NewsNight Minnesota; 6004; Labor Day Special On Education; SD-Base

NEWSNIGHT Minnesotan is a production of Katy CA with the stations of Minnesota Public Television. I hope your Labor Day weekend was a good one I've come to town and I'm with Harmon It is time to get back to schools like we have a special back to school edition of NEWSNIGHT. We're going to take a look at a private school that has decided to become a charter school and we're going to follow it up with a discussion about the pros and cons of charter school and we have the superintendent of Minneapolis St. Paul and Duluth all in our studio at the same does. OK open your notebooks Let's get started. Welcome to NEWSNIGHT Minnesota a statewide information program for thoughtful Minnesota bringing context to the region's most important story. NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible in part with support from the Blendon Foundation working to strengthen rural communities throughout Minnesota working to strengthen families and communities across Minnesota supporting Minnesota's tradition of community service and by fakery and Benson offering comprehensive services for the legal needs of growing

and established businesses. I'm going to start things off with a look at the charter schools charter schools are public schools financed with tax dollars but they're targeted toward students who may not do well in a typical public school setting. The charter school movement began in Minnesota in 1991 but there's a new study that raises questions where the charter schools are delivering what they have promised. Now Liz got a few people who are here to talk about that but first let's take a look at the seed Academy and Harvest Prep that's a private school in Minneapolis. That is the site of to become a charter school. During the last school year we followed a special group of public school kindergarten students who spend half their day at Harvest Prep in pre-kindergarten screening the children had scored below average and they were considered at risk by the end of the school year. Most of those children were doing very well. Very good get ready. Let's go back and read that again.

The children are not only reading but many of them are reading at a second grade level. You know the school spirit good continues scientists get a trial you may get behind. Very good. In fact these kindergarteners are tested poorly in pre kindergarten screening last year just passed a reading test that some older children did not. I've been tested second graders who are coming to our school in the same thing to us. And they could not. So for me it was just to say it was just the icing on the cake to say it said it all that I need to know about direct instruction. They set it off for me. Direct Instruction is the curriculum used by the seed Academy Harvest Prep. It's based on phonics and it relies on lots of repetition. Even though these children are now

reading they're still doing some of the basic drills they were doing last fall. Get ready. Yes get ready. Yes get ready. Yes get ready for many children of color especially from low income families. This kind of instruction is vital. There's a book by Lisa del Pitt the name of the book is other people's children. And one of the things that she talks about is when you're dealing with children who are part of what she calls the culture of power which is essentially middle class culture in other words their mothers don't speak the language their fathers don't speak the language then the best way to teach the language of the culture is through explicit instruction. And this is what the direct instruction program gives explicit instruction. One of the strategies on being successful in reading and math Harvest

Prep like most private schools wasn't the kindergarten students from Lincoln Elementary who participated in this program had their tuition paid for by the Minneapolis Public Schools. Here's part of an experiment to see if Harvest Prep could help at risk public school students this year Harvest Prep will be able to do a lot more of that because Harvest Prep has become a charter school that means receiving tax dollars like other public schools and no more tuition. I'm extremely excited about becoming a charter school because what that's going to do is to give us the opportunity to impact more children that are more like the children in this Lincoln program. One of the biggest challenges that we've had as a private school is to get over the wish and hope where parents have not been able to afford to send their children here on a consistent basis. So the charter school is going to remove that barrier and will really be able to impact those children that really need our program except for the funding Harvest Prep will

change very little as a charter school. That means continuing to use direct instruction and whatever else works to reach children who otherwise might be left behind. And that's why I believe children are born geniuses. And it's just what we do as a society that either bails on that or tear it down. And I think these children and cation and that that the last week holds true. Sounds good. But a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota raises serious questions about charter schools. And Lou has that. Thanks Kim. Are charter schools in Minnesota doing what they are designed to do which is to improve student achievement. Researchers at the University of Minnesota studied 16 charter schools in the state and have concluded many are having some serious startup problems. Karen seashore Lois's associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Minnesota where the study was conducted. And Wayne Jennings is chairman of designs for learning which operates for charter

schools and is also president elect of the Minnesota Association of charter schools want to thank you both for coming down Karen I want to start with you. You are not is it fair to say overwhelmingly impressed with charter schools. Overwhelmingly Probably not. I think my our concerns when we looked at the charter schools are that like all other efforts to try and create new models of education they're often underfunded. They don't have the kind of resources that they need to get started and therefore they they tend to try and run on the commitment of the parents and the teachers who begin them. In our view this is not necessarily the right way to try and reform education and it puts an unfair burden on charter schools so we don't see their startup problems as being fundamental to the essence of being a charter school. But if the policies of the state of Minnesota. All right Wayne agree or disagree. Well it's true and what Karen said is absolutely true.

