In a message dated 9/1/2002 8:01:58 PM Central Daylight Time, Gypsycurse7
writes:
> From: [sender's name and email address deleted]
> Linda: What exactly is Doug going to do about
> the "system". And how can there be "apartheid"
> with all the years of busing that have been done?
>
The Minneapolis Public Schools passed a resolution call
"Closing the gap: ensuring that all students can learn" in 1995.
It predicted that the district could make progress toward "closing
the gap" by designating most of the schools within the district as
"community schools" with guaranteed placement for any student
who lived within a defined attendance area. Any doubts that the
district would use this community school plan to carry out a policy
of racial separation were dispelled by the unveiling of the proposed
attendance boundaries late in 1995. For example, the attendance
area for Lyndale community school was about one-and-one-half
miles long from east-to-west, and two blocks long from north-to-south.
The district correctly predicted that the student population at Lyndale
would be over 90% black. My wife and I initially tried to enroll our son
at Lyndale in the fall of 1996 because it is located two blocks away
from our house. However, the district refused to process a bid for
Lyndale school because the idea was for Lyndale to be a school
for people of African descent and our son is white. The choice of
new school sites and changes in grade level configurations at
various schools also had the predictable effect of increasing racial
separation.
> Another thing I'm wondering about is if schools
> like Washburn and Southwest are "failing", too
> since they operate under the same administration
> as the "failing" schools.
>
I think it is entirely possible for one school to succeed
and another to fail, despite being in the same district with
the same central administration. For example, I think it reasonable
to expect that high-poverty schools where the new teachers are
assigned will have much lower test scores than the low-poverty schools
which only high-seniority teachers (12-15 years or more) can bid into.
This district did its own study a few years ago which attributed something
like 44% of test score variability to teacher efficacy, which is generally
measured as years of experience with adjustments for differences in
levels of educational attainment, certifications, etc.
> Are there differences for public schools like
> Wayzata and Edina other than that they naturally
> have more money? If public is by definition bad,
> how could these schools be succeeding?
>
It is my guess that the schools in about half of the districts
in Minnesota are basically college preparatory schools and
get about the same results as the better private college
preparatory schools, despite the burden of having to take
all comers.
-Doug Mann
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