In the aftermath of the election of 6
November 2018, the death knoll can be heard immediately and with clarity into
the distance for the overweening influence that the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers (MFT) has wielded in elections for seats on the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) Board of Education.
Consider:
Michelle Rhee spent four years (2006-2010)
as chancellor of the Washington, D. C., public schools, for a while enjoying
the backing of many community members and Mayor Adam Fenty in seeking to oust
ineffective teachers protected by the local affiliate of the National Education
Association (NEA), clashing multiple times with NEA President Randi
Weingarten. When Fenty lost a reelection
campaign in large measure because of his support for Rhee, and as the NEA
rallied segments of the community formerly supporting Rhee, her days as
chancellor came to a close. She soon
launched a national organization, StudentsFirst, to continue her work on a
national level. A key goal was to create
a lobbying counterforce to the power of the NEA and its affiliates, so as to
break through seniority strictures and union protection of low-performing
teachers. She sought most of all to gain
the political clout to change policy at the level of state and, as possible,
national government.
This was a misguided strategy, and Rhee
turned out to be a very disappointing leader.
In time, she gave the appearance, sporting heavy makeup and tottering around
on stiletto heels, of being interested in becoming a big player on a national
scale to satisfy the expectations of ambitious South Korean parents while
achieving something good for young people.
Her aim was wrong:
Education policy in the United States is
made at the local level, at which we have a focal mania with an accompanying
mantra repeatedly demanding local control.
Rather than seeking to make big changes at the state or national level,
where the best education systems of the world do focus attention, we must play
the game at the field of our putative focus, which with regard to public
education must be the locally centralized school district. Funding will continue to be important as
emanating from national and state governments;
but changes in curriculum and teacher quality must be conceived and
implemented at the level of the locally centralized school district.
Inasmuch as this is true, we must take
Rhee’s idea of forming a union counterforce to the local level. Rhee’s organization is now moribund in
Minnesota and limping well under the radar of national and state politics and
policy; the erstwhile head of the
Minnesota chapter of StudentsFirst, Kathy Saltzman, has not sounded any public
message for several years. But the idea
of confronting the union is sound; our
aim must be true and local.
Remember at this juncture that I am a
leftist:
I respect the general mission of the NEA,
Education Minnesota (a composite union with links to both the NEA and the
American Federation of Teachers [AFT]) and its local MFT affiliate to agitate for
better pay and working conditions for members.
But these organizations also claim to have
the best interests of students at heart, and this is decidedly not true:
The MFT favors policies that would limit
objective testing to determine student achievement levels, has a view of
curriculum derived from the degraded formulations of education professors that
devalue sequentially acquired knowledge and skill sets, and defends ineffective
teachers with the protections of tenure and seniority. Student achievement is neither sought
objectively nor prioritized politically.
The campaign of Sharon El-Amin and a key
event that occurred during that campaign signals the death knoll of overweening
MFT influence in electoral contest for seats on the MPS Board of
Education.
……………………………………………………………………..
The results of the election were as
follows:
Candidate Name Number of Votes Percentage
Kim Caprini
86,739 33.84%
Josh Pauly
73,994 28.87%
Rebecca Gagnon 48,567 18.95%
Sharon El-Amin 47,000 18.34%
Caprini and Pauly were endorsed by the MFT
and had the backing of Education Minnesota, the second most powerful political
lobby in Minnesota, behind only the National Rifle Association (NRA). Caprini is a well-known parent and community
activist in North Minneapolis, but Pauly is a largely unknown presence; he had a slim campaign of his own initiative,
with victory occurring for him only as the result of MFT support.
Gagnon is a political savvy operator who
ironically got caught in a web of heavily damaging political errors. Her rising star faded as she failed to gain
MFT endorsement, and that of the union’s political backer and beneficiary, the
Democratic Farmer Labor Party; the
MFT/DFL political machine went into its powerful motion not for her, but for
Caprini and Pauly.
El-Amin’s natural base of support is
expansive and deep; the last of four
school board candidate forums in this 2018 election season brought forward a
crowd at the University of Minnesota community engagement center at 2100 Plymouth
Avenue North (across from the Minneapolis Urban League) that was overwhelmingly
and vocally expressive in support of her candidacy.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
A mass movement for change in the
Minneapolis Public Schools began on 30 October 2018, at the 30 October 2018
event, the Parent-Led School Board Candidate Forum, held at the University of
Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach Engagement Center in North Minneapolis
(2100 Plymouth Avenue, across from the Minneapolis Urban League), and sponsored
by KWST Behavioral Development Group, Little Earth of United Tribes, STANDUP,
Centro Tyrone Guzman, Latino Youth Development Collaborative, UPLIFT-MN, the
Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), and Voices for Effective Change.
Unlike the immediately preceding events
held respectively at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church (15 October, sponsored by
the Isaiah group and others) and at Franklin Middle School (22 October,
sponsored by Pollen Midwest in conjunction with the Graves Foundation), the
organizers and moderators of the 30 0ctober very avidly encouraged
participation by members of the audience, who expressed themselves with emoji
signs of frowns and smiles, applause, groans, cheers, and questions written
down on notecards and posed to the candidates.
The night belonged as candidate to Sharon
El-Amin.
Her message has emotional resonance with
many different constituencies in North Minneapolis, the Cedar-Riverside area,
and an expanding base throughout the city.
The Somali community was out in force at this gathering, clearly
listening intently to each statement from El-Amin. This was true, too, for the sizable Native,
Latino, and African American contingents in the audience.
Over the course of these next two years, I
am going to be heightening my efforts to organize this potentially massive
force for change. El-Amin, as a
well-known education and community activist in North Minneapolis all of whose
children are either graduates or currently matriculating at North High School, is
a natural to run for the seat (District 2, North Minneapolis) now held by
MFT-backed KerryJo Felder.
I am going to be using the multiple venues
and forms of advocacy that I have created over the course of the last four
years to organize the community behind education change, with
knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher quality as the foci.
El-Amin’s energetic campaign and community enthusiasm
stirred prove the prevalence of a public ready to respond to a message of
educational excellence, wherein student academic nurturance rather than adult
agendas is the focus.
May MFT agitation for favorable wages and
conditions live on.
But may its leaders know that the death knoll
of the MFT as paramount influence in elections for the MPS Board of Education
sounded in the campaign of 2018 and with the strong performance of Sharon El-Amin
on 6 November.
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