Tag Archives: Minnesota Comeback

Minneapolis Public Schools “Ghosted” by 2040 City Plan

May 29, 2018

Will the Minneapolis Public Schools exist in the year 2040? Judging by the Minneapolis 2040 master plan, it won’t.

Minneapolis 2040 is a visioning document, designed to offer a planned-for picture of what the city will look like over the next 22 years (as part of the Met Council’s Thrive 2040 project). It has been in development since before 2014, and is now in the last stages of community input. By the end of 2018, the Minneapolis City Council will vote on the 2040 plan and the vision of Minneapolis it provides. After that, assuming the plan is accepted by the Council, it will be put into action via updates to the city’s zoning laws. 

The zoning laws will dictate how, exactly, Minneapolis will morph into the city depicted in the 2040 draft. (Zoning issues tend to really get people’s goat.) The vision is for a city with business nodes in multi-use neighborhoods, full of green space, access to transit, bike lanes, high density housing and…no schools, it would seem. A glance through the guiding principles and priorities behind the Minneapolis 2040 draft reveal virtually no mention of the city’s public education system, or education in general.

The six guiding values for the Minneapolis 2040 will hopefully lead to “An inspiring City growing in equity, health, and opportunity,” according to a 2018 City Planning Commission press release. Those six values center around growth (boosting Minneapolis’s population and its tax base); livability (safe, green, healthy neighborhoods with access to amenities); economic competitiveness (including private/public sector innovation); health; equity and racial justice; and “good government.”

These six values are expanded upon by a list of fourteen priorities, as identified by the Minneapolis City Council. The priorities offer more information about the values guiding the 2040 plan, but again make very little mention of public education and what role, if any, schools will play in this future version of Minneapolis.

The emphasis seems to be more on turning Minneapolis into a “city without children,” in the words of writer Benjamin Schwarz. (He attributes this push to a “bevy of trend-conscious city planners, opportunistic real-estate developers, municipal officials eager to grow their cities’ tax bases, and entrepreneurial urban gurus that ballyhoo the national renaissance of what inevitably gets described as the Vibrant Urban Neighborhood.”)

After the six guiding values and the fourteen priorities comes the ninety-seven (97!) goals of the 2040 draft plan. There is one goal that specifically touches on the importance of investing in children from birth to age 5, but beyond that…nothing.

9. Complete neighborhoods: In 2040, all Minneapolis residents will have access to employment, retail services, healthy food, parks, and other daily needs via walking, biking, and public transit.

–Goal nine from Minneapolis 2040

Where is the Minneapolis Public Schools?

Is the city of Minneapolis ghosting its own public school district? Why is there a minimal commitment to having schools in neighborhoods, or schools within walking distance of every family, as the plan spells out with parks? It is hard to imagine that this is simply an oversight, as the plan itself, and the Minneapolis 2040 website, is very thorough and full of a wealth of information, values and vision statements.

If Minneapolis is hoping for double-digit growth, and is planning for this growth with equity, racial justice and equal opportunity in mind, then where does education fit in? If our collective goal is to attract more residents, where should they send their children to school?

Image result for itasca project
Itasca Project, 2015: New York Times photo

It is important to consider that the Met Council is providing the overarching guidance for the 2040 plan. The Met Council has close ties to the Itasca Project, which helped fund an ill-fated  2007 reboot of the Minneapolis Public Schools via McKinsey and Co. consultants. In the Itasca Project worldview, education should be “aligned with employers’ workforce needs”—a questionable premise that undergirds neoliberal education reform policy around the world. 

Some would argue, of course, that education should serve communities and help support the dynamic, democratic foundation of our society—and not just train workers for the benefit of profit-minded, globally connected businesses. But the Minneapolis 2040 plan actually appears to have its roots not in local city planning priorities, but in a 2008 document produced by the Brookings Foundation.

Business-Driven City Planning

The document, called the Blueprint for American Prosperity, was crafted by the Brookings Foundation’s Metropolitan Policy Program. It is focused on “unleashing the potential of a metropolitan nation,” and argues that cities are the place to turn when looking for ways to keep the U.S. economy at the top of the increasingly competitive global rat race. The document is long and focuses a lot on the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of federal policies, and instead seems to position businesses and corporations as the rightful redesigners of American life.

This probably has to do with who is funding the nearly century-old Brookings Foundation these days. Among the usual suspects are the Gates and Walton Foundations, which both happen to be pretty in favor of market-based, union-free education reform.

The Blueprint also utilizes data from McKinsey and Co., a global consulting firm dedicated to increasing profits and worker efficiency around the world. (To be fair, they are also engaged in promoting “long-term” capitalism, which focuses on more sustainable growth and, theoretically, a broader sharing of wealth and resources.)

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, China and India have more than twice as many young professionals in fields including engineering, finance, and life sciences research as the United States. Nonetheless, only a fraction of those workers—about one in eight by McKinsey’s estimates—would make suitable candidates for employment with a multinational corporation.

Blueprint for American Prosperity (13)

The Blueprint is full of the same ideas as the Minneapolis 2040 plan, including the need for new zoning laws that prioritize higher density housing, transit needs, “vibrant neighborhoods,” less sprawl, and income inequality–but it comes at these from a business plan model, rather than a workers’ rights or family friendly angle.

That’s because it is a business plan model.

The following is from a website connected to Jon Commers, of the local Donjek strategic planning firm. Commers is also a St. Paul-based representative on the Met Council. (Commers’ company, Donjek, was hired to help guide and implement the Blueprint for the Twin Cities in 2009. In 2011, he was appointed to the Met Council.)

In 2009the Brookings Institution approached leaders in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region about a pilot initiative to apply a business planning approach to regional economic development. Partners including the Itasca Project, City of Minneapolis, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), Regional Council of Mayors, City of Saint Paul, Target Corporation, Urban Land Institute Minnesota, started an initiative to undertake business planning for the metro area’s regional economic development. Additional funders including the Minneapolis Foundation, Saint Paul Foundation and Wells Fargo Foundation have provided financial support to the project.

The Blueprint for American Prosperity was the Brookings Institution’s pilot program at the time. It later showed up in a resolution put forth by then-Minneapolis City Council member, Elizabeth Glidden. The resolution includes this clause: 

Whereas, the need for regional cooperation and leadership by public and
private entities in the area of economic development has been highlighted by the
Itasca project and the Brookings Institutions’ Blueprint for American Prosperity;  

The Met Council, of course, also played a role in the largely taxpayer-funded creation of the new U.S. Bank Stadium, a project that has helped direct tax dollars and resources away from public education. And the funders of the Blueprint initiative that led to the Minneapolis 2040 plan—including the Minneapolis Foundation—have been key supporters of the spread of local school choice schemes at the expense of public education.

I have reached out to Minneapolis city planning officials for more information on the role of schools in the 2040 plan. When I receive a response, I will add it here.

If leaving the schools out of a master vision for Minneapolis’s growth was purposeful, then to what end?

This fall, three new charter high schools will open in Minneapolis. Two will likely struggle to survive (Northeast Polytech; The Studio School), in the competitive pursuit of students (students bring funding). One, the Hiawatha Academy High School in the Seward neighborhood, will be buoyed by philanthropic dollars, including investment from the Walton Family Foundation (Wal-Mart dollars) and from local, wealthy supporters of market-based education reform, including the folks behind Minnesota Comeback.

The school will likely pull students from Minneapolis’s Roosevelt High, a burgeoning, diverse school with urban farming classes, a Heritage Spanish program, IB classes with a career and tech education focus and…seats to fill. In a competitive, market-based school choice landscape, there will be winners and losers.

Schools? No, School Choice

Minnesota Comeback, as I have documented, is a local “harbormaster” in the national, Education Cities network. Both Education Cities and Minnesota Comeback enjoy financial support from very wealthy individuals and foundations, including, locally, the Minneapolis Foundation (where Minnesota Comeback was reportedly “incubated.”

The group, run by former General Mills marketing director Al Fan, maintains a “sector agnostic” vantage point. Instead of just supporting the growth of charter schools, the organization says it supports “high performing” seats in schools of any shape—public, charter, private or religious.

This is a district-less vision for the future of education in Minneapolis, where neighborhoods and community schools do not particularly matter. Rather than a robust, philanthropist-driven embrace of the concept of public education (that it is a cornerstone of our democracy and a public entity worth supporting, for example), Minnesota Comeback’s ideology revolves around a partially privatized system of individual choice. 

A May 25 post on Minnesota Comeback’s Facebook page illustrates this very concept. The children are our future, the post claims, and right now, according to Minnesota Comeback’s standardized test-based calculations, “only 4,300” of Minneapolis’s 30,000 plus students attend a “high-performing” school. The solution, in Minnesota Comeback’s view? Embrace the scattered playing field of the school choice market.

Their Facebook post advises just that. It lists twelve schools that “do well by students underserved” and have space available for the upcoming school year. Seven are charter schools with mostly segregated populations. One of those charter schools, Nompeng Academy, hasn’t even opened its doors yet, but is still being sold as a high performer, based on its affiliation with an existing charter school in Brooklyn Park.

One commenter on the Facebook post plaintively asked why the FAIR school in downtown Minneapolis did not make the list of recommended schools. In response, Minnesota Comeback has this to offer:

For a school to be high performing, proficiency OR growth needs to be at/above the state average. In instances where a lot of high school students opt out of the MCA, we look at the school’s average ACT score – we consider 21.0 (or above) high performing because colleges and universities consider 21 “college ready.”

