Article #4 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume XII, Number Seven, January 2026

The Shallow Knowledge of Outside Observers

 

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is so chronically ineffective that the worry cast with considerable frequency by Katherine Kersten with regard to mandates issued by the MDE are unwarranted.  Kersten especially worries abidingly that academic standards issues are too liberal (as in ”woke”), as if those standards are ever taught by teachers in systems such as tht eh Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Those standards are not taught by the teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools, so Ms Kersten can quit fretting.

 

Take as indication of MDE ineffectiveness a Minnesota State Office of Legislative Auditor’s (OLA) report issued in 2023, a review of MDE oversight of four programs: American Indian Education (AIE), Achievement and Integration (A&I), World’s Best Workforce (WBWF), and Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE).  WBWF legislation in Minnesota was passed in 2013 and A&I was given that appellation and updated in the same year.  These programs anticipated federal Every Student

Succeeds Act (ESSA) legislation then under development and passed in Congress in 2015.

 

WBWF programs purportedly have the five-fold goal of closing the achievement gap, readying

all students for school as kindergarteners, promoting grade-level literacy for all third-grade students,

preparing all high school graduates for career or college, and sending all high school students forth to

graduation.  Similarly, A&I goals are to reduce academic disparities, pursue racial and economic

integration, increase student academic achievement, and increase equitable educational

opportunities.  None of the programs under WBWF and A&I have achieved their aims and have no capacity to do so.  These programs serve only to meet the legalistic requirements of ESSA and the

state response to ESSA known as the North Star Accountability System.

 

Minnesota school districts submit annual reports to MDE concerning programming for WBWF

and A&I, but none of the programs are effective in increasing student proficiency for those lagging

below grade level, typically serving only a fraction of the “protected groups” (African American/Black,

Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Indigenous students, and those receiving free/reduced price lunch)

targeted for increased proficiency.  Further, as the OLA report conveys, MDE does little besides

receiving the reports and reporting in turn to the Legislature: no follow-up in terms of investigating

program effectiveness ever occurs.

 

As to AIE, state legislation and MDE implementation is also ineffective.  The legislation, passed

in 2021, serves the aim of closing the achievement gap “between American Indian students and their

more advantaged peers.”  In this case, MDE is given an explicit statutory responsibility to develop a

strategic plan for addressing the achievement gap, and to consult with the American Indian

community, evaluate the state of American Indian education in Minnesota, approve pertinent district

and charter school plans, assist districts and charter schools in meeting goals, and approve

preparation programs for teachers of American Indian language and culture. The OLA report finds

that MDE has not met most of these statutory responsibilities.

 

The OLA report, reflecting negatively on the efficacy of WBWF, A&I, and AIE programs and

MDE oversight, is more favorable to the Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE).  But the evidence cited

in offering the positive comments is very thin. The success cited involved just 20 percent of schools

served.  Although RCE staff members are not formally employed by the state of Minnesota, most of

those involved in addressing academic proficiency have been teachers certified and operating within

the same system that has produced such wretched proficiency rates (at the time the report was issued, just 46% in reading and 53% in mathematics for white non-Hispanic students, with achievement gaps of 37, 30, and 29 percentage points between non-Hispanic white students and their American Indian, African American, and Hispanic peers respectively).

 

There are only 57 total staff members at the six RCEs (located in Sartell [11 staff members],

Mountain Iron [10], Thief River Falls [10], Rochester [15], Marshall [9], and Fergus Falls [6]; the

Minneapolis Public Schools and St Paul Public Schools supposedly receive direct MDE support similar

to that provided by the RCEs.  There are over 2,100 traditional and charter schools in Minnesota with

a total of 843,404 students.  Considering that RCE staff members total only 57, this means that there is

one staff member for every 37 schools and for every 14,797 students. Given the establishment

qualifications of RCE staff members and those high ratios, the notion that RCES can address lagging

student proficiency rates in Minnesota is preposterous.

 

No federal or state level bureaucracy will ever result in knowledge-intensive, skill-replete

curriculum or improve teaching quality in the school districts of Minnesota and throughout the United

States.  Because of our mania for local control, only a locally centralized school district could

superintend the needed overhaul.  My own efforts are to induce the requisite transformation in the

Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

And any official in that school district, or at the Minnesota Department of Education, who

would like to engage me in a formally refereed debate in a public forum regarding the analysis made

above, know that I stand ready at any time to have that debate.

 

I do not expect school district or MDE officials to engage me in that debate;  they will not be eager for me further to expose their incompetence.