It looks we don't have the actual figures but it looks like charter schools are being funded at about most Something like 25 percent less than the conventional schools. So there isn't any data right now really solid data to show what the comparison would be between students who are in a charter school and in a district school let's say. But do you think kids are learning the things they're supposed to be learning. Did your study get into that I think. Yes it did I would say that charter schools are is are quite variable. That is it's not surprising if you go in and you say OK let's look at 100 new restaurants that started this year. Thirty five of them would be doing something really terrific and you'd want them to succeed and another 30 would be doing so you'd say oh I don't want to go there and certainly if I'm in the middle of a saw that schools are like that schools are like that but some of the argot are providing very ordinary very ordinary and sometimes below par educational experiences. Some of them are doing wonderful things. Wayne what about the ones that aren't doing so well. Well.

We'd have to be more specific I think because we're talking about schools as Karen has said is very a great deal some are dealing with a stream of difficult kids one school is dealing with kids are homeless essentially off the streets and so their big challenge is get them back in school and see if they can't put them into some kind of a program that will help them graduate from school. But there's the question becomes though if some of the charter schools aren't working that well why not just get rid of that charter schools to come back in regular school. I mean we're just kind of like shifting kids around for no reason. Well it is a fact that charter schools are accountable for results. The initial charter is granted for only up to three years and at that point the local sponsor which is usually a school district decides whether charter schools accomplishing its mission or not. If it's not the charter is yanked and they're out of business. That was one of your questions in the study and I mean and I would say I don't and I wouldn't say that Minnesota is out of line on this I would fact I would say Minnesota probably does a better job than many state laws about accountability about the accountability in many of the states that have passed charter legislation. The accountability is on paper and there's really no effort in practice to try and

track how well the students are doing and whether or not the students are living up to their expectations and in fact in part because of the very scarce resources many of the charter schools have difficulty collecting the kind of data that they need to in order to demonstrate their effectiveness so it isn't even there. And how do we get this on track because you know Ken has been a charter schools I've been in charter schools and you walk away you're quite impressed when you walk away going for those kids learning anything that they really get mad. Come on did they get any history in English and you know they're doing their different things that they like to do but are they learning. And you they certainly are. Absolutely I don't think there's any question about that. Some of the charter schools aren't much of much different from the the district school down the street when you're visit there are the kids working in worksheets and textbooks and conventional kinds of approaches. Most of the charter schools have to give standardized achievement tests the same tests that are given in them to the local district. And so there will be a basis of comparison.

The second kind of accountability is is the market accountability of parents don't think their kids are learning. They don't have to send their children there they make a choice to send their children and parents are getting more choosy these days. Yeah and I think I think there are two issues there. I mean I think one many of the people who are strongly in support of charter schools would say that the traditional methods of accountability such as state tests and standardized tests are not appropriate for many of these schools in part because some of them are dealing with students who are severely at risk and those tests are designed to work with that group of students very well or because they're trying to do something very different and it's unfair to measure their progress. So that's one thing I think is really important. The methods of countability that were establishing in Minnesota aren't necessarily the right ones for charter schools and to determine them on the market side. I think we don't you know we it's get gotten so difficult for parents to think how to make these choices. You. Every parent has so many choices in Minnesota and we don't have very many good resources for helping them make those choices and so I think charter schools add to

the wonderful mix of choices for parents that we've always advocated in Minnesota but they sure don't make it easy for parents to choose the right way. There aren't there aren't very many secondary charter schools there's only a few in the state. And of those we seem to be getting some pretty good success. I know that I'm in a sort of new country school for example. You know sending kids on to various kinds of colleges universities across the country so they're succeeding will keep falling and you know right there and I can see a lot more discussion so thank you very much for coming that the most important you should come for the sun coming term would be to pick the right parents would keep their children for example. Thank you Governor. Everything has many restrictions. You still got a couple of hours to add it to sense that our citizens can just drop by the star to be

both at the state fair and let the candidates for governor know what is on your mind. Comments will appear here on NEWSNIGHT and in the Star Tribune. OK enough of that let's get back to school in a couple of minutes Ken will talk with the superintendent of Minneapolis St. Paul and aloof. But before we get the view from the top we thought we ought to hear from the kids in the classroom. Some of you are familiar with program don't believe the hype. The show was produced for and by young people of color. Recently the hype crew talked about school. Now it turned into an interesting conversation about school bureaucracies which sometimes segregate students by race and students who sometimes segregate themselves. Here's a bit of that conversation. That there was a lot of race issues in the schools you've been engaged in. American students. How do you feel about that. Right now I go to sample Central High School and although I live in Venice heights I was supposed to go to the wiper Lake Area High School and I wanted to drive that extra mile because you know Central

