As a result education is often the topic of conversation around our office “water cooler”.  I find the conversations interesting, but often respond with some distance. Given that my little guy is only 18 months old, I assume that the public school system will all be different by the time he is in school so I’ll just worry about it then.  Recently a colleague set me straight, when she said, “School change is slow.  The impact of any changes being made now will be greater on your son or future kids, than my kids who are in 6^th and 9^th grades.”

So, now I am paying attention!

When I invited Dr. Bill Green and Suzanne Kelly, Superintendent and interim Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools and Saint Paul Public Schools respectively, to lead a discussion last week entitled, “Act Now to Build the Future” I challenged them to make the case for young professionals to start paying attention to the schools now.  Since most in the room did not have school-aged children, or didn’t have children at all, it was really important to frame the relevance.  Bernadeia Johnson, Deputy Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools, also joined the panel.

Participants Christian Zepeda, Kari Anderson and Molly Gillin

Dr. Green, a historian by nature and attorney by training, made the case by educating us on Minnesota’s long legacy of public education for all.  In the 1870’s a law was enacted that desegregated Minnesota schools and guaranteed that all children regardless of race, religion or ethnicity have access to education.  He also shared a tale from the same time period in which Minnesota officials searched for more teachers.  They sent letters to cities along the east coast in attempts to allure teachers to come to Minnesota.  Noting that it was not common practice in the east, those letters specified that interested teachers must be willing to teach students of all races and ethnicities.

The legacy of ensuring education for all was illustrated in the voting booths as recently as 2008.  Residents of Minneapolis approved the Strong Schools, Strong City Referendum which generates approximately $60 million per year for Minneapolis Public Schools.  The referendum and called for a tax increase of approximately $17 per month for the average homeowner in Minneapolis – the largest tax increase for schools to date. What was most striking about the referendum passing is that 71% of voters supported the referendum even though only 20% the city’s residents have children in the district.

Clearly our history illustrates that we are a community dedicated to our youth.  They are our future and their success has a positive correlation with our community’s prosperity.  Regardless of the source of your interest in public school – your concern for your property value, your dependence on the future workforce, or your hopes for the children in your neighborhood – what matters is that we steward the legacy passed down to us and pay attention to our schools.

How do you want to advance the legacy?

Interim Superintendent Suzanne Kelly

Both districts are implementing strategic plans that call for reform.  I encourage you to look over each of the plans.  (Click here for MPS Strategic Plan and SPPS Strategic Plan)

Both districts are experiencing declines in student populations and are struggling to “right size” their districts.  While this is difficult for community members who feel attached to their local school, the leadership firmly stated that by closing buildings they are able to redirect funds from

Superintendent Bill Green and Deputy Superintendent Bernadeia Johonson

bricks and mortar back into the classroom.

Ms. Kelly shared that she is deeply concerned by proficiency test results in her district.  Recent scores show that only white students reached a minimum of 50% proficiency in math and reading in 2009.  She stressed that incremental gains in achievement are not acceptable, they need to accelerate improvement.

St. Paul’s strategies include an emphasis on cultural proficiency in which teachers and non-licensed staff receive training in how their backgrounds affect the way they interact with students.  In addition they are focusing on teacher effectiveness, academic support, placing kids on a post-secondary trajectory starting in elementary school, and extending time spent learning in part through partnerships with nonprofits that can reinforce school curriculum.

Minneapolis is increasing accountability expectations and investing in principals and high performing teachers.  They emphasized the importance of the “instructional core” which is made of the student, teacher and curriculum content.  Minneapolis is excited about their partnerships with Teach for America which will provide the district with 13 teaching fellows.  They have also partnered with the New Teacher Project which is helping address contract reform with the Teacher’s union.

The panel agreed that they are challenged to find time in the day to provide interdisciplinary educational opportunities.  They look to nonprofits and community partners to help bring these activities to the students, and recognize it as a challenge in their curriculum.

Superintendet Green and Rajiv Shah

When asked if they had all the money in the world, what would they do to affect student success they unanimously agreed that they would buy more time.  They excitedly talked about  the idea of being able to extend the school day and the school year.

Additional questions have been submitted to the panelists.  Their responses will be posted shortly.

Minnesota Public Radio airing of Geoffrey Canada

View the webcast of Geoffrey Canada at Minnesota Meeting.

Geoffrey Canada addresses the crowd at Minnesota Meeting

recent Minnesota Meeting, everyone in the room was on the edge of their seats.  With a renowned model of success at the Harlem Children’s Zone all were anxious to hear his advice and he did not waste any time mincing words.

