Growth & Justice Blog

All of our kids will be in the minority, and very soon

Plain facts: By 2015, in just three years, white youth in the United States will  no longer comprise a majority, and then all of our kids will  be members of a minority group. The Star Tribune and other Minnesota media was abuzz last week confirming this transition.   In 2011, for the first time in our nation's history, more than 50 percent of our newborns were non-white or Hispanic and in Minnesota more than 30 percent of our kids under 5 are kids of color.

This will be good, for Minnesota must become a world community to compete in an age of globalization.  But the more important corresponding reality is that our white population and our education systems must adapt faster to changing demographic realities for this state and nation to thrive.   That was the key message delivered by Georgetown University Law Professor Sheryll Cashin  during a recent forum in Minneapolis.

Sheryll Cashin, Georgetown University Law Professor

“The Latino population grew at a rate 40 times that of the white population during the last decade, and these are people born here; not immigrants. Growth in the Asian population is high as well,” Cashin said during the 15^th Annual Julian Parker Lecture held earlier this month at the Minneapolis campus of the University of St. Thomas.

 Cashin, who writes extensively about issues of race and inequality, said that social psychology holds that most people harbor biases, and people who are the most isolated tend to believe the worst stereotypes.  This can be dangerous because separation perpetuates stereotypes of people perceived as “the other.''  

“It is no secret that American public schools are rapidly resegregating,” Cashin said. “Blacks and Latinos have become more segregated than ever in the last 30 years.”  Economic segregation is rising as well, she noted, noting that in 1970, 65 percent of the people in this country were middle class while today, 44 percent are middle class.

The better news is that some areas of the nation have been able to counter this segregation and the widening gap in various measures of  school success rates, to the benefit of all, Cashin said.  She cited Montgomery County, Maryland, where longtime zoning laws required 10- to 15-percent affordable units in wealthier communities.  Now, Montgomery County has emerged as a leader in closing the achievement gap between low income and affluent children, she said.   (See Growth & Justice policy brief on Montgomery County.)

Referring to different perceptions about race and inequality, Cashin said whites frequently view racism through its more blatant and outrageous history, in the context of laws and policies of the previous century that more brutally and intentionally held certain groups back.  So, whites are more likely to see progress around the issue. People of color, however, seek a future of true equality, which they see as quite distant, Cashin said.  

Although whites and people of color typically disagree about the subject of race and addressing disparities, Cashin urged unity and called for establishing multicultural coalitions that “narrow rather than widen gaps” between people.

 Louis Porter II

(Note from Growth and Justice President Dane Smith:  Louis  Porter II is a new Policy Fellow for Growth & Justice.   He's a communications teacher at the University of Minnesota, a former journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and he holds a doctorate in education.)

 

 

Recommended Reading: Ember Reichgott Junge on charter schools, and John Watson Milton on Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr.

For lovers of Minnesota, for history buffs and for students and practitioners of public policy, I highly recommend two outstanding books released this week.

One is "Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story,'' by former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, a key state leader in education, human services, and governmental redesign and a primary champion of the school-choice and charter school movement of the 1980s and 1990s.  Reichgott Junge skillfully weaves the story of emerging education innovation in Minnesota, from the influence of union leader Albert Shanker, through Gov. Rudy Perpich's bold effort to push through public-school choice, to her own championing of the fights for post-secondary options and finally, Minnesota's emergence as the leading model state in the charter school movement.   Controversy still surrounds charter schools, but they are here to stay, and I'm personally glad that this option was available when my own daughter sought an alternative to her big public high school a few years ago.  (If you buy the book online between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.on May 9, Ember tells me, there's a chance amazon.com will help with promotion.) 

