A couple of things have occured over the past couple of days that are leaving me feeling as if my post regarding Johnson's rebuttal to the Strib article may have been a bit strong. The occurences include the following - 1) The Strib published an editorial on July 3 that seemed to temporize the conclusions of their earlier newsroom article. Given that Johnson's letter - posted a couple of days ago here on mnforum - was sent to Lou Gefland at the Strib, it seems that the Strib editors agreed with Johnson's sense that the newsroom article did not do a good job of analyzing the reasons for the differences in the MPS and the SPPS budgets, namely MPS commitment to small class sizes. How I want to temporize my response is this: I still think that the District needs to take a very close look at why our smaller class sizes and our almost 30 more schools and our greater costs have not resulted in better test scores or graduation rates or attendance records than SPPS. And I still do not like the tone of Johnsons's article or her concern regarding "naive" readers but I'll leave it at that for now. BUT, unlike my earlier post that really targeted Johnson and the District admin directly, I would like to back off from focusing specifically on the Superintendent and look at the School Board and the local DFL appartus in general. It is true that the voters have supported school referendums based on a commitment to small class sizes and that MPS have delivered small class sizes. And MPS class sizes are still small relative to most of the state even given the increases we'll see next year. BUT test scores, graduation rates, attendance rates, and other performance measures do not seem to indicate that small class sizes have paid off. The District really needs to take on this test results issue a lot more directly. I am NOT one of those over zealous assessment promoters BUT I do think that such standards of measurement, universally applied and reported, allow parents and citizens in general to assess the relative quality of certain schools, certain districts, certain approaches. And only through such assessments will we be able to maintain a broad-base of support for PUBLIC education in this era. I think the Walsh article - although flawed - pointed to some real questions. Comparing costs between MPS and SPPS is truly comparing apples to apples - similar free and reduced lunch, similar numbers of students, similar LEP, similar environments, similar test scores. Even though some of the conclusions may have been too overdrawn, such a comparison should be helpful to everyone if done more thoroughly and carefully. 2) And the second occurence is actually a series of emails I have received - from people I know , as well as new web-aquaintances - that were sympathetic to my frustrations with the district but were also cautioning me against being overly focused on the Superintendent's office and encouraging me to broaden my perspective to include the School Board and the local DFL.
Indeed, one of the main concerns seems to be the power of the teacher's union in protecting a system that does not necessarily work in the best interests of the kids. Personally, the aspect of the union contracts that concern me most now are those relating to tenure and how the tenure system frustrates the District from being able to remove burnt out teachers, build a diverse staff, and take advantage of the energy and excitement of having new teachers as part of the team. The wisdom of experienced teachers needs the enthusiasm of younger teachers to make schools into vibrant, growing communities. I am not anti-union in the least. I am anti-hurting our schools and I think the current system has some real problems. How can MPS parents and the MPS teacher's union work together to find some answers? Carla Bates Read more at http://mpsparents.blogspot.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
