Tag Archives: racial disparities

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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