The other is "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-81,''  by former state Sen.  John Watson Milton, and who served with Majority Leader Coleman in a heyday of progressive reform.   This golden decade, in which Coleman arguably had more influence than any other leader, stretched from the Minnesota Miracle and greater state responsibility for education funding and quality,  to putting teeth in civil rights legislation and expanding the rights of women and minorities and gays and lesbians, to campaign finance reform, to environmental cleanups, to progressive tax overhauls.   As former vice-president Walter F. Mondale writes in the foreword:   "In many ways, (Coleman) and Roger Moe, his successor as Senate majority leader, were more important than many governors we've had _ lasting longer, creating a revolution, and elevating the legislative branch to an equal footing with the executive...Nick Coleman was one of the brightest and most effective people in public office I've ever known.''

Both books will serve as reference works for years to come.   And they are a reminder of what's possible in our political process, and an inspiration for future stewards of our state government.

 

Dane Smith

 

Hard work paying off for public schools, despite rising poverty and inequality

More good news for Minnesota and for the thousands of public school teachers and leaders who have been working so hard for so many years to improve achievement and attainment in our education system. High school graduation rates have risen over the last decade, even though our public schools are working with an increasingly poor and economically distressed student body every year. 

America's Promise Alliance released a report this week showing a comparison of 2002 and 2009 graduation rates for the United States. The Building a Grad Nation report confirms that more Minnesotans are graduating from high school than in the past, and the report also shines a spotlight on targeted interventions that work. Download the full report here.

Two specific Minnesota programs are featured in the report:

Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota, for its quality-based mentoring initiative. The QMAP provides a structured and systemic process to assess mentoring programs, with the goal of increasing the quality of mentoring.

Minnesota Reading Corps. Started as a pilot program in 2003, it has become the largest state AmeriCorps program in the country. Its goal is simple: reading by third grade. Growth & Justice supports this goal. (See our Policy Brief on Kids Age 4 to 3rd Grade). Reading by third grade is a key benchmark for America's Promise Alliance as well.

Minnesota's increase in high school graduation is 3.5 percentage points over a span of 7 years. It's a modest amount, but it's promising, after years of stagnation and even decline for some districts and regions. Of the 9 states with graduation rates over 80% in 2002 (in other words, the highest performing states), 3 declined and 4, like Minnesota, made modest progress. Only two states with graduation rates above 80% gained at a higher rate: Wisconsin and Vermont. Wisconsin became the first state to reach 90% graduation (a full 11 years early), and Vermont is nearly there at 89.4%.

Most alarming in the report is the trend in 16 states that shows limited or no growth, and the decline in graduation rates in 10 states. That's more than half the nation not making adequate progress towards higher graduation rates. Some are nearby: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois.

Currently, MInnesota is tied with North Dakota at 87.3%, with only Wisconsin and Vermont graduating a higher percentage of their high school students. This is a success story for Minnesota and even more impressive considering our changing demographics.

Maureen Ramirez

Lessons from Blackwell and Finland: Equity is the superior growth model

Angela Glover Blackwell is one of the nation's leading voices on poverty and inequality, and her national think tank, PolicyLink, provides a wealth of data and best practices for moving people out of poverty, and improving lives for middle- and lower-income households, and communities of color.

Blackwell was in Minnesota recently, promoting PolicyLink's America's Tomorrow report on equity, and she was featured on MPR talking about poverty in America. She made the points, among others, that the vast majority of Americans have no idea how hard it is to get out of poverty, and that more equitable nations are outperforming us economically.

The MPR segment included an inspiring call-in from a Lakeville woman who described how the more generous safety net benefits of the 1970s saved her family and helped her to go to college, and she decried the shredding of those benefits and their reduced purchasing power in recent years.

Blackwell's equity-driven economic model is not just a pipe dream, or a sentimental wish list. It exists as a real life example in places like Finland, which has one of the world's stronger economies, high incomes and standard of living, an innovative workforce, and leading socio-economic indicators.

In the 70's, Finland wasn't so much beset by poverty as it was concerned about how to redesign its education system to move into the knowledge-based economy. Finland chose equity as its educational policy goal, not competition.

