What is wrong with our schools?
The Minneapolis Star Tribune boasts that Minnesota's graduation rate (of high school seniors) is 79% - calling it "the good news"! That's good news???? This is down from when the reported graduation rate for Minnesota was 83.9% (school year 2001/2002) and 84.8% (school year 2002/2003). Minnesota's African American students graduate at a paltry 44%! The usual suspects say that the trouble is not enough money, but is that the case?
Minneapolis spent over $11,000 per pupil in the 2001-2003 school years and the graduation rate in Minneapolis is 52.8%. Meanwhile, cities like Apple Valley, Bloomington (Jefferson and Kennedy High Schools), Brooklyn Park, Shakopee or Burnsville spend less and graduate more of it's students.
Defenders of the status quo will say that Bloomington, Burnsville, Apple Valley Brooklyn Park and Shakopee don't have the same "challenges" that an inner city school would have. That may indeed be the case, but then again take a look at St Paul, who again spends less (per pupil) and graduates more students, and Minneapolis' Communications Arts High School, a charter school who spends almost 1/10th the amount that Minneapolis spends on each student and they graduate 63% of it's students!
So if more spending is not the answer, then what is? Parental involvement could be one answer, according to this story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
"Good schools attract good parents, and good parents make good schools."
Another thought comes to us from someone in the trenches...a teacher!
"School's out, and another opportunity arises to either genuinely change what we do, or continue to rearrange the deck chairs at PS Titanic. Here are some recommendations from a teacher of color.
• Once and for all, stop promoting regular education students who fail the MCAs and every other measure of success to the next grade. Every year we promote tens of thousands of failing students in the Twin Cities, most of whom are poor students of color. They deserve better.
• Do away with summer-school lite and bogus public relations programs like St. Paul's Excel, which was great for the superintendent's resume but does little for many thousands of failing students.
• Institute academically vigorous after-school programs for students who are failing. That is, two hours of solid instruction and practice. Not 20 minutes of homework help and 100 minutes of snacks and play.
• Institute full-day summer instruction for failing students with the expectation that they must pass the MCA, or some other measure, if they want to go on to the next grade.
• Give the boot to the principals and teachers who think that handing out stacks of worksheets and giving away unearned grades to underachieving students is equivalent to teaching. For these educators, controlling children is a higher priority then educating them. They are unprincipled and lazy, and they have made a mockery of many of our schools.
• Lovingly, give the boot and lock the revolving door on the sociopathic children who are distorting and wrecking the entire education system. Kids who come to school half-dressed and empty-handed, and think they can push, curse and disrupt their way through the day need to be removed, not just suspended, from the regular education program. Yes, they are not exclusively, but predominantly African-American and Latino. As a teacher of Afro-Caribbean heritage, I think we've been coddling these fools and their parents for too long. Beside themselves, they are hurting everyone else, especially the vast majority of students of color who are in school to learn. It's time to get over Minnesota's racist past and deal with it.
• For the kids who are taken out of the regular education program, have a range of qualitatively different but effective programs to address their needs. No more "alternative school" warehouses.
• Stop wasting millions of dollars on school change programs that just recycle and repackage already known best teaching practices. Lock all of the coaches and mentors hired by these programs out of every school building. Find other ways to invest in staff development.
That should keep us busy over the summer."
Some common sense solutions - will the Minneapolis School Board look into them, or will they continue to support the failing status quo? Will they realize that by failing these kids, they are responsibile for keeping the kids in generation after generation of oppressive poverty?
Much has been made (in recent months) of the "reasons" for crime and our need to "understand" why these kids turn to crime. Don't you think that an education system that fails to teach it's students the skills necessary to succeed could be a large part of WHY these kids turn to crime? If that is the case, and other schools are able to teach their students better and for less, don't you think (Minneapolis School Board) that you should talk to your counterparts in these other cities to find out what they do differently and then adapt some of those things to your school district? After all.....it's for the children!
Minneapolis spent over $11,000 per pupil in the 2001-2003 school years and the graduation rate in Minneapolis is 52.8%. Meanwhile, cities like Apple Valley, Bloomington (Jefferson and Kennedy High Schools), Brooklyn Park, Shakopee or Burnsville spend less and graduate more of it's students.
Defenders of the status quo will say that Bloomington, Burnsville, Apple Valley Brooklyn Park and Shakopee don't have the same "challenges" that an inner city school would have. That may indeed be the case, but then again take a look at St Paul, who again spends less (per pupil) and graduates more students, and Minneapolis' Communications Arts High School, a charter school who spends almost 1/10th the amount that Minneapolis spends on each student and they graduate 63% of it's students!
So if more spending is not the answer, then what is? Parental involvement could be one answer, according to this story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
"Good schools attract good parents, and good parents make good schools."
Another thought comes to us from someone in the trenches...a teacher!
"School's out, and another opportunity arises to either genuinely change what we do, or continue to rearrange the deck chairs at PS Titanic. Here are some recommendations from a teacher of color.
• Once and for all, stop promoting regular education students who fail the MCAs and every other measure of success to the next grade. Every year we promote tens of thousands of failing students in the Twin Cities, most of whom are poor students of color. They deserve better.
• Do away with summer-school lite and bogus public relations programs like St. Paul's Excel, which was great for the superintendent's resume but does little for many thousands of failing students.
• Institute academically vigorous after-school programs for students who are failing. That is, two hours of solid instruction and practice. Not 20 minutes of homework help and 100 minutes of snacks and play.
• Institute full-day summer instruction for failing students with the expectation that they must pass the MCA, or some other measure, if they want to go on to the next grade.
• Give the boot to the principals and teachers who think that handing out stacks of worksheets and giving away unearned grades to underachieving students is equivalent to teaching. For these educators, controlling children is a higher priority then educating them. They are unprincipled and lazy, and they have made a mockery of many of our schools.
• Lovingly, give the boot and lock the revolving door on the sociopathic children who are distorting and wrecking the entire education system. Kids who come to school half-dressed and empty-handed, and think they can push, curse and disrupt their way through the day need to be removed, not just suspended, from the regular education program. Yes, they are not exclusively, but predominantly African-American and Latino. As a teacher of Afro-Caribbean heritage, I think we've been coddling these fools and their parents for too long. Beside themselves, they are hurting everyone else, especially the vast majority of students of color who are in school to learn. It's time to get over Minnesota's racist past and deal with it.
• For the kids who are taken out of the regular education program, have a range of qualitatively different but effective programs to address their needs. No more "alternative school" warehouses.
• Stop wasting millions of dollars on school change programs that just recycle and repackage already known best teaching practices. Lock all of the coaches and mentors hired by these programs out of every school building. Find other ways to invest in staff development.
That should keep us busy over the summer."
Some common sense solutions - will the Minneapolis School Board look into them, or will they continue to support the failing status quo? Will they realize that by failing these kids, they are responsibile for keeping the kids in generation after generation of oppressive poverty?
Much has been made (in recent months) of the "reasons" for crime and our need to "understand" why these kids turn to crime. Don't you think that an education system that fails to teach it's students the skills necessary to succeed could be a large part of WHY these kids turn to crime? If that is the case, and other schools are able to teach their students better and for less, don't you think (Minneapolis School Board) that you should talk to your counterparts in these other cities to find out what they do differently and then adapt some of those things to your school district? After all.....it's for the children!
posted by The Lady Logician at
7:53 AM
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