Ali did—in a culture that worships sports and violence as well as a culture that idolizes black athletes while criminalizing black skin—was redefine what it meant to be tough and collectivize the very idea of courage.”

Mary Cecconi

How does this relate in any way to Mary Cecconi? Let me explain. On June 4, I sat in a crowded conference room at the Roseville, Minnesota library, listening to Cecconi give her final legislative session wrap-up, as head of the grassroots advocacy group, Parents United. 

Parents United began in St. Paul around 2002, as a way for parents to keep tabs on the important education funding and policy decisions made at the state capitol every year. Cecconi, a former Stillwater school board member, was asked to lead the organization a couple of years later. Since then, Cecconi has been a fighter in her own right–staying late at the Capitol, tracking legislators and breaking down complex info so that parents and other public school advocates can grasp it.

Here is Cecconi’s problem: she can’t be bought.

Parents United is a nonprofit, and for years received funding from local foundations and grants. About five years ago, that stopped. The foundations–I won’t name them, but anyone can search Parents United’s tax records and find their funders–began diverting their money directly to organizations, such as MinnCAN, that have an agenda–driven from the 1 percent on down–that the foundations agree with. Such as? Pushing for alternative licensure (seen by many as a door opener for Teach for America), clinging hard to test-based accountability measures, and advocating for “scholarships” (or, vouchers) as a method of privatizing preschool.

Side note: For an actual look at how far to the right education policy “groupthink” has swung in Minnesota, watch this brief video–compiled by one of my readers–from an April, 2016 “Almanac” show on PBS. And, consider this power couple: Republican House Education Finance Chair, Jenifer Loon, is married to Doug Loon, president of the MN Chamber of Commerce, whose legislative agenda for education sounds a lot like MinnCAN’s, and pairs well with the House’s recommendation for no new education funding this year.

What Parents United has offered, in contrast, is not an agenda but an exercise in civic engagement. Cecconi has always maintained that the needs and interests of parents are what drives her organization’s work; others may have wished her to take a stronger stand against the local market-based ed reform movement, but my sense is that Cecconi wasn’t comfortable in that role.

Education spending is the second largest state expenditure.

Long story short–Parents United is folding. When the foundation money dried up, the group tried to switch to a funding model that relied on fees for services (such as community engagement training sessions for school board members) and member support. It hasn’t been enough. The work Parents United does is high quality and labor intensive, and driven from the ground up. It is expensive and unsexy.

This is our collective loss. At yesterday’s farewell gathering, several people in the audience were near tears as they described the valuable role Parents United has served, in guiding many people–including state legislators–through the gnarled ins and outs of education policy. The two big sheet cakes at the back of the room–one with a school bus on it, the other with Parents United’s signature phrase, “Childhood has no rewind,” painted on it–sat mostly untouched as Parents United devotees mulled over the gaping hole that must now be filled by an as-yet unknown person or group.

Yes, but what does this have to do with Muhammed Ali? Forgive me, but in Cecconi and the work of Parents United, I see a similar spirit. Ali obviously faced a much different world, as an African-American man pigeon-holed as just a boxer, but his indomitable insistence on speaking truth to power resides in all kinds of non-spotlight seeking people, such as Cecconi. 

As her presentation yesterday was concluding, Cecconi made a simple statement: If you want education policy and spending to look different, then vote, and know who you are voting for.

That reminds me of something civil rights legend, John Lewis, posted on Twitter on June 4, in honor of Ali’s memory: 

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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Minneapolis Superintendent Search: A Direction Home?

May 24, 2016

There is one central question hanging over today’s expected announcement of Minneapolis’s next superintendent:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the reformiest of all?

Is it former Minneapolis administrator, Brenda Cassellius, who helped guide the district through its romance with McKinsey & Company consultants, back in the mid-2000’s? Cassellius is also cut from the same professional cloth–sewn by former superintendent Carol Johnson–as recent MPS administrators, Bernadeia Johnson and Michael Goar. 

This fact alone has scared off some potential supporters, who worry that Cassellius, as superintendent, will push Minneapolis further down the flash in the pan path of the market-based reform movement, where no shiny stone–or successful MPS department–has been left unturned. (Read my series on McKinsey’s influence on the Minneapolis schools for more info about this, starting here.)

Oddly, rumors are surfacing that the local reform glitterati (read the McKinsey series for names) are lining up behind Cassellius’s soft-spoken competitor, Anchorage superintendent, Ed Graff. Graff, if selected, is poised to either be a miraculous uniter, unknowingly aligning divided camps, or–some might hope–a blob of putty in the hands of Minnesota Comeback-like forces, who want to take apart and rebuild the Minneapolis schools in their own, highly proficient image. 

Cartoon by Stephanie McMillan

There can be no denying that Graff interviewed well. He was calm, cool, personable and actually had something of a vision for education. His focus has been on social-emotional learning, which sounds as refreshing as a warm day in Alaska. He smartly would not nod along to board member’s questions about student-based funding and autonomous schools, and instead offered grounded answers that implied he is not likely to be any plutocrat’s puppet. 

Cassellius has earned her marks, too. There must be a reason certain reformers–the kind who would like to convince us that alternative licensure is the burning issue of the day–do not want her in as head of the Minneapolis schools. Is she too savvy? Too familiar with their soulless data maps? Maybe she is the Carol Johnson protegé Minneapolis has been waiting for–the one who, like Graff, is not likely to fall for reform-minded shenanigans imposed on the district by outside political influences and agendas, propped up by hedge fund excesses.

