Equity and quality needed in K-12

By Carlos Mariani Rosa, September guest blogger

From the vantage point of the two public places I occupy: the chair of a state legislative committee on education and the director of a nonprofit focused on advancing the academic success of students of color, I want to share my assessment of Minnesota’s success in properly educating all students for the rigors of our world: we are doing a lousy job.

I won’t belabor the depth and diversity of statistics that back that assessment, including: the graduation rates of African-American boys, the college retention rates of white students and the high school standardized test results of ELL students. The Minnesota Minority Education Partnership has spent a decade reporting these outcomes and you can find those online.

Minnesota’s education system does great things, but not for all students, and in some communities not even for the majority of those students. We fail miserably with students of color but we also don’t produce the best K-12 outcomes — defined as college-ready for maximum global engagement — for all students, including white students.

Equity and quality may seem to be separate ideals but I believe in this case, they are one in the same. For example; only 34% of white students are deemed college-ready by ACT test results. And while this measure is only 16% for Latinos, the correct goal for that community is not to achieve the 34% white student outcome — which is too low — but for Latino, white and all other student groups to achieve 100% readiness rates.

While it’s true that an individual can attain quality academic outcomes in almost any school, it is also true that the odds of doing so diminish when the student is in an environment that fails to drive the same level of quality for other students. And make no mistake on this point: legislators invest over a third of our state budget to produce nothing less than quality from every student. We don’t do that in order to validate unequal advantages pre-existing in society upon students’ entrance to our public schools.

Generally speaking, all students are greatly influenced by school community dynamics. Students improve when they challenge themselves, but also when they are challenged by their community of classmates.

And increasingly that classmate community in Minnesota schools is a racially and ethnically diverse one, made up of students with different learning styles and world perspectives that our system has yet to develop competency with in order to drive quality.

And so it’s not just equity that suffers, with students of color persistently showing up in the lower end of achievement measures. Overall quality suffers, with all students unable to push the boundaries of their gifts by virtue of being part of a system that signals its acceptance of low achievement. All kids — black, white, brown — profoundly get this message.

We are more linked to one another — across race and culture — than we have been led to understand. While “closing the gap” is indeed about race equity, racial equity is about all of us.

I’ll blog next on the recent failure of our state’s political systems to move education reform ahead — and I’ll include myself in that critique.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Comments

[Joe Nathan]

Thanks for your fair, thoughtful column, Carlos. From 2001-2007, the Cincinnati Public Schools closed the graduation gap between white and African American students. At the same time, the overall graduation rate increased. This is doable. But the #1 thing required is a belief that this can be done.

In another forum earlier this am, I responded to an inner city Minnesota public school teacher who wrote:
"people here freely admit that much of the reason the kids don't do well in school is because of societal and family situations."

But all over the nation there are public school educators and public schools that despite skeptics, are making huge progress, and as a New York Times article from November 26, 2006 noted, bringing students from low income families up to levels of middle and upper income students. They believe they can. They aren't satisfied until they do.

[Dan Jett]

Thanks for putting this issue out for public discussion since it is past time for MN to step up and educate all of its children to a high level, no exceptions and no excuses. Any less than that is not good for all of us.

To Joe Nathan's comment concerning the starting point to achieve equity and excellence in Minnesota's schools as being a belief that all children and and in fact will learn at high levels...I couldn't agree more ! I would just add that by saying that one has that belief does not make it necessarily so. A self test all of us can use in this regard is to ask ourselves (or our institutions) "since I believe that all children can learn at high levels, what are my actions that reflect that belief. Or, how does one who does believe behave differently from those who say they do but really don't believe." I am suggesting that holding the belief about the ability of all children to succeed is not litmus test, rather it is the actions we take based on that belief !

Fortunately, we are seeing more and more educators and others "walk the talk" in this regard. Thanks again Carlos and Joe for furthering this conversation in public. !

[Bruce Corrie]

Carlos - thanks for your leadership on this issue.

We have to start looking at closing the achievement gap as a major economic development strategy for "Minnesota the Global Competitor."

Can we compete effectively if we do not have people with the right skills?

Will global corporations invest in Minnesota if they do not find a skilled workforce and cultural capital in the state?

We need to measure our performance against global benchmarks and not necessarily local ones. This implies a comprehensive strategy that focuses on closing the racial achievement gap and the overall educational gap in terms of global educational attainment.

The achievement gap will translate into an economic competitiveness gap very soon and from then it is a downward spiral for Minnesota.

The first step in our solution is to remove education from political posturing and interest groups and perhaps follow what we try to do in the legislative and congressional redistricting issue - have a Supreme Court appointed non partisan group study the issue and recommend strategies to eliminate the achievement gap and enforce implementation.

[Jerry Von Korff]

've found the writings of DuFour (e.g Whatever it Takes) and Odden (e.g. Doubling Student Performance) full of great ideas. What I like about both of these books is that they are filled with practical ideas on "what works." As a school board member, I wish that leaders at the State level would begin to focus on ways that we can be empowered to implement proven ideas. Many of these ideas are embedded in quality compensation legislation, but they come with a poison pill--compensation reform. As a result, these great ideas--which do not require compensation reform--cannot move forward. If we would eliminate the compensation poison pill, and if then management were given the right to implement delivery systems that work, we could make a quantum leap in Minnesota.

[Jerry Von Korff]

(oops, sorry,) in Minnesota.