[Mpls] ability group and zip codes.

[Lynnell Mickelsen]

Doug Mann writes:

"For the record: Doug Mann has a child who was continuously enrolled
at Lake Harriet Community School from the beginning of Kindergarten
to part-way through the fourth grade in the fall of 2000.

Lynnell Michelsen has a child who was in the same school, in the same
grade level, and sometimes in the same homeroom. Her child
received phonics instruction in school, my child did not. (If students
aren't learning something, the teachers aren't teaching it). Her child
spent 50 minutes per day in a reading program for children designated as
high-ability learners, my child spent those 50 minutes per day in one of the
other reading programs. The sorting and assignment to separate reading
classrooms happened at the beginning of first grade....

While our child was at Lake Harriet Community School my wife and
I used the school directory to figure out where most of the kids in the
low-, medium-, and high-ability learners groups resided. It almost looked
as if the kids were sorted and grouped by zip code."

Lynnell says: I've got three boys--same parents, same zip code and three different levels of ability, interest and achievement. My husband and I are like many parents with more than one child--we scratch our heads and wonder how they could have come from the same gene pool and family--because they're all so different.

Not sure which one of mine overlapped with Doug's kid. I've got two who do fairly well in school and one that struggles with reading and writing, although "struggles" is probably a euphemism. "Blows off" reading and writing would be more accurate. We had him assessed for learning disabilities and from what the experts could tell his chief disability was that he'd rather practice his jump shot or memorize Top 40 songs than pick up a book. So that's what we're dealing with.

My kids--all from the same zip code-- have been placed in various groups--because in fact, they seem to have various abilities and interest levels. Which is fine by me. If parents don't think their kid is placed in the appropriate group, they can go in and talk to the teachers, whom I have found are open to parent feedback. From what I can tell, it's not a rigid system and as I've said in my previous post---kids spend the majority of their day in mixed group settings. Reading and math have some flexible groupings. But kids are all mixed together for science, social studies, art, music, gym, homeroom, health, Spanish, which makes up the majority of the school day. I think this system tries to find the right balance.

One thing that I've been really impressed by at Lake Harriet is how quickly the teachers seem to figure out where my kids are at. I've heard this from other parents too. We go into conferences in the fall and the teacher says, this is where he's weak, this is where he's strong, this is what I'm going to focus on with this kid for the fall. I can't figure out how they do it. They have between 20 and 25 kids per class and their analysis of my individual kids have almost always been dead-on. (And tough!!!)

In previous posts, Doug has argued for individual learning plans for each kid. Which may sound good in theory, but is often not so good in practice. When I was a kid, my school signed onto the individual lesson plan program. For hours every day, we worked on our little packets of worksheets and reading and tests. We reported our results and progress to the teacher. We all got to move at our own pace. No stigma of grouping. Myself, I hated it. There was little interaction between myself or a teacher or another student. And the corporate work-sheet packets were beyond dull.

When I was a kid, I also had the peculiar misfortune to consistently test above my abilities in math. So I was usually placed in class levels that were beyond me. I hated "looking dumb" so instead of admitting I was lost, asking questions and slowing the rest of class down, I just muddled through and did badly. I would have been far better served by being placed in remedial classes where I would have gotten help and actually mastered the concepts. I simply could not run with the Big Dogs in math. Still can't.

On a practical level, I think I can safely say that the only people at Lake Harriet who were using the school directory and zip codes to sort kids into various groups were Doug and his wife. Teachers and staff neither have the desire nor the time to try something like this.

But Doug is right that if you look across the United States, you could pretty much predict academic success by zip-code---not in the case of each individual student, but certainly in test score averages. Because study after study shows that the most reliable predictors of student success are as follows: 1) the parents' level of education; 2) family stability and commitment to their kids education; 3) parents' income. Unfortunately, factors like teaching and curriculum almost always come in fourth after these first three.

Of course, this has never stopped critics--some from the left, like Doug Mann and plenty more from the right--from demonizing urban city schools that serve poor students and putting nearly all the blame the teachers or the districts . There's always room for improvements and we have things we could do better in Minneapolis. But the insistence that schools are completely responsible for the gap in achievement between students flies in the face of nearly all research, although it's a great argument for demonizing an urban teaching staff. On a practical level, I'm not sure why any teacher would now want to teach in an poor urban school--it's hard work and for all your efforts, you'll be continually blamed, called names and penalized under the guise of "accountability."

These first three predictors of student success also explain why Edina and Wayzata (and Lake Harriet School) have such consistently higher test scores. It's not that they have such enlightened teachers or superior curriculums. It's not even that they get so much more money. In fact, in Minneapolis, middle-class students get substantially LESS money than poor students. Nope, the success goes back to parental level of education, family stablity and commitment to education and family income.

I'm a progressive. I wish kids all came to school at the same high levels of learning preparedness. We'd be on our way to a more just and better world. But since kids come at such different levels, I think both the moral and practical thing to do is to meet each child where he or she is at and and give them the best possible instruction.


Lynnell Mickelsen
Linden Hills, Ward 13

PS: There's an interesting article in today's New York Times about putting minority students from the city into wealthy suburban school districts in New York. The program starts in middle school. In order for these kids to succeed, they are put through a "boot camp" of intensive tutoring and all-day Saturday classes so that they can go into advanced placement high school classes and do well. This program costs $35,000 per kid to get a student from middle-school through high school and it's been successful. But this program also been criticized for doing "ability grouping" by separating the most talented minority students from the vast majority of minority students who are doing poorly.
My question for the critics is: so what should New York be doing instead? Criticizing a program is simple. What's a better solution? How do you serve students of such varying abilities.



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