Now that I think about it, either one of these candidates sounds pretty good. And it’s Bob Dylan’s birthday, too. 

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

–Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” 1965

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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MN Comeback Leapfrogs Democracy in Minneapolis

April 7. 2016

If there is any question about how deeply embedded the market-based reform group, MN Comeback, is within the Minneapolis Public Schools, a recent email from the district’s Human Capital director, Maggie Sullivan, should make the situation unmistakably clear.

Sullivan, who sits on a MN Comeback committee along with other MPS human resources employees, wrote the following message (condensed here) to district staff on April 6:

Good Morning Everyone!

I want to share some positive news.  We were just awarded $575k from Minnesota Comeback to fund the Minneapolis Residency Program.  This means that the program is now fully funded for next year so we will be able to continue with a second cohort of residents!  The Comeback is a movement of schools, funders and educational organizations developing a citywide plan to coordinate systems-level grants that improve K-12 education.

Way to go team!

This startling tidbit–that a private group with a distinct mission to disrupt, alter, and take students from the Minneapolis Public Schools–will now be fully funding the district’s own training program for future teachers of color should stop the presses. But it hasn’t.

Instead, Star Tribune education reporter Alejandra Matos spun out a MN Comeback article yesterday, in which the group’s efforts sound like something Mother Teresa might approve of.

Matos describes MN Comeback as simply a “group of foundations and business leaders,” intent on snuffing out the “achievement gap.” There is no mention of MN Comeback’s allegiance with the national reform group, Education Cities, and no deeper analysis of what their motives might be, beyond MN Comeback director Al Fan’s stated intentions:

“We envision a day when every child in Minneapolis regardless of their race, income or ZIP code has access to world-class schools,” said Al Fan, Minnesota Comeback’s executive director, in a statement. 

Fan’s description of MN Comeback strongly echoes Teach for America’s legendaryOne Dayslogan, which in turn strongly echoes the mission of the Walton Family Foundation, whose Walmart-fueled largesse funds both TFA and MN Comeback:

The foundation has invested more than $1 billion to date to improve all types of schools — traditional district, public charter and private — and to support innovative organizations that share a common goal: to give all families the ability to choose the best school for their child, regardless of their ZIP code. 

This all makes sense. Teach for America is deeply entwined in MN Comeback, as former TFA alum (including MinnCAN director Daniel Sellers and his wife, Stacy Strauss) and current TFA staff sit on the group’s numerous committees, helping its funders decide how to spend their money. Given Teach for America’s growing PR problems, that should give pause to anyone following this, or writing about it, or choosing to accept money from MN Comeback.

But MN Comeback is doing something great by funding Minneapolis’s burgeoning “Grow Your Own” program, right? Everyone agrees–rightfully so–that diversifying Minnesota’s teaching corps must be a priority. And, as Maggie Sullivan notes in Matos’s Star Tribune article, this initiative needs money:

“Without this funding we would not be able to run the program next year.”

The article makes no mention of the fact that, simultaneously, there is a bill moving through the Minnesota legislature for a statewide, publicly funded “Grow Your Own” program. It has broad support and is expected to pass and bring funding with it, as part of Governor Mark Dayton’s outlined education and racial equity priorities.

Minneapolis’s Grow Your Own program would surely benefit from this bill, without the infusion of money from MN Comeback. But this way, MN Comeback gets to leapfrog the democratic process, where elected representatives write bills and haggle over where taxpayer dollars should go. There is no oversight here. No elected rep to turn to. No publicly held meetings, recorded in excruciating detail. (One Minneapolis school board member, Rebecca Gagnon, has publicly questioned Minneapolis’s relationship with MN Comeback, to no avail thus far.)

There are questions to ask about who will ultimately own this program, if MN Comeback is paying for it. This group has said, numerous times, that their mission is to remake the Minneapolis schools, mostly through market-based reforms (competition, choice, the chase for higher test scores). And it wants to “expand the charter sector” in Minneapolis, bearing no special allegiance to the Minneapolis schools (so these trained teachers will be working where?).

Matos’s article states that MN Comeback will also help lobby for “nonconventional teacher prep programs,” a core mission shared by Teach for America and its affiliates, including Educators for Excellence and MinnCAN. This is a policy step favored by the market-based reform movement, often with the goal of making teachers more “outcome” oriented, and less steeped in meaningless educational “theory.” (“Nonconventional,” or alternative, licensure programs already receive a tremendous amount of lobbying support in MN.)

Paying for more Minneapolis staffers to become licensed teachers could be a red herring, giving MN Comeback the cover it needs to work behind the scenes, shaping Minneapolis into more of a portfolio, choice-saturated district (with a real estate kickback to boot, for investors). This is a function of our current plutocracy. Consider these excerpts, from a 2011 Alternet article, “Meet the Plutocrats Behind Attacks on Public Education”:

…billionaires, the Nation’s magazines Dana Goldstein suggests, may have a deeper reason for pushing their education vision, for insisting that putting “better” teachers into America’s classrooms can “completely overcome poverty.”

“If the United States could somehow guarantee poor people a fair shot at the American dream through shifting education policies alone, Goldstein observes, “then perhaps we wouldn’t have to feel so damn bad about inequality–about low tax rates and loopholes that benefit the super rich and prevent us from expanding access to child care and food stamps.”

MN Comeback may be paying for an important program, but what will they expect in return?

No grant, no guru, no outside funding source. My work is entirely funded by my very kind and generous readers. Thank you to those who have already donated!

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