“If you care about your children, you’re going to have to save them yourselves.  No one is coming in to rescue Minnesota’s children.  If you don’t do it, it will not get done.”

He laid out six critical principles that he has adopted and believes are applicable to educational reform in Minnesota:

• Begin early.  Only by beginning with early childhood education and intervention can we keep students from falling behind so far, so fast that they’ll never catch up.
• No one program idea is powerful enough to do the job.  Create a continuity of best practices that help kids in school and in the community successfully achieve the next stage of progress, all the way through college.  Canada pointed out a constant continuum of support is needed.  His program believes that to tackle only one issue while everything else in a child’s universe is crumbling is a failed strategy.
• Parents have to be involved and engaged, especially for the most vulnerable children.  Canada said he was unapologetic for programs in HCZ that provided economic incentives for parents to get involved in school activities, saying the focus needs to be on what the children need.
• Schools must be redesigned for success.  He said, “You’ve got to invest in a longer school day and a longer school year” to help children keep pace with competition elsewhere.  He said we need to hold teachers accountable but also “pay teachers like they’re professionals.”
• Communities need to support young people in an atmosphere with clean parks and playgrounds and an absence of violence.
• Evaluate and measure each and every step.  He encouraged getting student testing data turned around fast enough to allow for meaningful intervention for struggling students.

Guests at Minnesota Meeting

He recognized the many challenges of dealing with an educational system that he views is in a state of crises.  It requires an ability to make long-term fixes while treating the emergency at your door.

Canada closed with an original poem which illustrated his personal story in which poetry served as the hook to keep him engaged in education while growing up poor in the Bronx.  He said, “We don’t know what will save a child.  For some it will be music, for others it will be drawing.  Our job is to provide a variety of real opportunities for kids to allow them to find the things that will save them.”

Minnesota Meeting Guests

The written word does not do justice for Canada’s talk.  He is a highly entertaining and engaging speaker full of stories to illustrate his incredibly work.  I hope to have a webcast of his talk posted soon!

Check out the fact sheet distributed at the meeting.

He says, “Forgive some academic jargon, but the most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.”

He goes on to quote a Harvard economist who believes what Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids.”

Brooks finishes his column by challenging other communities to take on HCZ’s best practices to make the necessary reforms to close the achievement gap.  Locally, the Northside Achievement Zone is working on replicating the HCZ model by creating a collaborative of community organizations serving youth in North Minneapolis.

Since becoming a mother I find myself periodically referencing Hillary Clinton’s book from the 1990′s “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.“  I believe this to be very true, I regularly rely on family, friends, neighbors, and community members to support me (and my husband!) on my adventure of raising a child.  I also believe in being an active member of the village.  Whether it is modeling  HCZ or the development of the Northside Achievement Zone, we all have a role in the success and positive development of the youth in our community.

At the Table participants

On Wednesday, April 22^nd, Former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison addressed a crowd of nearly 800 people at the most recent Minnesota Meeting.  Dr. Jemison said Minnesota needs to develop a “science literate society” to ensure its economic competitiveness in the future.  She said all students have “a world filled with ideas and possibilities before them” if they receive a balanced education that includes rigor in science and math through problem solving and real-world applications.

Jemison said that literacy in science will be critical for the jobs of the future.  But, according to the Minnesota Private Colleges Research Foundation, only 40% of high school students in Minnesota are meeting the ACT college readiness benchmark score in science. That percentage drops significantly for African American students – only 9% meet the benchmarks in science, and only 16% meet college requirements for math. Latinos, American Indians, and Asian Americans also experience participation and achievement gaps.

Moderator Eric Jolly, president of the Minnesota Science Museum, agreed, noting that “three of four new jobs that will be created in the next decade that pay more than minimum wage will require basic fluency in science, engineering and mathematics. Our students need to be prepared for that.”

According to Jemison, the accelerated pace of technology development has made science as critical as other school subjects, such as reading. Science and math skills aren’t about memorization, she said, but rather “problem-solving and critical thinking skills are the most important aspects of science literacy – being able to work our way through the day.”  Jemison who balanced a love for the arts and dancing with her technical career said that it the same creativity is used to build the space shuttle as the creativity to make a sculpture or choreograph a dance performance.

Jemison added, “It’s never too early…kids have a natural curiosity, a natural inclination towards learning” that we need to build upon.” She feels that laptops and computer training are significantly less effective than hands on experimentation from kindergarten on.

Building on the messages of teacher quality from the last Minnesota Meeting, Jemison cited teacher quality and training as essential ingredients for effective STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] instruction. “To get rigor in the classroom from 8^th grade on up you need teachers who majored in the subject. For grade school teachers to be comfortable teaching math and science, they need to have taken some science after high school.” In addition, she said, teaching methodology needs to address a diversity of learning styles.