This is a game we can’t win. MCA and ACT test scores play a huge role in segregating not only charter schools, but also public schools and colleges. Fixating on them as the determinant of quality fits exactly into the rapid push to privatize America’s public school system, as detailed in a recent Talking Points Memo series called “The Hidden History of the Privatization of Everything.”

Since 2000, the testing market has roughly tripled in size, to nearly $4 billion a year, with annual achievement tests spawning a range of more frequent tracking assessments. As testing has flourished, more and more functions of the school publishing industry the have fallen into fewer and fewer hands. In 1988, ten publishers shared 70 percent of the textbook market. Today, the “Big Three” —McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the juggernaut Pearson—control at least 85 percent of the market. These lucky few have since expanded their offerings; Pearson hawks everything from student data trackers to online credit-recovery courses to ADHD diagnostic kits.

Take a look at one of the charter schools featured in the Minnesota Comeback Facebook post. Hennepin Elementary School is a small charter school in south Minneapolis, with 338 students; ninety percent are black, ten percent are Latino. Ninety-six percent live in poverty, according to federal standards.

Although Hennepin Elementary’s test scores are not exactly “beating the odds,” as market-based reform purveyors like to say, it sure is trying. The school gives its young charges “double sessions of reading and math on a daily basis” and tests all kids, even kindergarteners, on multiple occasions throughout the school year. According to a school testing calendar, kids are tested and retested on a continuous cycle.

Is there any public, charter or private school in the metro area with a majority white population that is built around constant testing and test prep? Would any wealthy funder of Minnesota Comeback send their own child to a school that doubles down on math and reading, the two most tested subjects? Perhaps not.

The Shrinking Minneapolis Schools

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Public Schools is set to embark on another round of challenging conversations about the district’s “footprint,” as Superintendent Ed Graff has repeatedly said. The district is $33 million in the hole for the upcoming school year. It has seven high schools. Three of them are near or over capacity (South, Southwest, Washburn), while four are under-filled (North, Edison, Henry and Roosevelt). Then, there are the smaller, alternative high school programs run by the district, including Wellstone International, Heritage and FAIR school.

That’s a lot of seats to fill. There are also finances to think about. The expansion of school choice as the solution to education issues means that one pot of money–the per-pupil, general education funds provided by the state–is getting sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. Thanks to state law, districts like Minneapolis must pay the lion’s share of both transportation and special education services that charter schools provide—with no oversight over how the money is being spent.

So how do public schools fit into the Minneapolis 2040 plan? And why have they been seemingly excluded thus far? 

The last community engagement session for the 2040 plan is being held on May 31 at Powderhorn Recreation Center from 5:30-8:00 p.m. 

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If there is hope for a renewal of our belief in public institutions and a common good, it may reside in the public schools. 

–Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Have We Lost Sight of the Promise of Public Schools?”

Minnesota’s Charter Schools Suspend Kids of Color, Too

March 27, 2018

Linda Brown died on March 25 at age 75. As I read through memorials about her life and her role in the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, I was struck by this

In 1979 Linda Brown—who was now a mother with her own children in Topeka schools—became a plaintiff in a resurrected version of the Brown v. Board case that sued Topeka schools for not following through with desegregation.

Linda Brown; AP Photo

This 1979 lawsuit was not settled until 1993, when a judge finally approved a desegregation plan for the Topeka schools. I hadn’t realized before how powerful Brown was, nor how long she had fought for equal access to integrated, well resourced schools. 

I wonder what she would think of our charter school landscape today. In Minnesota, home of bipartisan school choice legislation, we are facing a significant but little acknowledged problem:

Students of color who attend racially and economically isolated charter schools are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than their white peers.

This problem has actually been widely acknowledged—when these students of color attend public schools. A March 18 article in the New York Times, by Erica L. Green, took a long look at discipline rates in Minnesota’s public schools, with a special emphasis on racial disparities in the Minneapolis Public Schools. “Why are Black Students Punished So Often?” the article’s headline asked, before pointing to Minnesota as a central case study.

Green’s article is on target. She uses data and anecdotal evidence to highlight the higher numbers of push outs and suspensions black and Native students receive in our public schools. “It is a reality that district leaders here have been grappling with for years: The Minneapolis school district suspends an inordinate number of black students compared with white ones, and it is struggling to figure out why,” Green writes, before dropping this statistic:

Last year, districtwide, black students were 41 percent of the overall student population, but made up 76 percent of the suspensions.

But what Green’s article does not cover at all is this: the highest school suspension and expulsion rates for students of color can often be found in the Twin Cities’ ever-expanding landscape of highly segregated charter schools.

In fact, some of the local charter school networks with the highest discipline rates have long enjoyed reputations as “beat the odds” schools that supposedly serve students of color better than the Minneapolis Public Schools.

First, a data dive overview.

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) collects statistics on student discipline rates (called incident reports) for all of Minnesota’s public and charter schools. Only suspensions, expulsions and exclusions (a shorter term expulsion, as I understand it) are included in the state’s discipline data.

The Minneapolis Public Schools also keeps track of student discipline incidents, thanks to a publicly accessible “data dashboard.” Unlike MDE’s more limited reporting, the Minneapolis schools provide a wealth of information. All discipline incidents are reported for every site in the MPS system, from the more extreme suspensions, expulsions and referrals to law enforcement, to the milder “Other” category that may include phone calls home to parents or guardians.

The MPS data dashboard allows interested citizens to drill down on a per-school basis, seeing how many students at any school site were disciplined in a given year (going back to 2013-2014). One can find out how many special education or advanced learners were disciplined, for example, or how many Native, African-American or white students were cited.

It is also possible to pick up another important but often overlooked discipline data point: one student may be responsible for multiple discipline incidents. This is an intense level of disaggregated data that allows for a higher level of public scrutiny and oversight.

There is no comparable data dashboard for charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. Instead, to find out what is happening with discipline in charter schools, it is necessary to use the state’s more limited data reporting system. Simply put, there is less public information regarding what happens to students in charter schools.

Some Startling Charter School Examples

Eric Mahmoud has run the Harvest Network of charter schools for many years now. His portfolio of schools, all on Minneapolis’s northside, has expanded to include a small list of very segregated K-5 and K-8 schools. A banner on the network’s website promises that “College Starts Here!” But discipline rates for the network’s students of color are off the charts. 

Take the Mastery School. This K-5 Harvest Network school is praised on its website for having small class sizes as well as an “African American focus.” It has just over 150 students. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, 95 percent of Mastery’s students identify as black. 81 percent live in poverty.

In 2016-2017, the school reported 85 discipline incidents to the Minnesota Department of Education. That adds up to an incredibly high discipline rate of around 55 percent.

All of the discipline violations at The Mastery School were directed at the school’s majority black population. Similarly, Harvest Prep, a K-4 site in the Harvest Network, has just over 260 students. It reported 83 discipline incidents in 2016-2017. 79 of those went to black students, who make up 95 percent of Harvest Prep’s population. (90 percent of Harvest Prep students live in poverty, according to MDE.)

Keep in mind, these are young, elementary school students being suspended or expelled.

The Harvest Network has deep ties to Minnesota’s philanthropist community, with venture capitalist and charter school champion, Ben Whitney, acting as vice chair of the network’s board of directors. Whitney is also a prominent member of Minnesota Comeback, the local education reform outfit with national ties that is funded by philanthropic heavy-hitters including the Walton Foundation of Wal-Mart fame.

It seems fair to ask: What exactly are charter school funders and board members supporting?

KIPP School

KIPP is a charter school that operates out of a former Minneapolis Public Schools building in the very northern corner of the city. It currently serves 337 students in a range of grades, including K-2 and 5-8 (with plans to add grades 3 and 4, according to the school’s website). State records show that 92 percent of KIPP’s students live in poverty and 96 percent are listed as Black/African American.

Four students in the school are white although it sits in Minneapolis’s Shingle Creek neighborhood, which is 41 percent white.

In 2016-2017, 80 discipline incidents were reported to the state by KIPP. That is a suspension rate of just under 25 percent, given the school’s total population of 337 students. That is more than double the rate of the Minneapolis Public Schools. According to MDE data, 100 percent of the discipline incidents at KIPP were directed at black students.

For a more relevant comparison, consider Minneapolis’s Bethune Elementary School. Like KIPP, it is located in north Minneapolis and serves a majority black population, with 95 percent of its students living in poverty. In 2016-2017, Bethune reported five suspensions—nowhere near the 80 serious discipline incidents KIPP reported.

KIPP, it must be pointed out, is part of a national network of charter schools with close local and national ties to Teach for America. It enjoys tremendous, bipartisan political and philanthropic support here as a “gap-closing” alternative to traditional public schools.

Notably, Cam Winton, policy advocate for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, sits on KIPP’s board, as do many others with ties to corporate entities such as 3M and General Mills. KIPP is also listed as one of the “Team Members” for Minnesota Comeback, the reform outfit that would like to create “30,000 rigorous and relevant seats” for Minneapolis kids, using a “sector agnostic” framework.

Again. What are these high-profile, right-leaning civic and political leaders supporting via charter schools like KIPP?

Hiawatha Academies, Too

Hiawatha Academies is another philanthropist supported charter school network. While KIPP serves a majority of black students, Hiawatha’s student population—spread out at the elementary and middle school levels, with a new high school set to open in the fall of 2018—is mostly Hispanic (89 percent of students).

