Tag Archives: education reform

Minneapolis Ranks High–Relatively–On Loving Cities Index

March 20, 2018

Want Education Reform? Try Love

Since 2000, according to his own estimation, Bill Gates’s philanthropic foundation has dedicated $1 billion to the remaking of America’s schools. Speaking at an urban education conference in 2017, Gates said he hopes to address disparities in outcomes between students of color and their white peers. While noting that race-based differences in school success measures are still a problem, Gates makes it clear that he still believes in schools as the “unit of change” when it comes to boosting student achievement. 

Never once in his speech did Gates mention the broader inequalities—from immigration status to lack of prenatal care—that impact students’ lives. Instead, as outlined in his 2017 speech, Gates and his foundation have maintained a laser focus on what happens inside the classroom or, in the case of its promotion of charter schools, on what type of school kids attend.

From Ronald Reagan to Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump, the federal government has supported a Gates-like view of education policy by promoting everything from a national, standardized curriculum (Common Core), to the continued use of testing to rank teachers, schools, and students.

But there is a different perspective available, thanks to a new report from the Boston-based Schott Foundation. 

Called the “Loving Cities Index,” the Schott Foundation report looks at multiple and intersecting factors that create unequal opportunities for students—often before they ever set foot in a public school classroom. Schott Foundation researchers did a deep dive into ten U.S. cities from Long Beach, California to Springfield, Massachusetts and points in between, evaluating four “areas of impact”: Care, Commitment, Stability, and Capacity.

Cities across the United States are built around policies rooted in “implicit racial bias at best, and explicit racism and hate at worst,” the report argues. The result is that too many families still lack access to healthcare, job, and housing options that would provide a solid foundation for their children’s academic success. Over 40 percent of students of color across the country attend schools where at least three-quarters of the student body live in poverty or are considered low-income, the report notes. In contrast, just over 7 percent of white students attend these same types of schools.

No city scored well on the Schott Foundation’s Loving Cities scale. Minneapolis and Long Beach were at the top, offering just over half, on average, of what the Foundation believes kids need to thrive, including healthy food, safe neighborhoods, reliable public transportation and access to advanced coursework. Charlotte, North Carolina, was the lowest performer, along with cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Little Rock, Arkansas. These cities were flagged for offering just over one-third of the social and environmental support services deemed necessary for greater student, family, and community success.

Some of the solutions offered by Loving Cities include school support staff who can coordinate “with community partners to bring outside resources inside schools—from immediate needs like food or clothing to more complex ones like counseling or emotional support.” The report also describes the need to address “white-washed” teaching of our history of oppression, and the importance of building a common understanding of how we have historically created opportunity gaps. Another important part of the equation involves “progressive” school funding policies, with sufficiently high funding levels and higher rates of funding for high poverty districts.

By zeroing in on segregation, environmental racism, police brutality, and unfair banking practices, for example, the Schott Foundation offers a seismic shift in how policy makers, philanthropists, and the general public can approach education reform.

The Schott Foundation offers a seismic shift in how policy makers, philanthropists, and the general public can approach education reform.

This is a radical departure from the market-based reform model pushed by Republican and Democratic leaders, along with billionaires like Bill Gates, and venture capitalists eager to take a crack at reshaping—not to mention profiting from—America’s “untapped” public education system.

Market-based reform measures have succeeded in scattering the education landscape with seemingly endless choices for families, including charter and voucher schools. But 90 percent of students in the United States still attend traditional public schools, and as Schott Foundation president Dr. John Jackson notes in his introduction to the Loving Cities Index, “parent income remains the number one predictor of student outcomes—not type of public school, labor contract, or brand of assessment.”

In other words, promoting school choice as the solution is a distraction from the basic fact that parent income, along with interrelated racial and economic segregation, remain powerful determinants in the quality of education a child receives.

Attacking these more economically oriented issues appears to be uncomfortable for billionaires like Gates—perhaps it calls into question the largesse he accumulates while income inequality balloons. Maybe that is why he avoids tackling the racially biased policies that the Schott Foundation and others insist stand in the way of progress for all America’s students. As the report states, “Placing the blame at the doors of educators, parents, students and the public school system is the easy route that has proven to do very little to solve the problem.”

This piece was originally published by The Progressive.

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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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DeVos Didn’t Start the Fire

February 6, 2017

Betsy DeVos is everywhere, filling up Twitter feeds and Facebook sidebars with links to the latest, most outrageous evidence of her desperation to become our next secretary of education. 

Ed Patru, Friend of Betsy DeVos

The tabs on my computer are cluttered with articles describing DeVos’s criminally incompetent push to make our schools great again through unfettered privatization plans. She can be linked to ALEC, fraud and a personal disdain for public schools. She has created opportunities for scammers who want to make a “boatload of money” on public ed without the hassle of accountability. She has a prolific Friend of Betsy© in Ed Patru, and, when that is not enough, she has provided a way for other people to get paid to shill for her.

