Yesterday in Where have I been? And other things. I finally broke my nearly two month blogging hibernation and explained why my blog has been so silent this fall. I explained that I have been caught in what seems like an ethical or moral paradox professionally going from working at an integration district to a Hmong immersion charter school. In that post I made a statement about school funding of non-Broad/Gates/Walton-funded charter schools in Minnesota receiving and operating with some of the lowest per-student revenue in the state. I was going by some old figures so I decided to pull up the most recent data today and verify that my statements were indeed true.
It seems between foundation aid, grants, and other donations the Community School of Excellence receives $11,983 per student in revenue. $9,370 of those funds come from foundation aid and $2,600 come from federal funds. If you take into consideration the 60/40 deal the legislature cut this year to to schools (money we will likely never see paid back), we are really looking at more like $9,790 per pupil revenue for CSE. So, it stands to reason that if one were to figure out which school districts in Minnesota were suffering the least from the 60/40 dealayed payment one would look at total revenue per pupil a school or school district received from non-state sources like federal aid, local property tax, grants, etc. So, when you add up all non-state funding and divide by the number of kids in a school, how does CSE compare to other schools?
school
non-state aid revenu/pupil
%of students on free and reduced lunch
Edina Public Schools
$6,112.00
8%
Minnetonka Public Schools
$6,323.00
9%
Wayzata Public Schools
$6,405.00
15%
Eden Prairie Public Schools
$5,857.00
18%
Westonka Public Schools
$6,170.00
20%
Moundsview Public Schools
$6,481.00
28%
Inver Grove Heights Public Schools
$4,861.00
34%
Hopkins Public Schools
$7,847.00
35%
St. Louis Park Public Schools
$7,504.00
35%
Spring Lake Park Public Schools
$5,607.00
36%
Burnsville Public Schools
$5,564.00
38%
Bloomington Public Schools
$6,777.00
39%
WEST ST. PAUL-MENDOTA HTS.-EAGAN
$6,396.00
40%
Robbinsdale Public Schools
$6,897.00
46%
SOUTHSIDE FAMILY CHARTER SCHOOL
$8,648.00
56%
Richfield Public Schools
$6,031.00
64%
Saint Paul Public Schools
$5,884.00
72%
KIPP MINNESOTA CHARTER SCHOOL
$9,103.00
88%
Community School of Excellence
$2,613
90%
EL COLEGIO CHARTER SCHOOL
$6,791.00
90%
RICHARD ALLEN MATH-SCIENCE ACADEMY
$7,076.00
94%
I threw CSE's numbers in there just for comparison. Most districts and schools in the state receive around the $2k-$3k range of non-state revenue.
I find this fascinating. The schools listed above (except for CSE) are all some of the best-funded schools in the metro-area. Notice which districts are not on this list. Also, consider the position of EMID board members and superintendents who are thinking about closing down their integration schools. Which of these schools are EMID schools? Which of those EMID schools are pushing the hardest to get rid of the integration district?
Also, among the charters listed above, who is providing the money? In the case of three of the five charters listed their non-state revenue equaled or surpassed the amount of foundation aid the state provides. When someone else holds the purse strings, who does the school really serve?
I know I promised that I would write today about what we are doing at CSE. We are doing some real exciting and ambitious things with the children here but I just had to revisit this numbers game one more time. Tomorrow I'll write about CSE's 1:1 laptop program, our move to Google Apps for Education, and our foray into IB.
I should be ashamed of myself. It's been nearly two months since my last blog post. A lot has gone on in that time and to be honest, I wasn't sure how to process it or reflect on it on my blog. So, instead of writing about the issues that I have been confronting everyday I've just let my blog go dormant. I have not written anything significant nor have I been able to keep up with my Twitter Book Club archiving.
So, where have I been?