In 2016-2017, Hiawatha Academies reported 169 discipline incidents to the state. Of those, 47 were doled out to black students and 127 went to Hispanic kids. (A handful went to the school’s small populations of white and Native students.)

Hiawatha Academies, which is another “beat the odds” partner for Minnesota Comeback, serves around 1,200 students. It’s discipline rate is higher (14 percent) than that of the Minneapolis Public Schools (10 percent), particularly for Hispanic and black students.

There’s More

Even charter schools without ties to corporate supporters or wealthy philanthropists tend to discipline their students at high rates—when those students are kids of color who live in poverty.

Example: Sojourner Truth Academy is a Pre-K-8 charter school in north Minneapolis. It’s been around since 1999, and, according to its website, the school’s mission is to “prepare children for the future by building confidence and a strong sense of self-worth through small classrooms and an open, safe, family-like environment.” State records show that 96 percent of the school’s 379 students live in poverty and 99 percent are students of color.

In 2016-2017, Sojourner Truth Academy had 173 discipline incidents worthy of either suspension or expulsion. That is a rate of nearly 50 percent.

Two of the worst offenders

Prairie Seeds Academy is a K-12 charter school in Brooklyn Park, just across the border from north Minneapolis. In 2017, the school tallied 769 students. 64 percent are Asian, its largest demographic group. 77 percent of all students live in poverty. In the 2016-2017 school year, Prairie Seeds Academy racked up 277 discipline incidents. 

The vast majority of those incidents (172) went to black students. Considering there were only 165 black students at the school in 2016-2017, that number is astoundingly high. 

The Minnesota Transitions Charter School network, based in Minneapolis, serves a wide variety of students (online, in school, sobriety high school) in a diverse collection of small charter schools. The network’s total population in 2016-2017 was just over 3200 students; 60 percent were white.

Minnesota Transitions Charter Schools reported 310 discipline incidents in 2016-2017. Eighty percent—or 248—of those incidents were handed out to black students, who make up 21 percent of the school’s population. The school’s white students accounted for 14 discipline marks.

What about segregated white charter schools?

Local charter schools that serve mostly white students have nearly non-existent discipline rates. Twin Cities German Immersion and Nova Classical Academy—two St. Paul-based charters with virtually all white student bodies—had so few incidents to report in 2016-2017 that there is no state data available for the schools.

Great River Montessori, another mostly white, middle class charter based in St. Paul, reported only 14 discipline incidents in 2016-2017 for a student population of around 300.

Minneapolis Schools: A complicated picture

Majority white charter schools have very low, mostly statistically insignificant discipline rates.  Majority white Minneapolis Public Schools sites are the same. I can’t find any suspension or discipline incidents to speak of when I look at data from Minneapolis’s Lake Harriet Lower School, a K-4 site where 85 percent of students are white and 6 percent live in poverty, according to federal guidelines.

Burroughs Elementary, another southwest Minneapolis K-5 site with a majority white population (75 percent) had a handful of discipline incidents (but no suspensions) last year. The majority involved white students. Dowling Elementary, a fairly well-integrated Minneapolis school near the Mississippi River, had a student population of 499 last year, and racked up just one suspension.

However, Minneapolis’s Hall International Elementary School (a Pre-K-5 MPS site in north Minneapolis) has some troubling statistics. 93 percent pf the school’s population is students of color. 93 percent live in poverty. The school had 43 suspensions in 2016-2017. 41 of those went to African-American students.

Separate and Unequal Schools

What is the pattern here? Wherever there are highly segregated schools made up of marginalized students of color, discipline incident rates tend to be very high—even when the students involved are quite young. This goes for public schools and charter schools, including those sites celebrated for “outperforming” the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Does this mean that students of color who live in poverty behave poorly, as some noxious commentators have recently suggested? Does it mean that all schools–public or charter–that serve segregated, non-white populations are poorly managed or staffed by teachers who, as a Minneapolis schools administrator states in Green’s New York Times article, “only see” black (or Native) children when there’s trouble?

The data doesn’t tell us any of this. It does tell us that charter schools full of vulnerable students—students in crisis, living in poverty, or bearing the worst of America’s racist and classist legacies—have discipline rates equal to or often greater than that of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

This should tell us that school choice schemes have not solved the problem of separate, segregated and very unequal schools.

Rest in power, Linda Brown.

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Minneapolis Teachers Rally as Reform Battle Lines Get Drawn

February 14, 2018

If education reform is a political game, and it is, then it looks like the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) is winning. Here’s why.

On February 13, the union held an informational picket line, meant to rally members and raise public awareness of the issues MFT says it is fighting for. That includes clean buildings, less testing, and smaller class sizes. 1,000 people showed up to walk the picket line in freezing, late afternoon temperatures. They hoisted signs and banged on drums while passing vehicles honked and waved in support. 

Whatever you think of union politics, it was an impressive show of force. Once the picket line ended, the action moved inside the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Davis Center headquarters, where a regularly scheduled school board meeting was getting underway. The spotless front entryway of the building, with its walls dotted in elementary school kids’ colorful art, was so packed with union supporters that elbow room was impossible to come by.

With boot-clad feet stamping the floor, a chant of “We are the union, the mighty, mighty union” took shape before teachers, kids, parents and community members marched through the school board room. The mood was unmistakably buoyant.

It comes amid contract negotiations between MFT and the Minneapolis schools. According to a Star Tribune article, the district would like to hold mediation sessions over typical business items such as wages and benefits. Across the table, however, the union, like its counterpart in St. Paul, is attempting to use its contract as a way to advocate for the “schools Minneapolis kids deserve.” Labor laws in the United States favor management on this one, with precedent given to restricting union negotiations to boilerplate contract issues. 

But there is a growing trend of labor groups embracing “social justice unionism,” where the contract becomes a way to reframe the failure narrative dogging public schools. In cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, St. Paul, and now, Minneapolis, this movement has pushed back against the plutocrat supported assumption that schools and teachers are failing kids.

Reformers Rally Too

On February 7, almost one week before the MFT rally drew one thousand supporters, the local education reform outfit, Minnesota Comeback, held their own rally at Minneapolis’s Capri Theater. This was billed as a quarterly gathering for the group’s community members and was a much more sparsely attended, subdued affair than MFT’s more celebratory one.

It may be because the intended audience was much different. A handful of politicians, including St. Paul state legislator, Carlos Mariani and state auditor hopeful, Jon Tollefson, were there, along with a few people who identified themselves as charter school parents. Al Fan, director of Minnesota Comeback, started the gathering off by identifying his organization’s goals.

“We want to triple the number of students enrolled in proven schools by 2022,” Fan promised, before noting that this does not include “every kid.” This seems to imply that, although Minnesota Comeback is funded by some of Minnesota’s wealthiest individuals and foundations,  its official position is that some kids will simply be left behind. 

This is the root of the kind of market-based, “sector agnostic” approach to education reform that Minnesota Comeback represents, especially given its ties to the national, billionaire-funded group, Education Cities. Their “theory of change” is that schools fail kids, not a society grossly hamstrung by racial and economic inequality. Throwing philanthropic dollars around, as Minnesota Comeback does, is increasingly seen as justification for capitalism’s excesses and, many argue, does little to address the complex historic and current problems that hold some kids and schools back.

Rather than fighting for an increase in minimum wage for all, as both the St. Paul and Minneapolis teachers unions have done, for example, Minnesota Comeback talks about “schools as the unit of change,” where the lucky will land–through the wonders of school choice–in the right kind of life-altering spot. 

Nuance. We Need Nuance!

Shavar Jeffries

This is the perspective that Shavar Jeffries, a former candidate for mayor of Newark, New Jersey, brought to the February 7 Minnesota Comeback event. After Al Fan left the stage, and Carlos Mariani had a turn talking about the need for “nuance” in education policy, Jeffries stepped up to share his story. (If you want to know more about the complexities of Newark and education reform, read The Prize.)

It is a compelling one. Jeffries has overcome a lot, as a child of Newark’s South Ward. His mother was murdered when he was just ten, and his father was not part of his life. Thankfully, as he pointed out, his grandmother steered him towards the Boys and Girls Club of Newark, where he was encouraged to apply for a scholarship to a prestigious local private school. Once there, he soared, and eventually graduated from Columbia Law School. 

After returning to Newark and helping to set up a KIPP charter school, which Jeffries said his own kids now attend, he has gone on to become a partner in a law firm. He is also the current president of the once-prominent group, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). This group’s influence reached its zenith with the Obama administration, when Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, proved willing to embrace DFER’s Wall Street-funded goals of promoting school choice, blocking the power of teachers unions and otherwise carrying water for elite interests.

From a 2008 DFER press release:

So what should we make of Mr. Duncan? One promising clue comes from a group called Democrats for Education Reform, part of the growing voice for reform in the party. DFER is known to cheer Democrats brave enough to support charter schools and other methods of extending options to parents. Joe Williams, the group’s executive director, predicted that Mr. Duncan will help break the “ideological and political gridlock to promote new, innovative and experimental ideas.”

Former DFER director, Joe Williams, is now in charge of the Walton Education Coalition, a reform advocacy fund worth $1 billion. Under Williams, and now Jeffries, DFER has been particularly anxious to portray itself as purveyors of “progressive, bold education reform.” Jeffries said this work includes promoting both district and charter schools in places like Denver, and fighting against “bad actors” in the charter sector–a move that would seem essential today, given the growing stories about corruption and scandal in these publicly funded, privately run “schools of choice.”

