Katherine Kersten’s article,
“Undisciplined” (Star Tribune Opinion
Pages, 18 March 2018) generated much energetic discussion and induced the
newspaper’s editor to print two lengthy rebuttals and another response
pertinent to her own article and another ranged against positions of the Center
of the American Experiment, with which Kersten is associated. The rebuttals came from an opinion piece jointly
authored by Julia Hill and Dana Bennis, and from Minnesota Education
Commissioner Brenda Cassellius; the
other response directly elicited by the Kersten article came from Laura
Gilliam, published in today’s Star
Tribune as I tap out this note on Tuesday, 27 March. Additionally, Tom Connelly and Daniel Bordman
wrote pieces focused on a bill before the Minnesota State Legislature that would
restrict teachers as to their ability to require students t express opinions of
an ideological nature in classroom discussions.
Inasmuch as these authors were focused on matters that have drawn
position papers from the Center of the American Experiment, with which
Katherine Kersten is associated, these articles are thematically related to
those mentioned above.
I have recently blog positioned
these articles from the Star Tribune
as exercises for my readers in discerning subtext and realizing the poor
quality of coverage given to K-12 issues in that newspaper and most other
journalistic sources. I accordingly
posted the Kersten article, accessible as you scroll on this blog, asking
readers to bring their own analysis to this opinion piece, which gained front
page positioning in the Sunday, 18 March edition.
Given here again is
that article, now interspersed with my own comments, as follows >>>>>
Introductory script
from Star Tribune editorial board,
giving the thematic gist of
Kersten’s article
>>>>>
“A state agency aims
to eliminate
disparities in
schools’ response to
misbehavior. Its destabilizing
course would only
spread chaos in
our classrooms.”
Article
(“Undisciplined,” 18 March 2018) written by Katherine Kersten >>>>>
Brace yourself, parents of
Minnesota. Here’s what’s coming soon to
a school near you:
increased violence, brazen challenges
to teachers’ authority and a chaotic environment where learning is an uphill
battle. Teachers who try to exert
control will find their hands tied, and some kids--- no longer accountable for their
behavior--- will feel free to provoke
mischief and mayhem.
If this happens at your school, you’ll
be able to thank the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR). In fall 2017, the department sent letters to
43 school districts and charter schools across the state, announcing that the schools
are under investigation because their student discipline records suggest that
black and Native American students are disciplined at a rate that exceeds their
proportion of the student population.
On March 2, the department released a
report it said showed that, in the 2015-16 school year, minority
students--- 31 percent of the state’s
student population--- accounted for 66
percent of school suspensions and expulsions.
My Comment >>>>>
Like most people, Kersten has a naïve attachment to the misguided notion of free will, and as a conservative she believes adamantly in personal responsibility. She also discerns a liberal bias in both K-12 and collegiate classrooms. She is suspicious of categorical advocacy for students along gender, transgender, and racial lines. She believes that such categorization distracts from the mission to serve all people and invidiously promotes the balkanization of society.
Kersten continues >>>>>
MDHR has declined to make public either
the letters or the identity of the districts targeted, citing ongoing
investigations. But Human Rights
Commissioner Kevin Lindsey provided troubling details in a recent interview
with MinnPost.
Here, in essence, is MDHR’s
position: The primary cause of racial
discipline gaps is racist teachers and discipline policies, not differing rates
of student misbehavior. Schools must
move to end these statistical group disparities. If administrators don’t agree to change their
disciplinary practices in ways that reduce black and Native American discipline
rates, according to MinnPost, “Lindsey says that the state will initiate
litigation.”
We’ve seen this movie before, most
recently in the St. Paul Public Schools.
There, it had devastating
consequences for students of all
backgrounds. MDHR bureaucrats must have
been the only people in St. Paul who weren’t paying attention to this debacle.
In St. Paul schools--- as virtually everywhere in the
country--- black students, as a group,
are referred for discipline at higher rates than other students. Starting around 2012, the district’s leaders
tried to narrow this gap by lowering behavior expectations and removing
meaningful penalties for student misconduct.
For example, they spent millions of dollars on “white privilege”
training for teachers, and dropped “continual willful disobedience” as a
suspendable offense.
Violence and disorder quickly
escalated. In some schools, anarchic
conditions made learning difficult, if not impossible, according to
teachers. In December 2015, after a
vicious attack by a student left a high school teacher with a traumatic brain
injury, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi labeled the trend of violence a
“public health crisis,” according to news accounts.
By that time, suspensions--- which had initially fallen--- had surged to their highest rate in five
years. Black students, about 30 percent
of the student body, were 77 percent of those suspended. The St. Paul teachers’ union threatened to
strike over safety concerns, and families who valued education began flooding
out of St. Paul schools. In June 2016,
the school board voted out the superintendent.