Finland's results on the PISA, an international reading, math and science survey conducted by the OECD, rank among the very best in the world. And this is from a system that promoted cooperation among schools, high teacher pay, and equality over high-stakes test scores, competition and "choice." A fascinating recent article in The Atlantic magazine explains Finland's success and concludes that "the problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed."

While comparisons between Finland and the United States as a whole may be like comparing lingonberries to fruit salad, a comparison of Finland to Minnesota is particularly useful to our policy conversations. Finland's population is 5.4 million; Minnesota's is 5.3 million. Finland is becoming more diverse than most people realize and its foreign-born population is 4.6% of the country. Minnesota's foreign-born population is 6.7% of the state.

FInland created an equitable system based on the idea that every child, in any city, from any family and any income should have the same educational experience, from birth on. Minnesota can match the rhetoric on equal opportunity. And we actually stood out as a model of equity among the states until a couple decades ago. But we can't match the results lately and disparities by race and income on educational attainment and achievement are among the worst in the nation.

The lesson from Finland and from leaders like Blackwell on the payoff from elevating equity in order to achieve growth is becoming part of a larger conversation. And PolicyLink's mantra, that equity is the superior growth model, is catching on as a defining principle for economic and education policy.

Maureen Ramirez
 

P.S. I'm the new policy and research director at Growth & Justice and I'm thrilled to be working for an organization that is focused so clearly on advancing equity (also known as economic justice) as the superior growth model. I bring to this job my experience as a current member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents; as a former executive director of the CaptiolRiver Council in St. Paul (a downtown council that advises the city on planning issues); as a former director of the Minnesota Civic Engagement Table; and as a former coordinator of the Minnesota Participation Project at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

 

Wave of innovation in Owatonna schools more important than referendum loss

As Owatonna high-schooler Jarrod Neuharth described his project designing parachutes from scratch -- learning how to sew from his grandmother, rustling up help from a local shoe-repair shop, linking up to a NASA project -- I got the sense that we might be seeing both a creative new entrepreneur for our state economy AND an exciting new shape for tomorrow's public schools.

Neuharth was a star performer in a presentation at the U of M this week by an articulate and passionate Owatonna Public Schools team that has built an Owatonna Options' program over the last few years, funded in large part by federal recovery funds.  The initiative, still under construction, is based on project learning and includes an imaginative blend of interdisciplinary workshops, a flexible schedule, mentorships, teacher guides, a heavy emphasis on science and technology, and strong emphasis on the principles of leadership and inquiry.

The opening passage of the options handbook for students describes the program as a "personalized and innovative learning environment."  Its beneficiaries include both gifted high-achieving students, like Neuharth, and those who are struggling with traditional school instruction delivery models.  Neuharth said after his presentation that one of the most valuable members of his project team was a friend who was not doing well academically.

"Owatonna might be delivering the 21st Century model for public schools,'' observed Steve Kelley, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute.  Kelley organized a roundtable session that included presentations from school innovators from Itasca County and the Blandin Foundation, where citizens and school officials are working on a comprehensive strategy to improve student success, and with whom Growth & Justice has partnered (see posts from June 26 to July 1 on learning about the total community model in Cincinnati.)  A third presenter at the meeting was the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a partnership with the Bush Foundation.

Owatonna schools were in the news this week because of a very narrow school levy referendum loss (mostly for buying a new building and other facilities needs, unrelated to the reform initiative).  But that loss, by just 10 votes the night before the presentation, seemed to actually enthuse the Owatonna team about its commitment to press forward with Owatonna Options.

Although "Options" is initially focused on some 120 students in grades 9 through 12, plans call for expansion.  And K-8 is undergoing an innovation transformation too, with new emphasis on developing themes of leadership and inquiry and the principles of Steven Covey's well-known "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."

Influenced by a wave of recent ground-breaking books and research (including "Disrupting Class," co-authored by Minnesota public policy leader Curt Johnson) and advocacy on the need to disrupt and challenge the so-called "factory model" of public education, Supt. Tom Tapper and his team of teachers and administrators of set out several years ago to develop a new model.