Jeffries made many salient points about America’s racist past and present, saying we are “still dealing” with the idea that people of color are not as smart as white people. White supremacy is a problematic framework in education, Jeffries insisted, before picking up on a theme common in Minnesota Comeback’s promotional materials: schools today need to be “rigorous and relevant.”

Fragile Political Capital

The conversation took an interesting turn when Jeffries, who was later joined on stage by Mariani for a question and answer session, talked about how “fragile” political capital is right now for groups like DFER, especially, undoubtedly, in the accountability-free world of Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. (Jeffries has publicly distanced himself from DeVos and her zealous approach to education reform.)

Jeffries then waded into the “unions vs. reformers” squall by saying DFER bore no “categorical opposition to labor.” However, he noted, unions are part of crafting a “scary narrative,” by saying reform groups like DFER and Minnesota Comeback are just “corporate” and affiliated with hedge funds. Which, of course, they are. Both Minnesota Comeback and DFER, especially under Jeffries, have taken pains to call out white supremacy and its impact on public education, yet they are very quick to defend their ties to the purse strings of very wealthy, very elite, powerful people and institutions.

“What they do is, they try to demonize us,” Jeffries said of unions, drawing supportive claps from many in attendance. Mariani, who is also part of the Minnesota Education Equity Partnership, answered Jeffries, saying, “We need to fight against fear tactics and keep the public informed.” 

“I’m a kid from the hood who got an opportunity,” Jeffries later said. “There is no one behind the curtain.”

It’s hard to square this, though, with Jeffries’ other insights. He repeated later that “white supremacy must be dismantled,” yet he said he “loves Teach for America”–a politically powerful reform outfit heavily funded, again, by billionaire investors. In a later conversation, Jeffries also said he supports standardized testing over “five million teachers doing their own thing,” which would seem to be at odds with his belief that schools need to celebrate and uphold marginalized students.

Later, Jeffries was called upon by state auditor candidate, Jon Tollefson, who has been endorsed by the supposedly progressive group, Our Revolution, to provide info on how to “blunt the ‘oh, they’re just corporate reformers'” message. (Tollefson is married to Josh Crosson of the local reform group, Ed Allies.)

Tollefson said a friend of his, Anthony Hernandez, is running for a seat in the legislature. Hernandez has been “attacked by the so-called left,” Tollefson insisted, for being a charter school teacher and member of (yet another billionaire-backed reform group), Educators for Excellence. All Hernandez is doing, Tollefson insisted, is “running to make sure we get good schools for all kids.”

Jeffries kicked his message into high gear then, telling the audience that “we gotta smack our opponents around if they won’t stop.” Get “validators,” he advised, to help spread the reform message. He then noted that DFER can help: “We have a whole political team that can provide support.” Yes, DFER does, as the Center for Media and Democracy noted in 2016:

At first glance, “Democrats for Education Reform” (DFER) may sound like a generic advocacy group, but a closer review of its financial filings and activities shows how it uses local branding to help throw the voice of huge Wall Street players and other corporate interests from out-of-state.

DFER is actually the more well known PAC arm of Education Reform Now, Inc. (ERN), a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit, and Education Reform Now Advocacy, Inc. (ERNA), a 501(c)(4) social welfare group. Their acronym not only sounds like the word “earn,” but also it has the backing of some really huge earners.

DFER co-founder (and founder of the T2 Partners hedge fund) Whitney Tilson explained the hedge funders interest in education noting that “Hedge funds are always looking for ways to turn a small amount of capital into a large amount of capital.

This is the kind of group Minnesota Comeback has aligned itself with, while taking great pains to present itself as acting only on behalf of the needs of under-served students. Get those kids–well, some of them, anyway–into a “proven” school, with teachers who believe enough to make them succeed, and things will work out. (Especially if these schools are beset with the latest education innovations, such as tech-driven “personalized learning”–the kind that venture capitalists love to invest in.) 

Or maybe, as the Minneapolis teachers union has insisted, the conversation should turn towards the kind of conditions kids today are living in, with a bottoming out of public support for their families and schools. Judging by the throngs of teachers and parents who walked the informational picket on February 13, their message might just be catching on. 

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Minneapolis Public Schools Administrator Runs a Side School Choice Consulting Business

January 16, 2018

When it comes to declining student enrollment for the Minneapolis Public Schools, it looks like the fox may be guarding the hen house. 

Bryan Fleming

Bryan Fleming, who has served as Director of Enrollment Management for the Minneapolis schools since 2016, runs a side consulting business that offers “School-placement Advising for families and family law practitioners.” Fleming’s side gig bears his name–Fleming Education Group–but no mention of his role as a current employee of the Minneapolis Public Schools. His bio simply states that he is a “former educator and school administrator.” 

Fleming may be collecting an undoubtedly generous, taxpayer-funded salary from the Minneapolis schools, but that doesn’t appear to have made him a champion of public schools. Instead, the consulting company that bears his name offers this note for prospective clients:

Fleming Education Group helps clients manage their fears and anxiety about educational options, and strive for child-centered solutions in every instance. We know how to broaden a family’s school-choice lens in a productive, efficient way to achieve the outcomes that will maximize their child’s promise.

“Broadening a family’s school-choice lens” is an interesting position to take for someone employed by a pubic school district–particularly one that is struggling to stay afloat amid the endless proliferation of school choice schemes. But the Fleming Education Group is clearly targeted to families with choices, the kind that can easily walk away from a school they deem unworthy or unfit for their children. 

Need proof? Just read through the blog post currently up on the Fleming Education Group website. Called “Debunking ‘Private–Why a Private School?’,” the post is a declaration of love for exclusive private schools. The blog post, part of a series called “Thoughts by Bryan,” offers Fleming’s thoughts on the value of a private education–and the freedom these schools enjoy by “admitting only those students appropriate to the mission.”

Here are the first four paragraphs of the  Fleming Education Group’s blog:

Those of us with children in private schools have chosen our school for many important reasons, one of which may be that it is an independent, or “private,” school. Yet when family, friends and neighbors ask, “Why do you send your student to a private school?” many of us find it difficult to articulate the answer.

Our difficulty may stem, in part, from the fact that we chose our private school for many intangible reasons that are hard to put into words. And sometimes we might be concerned that our answer will trigger a debate about the merits of public versus private school.

At Fleming Education Group, our client families pose this question more often than not. I want to help make answering “why a private school?” in general, and “why Breck, SPA, Blake, Minnehaha Academy, International School or Providence Academy?” in particular easier for anyone exploring school-placement options.

Especially here in the Twin Cities where there are so many excellent, non-private school options (Eden Prairie, Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Orono, Wayzata and many more), it’s important to focus on understanding the value of independence, as this is truly one of the things that can make private-independent schools worth the investment.

This is jaw-dropping. The Minneapolis Public Schools’ own Director of Enrollment Management runs (according to his LinkedIn page) a side business built around steering families into private schools. The “many excellent, non-private school options” Fleming’s post mentions does not even include the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

Fleming is  a full-time employee of the Minneapolis schools. As I understand it, full-time employees of the district are not allowed to operate side consulting gigs that directly conflict their paid employment with the district. At the very least, the district has a “conflict of interest” policy.

This came to a head in 2016 when Associate Superintendent, Lucilla Davila, was placed on leave for her involvement in a business that provides after-school programming. Davila was reinstated in January, 2017 although she is now listed as being part of another side consulting business, Global Immersion Network Consultants (GINC), with a very similar-sounding, educational mission to that of the Minneapolis Public Schools’ Multilingual Department.

Fleming was the Director of Admissions for the prestigious Blake School from 2000-2014. He then took a short turn as an employee of the Bush Foundation, a key, local philanthropic group that has been very supportive of market-based education reform efforts. In 2014, the Bush Foundation gave a $200,000 grant to the Education Transformation Initiative. This is very important to keep in mind here.

The Education Transformation Initiative became Minnesota Comeback, according to a 2016 press release from Minnesota Comeback:

Incubated by The Minneapolis Foundation as the Education Transformation Initiative, MN Comeback is an independent nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis.

Minnesota Comeback is a local group with ties to a national, billionaire-funded reform outfit called Education Cities. Education Cities’ mission, carried forward locally by Minnesota Comeback, is to spread school choice and facilitate the growth of charter schools, under the guise of a “sector neutral” preference for “High Quality Seats.” They want seats as opposed to schools  because “seats” open the door to investors (in education technology, for example) that traditional, union-staffed public schools might not.

The charter schools being given funding, PR and “growth opportunities” by Minnesota Comeback and their supporters need students from the Minneapolis Public Schools in order to survive and further weaken the district. (A district, weakened by design through chaos, reduced funding and poor management, for example, is a boon to charter school operators.)

Enter Bryan Fleming. As Director of Enrollment Management for the Minneapolis schools, he has key insight into what families want from the Minneapolis schools and what their reasons are for leaving the district. He appears to have a side business that promotes school choice and indicates a clear preference for the greener grass at fancy private schools while the Minneapolis Public Schools struggles with shrinking enrollment and the accompanying loss of funding.

If this isn’t a conflict of interest, then what is?