In our new, enticing world of alternative facts, DeVos will most likely be confirmed tomorrow, as the search for one more–just one more–“Republican with integrity” appears to have come to a Dark Money dead end

But DeVos just might be the rock bottom this country needs to hit, in terms of our dependence on plutocrat-driven school privatization schemes. Her preference for an unregulated, unrestrained market of publicly funded private and religious schools, as well as charter schools, has embarrassed even her fellow billionaire buyers of influence and school choice–Eli Broad and Arthur Rock

For years, Eli Broad’s name has been synonymous with the expedited take down of our nation’s public school system. Using wads of cash, and leaked secret plans, Broad has unleashed anti-union charter schools (high performing, always high performing) and a superintendent training academy for those with little to no background in public education. People like Betsy DeVos, for example. 

Rock, on the other hand, has occupied a quieter place in education reform while still wielding a DeVos-like level of undue influence. He is a venture capitalist from California who sits on Teach for America’s board of directors, has funded a sketchy chain of “blended learning” charter schools (Rocketship) and done his best to upend local school board elections around the country. In Minneapolis, for example, Rock has donated money to pro-reform school board candidates with connections to Teach for America. (And though Al Franken flayed DeVos for her ignorance around key education issues, he has also employed Teach for America alums as staffers–something Rock has funded)

Rock is an active philanthropist in education reform. From 2006 to 2008, Rock contributed $16.5 million to Teach for America. He also donated $1.5 million to Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), the country’s largest network of charter schools.

–Angel Au-Yeung, Forbes, February 2017

If these guys don’t approve of DeVos, then we know something’s up. What separates DeVos from Rock and Broad, is, perhaps, her religious fervor, accompanied by a zest for vouchers. Vouchers, of course, would–in an idealized, free market world–make private schools eligible for public funding. In other words, they could threaten the market share Broad and Rock are trying to carve out through the expansion of charter school networks. (Beware! Vouchers are morphing into scholarship and “tax credit” bills.)

To be fair, Broad has also objected to DeVos’s devil-may-care embrace of for-profit charter schools, something Broad says he abhors. In a February 1 letter to Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Charles Schumer, Broad touched on the most embarrassing moments of DeVos’s confirmation hearing. “We must have a Secretary of Education who believes in public education,” Broad wrote, before mentioning DeVos’s less than artful dodge on the question of whether or not schools should be gun-free zones.

In short, DeVos has created an opening for the likes of Broad and Rock, allowing them to position themselves as the moderate voice of education reform–despite their track records. DeVos is the unflattering mirror image of venture edu-philanthropists, and lurks as a no holds barred representative of the worst possible outcome (see Detroit) of their market-based reform plans.Image result for mirror mirror on the wall

Arne Duncan, Obama’s secretary of education, was not ideologically far from DeVos, yet stood as a kinder, gentler, Democratic version of her. He did not offend the way she does, but he should have. Or, to paraphrase Elizabeth Warren’s recent speech at the Congressional Progressive Caucus, our moment of crisis did not begin with Betsy DeVos’s nomination. We were already in crisis. 

Education policy has been stuck in an Orwellian war on the “achievement gap” for decades, while public resources have mostly shrunk and segregation has increased. DeVos didn’t create that, though she has certainly capitalized on it. If her confirmation goes through as expected, the public–and policy makers–should capitalize on our awakened understanding of the cost of putting billionaires on a mission in charge of our schools.

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Minneapolis School Board Campaign Finance Reports Reveal…?

November 5, 2016

In 2012, Minneapolis residents got an education reform wake-up call in the candidacy of Josh Reimnitz. Reimnitz, then a Teach for America alum new to Minneapolis, won a spot on the Minneapolis school board after attracting thousands of dollars in campaign funds–the most, at close to $40,000, ever seen in what was once a low-profile race.

As Reimnitz’s campaign war chest grew, observers worried that the Minneapolis school board race was becoming “nationalized.” And, of course, it was. Just after Reimnitz’s 2012 victory, Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Steve Brandt made this observation:

“Reimnitz won with a tidal wave of spending that set a record for a Minneapolis board race. Some came from friends but, even more important, from people he’d never met who are pushing a school-reform agenda.”

2012 was just the beginning.

In 2014, hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside money flooded into the Minneapolis school board race, mostly through the cleverly named Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund. This Fund, which operates as a political action committee, was set up by then-MinnCAN director, Daniel Sellers. Riding a wave of plutocrat interest in local school board elections, Sellers was able to attract large donations from some decidedly non-progressive sources. 

Illustration: Christoph Hitz
Illustration: Christoph Hitz

Billionaire education reform advocates such as Michael Bloomberg and Arthur Rock, a venture capitalist and Teach for America funder, plumped up the Fund’s coffers, as did local Republican party affiliates such as Ben Whitney and Edina resident Bonnie McGrath, who reportedly became deeply alarmed about the state of public education after viewing 2012’s reform blockbuster, Waiting for Superman.

In 2014, the Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund tried a strong-arm tactic by spending money on negative campaign literature, in favor of school board candidates Don Samuels and Iris Altamirano, and against incumbent Rebecca Gagnon. The strategy turned the race into an ugly, last-minute smear campaign against Gagnon, who nonetheless retained her seat on the board. Samuels also won. (The Fund has around $12, 000 in the bank. Final 2016 campaign finance reports, which would show whether or not that money gets spent, will not be available until January, 2017.)