is a more diverse school and I think I like that much more because you get it's not always one culture you get you get that melting pot of a feeling but I had an issue that actually like with the I mean I agree I got essentially two in synch with a very diverse mix that are like that I being Quest QUEST class. Those are like pretty white dominated me being like a black female or whatever. I was like the only one I took of the last class and I was like the only black person in there and we were talking about race began the subject of race. It was like my opinion I felt that a lot of the students in there were making stereotypes about different cultures and I spoke in they just like me and I think that was the reason because I was like the you know the one that was like the lowest down because. Most of the kids were away and I was like the minority in that class know their opinions. I've been working in the school system for about two years now and

one of the issues that I've been dealing with for for years even when I was going to school is to classes like the IBS and the quest classes aren't directed towards people of color. You got your counselors who who don't who don't put the students aside and say you know you need to enroll in this quest class because you know if you plan on going to college you should be in a pre IB your request or the c p classes they don't do that or they don't tell you about post-secondary enrollment and counselors in your school could do this now if they sat down with you and taking get letters of reference for you to get these these courses and get you free college a lot of kids don't know that post-secondary a Roman is free college. A friend of mine went to post-secondary for his cosmetology license and actually graduated from cosmetology at the same time he graduated from high school and went right away into making you know some pretty big money for 18 year old.

I hope there's more people out there with with the view of we need to start telling people of young young youth of color about these opportunities because sometimes. Our fault as we don't take the advantage of time to find out for ourselves. What about there for us and I would say that entirely because I'm in some advanced placement classes at my school and the Councils are all very helpful at my school maybe just at your school or I don't know but we have very helpful counselors at our school and they go a lot into it. I met a bunch of well I mean one AP class this year and I'm set up to go into other ones next year and there are minorities my school doesn't have a great minority a great percentage of minorities. But those who are it's about equal in terms of in the general school population in the AP classes and things like that you know I think one of the issues that our school is the fact that you know why are minority students well

represented in higher level AP classes IB classes and that's receiving I guess is kind of an atmosphere I mean students look at you know it's like I can't do that. You know my friends will think you know I can't be in that class and those are like you know white education you know. So I and that's that's I think that's deters a lot of students from going and talking about what education one of the problems that I find in my history classes. We don't really study any of that. Native American perspective or the African-American perspective unlike the Harlem Renaissance it's like yeah there was Harlem Renaissance. OK moving on. It's like that's a big thing. And with Native American It's like yeah they were there. We move them out of the way and now we have the West. I think that that's one thing I've kind of begun to is changing history books I think we need to. Get it more inclusive. Do you back an author that I grew up in during the NE year he began a public school system and we never learn anything about European history. We learn all about African-American history and Native American history and Asian

American history so it was different but then I never had a white teacher until I came to Minnesota. It's not diverse like that at all and am I like the schools up here. I've never seen a Native American till I came to Minnesota. So I like I mean maybe it's not so diverse but it's in the best of all worlds. At my school when I go to south high in Minneapolis. That segment from the upcoming season of don't believe the hype. We want to say thanks to the hype crew and producer Dan Bergen for that. Now let's turn it over to Kim. OK we heard from students there. How about a response from the folks at the top. Superintendent Carol Johnson has been head of the Minneapolis School System for just over a year now. William Larson was appointed interim superintendent of the St. Paul city schools this past summer. He's hardly a newcomer However he's worked in the St. Paul schools since 1965. Julio used to work in St. Paul but earlier this year he was hired as superintendent of the Duluth public school systems Thanks all for coming.

Anything in that conversation surprise you. Well not me. I'm always excited to hear students talk about their experiences. And I think that it's true that we don't have enough students of color in some of our advanced placement courses in some of our international baccalaureate programs which are the highest academic programs that most of our schools offer. And I think there are couple of things one is I think sometimes our counselors don't encourage students I think their perceptions about that are right and students do need to be encouraged. The other piece is that some students think you're either born smart or you're not. And if you're not born smart there's not much you can do about it. So they don't see that their personal effort and their investment in the work early on in their education matters. It's OK by the time they get to be 15 or 16 what in the world could a school do to change their mind about that. Well that's an interesting question can I. I concur with Carol and a couple of the students on that segment were talking about Central High School in St. Paul with the International Baccalaureate program and the

