As in most large US cities, Minneapolis made some progress toward making a
quality education accessible to all on an equal basis during the 1970s and
1980s. On National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, the difference between
non-Hispanic black and white 13 year olds declined by 50% between 1971 and
1988 -- 'The New Crisis (NAACP magazine) "Long Division," p. 25-31, graph on
page 28). In his Insight news column of May 29, 2002 Clarence Hightower noted
that, "A generation ago, 68% of African Americans were high school graduates
compared with 76% of whites."
However, nationally, and to greater degree in Minneapolis, the learning gap
between black and white students has widened. The high school graduation rate
for African Americans in Minneapolis is less than half of what it was a
generation ago. The test score gap has been getting wider. And the district has
learned well how to hide its failures with Enron-style accountability gimmicks
pioneered by the Texas Department of Education.
The school board, and most of the educational establishment seems to have
bought the
idea that the racial learning gap was being closed in the 1970s and early 80s
due to the effect of a "rising tide of mediocrity," as proposed in 'A Nation
at Risk," the 1983 report of a blue-ribbon commission selected by the
Reagan-Bush administration. In other words, the gap was being closed at the expense of
the high achievers. The "solutions" included sorting students into
instructional groups and / or classrooms according to perceived ability, a practice
that
is know to widen the gap.
The idea that the gap was being closed at the expense of high achievers in
the 1970s and early 1980s was tested and contradicted by the Sandia Report, a
report which the first Bush administration ordered and suppressed. The Sandia
Report was the product of a study done by Sandia National Laboratories, which
analyzed educational data, including National Assessment of Educational
Progress exams from the 1970s to late 1980s.
Minnesota basically gutted the Brown decision and reinstated a Separate But
Equal doctrine, i.e., racially isolated schools do not violate the equal
protection clause of the 14th amendment as long as the educational inputs are more
or less equal.
"Even if some racially isolated schools remain under the proposed
[desegregation] rule, this does not mean that the rule is unreasonable or
ineffective; schools comprised predominantly of students of color are not inherently
inferior (from the Statement of Need and Reasonableness for the proposed
"voluntary" desegregation rule, page 59). -- See: Comment on the "State executive
branch response to Plaintiff's settlement proposal in the NAACP and Xiong
cases [dated 3/19/99]. http://educationright.tripod.com/id33.htm
-Doug Mann, King Field
Minneapolis School Board Candidate
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