The combination of Samuels and Reimnitz on the Minneapolis school board has not led to a puppet-like adherence to a reform agenda. Samuels seems like more of an outlier, voting against Michael Goar–the presumed favorite of the local reform community–during his bid to become the district’s superintendent. He also voted in favor of the board’s 2015 move to cancel its contract with the controversial Reading Horizons company.

Conversely, Reimnitz did vote for Goar. He was also one of two board members (along with Carla Bates) to vote against the decision to cancel the contract with Reading Horizons, whose curriculum was deemed racist and offensive by many in the community. If reform-supported candidates are supposed to bring group think to the board, it hasn’t happened yet.

2016 Campaign Finance Reports

Still, the education reform crowd appears to be betting on two candidates in this year’s school board race: Reimnitz and his counterpart on the board, Tracine Asberry, who is running for re-election in District 6. Neither one received the endorsement of either the DFL or the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, perhaps endearing them to reform interests. Reimnitz is running against Bob Walser in District 4, while Asberry is facing a challenge from Ira Jourdain, who first ran for a seat on the board in 2014, and spoke out then against the “dark money” impacting the school board race.

Reimnitz’s most recent campaign finance report shows that he has raised close to $15,000 as of November 1. That is significantly less than he had in 2012, but currently more than any other candidate. The traces of reform money can still be seen on Reimnitz’s 2016 report, with donations from many Teach for America and charter school affiliates. Also telling: Reimnitz has attracted the support of wealthy Republican donor Ben Whitney and former Minneapolis mayoral candidate and charter school supporter, Cam Winton.

Reimnitz has also received money from Tad Piper. Piper, along with Ben Whitney, is a preeminent funder and supporter of local education reform initiatives, such as MinnCAN and now, Minnesota Comeback. Minnesota Comeback, which I have written about extensively on this blog, is a project of the national Education Cities movement, with a school choice-centered education reform agenda funded by billionaire philanthropists. The goal, according to Minnesota Comeback’s website, is to bring “30, 000 rigorous and relevant seats” to the Minneapolis area by 2025.

Reimnitz’s challenger, Bob Walser, has taken in about $8,000 in donations since August. It appears he is getting support mostly from District 4 residents, with a few out-of-state donations listed (in the past, Walser has said he has a wide network from his years as a traveling musician and teacher.)

Asberry’s campaign finance reports from 2016 are less detailed, with her most recent report listing only five individual contributors. The biggest reported donation she received was $300 from Matt Kramer, former Co-CEO of Teach for America. Asberry’s previous campaign report offers more information about her finances, including support from neighbors and local businesses, as well as from names familiar to those who follow education politics. This includes Lynnell Mickelsen, who often writes about education reform, and Kate Sattler, a supporter of the now-defunct MinnCAN organization.

In an email exchange from September, Asberry noted that she has a long-standing working relationship with Sattler, who had children in the Minneapolis schools and lives in Asberry’s district. Asberry also maintains that she has “deep, diverse, and committed support…from so many District 6 and MPS families,” whose names can be found on her campaign website. In a charged atmosphere fueled by reformer vs. union narratives, it is worth remembering that support for Asberry may be as much about efforts to defeat the union’s endorsed candidate, Ira Jourdain, as about any hope that Asberry will toe a reformer-drawn line. (Asberry did not vote in favor of maintaining the district’s contract with Reading Horizons, nor did she support Goar’s candidacy for superintendent.)

Jourdain, like Walser and the other two DFL and union-endorsed candidates, Kerry Jo Felder (running in District 2) and Kim Ellison (citywide), has received support in the form of mailings, phone banking and coordinated campaign events. Felder’s opponent, Kimberly Caprini, has less than $1800 in funds, and lists no donations over the mandated reporting amount of $100. Ellison has also taken in minimal funds, perhaps because her challenger, Doug Mann, does not appear to have launched a vigorous campaign. All campaign finance reports are available on the Hennepin County elections website.

Reform Tactics Shift

The influence of Minneapolis’s well-heeled education reform community is less visible this time around, but no less present. Minnesota Comeback, which grew out of previous philanthropic efforts to guide the Minneapolis Public Schools, has helped fund an election year side project called Animate the Race. With a promise of neutrality, Animate the Race has put money into hosting school board forums and providing social media coverage of this year’s race. It is being run by Daniel Sellers, who ran MinnCAN and 2014’s Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund.

On November 3, Animate the Race held a school board candidate event at the Children’s Theater. It was a lush affair, and a reminder of the good things philanthropy has provided for Minneapolis–such as the Children’s Theater and its incredible Neighborhood Bridges program. Tad Piper was there, circling the crowd, as was Al Fan, current director of Minnesota Comeback. (All current candidates, except Jourdain and Doug Mann were in attendance. Jourdain said he was busy door knocking in his district that night.)