Last year I was employed by East Metro Integration District 6067 in St. Paul under an Edtech ARRA Grant that ended June 30th. As you may or may not know, integration districts are special school districts created by the state of Minnesota charged with carrying out the provisions of the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision to desegregate schools. In St. Paul, this has been done for the last ten years or so with two magnet schools: Crosswinds Middle School in Woodbury and Harambe Elementary in Maplewood. The integration district is created as a sort of joint-power arrangement between St. Paul Public Schools and neighboring suburban school districts. The state issues "integration revenue" which the integration district uses to fund equity and desegregation programs in it's member school districts. In turn, each member district makes available to it's students the option of attending one of these magnet schools where inner-city and suburban students attend class together.
Now, the time I was employed by EMID was a tumultuous time for the organization. In the year and a half that I was employed there the district went through four different superintendents and nearly every administrative position in the district changed. When the first superintendent retired the district hired Brenda Casselius to take his place. Brenda came in and shook the tree pretty hard causing a lot of people to either leave or to be on guard. This in itself wasn't necessarily a bad thing but as the political winds would have it, not long after taking the assignment she was called upon by the newly elected Governor Dayton to be our state's Commissioner of Education. When she left, a neighboring district's superintendent stepped in as acting superintendent until an interim superintendent could be named. Soon Jerry Robicheau, a retired superintendent of Inver Grove Heights Public Schools (one of the 9 EMID member school districts), was named interim Superintendent.
A couple of things about EMID are worth noting before I move on to discussing where I have been and where I am now. First, as a result of NCLB and the pressures placed on school districts to make AYP these two magnet schools have in a way become a form of alternative school for many of the member districts. When a student is not performing well in a given school it is often felt by the school that perhaps the school is not the best fit for that student. It is in both the school's and the student's best interest to find them better placement. Given the high stakes of test scores there is an added incentive to pass lower performing students along to other schools where they will hopefully have better chances but at the very least their removal will bring up test scores in their previous district. What adds to this arrangement is one thing Crosswinds had going for it was a fantastic special education department, a fact many referred students' families told us was one reason they decided to send their children there. As a result, even though these two schools offer fantastic learning environments with some of the most professional educators I have ever had the pleasure of working with, meeting AYP was always an uphill struggle.
The other thing worth noting is the political climate (both local and national) which we find ourselves in. With the rise of the Tea Party we have a resurgence of personal Liberty being held up as an ultimate American virtue. Liberty and equity have always been at odds with each other. While schools like Crosswinds and Harambee seek to create an equitable learning environment for students, far right wing politics seek to deconstruct such environments because equity for all means some people have to do with less liberty. As a result, when the Republicans took control of both houses of the MN legislature last fall one of the non-negotiable budget cuts they made was to eliminate the integration revenue. This elimination, essentially, takes away any carrot EMID member districts have to staying members of the integration district. Without receiving services from the integration aide membership meant simply loosing student units to the magnet school. No school district likes to loose funding because of school choice. In EMID's case, the member districts control the access families have to that choice.
One of the reasons I have been so quiet on my blog is I have been put into an ethical dilemma. The school district I just left and one I highly support was devoted to racial desegregation and equity, two goals I wholeheartedly support. The school where I ended up landing a job this fall is a charter school in St. Paul, the Community School of Excellence (CSE), that serves mainly Hmong students. Where my ethical dilemma resides is that in some ways schools like this one are self-segregating. In many ways it feels like coming here to work is a betrayal of the principles we fought for at EMID.
On the other hand, there is real good reason for schools like CSE to exist, especially if they serve ethnic groups brought here from refugee camps in places where US military action caused their displacement. This was the case for the Hmong. What many people do not know is that in the Vietnam War there was a secret CIA operation known as the Secret War (also known as the Laotian Civil War) that took place. Foreign military were not allowed to bring troops through Laos so the CIA recruited Hmong soldiers to fight with them from the mountains of Laos. Led by General Vang Pao the Hmong soldiers rescued downed American pilots and fought the Viet Cong from the mountains and protected the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In exchange for their involvement a deal was struck that if things turned sour and the Hmong were displaced from their homes they would be given places to live in the United States. Things did go sour and the Hmong were displaced from their homes. They were forced to live in refugee camps where they awaited transport to the United States. Today many still wait even though generations have passed.
