Defeating Donald Trump in the presidential election on 3 November and achieving Democratic Party victories for control of the Senate and retaining majority in the House of Representatives are supremely important goals for the American electorate. But these are well-publicized goals for everyone disgusted with the tone and temper, as well as the policies, of the Trump tenure, and deeply concerned about the issues of climate change, health care, and economic equity.
But strategic, as opposed to tactical objectives, will only be achieved with greater attention to and better outcomes in the least publicized race in Minnesota, similar to low-radar contests across the nation: races for seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education--- and like races across the United States.
The dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are not those that gain the most attention during those rare moments during which issues pertinent to K-12 education generate public responses. Last spring, before the threat posed by COVID-19 became clear, members of the Minneapolis community packed the assembly room at the occasion of monthly regular business meetings of the MPS Board of Education. At issue was the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD), which brought forth complaints mostly of an intensely personal nature, with parents complaining about alterations in programming or transportation pertinent to schools attended by their own children. In fact, the CDD (ultimately approved by the Board in May 2020) is in most ways an enormously thoughtful reshaping of MPS that induces attendance at community schools, centralizes and reconstitutes magnet programs, and rationalizes transportation so as to capture precious resources that can be applied to the most vexing dilemmas relevant to curriculum and teacher quality.
The real problem with the CDD is that those who generated this otherwise thoughtful plan did not address either of those most important issues for reform. Curriculum at the Minneapolis Public Schools is enormously weak. Teacher quality is mediocre. As a result, math, reading, and science proficiency lag below fifty percent, below thirty percent for many demographic groups. Students gain little knowledge of natural science, history, government, economics, literature, or the fine arts. The fewer than seventy percent of students who manage to graduate in four years walk across the stage to claim a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only. One-third of former MPS students who matriculate at colleges and universities must take remedial courses.
Across the nation, these circumstances are familiar to the public schools, which produce a citizenry that possesses a lamentably weak knowledge base; those who vote tend to do so on the basis of emotion and, at worst, to the framing of issues by demagogues. Only when we overhaul public school systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools will we send forth citizens primed for lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction, capable of making decisions on the basis of objective information rather than emotional responses and personal prejudice.
This is why low-radar school board races are the most strategically important of all political contests. Only via the overhaul of curriculum for the impartation of key knowledge and skill sets and the training of teachers capable of delivering the requisite information will we produce the citizenry necessary to meet the enormous challenges the nation faces.
In the open seats for the MPS Board of Education, voters should vote for Sharon El-Amin (over KerryJo Felder) in District 2 (North Minneapolis), Adriana Cerrillos (over Christa Mims) in District 4 (ranging from Bryn Mawr through Uptown and adjacent areas), and Michael Dueñes for the open at-large seat (currently occupied by Kim Ellison). El-Amin is a longtime presence on the North Side, a business owner and parent active in MPS schools in that part of the city. Cerrillos is an activist at the State Capitol, advocating for immigrant rights and promoting social justice. Dueñes is a former college administrator with clear policy interests. All of these candidates will bring needed new perspectives, unencumbered by ties to the usual political forces that have weighed so heavily against reform at the Minneapolis Public Schools for decades.
Thus, please by all means vote for Biden/Harris and for Democratic Senate and House of Representative candidates. Doing so will achieve tactical victories necessary for moving forward on issues vital to the nation’s future. But the strategic victory will come only with the election of school board candidates positioned to bring the needed overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools and other public school systems, productive of citizenry capable of evaluating issues on the basis of strong bases of information and making decisions based on objective fact rather than emotion and prejudice.
No comments:
Post a Comment