There were not a lot of other people there. just pockets of reform supporters and little clusters of teachers, neighbors and organizers who don’t neatly fit into that category. All were treated to a sumptious-looking buffet of shrimp cocktail, chicken wings, fruit kabobs and giant brownie wedges. There must have been tons of food left over. I hope the Children’s Theater staff who worked the event got to take some of it home.

Animate the Race’s forum started off hot, with District 6 candidate Bob Walser saying he felt “manipulated” by being invited to an event billed as “non-partisan” but organized by the very person (Sellers, I am assuming, although Walser didn’t name him) that brought in hundreds of thousands of outside, “dark money” in 2014. Walser’s attempt to lead with this drew a harsh rebuke from some Animate the Race supporters, and threatened to throw the whole forum down an ugly, irreversible path. (Animate the Race is also funded by Minnesota Comeback, whose donors have given money to Walser’s rival, Reimnitz.)

But Walser recovered. So did the moderator, Reynolds-Anthony Harris, whose company, Lyceum Partners + design, is listed as an Animate the Race supporter. The atmosphere was barbed, but worth sitting through. At one point, candidates expounded on teachers they considered inspirational. Interestingly, most of them mentioned Minneapolis teachers like Crystal Spring and Flory Sommers, who both recently faced disciplinary action from the district’s HR department after advocating on behalf of racial justice concerns. 

If those are the kind of teachers our current and future board members admire, then perhaps there is hope. But the specter of the billionaire-crafted education reform agenda still lurks around the edges of Minneapolis, waiting, perhaps, for the right combination of funders or school board members to shake up the “status quo.”

Minneapolis: A “Recovery” District?

In a series of complex questions, which the candidates were supposed to answer with a quick yes or no, the moderator asked whether or not the hopeful board members would, once seated, vote to turn Minneapolis into a “recovery” school district–should district test scores and other, undefined measures fail to rise significantly.

This was the moment, and everyone in the room knew it. People rushed to turn their cell phone videos on, to capture the candidates’ responses to this loaded question. A recovery school district, like the ones operating in New Orleans and Memphis, are built around the “transformational” principles of neoliberal education policy. A 2013 article in the Atlantic about the takeover of the Memphis schools describes recovery districts this way: 

The city’s schools are on the vanguard of controversial changes reshaping urban education nationally, including decentralized control, more charter schools, increased use of data to determine which schools stay open, and a greater reliance on new teachers who come through alternative preparation programs such as Teach for America or the Memphis Teacher Residency

FEMA photo
FEMA photo

In New Orleans, there are no public schools left, only a landscape of charters. Hurricane Katrina created the ideal circumstances for a complete takeover of the city’s schools, according to a 2014 In These Times magazine investigation

With the public-school bureaucracy out of the way, powerhouses in the reform movement, such as the Walton and Gates foundations, came calling. In a 2006 interview with Education Next magazine, Mayor Ray Nagin put it this way: “They said, ‘Look, you set up the right environment, we will fund, totally fund, brand-new schools for the city of New Orleans.’ ”

And they did. 

“In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision,” writes Naomi Klein in her landmark 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. She holds up the takeover as a prime example of “disaster capitalism”: “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.”

This is the reform framework hanging in the background of the Minneapolis school board race. When the question about recovery school districts was posed at the Animate the Race forum, the candidates seemed frozen in surprise and uncertainty. No one seemed to know exactly what the moderator was actually asking them to do or say, or perhaps, they did not want to answer the question in a public setting. All either said no or abstained from answering, but in the hubbub, it wasn’t clear who said what.

A further, unspoken question hung over the room: Whose agenda is this?

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

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MN Comeback Leapfrogs Democracy in Minneapolis

April 7. 2016

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

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

Good Morning Everyone!

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

Way to go team!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pasi Paradox: Finding Our Own Finland

February 20, 2016

Last week, on a frigid but beautiful day in Duluth, MN, I was fortunate enough to spend the morning with Finnish education expert, Pasi Sahlberg. He was in Duluth to give the keynote address at the Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference, and I was there to interview him.

But I couldn’t. I sat and listened to Pasi give his keynote speech, and I listened to him give a more casual, hour-long group session about the state of education policy today, in Finland and elsewhere. I also sat with him at lunch, and chatted with him after the plates of pasta had been cleared away.

Pasi is a vegetarian, like me, and says he is on his way to becoming vegan, due to his concerns over climate change. Honestly, I would rather interview him about that then take another painful plunge down the “this is what Finland did to make their education system one of the world’s best” path. 

Finnish Education Framework

It is painful because there is so much Finland has done that the United States seems to have no interest in doing, even though, as I have heard Pasi say before, many of Finland’s great ideas (and practices) about education reform have come from research done in the United States, generally, and from Minnesota, specifically.

That’s why I couldn’t really interview Pasi. His ideas have been mined extensively, and rightfully so. He’s funny, warm, smart and right on, when it comes to how to actually create a vibrant, successful, equitable education system. That is why, like many others who follow education, I have done pretty much everything I could to soak up Sahlberg’s lessons, except move to Finland (which, I will admit, I have considered). But emulation is not enough. We have to move past him, frankly, and find our own Finland. 

