Coming Face to Face with the Corruption That is the
North Star Accountability System on 24 September 2019
At 6:00 PM on Monday, 24 September 2019 in Conference Center B at the Minnesota Department of Education, the MDE Commissioner Brenda Cassellius’s aide Michael Diedrich and others conducted an information session focused on the North Star Accountability system. This is the system of purported accountability now being foisted on the public in the latest failed proclamation hailing a program that nevertheless has no chance of raising academic performance of Minnesota students.
Of the approximately 2,000 schools in Minnesota, 485 of them have failed to demonstrate acceptable performance along several indicators: graduation rates, attendance, academic progress for English learners, general academic progress, and proficiency as demonstrated on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Note that the latter indicator, which is the only measure that reveals the actual proficiency levels of students in a given academic year, now is a mere inclusion in an array of indicators. Much mention was made at the meeting of reference to how schools now have multiple ways of demonstrating that they are making progress; the matter of academic performance is not clearly in focus, as was the case during 2002-2016 before Congressional jettisoning of No Child Left Behind and the passage of the new Every Student Succeeds Act. The Every Student Succeeds Act and the North Star Accountability System designed by staff at the Minnesota Department of Education allow for considerable more wiggle room for failing schools to claim some level of success:
Perpend, on the latter matter:
One MDE presenter gave his approval to a case in which a school has done a particularly good job of cleaning up around and plugging bullet holes in lockers, indicating that this could be a case of what MDE staff is touting as “Quick Wins.”
I kid you not.
And some members in the audience comprised heavily of people from Minnesota Public Schools systems gave verbal expressions of approval.
I kid you not on that, as well.
After the meeting had proceeded through three presentations and the clock indicated that we had rolled past the hour point, with less than thirty minutes to go, I raised the following question, with introductory comments as follows:
“There are to be six Regional Centers of Excellence, staffed with a total of 45 members, so that each center will have seven or eight people providing assistance.”
“That’s about right,” the presenter responded.
I continued:
“Back in the late 1990s and very early 2000s in the time of the Minnesota Basic Skills Test, the school systems of Minnesota demonstrated that they could not even educate an acceptable percentage of students at a grade 8 level. Then we had No Child Left Behind and more embarrassing academic results, at that time with the MCAS; No Child Left Behind was attacked by the left (Education Minnesota, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, DFL) and right (when the right figured out, “Oh, yeah, these are central government mandates”), so that we then had the Multiple Measurement Rating System, the Every Student Succeeds Act and with it the current North Star Accountability System.
“My question to you, then, is:
Do you at the Minnesota Department of Education live in a fantasy world, or are you knowingly perpetrating this hoax on the students of Minnesota?”
The crowd, comprised mainly of public school administrators and teachers, sat in stolidly stunned silence. The presenter stammered that answering that question would take a lot of unpacking.
I said, “Sure would. Go ahead and unpack it.”
“Not now,” he said.
And I then responded, “Well then, would you meet me in a public debate”?
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said.
“Of course, you wouldn’t,” I asserted, “because you don’t have the ability. You know that I’m correct about the new system being a hoax. You’d be defending the indefensible.”
Members of the audience, all of those retorting representing either Minnesota school districts or the MDE, then began to issue rejoinders to me. I challenged two more MDE members and one school district representative to a refereed public debate. There were no takers.
One of the previous presenters came to the fore and threatened to call a security guard.
“And on what basis would you do that?” I asked.
“Disturbing our meeting,” came the reply.
Michael Diedrich, I kid you not once again, hastened out of the room to summon the nearest security guard.
I just laughed.
As the last presenter made one more lame presentation, Diedrich returned with the security guard as both remained at the back of the room (I was sitting right up front). The presenter concluded, called for questions, there were no takers, and the meeting was over.
I rose slowly but was the first to stride up the aisle. I expected a few people to meet me in the eye with angry stares, given the dominant composition of the crowd representing the state department and the school districts culpable for the academic results that have no more than sixty percent (60%) of our students reading and performing mathematical tasks with grade level proficiency.
But not a single person met my eye.
I continued my trip up the aisle, staring a hole in Michael Diedrich’s prevaricating countenance.
But I turned amiably to the security guard and said, “Hey, good to see you, man.” He shook my proffered hand. I strode out the door smiling at the stupidity that I had witnessed on the part of the audience at this charade of a meeting. But I had three attending thoughts as I strode to my Toyota Matrix and drove home:
With regard to public and official attitudes about K-12 education; people variously
>>>>> are dimwitted on the issues;
>>>>> are dissembling officials or their sycophants;
or
>>>>> they just don’t care.
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