My Comment >>>>>
Katherine Kersten is a devout Roman Catholic with a deep moral sensibility.
Her conviction is that out of wedlock births, the absence of fathers from many African American households, and the dysfunctional nature of too many families of the urban poor produce behaviors that logically lead to suspensions.
There is truth in those observations that many liberals deny or give little evidence of discursive eagerness.
But there is a grave flaw in the observations of Kersten and fellow conservatives.
They imply that individuals and families could just make better decisions if they had the will, that will of the free sort in which they errantly and naively believe.
In fact, human behavior is produced according to the array of positive reinforcements (rewards), negative reinforcements (withdrawal of rewards), and punishments (aversive experiences) to which a given person is subject, individually and as part of a group with similar experiences in history.
Kersten is more knowledgeable than most people as to United
States and world history. She is intellectually positioned for deep consideration of the African
American historical experience; for
this consideration, key points of reference are the Middle Passage, slave
auctions, Civil War, Reconstruction failure, vitiated Reconstruction Amendments
(13th, 14th, 15th), Plessy v. Ferguson,
vigilante lynching, Northern Migration, restricted housing covenants, urban
poverty concentration, cyclical poverty, and wretched K-12 education (weighing
most heavily on the urban poor).
But Kersten is too dedicated to the notions of free will and
personal responsibility to give proper attention to the weight of experience
and the actual determinates of human behavior.
Thus, her reasoning is gravely flawed.
Kersten continues >>>>>
Today, MDHR seems intent on duplicating
this failed social experiment throughout Minnesota. The department--- whose use of state law for this purpose
appears virtually unprecedented--- is
probably doing so because the federal government seems poised to back off on
enforcing Obama-era race-based discipline “guidance.”
In its campaign to transform Minnesota
schools, MDHR is operating under a shroud of secrecy. Reportedly, officials in
the 43 targeted districts and charters have not informed parents that their
schools are under investigation, most likely because MDHR has threatened to
initiate legal action against them unless they cooperate and because they fear
adverse publicity.
As a result, the parents and
communities affected will have no chance to examine the data that allegedly
expose their teachers as racists, or to influence the radical new approach to
discipline that MDHR is foisting on their children’s classrooms.
Is this how things are supposed to work
in our public schools?
The fact is, public scrutiny is vital
here, to expose the three deeply flawed premises on which MDHR’s race-focused
discipline campaign is based.
The department’s first faulty premise
is that teachers, not students, are to blame for the racial discipline
gap. MDHR bureaucrats’ key (if unspoken)
assumption is that students with widely different socioeconomic and family
backgrounds--- as groups--- all misbehave in school at the same
rate. Relying on this premise, the
department attributes any significant group disparities to discriminatory
teachers and discipline practices, by default.
But consider this: Nationally, white boys are suspended at more
than twice the rate of Asian and Pacific Islander boys, while boys in general
are suspended much more often than girls.
Is this because teachers are biased
against white students and boys? Or does
it reflect real differences in conduct?
There are, in fact, real differences in
group behavior. For example, nationally,
young black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the
rate of whites and Hispanics of the same age.
Behaviors that lead to criminal conduct are also likely to produce
school misconduct. Tragically, black
students’ discipline rate is most likely higher than other students because, on
average, they misbehave more.
A groundbreaking 2014 study by J. D.
Wright and colleagues in the Journal of Criminal Justice appears to confirm
this. Using the largest sample of school
aged children in the nation, the authors found that teacher bias plays no role
in the racial discipline gap, which is “completely accounted for by a measure
of the prior problem behavior of the student.”
What accounts for group differences in
behavior? A primary factor appears to
be profound demographic differences in family structure. Nationally, about 72 percent of
African-American and 66 percent of Native American children are born out of
wedlock, as opposed to 29 percent and 17 percent of white and Asian children,
respectively. Young people who grow up
without fathers are far more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial
behavior, as voluminous research makes clear.
MDHR’s flawed premise is that black
student’s higher suspension rates give rise to a “school to prison pipeline,”
which reduces their chances for future success.
Lindsey told Minnpost that kids who miss school aren’t as likely as
other kids to learn or graduate, and so are more likely to land in prison.
But the problem of missed school days
goes far beyond days missed for suspensions.
Chronic absenteeism, defined in Minnesota as missing more than 40
percent of school days, is linked with poverty and home conditions. In 2015-16, 37 percent of Native American and
21 percent of black students were chronically absent, compared to 11 percent
and 8 percent of white and Asian students, respectively.