And, no, such a thing–our own Finland–won’t be started with a grant from the Walton Foundation. Finland’s education revolution started with a commitment, which is and must be ongoing, to eradicating poverty and inequality, so that it isn’t just some people’s kids who get access to such current luxuries as play-based learning and critical thinking.

In the United States, such a commitment would have to be paired with a concrete plan to share power with historically marginalized (or, historically looted, some would say) communities, to avoid the colonization and exploitation patterns so often repeated in today’s market-driven education reform efforts. How should we do that? Let’s start with asking the most marginalized what they think. 

The Finnish education system redesign was also built around an equity framework that, in essence, provides an individualized learning plan for each child–and not just the kids who get special ed services, or the kids whose parents can pay for tutors. And all Finnish kids eat lunch at school. They have health care, dental care, and their parents are given parental leave. This is love, and that is where change-making education reform begins.

Could we create that here? And will it last in Finland? Like most European countries, Finland is currently experiencing a values-testing “migrant crisis.” In 2015, it took on more than 30,000 people seeking refuge; most years, they get less than 800. What will Finland do now? Will the “world’s best” education system also be provided to these newcomers?

While we wait and watch, we should get busy building our own Finland.

…rich parents want creativity and flexibility and diverse curricula. They want individualized discipline (if they want discipline at all). They’d have very little patience for chanting in classes and being told what to do with their children at home. But, you know, “those people,” they’re not “like us.”

Ira David Socol

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McKinsey & Co. in Minneapolis: Strategery Sinks In

January 27, 2016

Background: As the Minneapolis Public Schools moves through a difficult superintendent search, I am taking a look back at how we got to this moment. Here is part one: McKinsey & Co. Mind Meld.

In 2007, McKinsey & Co. consultants–through the local Itasca Project–wrote a strategic plan for the Minneapolis Public Schools, at the invitation of the district and the city’s school board. The plan received an enthusiastic introduction from Minneapolis’s then-superintendent, Bill Green, who stated the plan was “…grounded in the best practices of school districts around the country.” (Green was steering Minneapolis through another moment of crisis, after the short, painful tenure of Broad-trained superintendent Thandiwe Peebles.)

Green’s intro to the plan declared that these “best practices”–said to be the product of months of community input–represented “an unwavering commitment to bold ideals and bold ideas.”

Why did it sell so well in Minneapolis? For one thing, it was 2007, and the broader global education reform movement was not well understood. And, true to the “McKinsey Way,” it was marketed well. A Minneapolis parent, recalling the plan’s rollout, remembers this: “It was neat, orderly, and presented well, with nice bullet points.”

The nine-point plan was bold–and contained the roots of today’s increasingly problematic free-market, top down, numbers based approach to rapidly raising student “achievement” (which can only be defined through something easily measured: standardized test scores). It promised all Minneapolis kids would be college-ready in just five years, in a “Field of Dreams” sort of way. If you say it, it will happen.

Here are some highlights of the McKinsey/Minneapolis strategy:

One – Restart and/or bring in other high quality schools to replace the bottom 25 percent; unleash high-performing schools. 

  • Translation: competition and choice will fix what ails Minneapolis schools. Missing from this equation: as long as schools continue to be sorted and ranked according to standardized test scores, there will always be a “bottom 25 percent.” What then?
  • This pairs well with recommendation number eight: Commit to supporting a network of great schools for all Minneapolis kids. A 2007 article about the plan made this point: “The report recommends that MPS ‘adopt a new mindset’ towards competition (such as charter and private schools).”
  • The first casualties (which happened just months before board approval of the McKinsey plan): Five schools in historically underserved north Minneapolis, and one elementary school near the University of Minnesota.
  • The push to embrace competition as a key school improvement strategy is still defining local education policy. First, Minneapolis officials signed the “District-Charter Collaboration Compact,” which has sputtered along meekly. Today, we have the district’s Community Partnership Schools plan, which will require all schools to adhere to district-created test score guidelines, but will allow for more “autonomy” in governance. Looming in the background is MN Comeback–a well-funded group that would like to see 30,000 “rigorous and relevant seats” in Minneapolis by 2025.

Two – Raise expectations and academic rigor for all students, aligning pre-K-12 programs to college readiness goal.

  • Rigor and expectation-raising, in the wrong hands (people who are not trained in education and/or child development), has come to mean the pushing down of narrow, standardized academic work–even into preschool. We have seen this in Minneapolis, through the McKinsey-led implementation of “focused” instruction (FI). Here is a 2013 article I wrote about FI’s insertion into Minneapolis’s early childhood classrooms: “Playtime or focused instruction for three year-olds?”
  • Minneapolis reporter Steve Brandt described FI this way in 2014: “Focused instruction comes from a national movement to create common standards for what should be taught in each subject. That movement has been supported by some politicians, education advocacy groups and often by business interests.” (Conspiracy theory or flow chart? Check out this visual of how McKinsey & Co. and other for-profit companies connect to the standards and testing movement in the U.S.)
  • Focused Instruction is also part of a McKinsey-style move to exert greater control (management) over what teachers and students are doing, through the use of benchmark or interim tests, and the data collection that comes from that. 
  • In 2014, a Star Tribune article reported that focused instruction was not working (that is, it was not miraculously leading to a rise in test scores).