quest program. And they are under-represented students of color up are under represented in those programs. The school recognizes that and school administration recognizes that and they're struggling with that question the tradition asked. In fact they asked the Bush educators group to come in and do a study of Central High School to address that very question this last winter the Bush group made a recommend a series of recommendations to the school and the school is considering which of those recommendations might be appropriate to try and implement and change the dynamic of that representation. In Duluth we've heard a lot about the changing student population in Minneapolis and St. Paul but it's happening also in Duluth as it's happening and the Luther and the Lutheran urban city like St. Paul in Minneapolis in fact having been in St. Paul I can tell you that the Luth is a number of years behind but it's still an urban center and it still has the same issues. The issue is not or only for students it's also for staff our staff does not reflect the populations that we serve. And we need to continue to address that issue. But it also speaks to the expectations

that the community has for public education and that is to educate all students and all of them at a high level. And a lot of expectations on Carol Johnson in particular a lawsuit filed against a lot of contention over the Community Schools issue and bussing. Where is that now do you think you're winning converts to the community school concept. Well I think in our conversations with parents they want good schools first and foremost they want really good schools for their kids. They want to make sure the schools are safe and they want to make sure the teachers can deal with the individual differences of kids. And over and over again I think that we hear those three things. Academic Excellence same schools and individual differences. And I think our efforts are really designed to make sure we do that the best. But it used to be 20 30 years ago that the idea was you need to get black students and children of color more into the quote White better schools that they needed to see white peers succeeding and there would be role modeling and so forth.

And I don't hear that as much anymore. Well I think all of us would probably agree. That all of our students need to have a diverse experience that's successful in their future. I think diversity the student population Julio's right diversity of staff is also a major issue. And the role models and the mentors for these kids are very important. And when they're not there the incentive sometimes is not there. But then you get into the numbers game where you've got a community school in a primarily black neighborhood that has primarily black kids and you start pushing against numbers that make lawyers very nervous. And in part it comes to that whole issue of which and this the district addressed as a deal with the numbers doesn't deal with the issue of excellent schools or does it also deal with the issue of a diverse population that's going to be what our children are confronted with. We have to constantly try to address all of those three issues at one time. And so it's easy sometimes for the public to say but you didn't do this part well or you didn't do that well. And so then we get a kind of a condemnation that schools are failing.

And in fact they're not. I think Bill had a we had a we had an interesting conversation the other day and a colleague of mine observed that he had heard Colin Powell interviewed on the radio. In fact Ken you were at that same meeting and the observation of the question posed to Colin Powell was what can we do to fix the schools the public schools. He thought for a while and finally his response was the schools are broken. Some parts of society are broken and some families are broken. And we attribute all of those failures to the public schools. But how do you take chances how do you get innovative when you have plenty of people I mean ready to hit you over the head with the Public Relations Club because you're messing up the test numbers for the school are bad the test numbers for that school are bad. I mean it makes it tough to be creative when you've got a lot of people not happy with you to begin with. Well I think we should shift from blaming each other and I think there has been a tendency for teachers to blame parents and parents to blame teachers and try to figure out how we can work together. The

Minneapolis Urban League recently announced an achievement matters campaign is both a local and a national campaign but it's really trying to get the message to those same students that you heard from their high academic performance matters that it's important to take high rigorous courses. And I think the students have to get the messages more than just from people in schools. The community families other people in the community have to echo those messages about how important it is for students to work hard to achieve success. And I would say it's more than that. They really have to model it. I think that I as an educator both as an administrator and as a board member would say to you that the schools cannot do this by themselves. That we need the community we need the. Civic leaders we need the Chamber of Commerce. We need the unions to help in that whole process. I think that's absolutely true. I think the view that this is a cooperative effort between society and the schools the families in the schools businesses and the schools we're all in this together. We've got about a minute to go. Are you having as much fun as you did when you were a teacher

that first or second year in the classroom. I would say to you I'm having I'm having fun not as much rewards as being in the classroom. Those rewards are immediate. But when we're in the leadership roles our rewards get quite a bit and your headaches magnified and the headaches magnified. But still it's because we believe in the education of our children. I was saying to some people the other day that every job I've ever had is the best job I've ever had. And this is no exception. Well I think Chris moko said this you said I teach I teach the future and I think for all of us who work in education the opportunity to touch a little bit of the future is pretty exciting. No matter where you are in the and the enterprise. Thank you all very much for coming. Good luck in this coming school year. And thank you for joining us Lou and I will be back tomorrow night going to talk to some gubernatorial candidates and have some other fun. So I hope to see that.

NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible in part with supporting the blending Foundation working to strengthen the community throughout the summer. The midnight Foundation working to strengthen families and communities across Minnesota. Argue. Supporting ministers in the community service. And by thanking me and Benson offering comprehensive services for the legal needs of growing and established businesses.