Attendance
was very poor, with only three students and five adults present in addition to
organizers Khulia Pringle (Chief of Staff of S.T. A.N.D. Up) and Minister Toya
(a pastor at a church in Roseville who presided over the meeting). The students, who were engaging in their
accounts of aversive experiences in public schools, had limited experience with
the Minneapolis Public Schools. One student did seem to have had numerous bad
experiences in schools that included Minneapolis Public Schools institutions
before having a turn-around experience at FAIR High School, which is not a
mainline MPS high school but rather a charter school that has just been overseen
by the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools for two years.
Those
of us in attendance at the meeting began with self-introductions and then
proceeded to watch a documentary focused on the school to prison pipeline,
detailing the high suspension rates for African American students in public
schools throughout the United States and the high percentages of African American
youth who are thrust into systemic patterns that result in sustained periods of
incarceration.
This
is a grave problem, part of a situation in which the odds are high that young
people facing problems of economic poverty, familial functionality, and schools
with a propensity to suspend rather than to educate end up on the streets that
lead to prison or early death.
Each
audience member then paired with another participant to discuss the documentary
and to give personal responses. Adults
generally expressed anger and disgust. Students
echoed those sentiments and gave accounts of schools wherein staff members were
generally uncaring and lacking
understanding of the problems faced by
young people facing significant life challenges.
…………………………………………………………………….
Literature passed out by the
organizers summarizing the program of S.T.A.N.D. Up describes an organization that vows
to fight for the education of students of color and those of low income who are
falling through the cracks and who are susceptible to the school to prison
pipeline. The organization vows to train--- with monetary compensation--- parents and community members to be advocates
for their own children and those who are not well-served by schools. Staff members of S.T.A.N.D.
Up pledge to offer information on schools that offer better educational
experiences than others, to provide individual review of records and present
experiences of students, to assist parents in formulating a viable educational
plan for their children, to provide support for parents as advocates for their
children, and to keep students on track once the plan is in action.
The
focus of the discussion at the meeting, though, focused heavily on the
suspension problem.
There
was little focus on the programmatic details and the structural components of
locally centralized school districts that deny our young people even a remotely acceptable, much less an
excellent education.
Readers of this blog know that my own
focus is relentless on the academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools
and that my nearly complete book, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect, will provide 350 pages of facts, analysis,
and philosophical observations pertinent to this iteration of the locally
centralized school district, detailing the massive failure of the district to
provide any student with a truly excellent education--- and
for students of poverty and students of color providing morally abhorrent
experiences.
Participants in the meeting organized
by S.T.A.N.D. Up were given
a useful book, Minneapolis School Finder,
compiled by leaders of Community Engagement for the organization MN Comeback
that attempts to identify schools that promise a better education than others. There are some good summaries in this book given
for schools according to demographics and overall performance, but the academic
performance component in not disaggregated according to ethnicity and income.
The main problem with this compilation
is an abiding assumption that there are really quite a few schools that offer
students most in need a good education.
The brutal reality is that none of our
public schools render an excellent education and very few get even close to good. Students emerge from the public schools of Minneapolis
knowledge-poor and skill-deprived.
Neither the leaders nor the participants
at this meeting organized by S.T.A.N.D. Up had a very good grip on details
pertinent to the staff and program of the Minneapolis Public Schools. They did not seem to understand the full brutality
of statistics pertinent to student academic performance in the Minneapolis Public
Schools, wherein levels are even worse than those for the state as a whole.
For
the review of my friends at S.T.A.N.D. Up, I give the summary that I have provided
elsewhere on this blog, as follows:
Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on
MCAs:
Disaggregated Data for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, and
2016
Math
African American
2014 2015 2016
Male 20.8% 22.0% 19.1%
Female 21.2% 20.7% 20.5%
African (Somali, Ethiopian,
Liberian--- late 20th/early 21st
century immigrant populations)
2014 2015 2016
Male 24.2% 25.0%
23.6%
Female 24.1% 25.9%
21.5%
Hispanic
2014 2015 2016
Male 32.1% 33.5%
32.1%
Female 29.4% 30.3%
30.4%
Native American/ American Indian
2014 2015 2016
Male 19.9% 16.5%
16.0%
Female 25.0% 21.9%
21.3%x
Asian
2014 2015 2016
Male 44.1% 47.4%
45.4%
Female 51.3% 53.4%
54.1%
White/ Caucasian
2014 2015 2016
Male 76.7% 78.4%
77.4%
Female 77.0% 77.9%
78.4%
All Students
2014 2015 2016
Male 43.1% 44.3%
42.9%
Female 43.9% 44.5%
44.4%
Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on
MCAs:
Disaggregated Data for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, and
2016
Reading
African American
2014 2015 2016
Male 18.8% 18.5%
18.2%
Female 24.0% 24.5%
23.4%
African (Somali, Ethiopian,
Liberian--- late 20th/early 21st
century immigrant populations)
2014 2015 2016
Male 18.8% 19.3%
20.4%
Female 27.6% 24.3%
23.2%
Hispanic
2014 2015 2016
Male 22.0% 22.9%
24.7%
Female 24.5% 26.6%
27.6%
Native American/ American Indian
2014 2015 2016
Male 18.3% 13.9%
15.3%
Female 23.6% 26.1%
25.9%
Asian
2014 2015 2016
Male 36.0% 33.8%
38.8%
Female 44.7% 44.1%
50.6%
White/ Caucasian
2014 2015 2016
Male 75.3% 74.3%
74.0%
Female 81.0% 80.2%
80.0%
All Students
2014 2015 2016
Male 39.2% 38.7%
39.6%
Female 45.3.% 45.1%
45.8%
…………………………………………………………………….
The school suspension problem that is
the key current focus of S.T.A.N.D. Up and that dominated the Thursday, 10
August 2017, discussion is grave.
But
the root problem for this and all of our abiding educational and societal
domestic dilemmas that produces those suspensions is the typically poor academic
quality abiding in the schools of Minneapolis.
I will
be working with my friends at S.T.A.N.D. Up to convey a deeper understanding of
the low level of education provided to all students of the Minneapolis Public
Schools, the precise systemic features that produce wretched academic results
for students of color and those of low income, and the five point program
(curricular overhaul, teacher training, tutoring, family resource provision and
referral, and bureaucratic slimming) that will be necessary to transform the
Minneapolis Public Schools into a model of excellence for the locally
centralized school district.
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