|
|
"Freedom is never voluntarily given
by the oppressor;
it must be demanded by the oppressed" - Martin Luther King
When you discover that a building
is on fire, the first
thing you do is rescue those who are in immediate
danger and sound the alert.
Back in 1995,
the Minneapolis NAACP branch sounded
the alert with a lawsuit against the state of MN alleging that
public schools
in Minneapolis were failing to adequately
educate students of color. Evelyn Eubanks was the most
prominent member
of the district's leadership to support
the NAACP lawsuit at that time.
Only recently, after a huge drop in enrollment
of
African American students, have members of the
school board publicly admitted that the schools
are failing to
adequately educate students of color.
In response to the news that nearly half of the district's
nonwhite and Hispanic
seniors were not expected to
pass the MBST in 2000, including more than 300
African-American seniors, Sandra Miller,
a director of the
Minneapolis Board of Education commented:
"It kind of makes my blood
boil. There's a lot of help out
there for these students. There's mentoring on every corner.
The district has done
everything they can do. Now it's up to
the kids and families [Star-Tribune, Wed., Feb. 9, 2000]."
And
this is what Dennis Schapiro wrote on 11/23/2001
as part of an on-line debate with me:
"...and
I want to go on record as saying that I don't see
it as an evasion of responsibility for school quality by
diverting
attention to "fixing kids and communities of color."
-The 1966 Coleman Report in its Historical Context,
by Doug Mann
http://www.educationright.com/id106.htm
According
to an October 2002 SW Journal article,
"One of the best ways Mann thinks the district can equalize
educational
facilities is to integrate inexperienced teachers
throughout schools. Though school district officials disagree,
Mann
said new teachers are disproportionally placed in poor
neighborhoods. "[This] should be addressed by phasing in
more
teacher-in-training positions at schools where the
teaching staff has the highest levels of experience and
better
working conditions for teachers." said Mann.
- Original title, "Doug Mann: A concerned parent
fighting inequality and
ruffling some feathers"
http://www.swjournal.com/articles/2002/10/22/export5473.txt
However, in an attempt to rally
public support for stripping
teachers of their seniority rights, the district's director
of research acknowledged that
the district's least experienced
teachers are, in fact, heavily concentrated in schools that serve
students from poor
neighborhoods.
Completely stripping teachers of their seniority and
tenure rights is the ultimate solution to the
inequitable
distribution of teaching talent recommended by the
Bush administration. That's also a method of
"corrective
action" required in the "No Child Left Behind"
federal education bill of 2001. The Congressional
leadership
of the Democratic and Republican Parties
supported that bill.
The NCLB solution to dysfunctional public schools
is to
downsize the public schools, isolate and weaken the
teachers unions, to transform teachers unions into
company
unions or get rid of them, and to eventually
end public education as we know it.
Under NCLB, the options for a
majority of low-income
and nonwhite students in urban public schools are
being narrowed to 'poor-performing' public
schools
and semi-public charter schools. The charter schools
do not have as much public financial support as
regular
public schools and generally provide
instruction of lower quality than is provided by the
better public schools. Under
NCLB, high performing
public schools are not an option for the majority of
low-income and nonwhite students in dysfunctional
school districts.
However, NCLB school reform doesn't have to be
the only option on the ballot for Minneapolis
voters.
That is why I am standing for election to the
Minneapolis Board of Education, and am seeking
endorsement
from the newly formed Independent
Freedom Party.
|
|
|