There was a story yesterday in the Strib about Minneapolis public school performance. Accompanying the story was a chart of the % of students of each school who live in poverty.
It's info that has been out there before, but the differences were still stark: for example, 16% for Barton and 20% for Lake Harriet in SW Minneapolis, versus 80-90-percent-plus for many, many other elementary schools (I don't have the chart in front of me). The low-poverty schools were clustered at the top of the rankings, the high-poverty schools clustered at the bottom. Clearly, we have dramatic class segregation in the Minneapolis public schools. And because poverty correlates to a great extent with race, racial segregation as well. Also not news, but the data underlined it again. This segregation has been enhanced by a policy of community schools. I do not want to play pious lefty here: we are looking to send our son to school next fall, and we are looking at the 16% school, the 20% school, and a couple of others below 40% kids-in-poverty. (There's also a couple of 60%-ers on the early list). We are likely to exploit this segregation in Fall 2002. I also understand the general realpolitik argument for and against community schools on the segregation issue. The anti- argument is that we are clustering poverty in a way that makes it easier for wealthier Minneapolitans to ignore, and making it harder for poor kids to learn. This segregation is a moral wrong and socially unjust, and we condemn in other circumstances. The pro-argument is that community schools benefit both sides of the class divide, at least relative to what existed before community schools. The middle- and upper-classes are more likely to stay in the public schools and in Minneapolis, while poorer residents are going to have a tough time anywhere and prefer at least to be in their own neighborhoods, closer to their communities. Also, the cost of busing can go into instruction, and simple race-and-poverty figures do not necessarily measure effective education. OK. So there IS an election coming. I'd like to ask the remaining six school board candidates: 1. Do you accept the segregated state of the Minneapolis public system as acceptable given the alternatives and the support for the community school model? 2. If not, what policies would you advocate as a school board member to reduce/eliminate class/race segregation in school populations? 3. If so, what must be done to reduce the correlation between poor-performing schools and schools with high percentages of poor students? Thanks, David Brauer King Field - Ward 10 Future MPS parent _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