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Minnesota Governor “Disrupts” Right-Wing Education Reformers

May 22, 2017

In the middle of a stormy legislative session, which is careening to a close at midnight tonight, Minnesota’s Governor, Mark Dayton, has thrown two clear lifelines to public education supporters across the state.

First, on May 18, Dayton took a bold swipe at a shifty, right-wing aligned overhaul of the state’s teacher licensure laws, called HF 140. Citing concern over the proposal’s lack of dedicated funding support, as well as doubts over the tiered approach to licensure offered in the bill, Dayton vetoed HF 140 and sent those supporting it back to the drawing board. “The move came as a shock to Republicans,” the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported, “who argued the bill was a bipartisan improvement to the often-criticized current system.”

The Republicans–at least, the publicly identified ones–weren’t the only ones shocked over Dayton’s rejection of the teacher licensure bill. A group of Minneapolis-based education reform interests, many of whom share an address on University Avenue, also expressed dismay with Dayton’s decision.

Calling themselves a “coaltion, groups such as Minnesota Comeback, Ed Allies, Teach for America, Students for Education Reform and Hiawatha Academies (a local charter school chain) sent a letter to Dayton on May 17, urging him to support HF 140. SIgning this bill into law, they promised, would help “countless teachers find a pathway into Minnesota classroom.” (They can’t do so now because of Minnesota’s cumbersome licensure laws, the argument goes.)

What’s more, the letter asserts, HF 140 would allow “school leaders to recruit and retain the best educators for our students.” How so? By having a tiered licensure system, offering several levels of qualifications to work in a school as a teacher. What caught Dayton’s eye was the proposed “Tier 3,” where a candidate could have, in essence, an unlimited, provisional teaching license. (Who would hire these teachers? Blake? Breck? Majority white public schools?)

This provision would have provided a fast track to a disposable, non-union teaching force–perfect for staffing the kind of “high performing, innovative” charter schools favored by education reformers. And, it ties HF 140 right back to its beginnings as a model ALEC bill. In 2006, ALEC–a “pay to play operation” that writes legislation for state and federal elected officials on behalf of corporations and conservative, pro-privatization causes such as Right to Work and Stand Your Ground laws–passed its own teacher licensure law, called the “Alternative Certification Act.”

What does ALEC want? A less skilled, less empowered, non-unionized workforce, preferably in charter schools rather than unionized public schools (charter schools can operate with less public oversight, and a more malleable teaching force may be more willing to experiment with personalized learning and other investor-friendly ventures.) ALEC has been heavily funded by the billion dollar Walton Family Foundation, set up by the folks behind Wal-Mart.

Guess who else is heavily funded by the Walton Foundation? Nearly everybody on the coalition letter sent to Governor Mark Dayton. For example:

  • Minnesota Comeback (the group determined to bring “30,000 rigorous, relevant seats” to Minneapolis)
  • Great MN Schools (the fund behind Minnesota Comeback)
  • Ed Allies (the lobbying arm affiliated with Minnesota Comeback)
  • Educators 4 Excellence (an offshoot of Teach for America, designed to supplant teachers unions and promote neoliberal education policies around testing and teacher evaluations)
  • Students for Education Reform (spurred by hedge funds)
  • Teach for America ((which seeks to stay alive by serving as an alternative licensure operation, staffing primarily charter schools)
  • Hiawatha Academies (run by Eli Kramer, whose brother Matt, a former TFA executive, also signed this letter through his new group, the Wildflower Foundation)
  • Prodeo Academy (local charter school prized by reformers)
  • KIPP MN (funded in part by the Minneapolis Foundation, which has received money from the Walton Family Foundation, as have many charter schools in MN)

    Cozy! MN Business Partnership Ed Policy rep, Jim Bartholomew, echoing “broad support” for the ALEC-influenced ed reform coalition

These groups often sell themselves as being all about equity and improved opportunity for marginalized communities. It’s curious to note, then, that both the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota Business Partnership–two pro-business, anti-tax lobbying giants–are also listed as part of this education reform coalition.

Flashback! In 2012, the Minnesota Business Partnership stood solidly behind another ALEC-written law, the Voter ID bill that sought to limit voting rights in Minnesota. This bill was described as an “intentional effort to reduce the voting rolls in order to help corporate conservatives further expand their wealth and power.”

This leads to another sketchy education policy provision recently axed by Governor Dayton. In the wee hours of budget negotiations last night, Republican state senator Roger Chamberlain, listed here as a member of ALEC’s “Public Safety and Elections Taskforce,” acknowledged that the ALEC-sprung measure–neovouchers, or “tax credit scholarships”–had been taken out of the omnibus tax bill.

First, St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger made this announcement:

Chamberlain responded with a terse Twitter statement of his own, declaring that “kids lose again.” Kids lose the opportunity, I guess, to be pawns in a game funded by wealthy ideologues like the Waltons, Betsy DeVos and ALEC’s corporate supporters–all of whom have stood emphatically behind the disruptive” effects of vouchers (using public money for private schools that do not have to accept “all kids.”)

Dayton has skillfully blocked these two attempts to weaken Minnesota’s stance as a pro-public school state. It couldn’t have been easy, since there are real issues wrapped up in the attempts to reshape teacher licensure laws, and elite forces are skilled at creating or using a crisis (teacher shortage!) to push through their preferred solutions.

Now, before midnight strikes tonight, Dayton faces a very heavy lift: getting ALEC-minded legislators and lobbyists to agree to fund Minnesota’s public schools. Without an investment from the state, public education in Minnesota will remain under further attack from right-wing ideologues and their well-funded agendas. 

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Minneapolis Teachers of Color to Protest Recent Firings

April 18, 2017

Budget cuts–and heads–are rolling in the Minneapolis Public Schools, prompting lots of behind the scenes chatter and a public rally, set for tonight’s school board meeting. The rally is being planned by the Social Justice Education Movement (SJEM), a local group that also produces the annual Social Justice Education Fair.

In a press release sent out on April 17, SJEM organizers said “six educators of color” will be speaking out tonight against “racist pushouts in the Minneapolis Public Schools.” These six educators, according to SJEM’s announcement, will be advocating for a change in district policies that are said to target students and staff of color. They will also be demanding that their jobs in the district be restored. 

SJEM logo, by Ricardo Levins Morales

Among these six are Lor Vang, whose story was shared on this blog last week. Vang was recently fired from Hmong International Academy without due process, he reports.  The SJEM press release also says that an African-American co-worker of Vang’s was fired around the same time, after being charged with insubordination. 

Michelle Barnes, who until recently was working as a special education assistant at the district’s River Bend site for students with “significant emotional, behavior, and mental health needs,” will also be there tonight.

Barnes’s experience of being fired from River Bend for “expressing concerns with punishing students who ‘misbehaved’ with cold instead of hot lunch” is included on SJEM’s press release, and taps into what appears to be a growing concern: the ease with which some MPS staff–tenured or not–are being dismissed from the district for seemingly small infractions. Stories often float along the edges of various MPS communities, of teachers being forced to resign or be fired (as Vang says he was) for clashing with administrators, or of support staff pegged as troublemakers for, as Barnes alleges, advocating for students. 

Eduardo.jpg
Eduardo Diaz

Bilingual teacher Eduardo Diaz will also speak out at tonight’s board meeting. Diaz is an ESL teacher at Andersen United Community School, a south Minneapolis K-8 site that serves a large percentage of students in poverty (98 percent), as well as English language learners. On SJEM’s website, Diaz, who is not yet tenured, relates a painful story of being told recently that he will not be rehired at Andersen next year, because he is “not making the progress they expected to see in a second year teacher.”

It may be impossible to know all of the factors at play in Diaz’s story, yet he says he has noticed a trend at Andersen:

I was made to feel inadequate, not good enough, and a bad educator. I found it odd that MPS advertises that it wants teachers who think differently and go above and beyond for students, yet they seem to get pushed out of the district at alarming rates.

The number is even greater when you analyze the teachers of color that were let go at Andersen over the last ten years, at least 17% out of 62 or 27% of teachers let go were teachers of color. 

I do not mean to say that the reason I was let go was because of my skin color but I find it hard to think that MPS would want to get rid of a male, veteran, immigrant natively bilingual Spanish speaker. 

Often, district personnel decisions are hidden behind data privacy concerns, making a full analysis of every situation difficult. In the sometimes harrowing void that falls from this, workers can easily be made to feel alone and, as Diaz describes it, “inadequate, not good enough.” This begs the question of whether or not there is enough (or the right kind of) support, transparency and coaching of MPS staff, especially for the teachers of color said to be in high demand.

Hanging in the background is a stark reality: the Minneapolis schools have been facing budget cuts for years (thanks to a statewide disinvestment in public ed), while the district’s percentage of higher needs students has grown significantly. Amid increased special education costs, as well as rising levels of inequality and poverty, MPS has pursued various neoliberal education reform “fixes,” adding to greater destabilization across the district. (Questionable alliances with corporate reform interests, teacher evaluation schemes, Teach for America staffers, Focused Instruction, outsourcing bus drivers and engineers, telling administrators they “have no voice” until test scores go up, destroying whole departments–these are some of the many viruses that have plagued the district in recent years, fueling dysfunction and a pervasive failure narrative.)

The destabilization makes the district more vulnerable to outside influences, such as Minnesota Comeback (at least two MPS employees appear to be active members of this group). Minnesota Comeback belongs to a national campaign, funded in part by Wal-Mart heirs, to reinvent (er, privatize) public education and turn it into a “sector agnostic” sea of “high performing seats,” rather than schools. The goal? To miraculously churn out kids for whom poverty and systemic racism is a thing to be overcome with standardized test scores. 