Five – Set clear expectations for all staff at all levels; reward successes and develop or remove low performers.

  • Successes should be rewarded in education, and “low performers” should be handled. But, again, who gets to define either the criteria or the consequences in these cases? And what do people–like McKinsey consultants–without experience or expertise in education know about what success looks like, in education? 
  • McKinsey & Co. consultants are notorious for using layoffs as a path to corporate profits (or district savings?). So, if McKinsey & Co. was sent in to guide the “strategic redirection” of the Minneapolis Public Schools, on behalf of the business-minded Itasca Project…then a recommendation to “remove low performers” was probably a given. Low performers–according to student test scores–are chaff, ripe for the sorting. 
  • McKinsey & Co. is a management consultant firm, not a labor consultant firm. Their trademark approach to reform is to cut costs, pursue efficiency and focus on all that can be “measured and managed.” Or, as a 2007 article about the McKinsey strategic plan noted: “Like schools and principals, underperforming teachers could be replaced.”

There are some benign aspects of the 2007 McKinsey plan, such as the reminder to “transform relationships and partner with families.” This is important, but everybody says this, all the time. What would real transformation look like, and would it be outlined in a McKinsey & Co. strategic plan? What if the community had been asked to write a plan for the Minneapolis schools instead?

But the community wasn’t asked to lead. Instead, McKinsey/Itasca placed one of their own–consultant Jill Stever-Zeitlin–at the helm of the Minneapolis Public Schools, to try to force, or ensure, a business-like “redirection” of the district.

This is how Stever-Zeitlin’s 2008 jump from McKinsey/Itasca to Minneapolis was explained to me by the district:

Prior to being hired as an employee, Ms. Stever-Zeitlin was an employee of Itasca, and was loaned by Itasca to MPS.  This began in 2008 and lasted through June 30, 2012.  There is no written contract with Itasca for this period.  This was an agreement between then Superintendent Bill Green and the Itasca organization.  Itasca paid Ms. Stever-Zeitlin’s salary during 2008 – 2010, and 58% of her salary from January 1 – June 30, 2011.  

The position she held was created for her, since it was this special arrangement made by Itasca to support the district.

I am stuck on what it means to “loan” a human being to someone or something else, but I will move on.

Stever-Zeitlin began working directly in the Minneapolis schools in 2008, but was not an official district employee until 2011. There was no contract. No public oversight. Just an ambitious attempt to be sure the McKinsey-esque redesign of Minneapolis would go forward as planned.

McKinsey and Co. did not pay Stever-Zeitlin’s salary, however. The local Robins, Kaplan, Miller,  and Ciresi (RKMC) Foundation for Children did, through a grant to the Itasca Project. 

The McKinsey plan, and Stever-Zeitlin’s undocumented administrative position, were just the beginning for the RKMC. Their philanthropic support swung the door to education reform wide open in Minneapolis.

Up next: The ties that bind Minneapolis to the market-based education reform movement.

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Minneapolis superintendent update: Paez seeks coffee, input

January 4, 2016

Dr. Sergio Paez is coming to town, and he wants to have coffee with you.

In an email sent on December 31, Paez–the current candidate of choice for superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools–announced that he will be in Minneapolis for two days, starting January 4. 

Dr. Sergio Paez; Photo by Don Treager

In the email, Paez said he plans to hold “2 coffee hours” while in Minneapolis. The first will be on Tuesday, January 5 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Avenue Eatery on West Broadway Avenue. The second will be Wednesday, January 6 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Fireroast Cafe in south Minneapolis. 

Paez says he is coming to Minneapolis to “be able to talk to people about anything they have in mind and to learn more about MN in the process.” His email makes no mention of the fact that, although the Minneapolis school board chose him as the district’s next superintendent in December of 2015, he is now in the unexpected position of having to fight for the job.

Immediately after the board named Paez their top choice at a December 7 meeting, troubling reports surfaced from Paez’s days as superintendent of the Holyoke, Massachusetts schools. The reports, completed by the Massachusetts Disability Law Center, detail allegations of abuse at Holyoke’s Peck School program for special education students.

Paez was not directly implicated in these allegations, and maintains that he and his staff acted properly when informed of the reported abuse. Also, the Holyoke teachers union has questioned the law center’s report, and recently told a Massachusetts news station that “low staffing levels and limited resources” are part of the problem at Peck.

Still, it seems Paez is coming to Minneapolis–on his own dime, I am told–to salvage his chances of becoming Minneapolis’s superintendent.

Maybe it will work.

If Paez creates a lot of warm fuzzies by learning “first hand what the community believes is important to transform the district”–a goal he expressed in his recent email–then perhaps the board will be persuaded to forget their cold feet and go ahead with contract negotiations, which were suspended after the Holyoke allegations surfaced.