For some reason Minnesota became the place where most Hmong in America decided to settle. The highest concentration of which is in St. Paul where my new school is. When the CIA made their promise to the Hmong people I am sure they did not take fully into consideration what would happen culturally to their people if they moved to the United States. The USA is a cultural assimilation machine. It is the whole melting pot concept but with some rather disturbing consequences. Time and again cultures which try to coexist with American culture either get absorbed into our culture or they are left to die. Over time the uniqueness of individual cultures disappear and what we are left with is cultural genocide. I know this is what the leaders of these Hmong immersion charter schools must be thinking. This is painfully obvious when they talk about the importance of retaining the mother tongue.
What I fear about this arrangement though is that schools like this one that self-segregate in order to try to preserve their cultural heritage will end up being no different from our American Indian reservation schools. Already there are tell-tale signs that this is what is already happening. Reservation schools are treated just like any other public school. They receive foundation aid and their local taxpayers are allowed to levy local property taxes to increase revenue to their schools. Unfortunately, the property values on reservations are so low that even a very high percentage would not lift school funding much beyond the foundation aid. Essentially, our state has found a way to keep economically depressed children on Indian reservations even more economically depressed. I see the same thing happening with these charter schools in the inner city. The state allows schools to be independently chartered and locally run but these charter schools are not allowed to levy taxpayer funds. Unless they are given grant money or find a Broad, Gates, or Walton to make up the difference they, like the reservation schools, must rely solely on foundation aid, aid which is nearly 1/3 per pupil what Minnesota's richest school district spends on it's children. And by the way, CSE has an 87% free and reduced lunch rate and nearly 100% ELL population. Most of our students are new to the country within the last four years. If there is a group in Minnesota in need of a greater portion of state aid it is this group. So, this is my moral dilemma. I want to help support the Hmong people to retain their cultural heritage while at the same time supporting racial desegregation. The way I see it both EMID and CSE are victims of present political winds in education. Winds that help to ensure liberty for some and justice for those who can afford to pay for it.
Tomorrow I will write more about what we are trying to do at CSE.
I am real excited about an event I have been coordinating on February 24th at Hamline University. As part of both my role at EMID 6067 and my role at Hamline University and through the grant funding that brought me to EMID this year we are hosting a day-long symposium on equity issues in technology and education. We are also partnering with the Office of Equity and Integration to provide free admission and pay for a sub for teachers in our 10 member districts:
The event is also open to anyone else who would like to attend for a fee of $75. (Click here to register.) Space is limited to 150 people.
We will also be streaming our morning sessions and at least one of our afternoon sessions online using Elluminate. Anyone can attend for free online and we will do our best to make sure any questions for our panelists posted online are addressed at the event. (Click here to attend online).
S. Craig Watkins will be keynoting the event in the morning followed by a panel discussion featuring Ira Socol, Cassie Scharber, and Daniel Sellers. The afternoon will be filled with two sections of break-out sessions, one preset and the other attendee driven. For one of these sessions we will even have a third grade class come and hold class at our event. We often hear that students should be involved with teacher professional development but it rarely gets done. We are going to give it a try.
This is another fantastic clip from the 1995 Congressional Hearing on Technology in Education that is loaded with important points about motivation in learning.
In this clip Alan Kay eloquently describes the Montessori model of education and how the Macintosh OS is a kind of Montessori learning environment. He also highlights how kids want to learn how to do things they find value in and that our schools do not look like places they resemble from any other part of their lives. Part of this problem, he adds, is they don't see their teachers learning and if they did they might be more motivated as well.
Seymour Papert jumps in to add that our traditional school model is well suited for only a minority kind of learner and that this model discriminates against students who learn differently. He goes on to speculate that with time congress might see this as a human rights issue and declare that schools violate a basic human right by discriminating on the basis of learning style.
At the end of this clip Chris Dede jumps in to add that learning is also social and highlights the ability for computers to foster activities of collaboration and communication. His statements sound like he was describing today's social networks.
Well, that's all I have time for tonight. Stay tuned, when I have a little more time I will try to get through the remaining 170 minutes of this hearing.