Into this mix, teachers and staff of color–as well as those who speak out–may find themselves feeling less protected.

In addition to being a dedicated teacher that is well-respected by staff, students, and families, Eduardo is also the only Latino middle school teacher at a K-8 school where over 50% of the students are Latino. Andersen needs Eduardo and the district needs to stop disproportionately pushing out educators of color. Come to the school board this Tuesday April 18th at 5pm to stand with Eduardo and others as we urge the school board to do the right thing! Let Eduardo continue to teach at Andersen! https://www.facebook.com/events/1901032760176615/

–Social Justice Education Movement

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Minneapolis Social Worker Fired for Being Too Ethical?

April 14, 2017

A handful of Minneapolis Public Schools administrators and school board members recently took a trip to Chicago, paid for by the deep pockets of Minnesota Comeback (a local “harbormaster” in the Education Cities sea of market-based reform) and the Minneapolis Foundation. The purpose? To see how “social-emotional learning” is being utilized in Chicago schools, and, perhaps, to convince philanthropists to throw dollars something other than test prep and charter schools.

Lingering in the background, however, are toxic situations in the Minneapolis Public Schools that seem impossible to manage. Take the story of Lor Vang, a Minneapolis school social Image result for social emotional learning latest fadworker. Until recently, Vang worked at the district’s Hmong International Academy, a K-8 in north Minneapolis. The school serves a high level of English language learners, as well as homeless/highly mobile kids, students living in poverty and those who qualify for special education services.

HIA is a troubled MPS site and has been for a while. Allegations of corruption, nepotism and an abusive working climate have been popping up for years, mostly in connection to HIA’s former principal, Halee Vang. While supported by some, Vang’s leadership at HIA has reportedly caused high staff turnover, a divided, “us against them” school climate and some shady operating procedures. 

Halee Vang was forced out of HIA last fall, but at least two of her close associates (including one family member) remain in high level administrative positions at the school, as the Assistant Principal and as the site’s building manager. Lor Vang, who is not related to Hallee Vang, says he was not fully aware of this deeply entangled, troubled environment when he started working at HIA in 2015.

Still, Vang eagerly took the job and tried to focus on building positive relationships with students and families at HIA. Before long, he found himself unwittingly cast as “against” then-Principal Halee Vang, after nominating another staff member for an award. It turns out the nominated staff member was seen by Vang’s team as a troublemaker, which pushed Vang into HIA’s political minefield.

When school started this past fall, Halee Vang was still HIA’s principal. Vang says she asked to meet with him early in the school year, to express displeasure with his work. He felt, instead, that she was “attacking” him, and had him marked, now, as another troublemaker. Vang says he then turned to MPS’s special education administrators for support, but was told that it was up to him to “make it work” with his principal.

Lor Vang

Then, Halee Vang was pushed out of HIA, and a new interim principal, from within MPS, was brought in. Vang wanted to do his part to improve HIA’s reputation; for him, making sure not to further antagonize families that were upset with the school was part of that. Along the way, Vang says he was pressured into rushing through a special education evaluation for a student–a move he feels was not only unethical, but sure to further anger the student’s family members. 

When asked by current school administrators–including Halee Vang’s associates–to quickly write up a plan for the student in question, Vang insisted he could not do that. “We need data for any evaluation,” Vang says he told HJA administrators, “and we don’t have that.” In response, Vang says he was forced to log into his school laptop, which was then “grabbed” from him. Without Vang’s approval, the school’s interim principal allegedly entered inaccurate data about the student into his computer, in order to hurriedly prepare for an upcoming meeting.

Vang says he then emailed his supervisor in MPS to ask whether or not he was correct in wanting to properly build up a diagnosis for the student, instead of just quickly filling in information that could then be shown to the child’s family. He copied HIA’s current principal on the email. The district supervisor agreed with Vang, but the next day, he says the principal denied asking him to expedite the special education process.

Shortly thereafter, Vang was told he would not be “recommended for rehire”–not just at HIA, but throughout the district. He says he was told that his “lack of communication” was the reason, but he had been given no warning or due process regarding this allegation. Instead, he is sure it connects to not only Halee Vang’s legacy, but also the current situation at the school. (Last spring, there were several similar instances of MPS employees being retaliated against for speaking out or advocating for students or staff of color.)

Vang asked for a copy of the documents prepared against him, and was told to come back later. When he did, he says he was treated aggressively and told by the HIA building manager that he “can’t come in here demanding anything,” since she is his supervisor. The next day, he was fired and asked to leave the building immediately.

“It all happened in a bang, bang, fast, fast kind of way,” Vang recalls, believing that this was on purpose, so that he would not have time to organize his thoughts or seek adequate support. He feels he was “forced” to sign paperwork by the school’s assistant principal, who told him–when Vang said he didn’t feel comfortable signing it–that he could not leave the building without signing the paper.

Vang says he did seek help from his union (the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers), but was told that, because he doesn’t yet have tenure, he “doesn’t have a strong case.” Although pointing out that the school’s release paperwork for Vang was incorrectly filled out, the union rep told Vang that his best option was to resign rather than be fired.

I have been dedicated to my work at Hmong International Academy and have advocated for creating a positive environment in our building for our staff and students…I believe that I was wrongly let go from Hmong International Academy. I have been a positive part of the school and would love to continue to be a part of it.

–Lor Vang, on losing his job at HIA

A rally for the April 18 Minneapolis school board meeting is being planned by the Twin Cities Social Justice Education Movement, on behalf of not only Vang, but also what the group says is a troubling pattern of retaliation inside MPS. There is a Facebook event set up for the rally, which includes this message:

In the last month, our small network of social justice educators know six people, all but one staff of color and Northside educators, who are getting pushed out of MPS for advocating for students. This is unacceptable – and only what we’ve heard about, we’re in this fight together!

How’s that for social-emotional learning? Or, as Minneapolis Foundation president and neoliberal ed reform advocate R.T. Rybak recently observedafter heading to Chicago to catch social-emotional learning in action, “When adults come together in the name of doing better for our kids we can do big things.”

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Right-Wing Neo-School Voucher Bill Hits Minnesota

January 29, 2017

Among the polished marble and gold-tinged walls of the Minnesota State Capitol Rotunda, a stand-off of sorts took place on January 24. On the outskirts of the rotunda, a circle of protesters–parents, teachers, union reps and activists–stood silently, clutching hand-written, pro-public school and anti-voucher signs. 

Before them, a crowd of school choice advocates began filling the inner circle of the rotunda, all wearing festive, buttercup-yellow scarves around their necks. The scarves came from a local group called OAK, or “Opportunities for All Kids,” but they were also a reminder that, hey–it’s National School Choice Week!

To show solidarity with other school choice devotees, the gold scarves were donned nationwide at charter school and state capitol rallies. Even Betsy DeVos was found sporting one at a Washington, D.C., charter school event. (I’m glad she’s found something to do while waiting to be–most likely–voted in as Trump’s education secretary on January 31.) 

In St. Paul, the OAK folks were also on hand to support the latest attempt to keep Minnesota taxpayer dollars in private hands, when it comes to education funding. Through a bill introduced by Republican Ron Kresha of northern Minnesota, lawmakers will be asked to provide a tax credit for individuals and corporations who make “equity and diversity donations” to private and religious school foundations.  

Such donations are then supposed to be used as scholarships for kids withering away at miserable and/or secular public schools, but don’t call them vouchers (at least not yet). A school voucher, strictly speaking, draws money directly out of public education coffers, and directs it to private schools, including religious schools, in the form of reimbursement. A tax credit, or “neo-voucher,” on the other hand, allows taxpayers (corporate or individual) to avoid paying into the public education coffers in the first place.

These “neo-vouchers” have been spreading across the country more quickly than traditional vouchers. The tax credit model provides a way to funnel taxpayer dollars to private schools with even less public accountability than with regular vouchers, and to bypass state constitutional provisions that have stood in the way of some state’s traditional voucher programs.

–Brendan Fischer, Center on Media and Democracy

Neo-vouchers are the latest school privatization scheme cooked up by the determined forces at ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is the place where “global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called ‘model bills’ reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.”  (Read Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money, for more info, or scroll through these short videos on ALEC’s agenda.)

ALEC has been pushing school voucher bills since the early 1980’s, under the tutelage of pro-privatization ALEC guru, Milton Friedman. Back then, ALEC tried the honest approach, by openly stating that its original voucher bill was intended to smash teachers’ unions and “introduce normal market forces” into public education.

But they have learned that vouchers are unpopular and, in many states, simply not allowed–thanks to the burdensome separation of church and state. Now, according to the Center on Media and Democracy, “ALEC and other school privatizers today frame ‘vouchers’—taxpayer-funded tuition for private, and often religious, schools—in terms of ‘opportunity’ for low-income students and giving parents the ‘choice’ to send their children to public or private schools.”

A recent Truthout article calls this narrative a “useful fiction” built around the idea that vouchers are “social mobility tickets”–and not a scheme to further segregate, de-fund and destroy public education. And it is working:

The American Federation for Children (AFC), chaired by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos, estimates that vouchers and voucher-like tax-credit schemes currently divert $1.5 billion of public money to private schools annually. But that is not enough. By expanding “pro-school choice legislative majorities” in state houses across the country the organization hopes that $5 billion a year will be siphoned out of public schools by 2020 and applied to for-profit and religious schools.