Meanwhile, my thoughts keep returning to a late December MinnPost piece by local writer and teacher Nicole Helget about the “leadership crisis” in our schools. It isn’t specifically about Paez, but is worth considering as Minneapolis tries to move forward.

Nicole Helget; Photo by Jason Miller

Helget’s piece starts with a bang, hitting readers between the eyes by zeroing in on the “crisis in administration from K-12 to higher education.” She continues on, calling school districts “kingdoms” where predetermined decisions are made behind closed doors, and subsequently “fobbed” upon “teachers, students, and communities.”

There are many blows that sting in Helget’s piece, including the idea that putting a woman or person of color in charge should bring about meaningful change, but often doesn’t–thanks to hidden gatekeepers who are seeking to perpetuate, and not alter, institutionalized racism and sexism.

Helget then ends with this: schools need new leadership styles, and not just new leaders. “We have to change the culture of education,” she writes, in order to achieve this:

Our goal in education includes preparing people who can work, of course, but our goal…is to prepare people to adapt to all the changing aspects of our world and to help build the next economy, not become slaves to the current one.

The Minneapolis school board is scheduled to decide Paez’s fate at a regular January 12 meeting, which will include the standard public comment period. If you’ve got time this week, you know where Paez will be.

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Goar is out, Paez is in: Education politics shift in Minneapolis

December 8, 2015

Welcome, Dr. Sergio Paez, to the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Image result for sergio paez
Dr. Paez

Many people were shocked to learn that Paez was chosen to become Minneapolis’ next superintendent, over interim candidate and hometown favorite (for some), Michael Goar. 

The decision was announced at an exhaustingly drawn out special school board meeting on December 7, where a long list of desired superintendent characteristics was sweated over in great detail by the board, with almost no indication–until the very end–that Paez would get the job.

The board room was mostly quiet throughout the nearly three hour meeting, despite sign-wielding protestors, who were demanding the board restart the search. These protestors were–randomly–clustered in seats right in front of the silently observing, stalwart Students for Education Reform (SFER) crew that has been present at many recent MPS meetings.

It was an interesting and telling mix, as well as a preview of the various factions Paez will encounter here in Minneapolis.

SFER is a national education reform organization, started in 2009, supposedly by a couple of nice college kids out of Princeton University. Fact check, please! SFER is simply another super spongy Astroturf group seeking to cash in on, and remake, public schools by declaring them failures, and then heavily promoting market-based “fixes,” such as more school choice, more “innovation,” less tenure, etc. 

CT SFER kids rallying for charter schools. Edushyster photo.

SFER has outposts at colleges around the country, kind of like the Sierra Club or Amnesty International, where they’ve been able to attract (and financially reward) young, idealistic students who will, perhaps unwittingly, carry water for the very adult interests that are pulling SFER’s strings. 

I am sure the young people who get hired by SFER to put tape over their mouths during union-district negotiating sessions, or to shill for certain candidates during school board elections, or to march in favor of judging teachers by their students’ test scores, are probably sucked in by a desire to do something about the real educational inequities and institutionalized racism that exists in our schools, and, of course, our society at large. 

Their activism and youthful desire to change the world provides a nice cover for SFER’s behind the scenes machinations, which revolve around a top-down campaign funded exclusively by very wealthy adults who know how to put their best foot forward, in order to conduct business as usual (with some help, of course; SFER, the national org, has a fancy New York PR firm on a retainer).

Conneticut blogger Jonathon Pelto has written two recent investigative pieces on SFER. Here’s Pelto’s take on what this group is all about:

Dedicated to promoting the privatization of public education, more taxpayer funds for privately owned, but publicly funded charter schools, the Common Core, the Common Core testing scheme and a host of anti-teacher initiatives, Students for Education Reform, Inc. (SFER) was created in late 2009,  according to their narrative, by a couple of undergraduate students at Princeton University.

Claiming to have over 100 chapters across the country, the ‘student run’ advocacy group has, as of late last summer, collected more than $7.3 million since its inception to fund their ‘education reform’ activities.

Oh! That explains how they can pay students to camp out at excrutiatingly long school board meetings. 

SFER was a presence during the 2014 Minneapolis school board race, and they will be present again, in 2016, along with their compatriots from MinnCAN, Educators for Excellence, Teach for America, and other well-heeled, decidedly non-populist reform groups.

But who else will be present? The group of local activists seated in front of the SFER crew at Monday’s school board meeting hopefully will be. Restart the Search

This group was small, and consisted of parents, teachers, and school support staff–and at least one student, who looked far too young to be part of SFER. Despite its small size, the group came wielding a petition that circulated through Minneapolis over the weekend, declaring all three finalists for Minneapolis’ superintendent inadequate, and too, well, too SFER or MinnCAN-like. Too corporate. Too big business. Too wedded to the money and priorities of outside entities with a scripted agenda.

Without any hedge fund cash, or any design help from an out of town PR firm, this local petition gathered 918 signatures in just a few days, asking the school board to restart its superintendent search.

