Governor Walz’s Vow to Address Educational Inequities Should Be Understood as a Sham

An article by Patrick Condon, “Walz plan aims for equity in the schools” (Star Tribune, January 26, 2021) parrots the claim by Minnesota Governor Time Walz that a key priority of his administration will be to address educational inequity.  This raises three questions pertinent also to numerous other actors on the K-12 scene: 

1)  Is the governor ignorant?

2)  Is he in denial?

3)  Or is he outright corrupt?

The reality is that the current program for addressing issues at low-performing schools is a sham, and those who devised the program---  key officials such as former Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and Minnesota Department of Education staff member Michael Diedrich---  know that the program has no hope of success.

The North Star Accountability System (NSAS) is the successor to the MDE’s Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS), retaining many of the latter’s features with some augmentation.  The MMRS moved away from singular reliance on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) for objectively determining student academic performance to include a host of other factors, including graduation rates, attendance, annual academic progress for English Learners, and improved annual academic progress for all students at the school.  The NSAS retains this multiple measurement approach in determining which schools need particular assistance due to lack of progress.  To assist schools assessed as needing outside help in addressing inequities by race and income, the NSAS offers eight Regional Centers of Excellence (RCEs)

Among the many indicators that the RCEs are a sham is the fact that the Minneapolis Public Schools and the St. Paul Public Schools are charged with the responsibility of becoming their own Regional Centerws of Excellence.  That is, districts that year after year reveal low overall rates of student mathematics, reading, and science proficiency---  with particularly disastrous results for African American, Native American, Latino/Latina and low-income students---  are now supposed to become, in some unspecified way, centers of excellence for improving academic performance.

Then there is the nature of the six other Regional Centers of Excellence, located in Rochester, Marshal, Sartell, Thief River Falls, Mountain Iron, and Fergus Falls.

There are a total of 45 staff members at these RCEs, for an average of approximately seven staff members per Center.  Of the approximately 2,000 schools in the state of Minnesota, 485 of them have failed to make satisfactory progress across the multiple measures.  This means that the MDE dwells in some fantasy world in which 45 people, all of whom have been trained in the same way as have the educators who have gotten us into this mess, are supposed to assist 485 schools (with each RCE staff therefor having responsibility for over 10 schools) get onto a promising academic track.

The current Minnesota Education Commissioner is Mary Cathryn Ricker, former head of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers;  she can always be counted on to oppose objective measures of student performance and is endeavoring to eliminate the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and the current state academic standards.  If one examines item samplers offering similar questions to those included on the MCAs, one finds skills tested that should be in the mathematics, reading, and science competency set for any student regardless of ethnicity;  but there abides in the conversational ether of the education establishment the unfounded assertion that such objective measures are culturally biased.

Thus do we have the Walz administration proposal that includes wording indicating that new academic standards will be tailored to be “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.”  The proposal also establishes an MDE Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center (EDIC) and anti-bias training for all public schools employees.  The Walz program also aims to expand early childhood education and out-of-school learning opportunities.

This program is a sham:

The establishment of the new EDIC is the typical bureaucratic response in pretending to address a problem by creating a new office or department:  Witness the ineffective Office for Black Student Achievement and the Department of Indian Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Anti-bias training in the absence of very aggressive recruiting of African American, Native American, and Latino/Latina staff is unlikely in the extreme to improve cultural sensitivity markedly.  Teachers unions always object to establishing programs for skill remediation, so that after-school or out-of-school programs will inevitably fail to address deficiencies in student mathematics, reading, and science performance.  And while early childhood education for all students is a worthy goal, dependence on such an initiative, even if containing school-readiness content, will not address the problems of curriculum and teacher quality for grades two through twelve.

Thus, Governor Walz, a former teacher, is knowingly or unwittingly foisting a another terrible ruse on the long-suffering students of Minnesota.

As with so many other actors in the education establishment, we must ask Walz,

1)  Are you ignorant? 

2)  Are you in denial?

3)  Or are you outright corrupt?