Panel of speakers

Jemison said effective teaching in the STEM subjects engages students’ “intellect, emotions, interests, and skills.” Students need hands on experiences with these subjects that engage the senses, she said.

It’s not just future engineers who need science and math, Jemison pointed out, but algebra and chemistry are used daily by carpenters, electricians, and beauticians.

She encouraged investment in school labs to help kids make these connections through experimentation. Jolly agreed that it is critical to make science “understandable, accessible, and meaningful” by providing students an understanding of its real world applications. He said, “It’s about challenging students to succeed.”

Dr. Mae jemison

When asked about students who may be afraid of pursuing science and math education because of its difficulty, Jolly pointed out, “When you understand that the use of science and mathematics gives you the ability to help change the world, you’re not afraid of the rigor.”

If you missed Minnesota Meeting, click here for a webcast.

“Research is very clear: Good teachers make good schools. Students who get several effective teachers in a row will soar no matter what their family backgrounds, while students who have even two ineffective teachers in a row rarely recover.” — Education Trust’s Education Watch Minnesota Fall 2006

Kati Haycock said pointedly that we can’t leave anything to chance.  We need to mitigate the risk and ensure that teachers have excellent training and professional development support to excel at working with our most valuable clients.

Peter Hutchinson, Kati Haycock and Rudy Crew discuss the issue of teacher quality.

Today, over 600 people attended the first Minnesota Meeting.  It was the first in a three-part series on education titled Raising Expectations.  I was incredibly excited to have many of you join us at At The Table.   I think that all in attendance were both moved and alarmed by the cold, hard facts about the state of Minnesota education laid out by the speakers.  The panel included Kati Haycock president of the Education Trust, and Dr. Rudy Crew, former superintendent of New York City and Miami/Dade Public Schools.  The panel was moderated by Peter Hutchinson, President of the Bush Foundation and a former Minneapolis Public Schools superintendent.

Haycock started things off with some concrete data. “On state assessments in reading, about 80 percent of your white 4th graders meet the state standards.  For black 4th graders it’s more like 44 percent, for Latino’s about 33 percent and somewhere in the mid-50’s for both Asian and native American students.”

Perhaps most alarming, Haycock said is that for students entering the system behind grade level, the education system actually widens the gap, rather than closing it.  She stressed two fundamental factors to addressing the gap – quality teachers and a rigorous curriculum.  She said, we need to raise our expectations of all students and provide the teaching to support it.

Dr. Crew, a passionate speaker with a professional history as a reformer (including being named Superintendent of the Year in 2008 and being fired from the position in the same year) laid out three primary points.

1. Raise expectations of kids, teachers, schools and governance of the school system.
2. Teachers need to cultivate a deep understanding of effective and varied teaching approaches.  He referred to this as the development of a teaching repertoire.
3. Demonstrate a “high degree of human caring,” which, he said should be evident at the board, the district, and the classroom levels, as well as in how a community spends its dollars.

Both speakers agreed that the allocation – not necessarily the amount – of dollars is critical to closing the achievement gap. Poor students simply get less – “not less in terms of dollars but in terms of what a dollar buys,” said Haycock. Crew spoke bluntly: advocating for increased funding without demanding results deters change. He said many states, including Minnesota, have “put in more money to get the same results….Good leaders need you to push for results and back their efforts for reform.”

Both speakers identified a need for better board governance, better data, and above all, more support and accountability for teaching.  Crew commented that it isn’t about intention.  No one enters the teaching profession without wanting to make a difference, but with little, if any professional support, many beginning teachers don’t know “what an A looks like,” in teaching. He advocates introducing a master-teacher approach to allow for greater compensation for and knowledge sharing by effective teachers.

Haycock who often commented on the need for measurement and data to prove what is effective and what simply doesn’t work, talked about the  need to evaluate teaching, based not on student achievement but on student growth. Teachers need to demonstrate their “value added” for students; standardized tests measure student performance as opposed to student progress.

Hutchinson also added to the conversation by saying, “We can’t compete in the global economy by falling behind in educational achievement. Over a third of our young people who go on to college are taking remedial courses when they get there – essentially taking high school over again.

Throughout the meeting the audience could be seen taking notes, nodding in agreement to the ideas of reform, and gasping in response facts like Minnesota’s academic place nationally.

So, now how do we move beyond the chairs of the convention center to take steps towards reform?

If you weren’t able to join us, you can watch it here.

Also, here is a brief fact sheet that was distributed and a MinnPost article.