The prologue to a thick document, "A New School Structure: Owatonna Public Schools' Journey to the 21st Century'' declares that "providing children with skills of the 21st Century such as collaboration, visioning and invention will be the foundation of all our schools.  This will be accomplished by purposefully instilling skills of leadership and inquiry.  Providing choice to parents so that students will have the opportunity to learn within the context of their unique learning styles will add to the effectiveness of our instruction and enhance the possibility that every student attending Owatonna Public Schools wil be 'inspired to succeed' as our mission requires us to do.''

--Dane Smith

Minneapolis Promise makes progress in getting kids on early college track

Research shows that getting kids and their parents in a post-secondary mindset as early as possible -- creating not just hope but an expectation for college attainment -- makes a big difference in whether they get credentials.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and his top economic development official, Mike Christenson, without a lot of fanfare, have been working this angle for years.  Every year in the fall Mayor Rybak addresses every 9th grader in the city with a message and specific programmatic inducements that encourage them to compete for summer jobs and scholarships for college, or that put them on the post-secondary track.

Christenson, director of the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning & Economic Development, and a Growth & Justice Policy Fellow, summarizes the success of those efforts in a recent MinnPost Community Voice column, key parts of which we reprint here: 

 

 

"Let's begin with the story of Alex Glaze. Alex and his twin sister grew up in poverty and were removed from their mother's home early in life. Alex quickly learned that if he needed a ride to school or school supplies, he was on his own. He began working in junior high to take care of household needs. At 18, Alex and his sister were told to leave their father's home for good.

After graduating from Southwest High School, Alex worked in the Minneapolis mayor's office as a STEP-UP intern. This summer, he joined nearly 2,000 other STEP-UP interns and dozens of employers to celebrate their summer accomplishments. For many interns, it was their first work experience. Like so many of us, they described their summer jobs as their first big break...

....The summer job is one of three parts of the Minneapolis Promise offered through Achieve Minneapolis. Mayor Rybak visits assemblies of ninth-graders in each Minneapolis public high school every fall. There, he lays out a compelling alternative to street life. Every Minneapolis youth may compete for one of 2,000 summer jobs, must complete a college and career map called "My Life Plan," and can apply for thousands of scholarships through Minneapolis Community & Technical College, Augsburg College, the University of Minnesota, Admission Possible, the Children's Defense Fund, the McGuire and Wallin and Page Foundations and many more programs.

State and city leaders from all sectors worry about the overwhelming challenges of the achievement gap in Minnesota. Populations of color trail others in measures of educational success at a nation-leading rate. We're a proud state, and national leader in so many categories, but this is a leadership position we need to vacate. After eight years, the Minneapolis Promise offers hope. A combination of summer jobs, career and college plans, and scholarships adds up to more than the sum of its parts...[and]...if the Minneapolis Promise continues to grow, the achievement gap will shrink. Here are the facts:

•    Over 82 percent of the STEP-UP and city summer interns are persons of color.
•    More than 900 students have attended MCTC under the Power of You program, and the number of Minneapolis high-school graduates has more than doubled at MCTC in five years.
•    The University of Minnesota has admitted 166 STEP-UP interns since 2006. 
•    ACT testing and college participation rates from the Minneapolis high schools continue to grow.

...Minnesota's future work-force challenge will be to inspire populations not likely to attend college to hear this promise. In Minneapolis, we have found that summer jobs join with college supports to boost college participation. Let's hope that miracle can go to work, first through a summer job, for all Minnesota youth like Alex. And let's hope that the business community, which has kept this promise in Minneapolis, will inspire others as well. One last thing: Alex Glaze is in the freshman class at Stanford this fall." (Bold italics added).

The punchline, about an impoverished Minneapolis child, benefiting from broad community support, smart taxpayer investments combined with private-sector partnerships, entering prestigious Stanford University, tells it all.

--Dane Smith

Nathan and CSC at Macalester show how to shape mindset early for post-secondary completion

Check out the recent column by our friend and ally Joe Nathan at the Center for School Change at Macalester College for some stirring advice on getting kids and parents plugged in to college visits and post-secondary options during the month of August.