Minnesota’s Voucher, er, Tax Credit Bill

This kind of “voucher by another name” is what we have with the bill now moving through the Minnesota legislature. ALEC has named its model bill the “Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act (Scholarship Tax Credits),” and Minnesota legislators have brought it, once again, to the Senate and House for consideration. In the mold of ALEC, they are calling it the “Equity and Opportunity Scholarship Act.” The basic premise of it is that individuals and corporations can direct their tax dollars to private school foundations, rather than pay into the state’s general education fund.

These donations, as noted above, would be used to provide tuition scholarships for individual students. And, the qualifying income level for these scholarships is quite high: a family of five making $105,000 per year, or twice the limit allowed by federal reduced lunch guidelines, would be eligible. (This points back to the idea that vouchers are more about breaking the public school system than helping low-income kids attend spendy private schools.) The state’s general education fund stands to lose up to $35 million if this neo-voucher bill passes.

In 2015 Republicans tried to push a similar bill through, with help from Democrat Terri Bonoff, a determined Teach for America and education reform supporter who ran for Congress in 2016 and lost. (The Minnesota push for vouchers goes back, at least, to the 1990’s.) The bill didn’t make it, but it’s back–and this year, Republicans control both the House and Senate in Minnesota. 

An important note:

But…School Choice!

Back to the gold-scarved, school choice rally sponsored by OAK, or “Opportunities for All Kids.” OAK is a relatively new organization run by long-time Republican operative, Chas Anderson, who was closely aligned with former Governor Tim Pawlenty and once held a top spot in Minnesota’s Department of Education.

I can’t tell where OAK gets its funding from, as they do not appear to be a registered nonprofit. In 2015, Anderson joined forces with two other “high-ranking alums of the Minnesota GOP”–Kurt Zellers and Brian McClung–to start a PR firm, MZA+Co. The return email address for OAK is Anderson’s MZA+Co email address: chas@mzacompany.com, so it is unclear whether OAK is a separate group or a project of her PR firm. 

In April, 2016, former Pawlenty spokesman McClung appeared on Twin Cities Public Television’s Almanac program to weigh in on Republican plans to fix the “achievement gap.” Ripping a page from ALEC’s playbook, McClung emphatically gave Almanac host Cathy Wurzer an earful: “For too long,” he insists, “Democrats and the teachers’ union have stopped kids from having real choices…and so we need to find ways to empower parents.”

He doesn’t mention that, as the state’s population has grown steadily less white and less wealthy, public funding for education has dropped. This is, of course, a Friedman-esque way to create a crisis for our public schools, thereby “proving” they are failing–and insisting that neo-voucher, school choice schemes are the only way to fix them. 

Choice Before Quality

At the OAK rally on January 24, as silent protesters stood witness, a small and equally quiet group stood before a podium. There, Arizona charter school advocate and sought after education reform expert Lisa Graham Keegan took the stage wearing a crisp red suit and waxing on about how she and her husband are “blessed to have a home in northern Minnesota.” 

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Lisa Graham Keegan, at a previous school choice rally. Photo: Gage Skidmore

Graham Keegan glowingly stated that she is “passionate, passionate” about school choice, but confessed to being “agnostic” when it comes to where kids go to school. “We love having choices,” she told the group in front of her,” because our five children are very different.” Graham Keegan helped write charter school legislation in Arizona, where, she has admitted, quality control lagged far behind the desire to make school choice a reality. (Arizona already has a state law that gives individual and corporations tax credit for directing their monies to private school foundations.)

Local school choice supporter Reynolds-Anthony Harris followed Graham Keegan onstage, saying that “our job is to harvest the best out of our children.” Harris is a small business owner whose company, Lyceum Partners+Design, was listed as a supporter of a series of school board candidate events in Minneapolis in the fall of 2016.  At one of these events, Harris moderated a particularly contentious candidate forum on behalf of  “Animate the Race,” a side project of Minnesota Comeback (another “sector agnostic” group with wealthy funders). 

After Graham Keegan and Harris were finished, OAK supporters headed off to a luncheon, to be followed by attendance at the Equity and Opportunity Scholarship Act hearing in the House Education Finance Committee. 

The line of resistance, so far, to this ALEC-crafted tax credit bill has been drawn by Education Minnesota, NOC (Neighborhoods Organizing for Change), and the faith-based group, ISAIAH. Before the school choice rally, these groups held their own media event in the basement of the state capitol. Hoisting signs that called vouchers a “false promise,” supporters called for more resources for existing public schools–more nurses, more mental health support, and more investment in training and retaining teachers of color.

Tax credits are just another name for vouchers, they insisted, before calling out the “two-tiered systems”–one for wealthier, white students, and one for marginalized students of color–that vouchers and other school choice schemes have created in cities such as MIlwaukee, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and, of course, DeVos’s Detroit.

Paul Slack, president of ISAIAH and head pastor at north Minneapolis’s New Creations Church, ended the anti-voucher rally by saying that “public education is still our best opportunity–not perfect–but the best opportunity for all of us.”

“Collectively,” Slack said, “we have one question for our legislators. Are you listening?”

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’s Previous School Board Can’t Vote on Proposed Policy Manual

January 10, 2017

Tonight, the new Minneapolis school board members will be seated. Just before that meeting, last year’s board will hold a ceremonial event to welcome the new members and conduct the oath of office.

What will not happen is a previously expected vote by the departing board on two key issues: 1) the revised policy manual largely orchestrated by outgoing member Josh Reimnitz, and 2) the make-up of the district’s Workforce 2020 advisory committee. In a December post, I spelled out the concerns with the revised policy manual, which is based on a somewhat obscure model called Carver Policy Governance

After months of work in 2016, it seemed as though the board’s policy committee, led by Reimnitz, would be able to get the policy manual passed at the December board meeting, despite concerns that the proposed revisions (intended to guide the school board’s work) had yet to be thoroughly vetted by the public. Adding to this concern was the seemingly sudden realization that no Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment had been completed for the new policy manual, although such an assessment is a district requirement for any new, notable “future policies, practices, programs and procedures.”

This realization–that no such assessment had been done–killed chances for a December vote. Rumors then circulated that the 2016 school board would get one more chance to push a vote through on the revised manual. That’s because the first meeting of the new year includes a nod to the outgoing members, as noted above, and a suspected (planned upon, really) opportunity for the exiting board members to squeak in a couple of votes before the new board is officially seated.

Not true. Statute dictates that the departing board members’ voting rights were valid until December 31, 2016, and not a day after. Reimnitz (along with the other two outgoing members, Tracine Asberry and Carla Bates) will therefore not be able to weigh in on whether or not the board should adopt the trimmed down policy manual he helped craft. (Many close observers say the manual is simply not ready for prime time, either. and in need of further hashing out.)

The policy manual vote is nowhere to be found on tonight’s agenda. Neither is any further discussion of who should be on the district’s Workforce 2020 committee. This committee is a state-mandated advisory group, and it must include community members who will attend monthly meetings and advise the school board on “rigorous academic standards and student achievement goals and measures.” All board members were allowed to suggest two names for this committee; those names were then slated for approval at December’s board meeting.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, the board came to an awkward pause that night, when it appeared not all board members were prepared to sign off on the Workforce committee–as the suggested names had not been previously given to the board for review. Should the board vote in one fell swoop on something they hadn’t seen until just then? Questions like this caused citywide representative, Rebecca Gagnon, to stop the process. Three hours and ten minutes into the four-hour long meeting, Gagnon told board chair Jenny Arneson that she “didn’t know we were voting on this tonight.” 

“We’re not, unless we approve it,” Arneson quickly replied. But, unless Gagnon had spoken up, it seems clear that the vote on the committee’s make-up would have sailed forward, with no public discussion on the proposed names on the list. Does it matter? Maybe not. But at least two names on the list–Al Fan and Kyrra Rankine–stand out as worthy of further scrutiny.

To be eligible to serve on the district’s Workforce committee, participants are supposed to be “teachers, parents, staff, students, and other community residents invested in the success of Minneapolis Public School students.” But Kyrra Rankine has been a longstanding Teach for America–Twin Cities employee, and Al Fan is the executive director of Minnesota Comeback, a moneyed education reform group with a declared goal of creating “30,000 rigorous and relevant seats” (?) in Minneapolis, by 2025–in “sector neutral” settings. 

Sector neutral means any school setting–charter, private, public–is fine, so long as it “beats the odds” for kids in poverty. This may be one (arguably unsuccessful) way to fund education, but it is certainly not the same thing as being “invested in the success of Minneapolis Public School students.” The public doesn’t “own” Minnesota Comeback the way it owns a public school district. There are no meetings posted on the Minnesota Comeback website, and no elected officials sit on its policy and “talent” committees. Minnesota Comeback is wielding influence with minimal public oversight. There are no four-hour long videos of any Minnesota Comeback gatherings to pour over and report on. 

Democracy!

The Minneapolis Public Schools might be a bureaucratic mess in the eyes of many, but it also must answer to the public through open meetings, a democratically elected school board and public data requests. Minnesota Comeback must, presumably, only answer to its funders, such as the Minneapolis Foundation, which described the group this way in a December, 2015 newsletter:

  • Minnesota Comeback (formerly the Education Transformation Initiative) will develop a portfolio of strategic initiatives and school investments to ensure that all Minneapolis students attend high-quality schools by 2025.

