Why does Minneapolis have a big education achievement gap? The only answer to that question I could find in the Sunday Strib editorial section is that a majority of MPS students are hard to educate. The barriers to learning are poverty, English as a second language for many students, etc. The Our Perspective article cited the Minneapolis Taxpayer Association study, which estimated that the district would need another $4,000 per student just to meet standard goals.
The Star Tribune's job is to manufacture consent for the status quo, so I am not surprised that "we have a hard-to-educate student population" is the best that the strib editorial writers could come up with. School board members have also been saying that the schools are doing a pretty good job with a difficult student population, that the basic problem is that too many parents aren't doing their jobs, that communities of color don't value education, etc. (I dare to call that "racism" per the dictionary definition.) In my opinion, there are huge, systemic barriers to closing the achievement gap that the district can tear down. It is just a matter of deciding to do it. The systemic barriers include: 1) High teacher turnover rates and a high concentration of inexperienced teachers (which can be greatly reduced by not laying off excessive number of teachers at the end of each year); 2) An extremely high concentration of inexperienced teachers and extremely high teacher turnover rates at schools serving poor neighborhoods (I have proposed the adoption of a plan to desegregate probationary teachers); 3) A tracking system which places most kids on different curriculum tracks on the basis of perceived ability in Kindergarten or grade 1 (I believe it is possible to phase out the "low-ability" tracks without holding back the high achievers, if issues 1 & 2 above are also addressed along the lines I propose). The current tracking system is holding back the low achievers and plays a big role in driving students out of the district. Also, small K-8 schools would be cost effective without multiple curriculum tracks for regular Ed students. And in my opinion, "No Child Left Behind" is not a blueprint for closing the gap. NCLB is designed to promote the privatization and charterization of the public school system. It does not address the major systemic addressed by me in the preceding paragraph. And if you look at the fine print, you will discover that school districts are not required to make better performing public schools an option for all of the students attending poor performing schools that don't show acceptable improvement. NCLB is a fraud. -Doug Mann, King Field Mann for school board www.educationright.com REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