We all know that our more successful students are prowling college campuses and weighing options by their sophomore or junior years in high school, and Nathan's column provides links to the public and private systems in Minnesota that encourage such free visits for any and all visitors.

The CSC website's mainpage also features a recent event at Macalester and an initiative that everybody needs to encourage greatly: getting much younger kids and their parents, especially students of color and in disadvantaged situations, on track and thinking about post-high school credentials.  The site chronicles a campus visit by kids from the Summer Academy, a summer instruction program provided by a partnership of three charter schools in Minneapolis, and notes these remarks by visiting elementary-age kids: "I will definitely go here" and "I want to go to college next year!"  The freedom of going to college intrigued some of the visiting 5th grade students, with one noting, "You can play video games BEFORE your homework is done!?!"  A Macalester student guide reflected on the event, saying, "You can never start too young to think about college."

--Dane Smith

Another Minnesota voice for post-secondary completion, and an even-handed critique of for-profit higher education

Back to School for Grown-Ups is a relatively new enterprise in Minnesota that shares our zeal for dramatically increasing post-secondary attainment, with special emphasis on grown-ups of all ages who need to re-think, re-educate and re-train in a fast-changing economic world.

The key principal in the firm is Laura Gilbert, who produces books, blogs, research papers, presentations and counseling, all providing sound advice to young and older adults who are trying to navigate the ever trickier and more expensive path to four-year "sheepskins" or other higher-ed credentials.  Her book, "How to Save $50,000 on College" is a pocket-sized guide that cuts through a lot of the confusing fog and expensive obstacles to higher-ed completion.

Gilbert is a life-long learner whose biography fits her philosophy.  She picked up her credentials in stages, starting with a triple major in music from Metropolitan State in the Twin Cities, a master's in industrial relations in mid-career, and a PhD in educational psychology much later in life.

Among her more important contributions recently are a thoughtful white paper, "For-Profit Education Under Scrutiny: Issues and Challenges," issued earlier this summer.  Gilbert succinctly summarizes some of the more appalling abuses of the "bad actors" in the fast-growing field, providing a lesson in how privatizing the classic public and nonprofit functions of education, health and welfare comes fraught with risks.  Her charts showing comparative cost and value for public, private nonprofit, and for-profit rather strongly make the case for the former two rather than the latter.  But Gilbert also acknowledges the strengths of responsible for-profit models, especially through online learning, and concludes that expensive and prone to abuse as they can be, for-profits are a legitimate route and have become a "mainstay" of our sytem.

Gilbert's work features a sharp cut-to-the-chase style and she has a good sense of humor, as her blogs on the Larry Crowne movie attest.  Like many higher-ed enthusiasts who loved the premise of a laid-off "UMart" retail worker going back to school for a degree, Laura and I were disappointed in the "nice" but rather boring and implausible movie.  How can you fall so flat, with such an uplifting concept, and Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts?  And I agree with Gilbert that it would have been a lot more fun to send Buzz and Woody (those souls of aging obsolescence, from the Toy Story trilogy) back to school.

--Dane Smith 

 

A statement for government redesign, goal-setting, and budgeting for outcomes

Few voices reflect Minnesota's moderate mainstream ethics more perfectly than Star Tribune editorial columnist Lori Sturdevant, and her call-to-action for government "redesigners'' in Sunday's Star Tribune Op-Ex was squarely on target.

 

And this morning Sturdevant hit the note again with a short editorial page item describing a discussion group on redesign that we at Growth & Justice have been part of for a year-and-a-half now. The nucleus of the informal ad hoc group is comprised of current and former presidents of the Citizens League, long considered a premiere civic improvement organization in the Twin Cities and Minnesota. The discussion group includes key leaders in the business community, from nonprofits and foundations and from the conservative think tank, the Center of the American Experiment. Much of the spirit and substance of the group's deliberations can be found on the pages of the Civic Caucus website.