Minnesota Comeback and Teach for America are frequent darlings of the local philanthropic community, as evidenced by the Minneapolis Foundation’s 2017 grant cycle. Should their representatives have a seat on a Minneapolis Public Schools Workforce 2020 committee?

Perhaps, but it seems that is a conversation the school board should have in public. And, with the rush to vote stopped, it looks like that’s what citizens just might get in 2017–for the proposed policy revision and for the Workforce 2020 committee.

Also up tonight: a shuffling of school board officers. Jenny Arneson will no longer be board chair. Instead, Don Samuels, Nelson Inz and Rebecca Gagnon are vying to fill her spot. Vice Chair is expected to go to Kim Ellison, while Arneson has put her name in for Treasurer. New board members Bob Walser and Ira Jourdain are said to be interested in taking over Reimnitz’s seat as Clerk, who oversees the board’s policy committee. The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at Davis Center headquarters and is broadcast live online here.

Consider making a new year donation to Bright Light Small City to keep this work going for 2017. My work is entirely funded by my kind and generous readers! Thank you so much to those who have already donated.

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No Equity Assessment, No Problem? Minneapolis Schools Ponders a Major Policy Shift

Monday, December 12, 2016

On Tuesday, December 13, at a regularly scheduled meeting, the Minneapolis school board is set to vote on whether or not to approve a radical overhaul of the policy manual that guides its work. This vote will be the culmination of nearly a year’s worth of revision efforts, started by policy committee chair, Josh Reimnitz. 

In November, Reimnitz lost his bid for a second term on the school board. Instead, his District 4 seat will be taken over by newcomer Bob Walser. But, before he departs, the board will have a chance to either approve, scrap or delay a vote on the complex policy manual rewrite that Reimnitz initiated. 

First, a little background info: Reimnitz’s still-viable 2016 campaign website says he undertook the policy manual makeover because the current one is so outdated and cumbersome that the board “can’t tell if we are in compliance of our own policies!” The current manual originated in the 1960’s (Dark Ages!) and is almost as long as War and Peace, apparently. Reimnitz’s work, with input from his fellow policy committee members, has whittled that tome down to around twenty pages. That is an accomplishment worth paying attention to, even as it raises questions about what, exactly, is being put through the shredder.

Reimnitz’s redo is based on the Carver Policy Governance Model, a seldom used approach (as far as school boards go) that significantly streamlines and limits what a board can or should do. The goal with the Carver model is to have boards focus more exclusively on what gets accomplished, rather than how it gets accomplished. Basically, any Carver-guided board is supposed to focus on the ENDS and not the MEANS. (The all-caps come from the Carver website.)

It seems logical to assume that Reimnitz’s attempt to move the Minneapolis school board in a Carver-shaped direction fits well with the district’s current strategic plan, Acceleration 2020. This plan includes the corporate catchphrase that “schools are the unit of change,” which implies they should be largely left alone to govern themselves–as long as student achievement and graduation rates are increasing. (This concept is not well-defined, however, in the plan.)

Acceleration 2020, is supposed to help free the district from burdensome, bureaucratic over-management. Switching the school board to a Carver, Policy Governance model is supposed to do the same thing. Here is a quick overview of how, in my understanding of the Carver approach to board governance:

  • The Carver model is designed to be “absolutely” hierarchical, by offering greater deference–and greater responsibility–to the superintendent.
  • Board members hire the superintendent and hold him or her accountable to agreed upon ENDS and ethical guidelines, but that’s pretty much it. 
  • The board should act as a whole, and not try to win influence for pet projects or separate, constituent-driven concerns. Board members should also not, in the Carver view, provide “advice and instruction” to district staff. This would be interpreted as board interference with the superintendent’s authority.
  • The board should be seen as operating with “one voice.” Any board vote–even a 5-4 decision–is to be taken as a mandate by the superintendent. Board members who disagree with an outcome should not try to “influence organizational direction.”
  • The board should simplify by focusing only on the “whole of the system,” and not the “parts” that make it work. The day-to-day management or MEANS by which the district operates are not to be (within reason) in the purview of board members.

The Carver method carries with it a strong distaste for “micromanagement” by board members, and is designed to create a cleaner system, with the superintendent being given greater power to make decisions:

Board members should not have their hands in micromanaging, instructing, and otherwise interfering with the proper role of administration. There is also no place for what Carver terms “sabotage,” (Carver) the purposeful undermining of a board’s decision by an individual board member who has a personal agenda that he will not relinquish and which the board deems has negative effects on the organization (Carver, “Remaking Governance,” 27-28).

This seems to fly in the face of the reason Minneapolis has a nine-member board. In 2008, at the urging of Minneapolis state legislator, Jim Davnie, Minneapolis voters passed the “ABC” referendum, expanding the school board from seven to nine members, with the majority representing various city districts. Previously, board members were all citywide candidates, elected to “govern the system as a whole,” as Pam Costain, then a Minneapolis board member, put it in 2008.

So, under a Carver-guided Minneapolis school board policy manual, board members will be strongly discouraged, one assumes, from advocating for issues and concerns in their specific corners of the city. This switch in focus would put the board in a strange position, since the November election swept in three new board members–Kerry Jo Felder, Ira Jourdain, and Bob Walser–who were elected to represent three distinct areas of the city. These new board members won’t be seated until January, 2017. Therefore, if the board votes on December 13 to approve the new policy manual, without input from these incoming board members, will these board members now be expected to act as citywide representatives?

Maybe this would be the best way to run the board, but who has determined this? The adoption of this new policy manual has not been put to the public (widely), and most of the work on it has been done by a small group of board members who serve on the policy committee. There have been, to my knowledge, no district-wide, well attended community meetings about the new thinking behind the policy manual overhaul. 

The Carver Policy Governance model is intriguing, but not intuitive. It is complicated and centered around a distinct theoretical approach to board leadership, intended to give as wide a berth as possible to the superintendent or CEO of an organization. In so doing, the Carver approach has board members create ethics-minded, big picture limitations for the superintendent that are spelled out in the negative.

  • Here’s one example, from the most currently available draft of the new policy manual: “…the Superintendent shall not cause or allow MPS to…Permit MPS families to be unaware of: What shall be expected and what shall not be allowed in and from classes, courses, activities or other services.”

I can imagine that families without a great deal of grounding in the legalese of board policy would have a hard time grasping what the shift to the Carver model is all about, especially if English is not their first language. It also appears that no Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment has been done regarding the proposed policy manual, even though, in 2013, the district agreed to do so for “all future policies”:

Minneapolis Public Schools is committed to identifying and correcting policies, practices, programs and procedures that perpetuate the achievement gap and institutional racism in all its forms. In order to apply corrective measures, MPS leaders are required to apply the Equity & Diversity Impact Assessment to all future policies, practices, programs and procedures that have a significant impact on student learning and resource allocation.

Why, then, would board members vote on a major policy shift (adopting a Carver governance model) without first seeing an Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment?

Another concern raised by those who have more closely tracked the policy committee’s work on this is that the Carver model concentrates an awful lot of power in the superintendent’s hands. There may be advantages to this, and the concept is worthy of public discussion, but it also represents a significant philosophical shift for the Minneapolis schools. The new policy manual has the potential, for example, to put labor negotiations solely in the hands of the district, while, previously, the board has shared responsibility for that. Similarly, as I understand it, the proposed policy manual has dropped the board’s requirement that the district pay “fair wages” to its employees. Instead, the superintendent would be trusted with these actions, and then held to how well they support district “results,” or ENDS.

Further, in an era of privatization, diminishing public resources and the pressures of the market-based education reform movement, the proposed policy manual includes this eye-catching directive:

MPS is dedicated to involving and engaging partners who are committed to helping MPS accomplish the Board-approved Results objectives. As such, the Superintendent shall neither cause nor allow MPS to withhold pertinent information, excluding individual student and staff data, from external partners or individuals.

Without limiting the above, the Superintendent shall not cause or allow MPS to avoid partnering and information-sharing on topics such as resource allocation, student achievement outcome summaries, or major shifts in practice.

“The Superintendent shall not withhold pertinent information from external partners or individuals?” Hmm. With the privately funded, privately run Minnesota Comeback lurking around the edges of the district, hoping to create 30,000 “sector-neutral,” “rigorous and relevant seats by 2025,” this policy provision should be subjected to further public debate. Minnesota Comeback, which is part of a national, billionaire-fueled education reform network called Education Cities, has the potential–and the unfettered bank account–to seriously disrupt the collective agency of the district. (The group’s ability to pick winners and losers is beginning to show up.)

Should the school board’s new policy manual simply give privately run entities like Minnesota Comeback the keys to the store, through a further concentration of power in the hands of a superintendent? 

This largely corporate model of governance is being marketed by Carver and many who have trained under him to the non-corporate world of public education. Is Policy Governance viable for district boards of education and the administration of public schools? An examination of the history, philosophy, tenets, marketing, and practice of Policy Governance in public education reveal that Carver’s model is not consistent with the principles of democratic-republicanism, does not fit the political realities of the American experience, and is operating without the understanding or consent of the public at large. However, if one wishes to see the end of local control, the erosion of democratic practices, and more power shifting to authorities in far away places, then Policy Governance has much to offer.

–Bobby Chandler, teacher and researcher. 2007

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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