In the United States, Activism for Public Education Must be Exerted at the Level of the Locally Centralized School District >>>>> Implications for Your Vote ("No") on the 8 November Referendum

For those of you concerned about public education in this political year, understand that with the local control impetus in the United States, your focus of action must be at the level of the locally centralized school district. Such votes matter much more than the hopes that you might futilely project on candidates vying for office at the national level.


A chance to exert your activism in Minneapolis will come this looming election day of 8 November 2016, the same day on which you will opt for candidates at the national, state and local levels.


On matters of foreign policy, trade, federal budgetary decisions, abortion, philosophy of jurisprudence for appointments and decisions at the Supreme Court, and a range of other issues your decision for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or other presidential candidates is very important. Your vote for the candidates vying to represent Minnesota in the United States Senate or House of Representatives likewise carries great weight. And your selection of candidates standing for state and local positions also bears heavily on matters of expenditure and revenue, the projects that do or do not materialize as a result of those budgetary decisions, and action taken on a range of social issues.


But while state-level education is a bit more important than most education policy set at the national level, your real influence on matters pertinent to education comes at the local level:


National and state programs for education come and go:


I have detailed in my academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota) and in many places on this blog (including one very detailed five-article series) how the great promise of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, a specific iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) was eventually undermined by politicians of both left and right inclination, and from both Democrats and Republicans. During the period encompassing the administration of President Barack Obama, NCLB was largely impaled by a waiver application system put in place by the United States Department of Education. Then NCLB was entirely superseded by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of Congress in December 2015, bearing significant policy changes as the new iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.


Under the policies of the gubernatorial administration of Mark Dayton, with Brenda Cassellius at the helm of the Minnesota Department of Education, a waiver application was issued and, after initial rejection, was approved after the second attempt. Policy shifts at the state level serve to indicate differences between NCLB and ESSA:


Under NCLB, scores on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) determined whether a school was failing or succeeding for not having given evidence of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) across all ethnic groups identified via disaggregated data. Failing schools in Minnesota, as was the case across the nation, had to allow outside private tutoring firms to vie for the provision of academic remediation. After about a half-decade of successive annual failure, failing schools faced mandatory staff and programmatic restructuring.


Now, under ESSA, utilization of contracted private tutoring firms has been eliminated. In Minnesota, the MCAs in math and reading are still administered at grades 3-8; and at the high school level, MCAs are still given at grade 10 (reading) and grade 11 (math). But under a new Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS) MCA scores are now combined with additional measures of success that take into account graduation rates and student progress from year to year. And, while students once had to prove grade level writing skills In a state-mandated assessment at grade 9, and to demonstrate grade-level performance on the Grade 10 Reading MCA, the writing test has been eliminated and grade level performance on the reading test is no longer required for graduation.


Meanwhile, great opposition has arisen across the nation to Common Core, the programmatic attempt by a private committee of scholars and other members to institutionalize curricular rigor and continuity across the nation. In Minnesota, the Brenda Cassellius administration has adopted Common Core standards for reading but not for mathematics.


But even states wherein both major facets of Common Core were at first adopted, opposition now casts the program in doubt. What had been an ingenious state-by-state adoption strategy by scholars seeking the nationwide continuity witnessed in the best education systems of the world (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Germany) foundered in confrontation with those asserting the primacy of local control.


.......................................................................


And so it goes in the United States.


And so we have it in Minnesota.


This is why you must exercise any activist tendencies that you have by focusing your own convictions and initiatives at the level of the locally centralized school district.


Funding and certain mandates impelled by pressures for equity do emanate from national and state decision-makers. But policies pertinent to student progress are almost all of local provenance.


And thus it is that you must consider the power that you will demonstrate by a vote of “No” on the revenue referendum of November 8 in Minneapolis--- or comparable opportunities awaiting you readers living in other locally centralized school district areas.


Other articles soon forthcoming will explain why decision-makers need the wake-up call that would be delivered via your "No" vote on the referendum.


Please begin with the first article that I posted on this issue, appearing next as you scroll down.