LETTERS AND COMMENTARY
Vote No on the Better Schools Referendum
The Minneapolis Board of Education is carrying out a massive disinformation campaign to
get out the vote for renewal of the Better Schools Referendum, which the “Vote Yes
for Kids” campaign claims will help to keep class sizes small. The Better Schools
Referendum actually mandates small class sizes, but at many of the Community Schools
serving poor neighborhoods, the district has been keeping class sizes large.
Moreover, the district has spent a lot of money to segregate the schools by class and
race. Recently, this policy was defended by “On Point” columnist Mary McDonald
in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, who argued that black students don’t need to sit
next to white students in order to learn, and that the idea that black students working
with black teachers, can not do as well as white students should be dismissed as nonsense.
One problem with that argument is that there are very few black classroom teachers in the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
Another reason children of color are failing to thrive in the Minneapolis Public Schools
is that most of them are heavily exposed to inexperienced teachers. At some of the
Community Schools in poor neighborhoods, more than half of the teachers have less than 3
years of classroom teaching experience. The average amount of experience for teachers in
some of the district’s better schools is greater than 10 years. The significance of
this teaching experience gap was explained by Dave Heistad, director of research for the
district, at a school board meeting earlier this year. According to Heistad, about 40% of
the variability in scores on academic achievement tests can be attributed to teacher
efficacy. He didn’t explain that “teacher efficacy” is measured primarily
as years of classroom teaching experience.
But instead of taking step to reduce the exposure of students to inexperienced teachers,
the district adopted a new attendance policy that requires teachers to flunk any high
school student with more than 4 unexcused absences per semester. Dave Heistad cautioned
that the policy is based on research that merely shows a correlation between attendance
and academic achievement, not a cause and effect relationship. Yet district officials
predict a great leap forward in academic achievement as a result of the new attendance
policy.
The truth is that the Minneapolis School Board is not very concerned about how the new
attendance policy will affect students because it is a smoke screen, nothing but a smoke
screen. Its purpose is to obscure the effect of institutional factors on educational
outcomes, such as exposure to inexperienced teachers, curriculum, and ability grouping on
educational outcomes.
Another example of how district policy harms working class students is the choice of a
district-wide reading curriculum. In one of many reports on this subject at the school
board on 29 September 1999, a teacher at Henry High School explained why many high school
students needed direct instruction in phonics in order to pass the reading section of the
Minnesota Basic Standards Test, which is a requirement for high school graduation.
However, the English language curriculum product adopted by the district for elementary
school students does not provide the type of phonics instruction that most children need
in order to become highly proficient readers. And the district is making no effort to
modify the curriculum by adding phonics instruction and integrating it into the rest of
the curriculum.
There is also a mountain of evidence showing that ability grouping as practiced in the
Minneapolis Public Schools reinforces and increases disparities in academic achievement
among students. For example, in 1972 the Congressional Committee on Equal Education found
that, “Once students were placed in low ability groups, they were likely to be there
for the duration of their school careers. The Committee determined that educational
inequality…was the result of lower teacher expectations, limited curriculum, and
negative self-concepts that students developed as a result of being placed in low ability
groups.
Instead of providing all students with what most people would consider an adequate
education, the goal of the district is to help a majority of students adjust to their
future roles in society as low-status workers or prison inmates. No confidence should be
placed in capitalist politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, to do otherwise.
The working class in Minneapolis needs an alternative to the current Board of Education
and its policies. The defeat of the Better Schools Referendum would also be a big step
forward in the fight to compel the district to educate all children to the same high
standard.
Doug Mann
www.socialistalternative.org
Affordable Housing
I want to thank you for the article “Affordable Housing” in your October issue.
I have lived in South Minneapolis for the past five years and was able to purchase my home
and stay afloat financially and emotionally), due to a first time home buyer loan.
I am a single parent of two children, 17 months and six years. I love my home and find
that it was the best decision I may have made in my life so far. In 1995 I was working for
approximately $22,000 year and purchased a home for $73,000. I had approximately
$3–4,000 from my tax returns and renters credit and was able to close on a $69,000
mortgage at 6.8 percent! At that time I didn’t know what it meant except that I would
be moving out of my squished, mouse and roach infested apartment. At that time, I couldn't
afford to move into another apartment. The rental market was asking an average of
$675–700 a month for a two-bedroom. My mortgage was finalized at $530 a month and I
received energy assistance for my heating bill. The house is beautiful and I feel so
fortunate to have purchased it when I did. My income has fluctuated over the years from an
all time low of $13,000 (1999 tax return) to a high of $28,000 (1997 tax return). When
things get tough and I wonder how I will ever pay off my $20,000 in student loans, I just
think: I have my home.
I can’t say how pleasurable it is to raise my children in a house and what a
nightmare it was trying to raise my eldest in an apartment until she was 17 months. From
the time I was pregnant until we moved into the house, I lived in three apartments.
My only concern now is the “community development projects.” Because of my
closeness to the 46th Street station I fear eminent domain (something I did not even know
existed until 1997.) For a single, low income mother, moving would place some unmanageable
financial burdens on me. I assume my first time homebuyer loan is saving me up to $150
month.
Please keep up the articles, I love my home and I hope that other single women and men
with children can bring their family the joy and stability that I brought mine.
Jennifer Bochman