 

Last week as the state government shutdown dragged on and a mutually unsatisfactory budget deal unfolded, our group produced a strong statement urging a commitment and offering specifics toward redesigning our governmental systems.

 

The statement is being shared with top leaders in the executive and legislative branch and will be districtuted broadly in coming days and weeks. Despair and cynicism about our political gridlock is undesrtandable but unnecessary. Recently I wrote a Capitol Report column noting that these actually are not the worst of times, and urging that we emerge from them with a commitment to redesign and invest in better government and measurable results. We can begin, for instance, by setting a 75 percent post-secondary completion goal for our young adults by the end of this decade, which is a top Growth & Justice policy objective.

 

The good news is that on many fronts conscientious Minnesotans, both inside and outside state and local government and in our state employee labor unions, are already working to improve our vital public investments. Let's encourage much more of that, and keep our minds open.

 

--Dane Smith

Bringing home "total community" for rural and Greater Minnesota student success

Coming home to Minnesota this week after an intensive three days of learning about student success efforts in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky - and trying not to think about the state government shutdown - one of the first things to pop up on my screen was a powerful op-ed in the St. Cloud Times, headlined “Education is up to all of us."

The article was all about a “Student Success Task Force" and a "Linkages Committee" in the St. Cloud area, which is mounting a “total community" campaign aimed at cross-sector coordination to improve achievement and attainment. "The goal is to change the way people in the St. Cloud area think about the stake we have in the development of all (bold italics mine) our children."

The author of this eloquent appleal was Patrick Henry, a retired executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical & Cultural Research. His main point was that everybody in the St. Cloud area needs to get enthused about a “communitywide, top-of-mind" campaign for universal student success. Henry urged his fellow central Minnesota citizens not to compartmentalize their thinking and not to defer to the public sector and public schools and welfare agencies, or the nonprofit sector, on a mission that’s so crucial to the health and vitality of all of Minnesota. Reading between the lines, Henry was exhorting businesses and all individuals to get more involved, whether they had children or not, and he noted that the portion of households with kids in school had dropped from one-half to one-fourth over the last few decades.

I really liked this passage: "Don't underestimate the significance of your attitude. When everyone in the community takes ownership and acknowledges a stake in the development and achievement of all (bold italics mine) our children, the St. Cloud area will be transformed, deserving even more its 'most livable' designation."

The column nailed almost perfectly the kind of “total community" effort we learned about from the Strive Partnership in Cincinnati, and that’s being advanced in Grand Rapids by the Blandin Foundation-supported Student Success Team, which organized our tour. One of the happier takewaways from the trip is that Blandin and Grand Rapids are already well along toward a "total community, cradle-to-career'' initiative for improved school success.

Strive in Cincinnati is very much an urban model but the principles - setting measureable goals and benchmarking results, focusing on early childhood, in-school and out-of-school support for every student, pushing academic rigor, preparing for and securing post-secondary attainment and career entry - can and should be applied everywhere.

Some specific advice for rural areas came in a presentation from the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, which has education attainment at the forefront of an agenda for 32 mostly rural eastern Ohio counties. And we were linked in that session to some other national efforts, including the Ford Foundation's "Creating Rural Wealth'' initiative, aimed at finding ways to sustain and restore economic health and wealth, which is really what the student success initiatives are all about.

More encouragement on the rural and urban homefront came from an all-day session I attended in St. Paul on Thursday, sponsored by the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership and its Minnesota College Access Network project. We heard from no fewer than 10 "College Connector Teams" as they proudly described their efforts to improve post-secondary participation and completion among specific groups, in rural areas as well as in the Twin Cities.

Among those that particularly impressed were a couple of teams focusing on American Indian kids at the Bois Forte and Fond du Lac reservations. We also saw presentations from groups working on minority success in St. Cloud, in Northfield and among the Latino population, which has a strong presence not just in urban areas, but in southern and western Minnesota.

--Dane Smith