Now, I see, it is up to 950 names.

The petition didn’t work, in one sense, because the school board did not vote to restart the search process.

But that goal was a long shot, at this stage in the game. The school board members themselves are clearly exhausted, and stretched thin by the months-long search. They are only human, after all, and paid virtually nothing to wade through the politics, policies, and shifting priorities that are part of the job.

Related image
Michael Goar

And to start over would look fractious, and perhaps further feed the failure and dysfunction narrative that spins so constantly over our public schools. (Remember Netflix CEO and billionaire Reed Hastings’ call to end democratically elected school boards? He is not alone in wishing for this.)

But it did work, in another, perhaps more important sense: Michael Goar was not chosen to become superintendent (the petition is full of quite pointed commentary on Goar’s tenure in MPS). Just three of the nine board members–Siad Ali, Carla Bates, and Josh Reimnitz–voted for Goar; all of the other board members wanted Paez. And this is significant, as Goar’s year-long trial run as interim superintendent was controversial, and disruptive, in the eyes of many.

Paez is undoubtedly only as human as Goar is, and will probably not offer any immediate, magical fixes for what ails the Minneapolis schools. And what ails it most, according to last night’s board meeting, is a loss of trust in MPS’s leadership, and a need for some relationship repair.

“We need someone who can bring our community together,” and “rebuild trust,” Tracine Asberry told MPR News last night. She did not seem to be alone in that sentiment.

And, not insignificantly, Paez was favored by at least two board members–Rebecca Gagnon and Nelson Inz–because they were impressed with his knowledge of teaching and learning, and what they saw as Paez’s commitment to educating the “whole child,” and not just the portion of the child who may or may not perform well on test day. (Board members also touted his success with ELL students).

We don’t know yet what Paez will do when he takes over as superintendent. Will he make shocking missteps (data walls, anyone?), or will he build bridges? While Paez was superintendent in Holyoke, MA, the district was taken over by the state. Could that happen here? Some people in Minnesota would love to see MPS go down, and be replaced by a New Orleans-style network of “high performing seats,” rather than schools. We should all be aware of this.

And will he know–or learn–how to put a racial and social justice framework first, without bowing to the hidden demands of groups like SFER?

Proceed with caution, Dr. Paez. 

While Students for Education Reform (SFER) will pontificate that they are “all about the children,” their political activities in Minneapolis, Denver and elsewhere tells a very different story.

–Jonathon Pelto

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Noah Branch for Superintendent

Image result for noah branch
Whiz kid Noah Branch

December 3, 2015

Kids say the darndest things. Take Noah Branch, for example. Branch is the first student to have a spot on the Minneapolis school board, and some of the adults who let that happen might be regretting it.

Today, during the final throes of the interview process for the three Minneapolis superintendent finalists, Branch dropped this question on interim superintendent Michael Goar:

You have squandered the past year. Why should we chose you and not someone who has educational background who can fix things?

Wow. This question seemed to make Goar visibly upset, and led him to declare that, if he is allowed to become the permanent superintendent, he will need to hire a CEO to help him get the job done. I am sure the job is tough, but a CEO sounds expensive, and very business-like. Didn’t they used to call this job “Assistant Superintendent”?

Branch’s question also launched Goar into a defense of a presumed weakness: He has no teaching experience. 

Image result for john deasy
John Deasy in the board room. Or is that the Broad room?

There are lots of other urban superintendents who haven’t had teaching experience, Goar stated. He then used New York, Los Angeles, and Memphis as examples (he also referenced them during a community meet and greet on December 2).

If those are his trailblazers, then we’re in trouble. Los Angeles is currently looking for a new superintendent, after John Deasy–the one with no teaching experience–resigned under a cloud of iPad-fueled scandal. LA is also having to fight off a virtual takeover by billionaire Eli Broad, and his plan to put “half of LAUSD students in charter schools in eight years.” (Don’t worry–Deasy enjoyed a soft landing after being forced out of LA. He now works for the “Broad Center for School Management Systems,” funded by Broad himself.)

Memphis does have a superintendent, Dorsey E. Hopson, with no teaching experience. Instead, Hopson is a lawyer who helped guide Memphis through its conversion from an independent district to a member of the “Achievement School District.” See this article: “When Outsiders Take Over Schools.”

And then there is Joel Klein, the former New York superintendent that Goar mentioned by name as also having no background in teaching. In a review of Klein’s 2014 book about his educational prowess, education professor Aaron Pallas offers this insight:

What…are the lessons that Klein offers to the rest of the country? If U.S. schools in general are failing, as he asserts, what are some possible action steps? Recounting the endless reorganizations in New York City, the expansion of charter schools, and the positioning of school principals as mini-CEOs provides little guidance for the typical school district or school leader.

Branch has also asked another pointed, “Emperor’s New Clothes” question during these weeks of superintendent candidate interviews: “How do you know the Acceleration 2020 plan will work?” Acceleration 2020 is the oft-cited, “get our numbers up” strategic plan for the Minneapolis schools.

Maybe Branch would consider becoming Minneapolis’ next superintendent.

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