If MDHR is serious about keeping young
people out of prison, it should focus its efforts here.
MDHR’s third flawed premise is that
discipline policies that focus more on race than on students’ actual conduct
somehow benefit poor and minority children.
In fact, the greatest victims of such
policies are the children--- many poor
and minority--- who come to school ready
to learn. The classroom disorder these
policies promote can add insurmountable obstacles to their quest for an
education.
Race-based policies also harm the
student troublemakers they are intended to help. Often, these young people aren’t taught
self-control or respect for others at home.
Their only chance to master vital social skills is at an orderly school. But if instead they learn that bad behavior
and disrespect for authority carry no adverse consequences, how can they ever
hope to hold a job or become productive citizens?
The misguided approach to discipline
that MDHR is foisting on Minnesota schools has a dismal track record, from Los Angeles to New York.
In 2014, for example, New York’s
attorney general compelled the Syracuse Public Schools to reduce racial
disparities in suspensions.
Violence quickly mushroomed out of
control as behavior standards were lowered.
In 2015, a teachers' union survey found that the district’s teachers and
staff felt “helpless” to combat it.
Two-thirds of respondents reported worrying about their safety, 57
percent had been threatened and 36 percent had been physically
assaulted--- shoved, kicked,
head-butted, choked or bitten. Many
described daily harassment in the form of crude and abusive language,
frequently racial or sexual in nature.
In 2017, after a Syracuse high school
student stabbed a teacher twice, the Onondaga County district attorney issued
an urgent call for reversal of the 2014 disciplinary policy changes.
Minnesota parents should demand to know
whether MDHR has targeted their school district or charter school. Other schools will also be under pressure to
alter their disciplinary policies to avoid finding themselves in MDHR’s
crosshairs.
Only prompt citizen action can avoid
potentially disastrous consequences for all of Minnesota’s children.
My Final Comment
Like most conservatives who originally supported the principles that undergirded No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislative program for academic standards and accountability, Kersten in time came to distance herself from that most promising K-12 legislation since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of which NCLB was an iteration. Disregarding the fact that the best systems of public education in the world (Taiwan, Singapore, Finland) are nationalized, Kersten came to take the conservatives’ anti-centralization view of NCLB, viewing federal mandates as an intrusion on state and local power.
So Kersten has not been consistent in her view regarding K-12 education, nor has she relentlessly focused on programmatic features that would overhaul the K-12 system for delivery of excellent education.
The real problem in K-12 education, adversely
affecting students of all demographic descriptors, concerns wretched academic
quality. The abominable quality of K-12
education in Minnesota and across the United States falls most heavily on students
of ill-educated and financially impoverished parents in dysfunctional families,
households not positioned to provide compensatory and supplementary educational
experiences that in some measure fill in gaping academic holes.
Only 30% of students taking the ACT in
Minnesota are academically proficient in all areas covered on the exam. At least a quarter of Minnesota’s high school
graduates are so academically ill-prepared that they need academic remediation
once matriculating on college campuses, and although graduation rates have
improved they remain low for students in many demographic categories. Even
graduates with high grade point averages (GPAs) are lacking in key knowledge
and skill sets pertinent to mathematics, natural science, history, government,
economics, literature, fine arts, and vocational fields requiring manual
skills.
Better
behavior will follow from excellent education.
The
impartation of an excellent education is the door through which we must
access that favorable terrain of humanity conducive to a better
quality of life, and in so doing redress the injustices of history that have
abused many people.
Kersten
has the capability to pierce the outer layers tangential to the core K-12
dilemma in Minnesota and across the United States. She has the keen intellect for contemplating
root causes and the path to a more rewarding future for all of our precious children.
Kersten
has an admirable pugnacity reminiscent of her late liberal counterpart, Molly
Ivins. She refuses to accept easy explanations
that seduce others. But she is too
concerned with matters tangential to the provision of an excellent education,
too distracted by issues important to those who inhabit her conservative
ideological universe.
If
she really is concerned about addressing the vexing problems of society in the
United States, Katherine Kersten needs to consider the program that will bring
excellent education to young people of all demographic descriptors: knowledge intensive curriculum; knowledgeable teachers capable of imparting
such a curriculum; academic enrichment,
including highly intentional, coherent, comprehensive tutoring as necessary; resource provision and referral for families
struggling with challenges of finances and functionality; and a slimmed and rationalized bureaucracy
redesigned for the implementation of such a plan.
Like
so many other authors whose articles gain print in the Star Tribune, Katherine
Kersten strays from the central issues, gravitating toward those that are
controversial and engender much discussion but never penetrate to the core of the K-12 dilemma.
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