Over the objections of Education Minnesota, the statewide teachers union, a House panel approved two pieces of legislation that would allow an alternative teacher certification mechanism in Minnesota. (Pioneer Press). Similar bills will go to Senate committees in the coming weeks. (Expanded coverage forthcoming).
The Pioneer Press editorial team also weighed in in support of ALT CERT. Well said.
Beginning today, the Charter School Partners (CSP) Blog will be focusing on the alternative teacher certification (ALT CERT) legislation being considered at the legislature. The first hearing on the bill will be this Thursday, February 25th at 8:30 am in the House K-12 Education Committee, chaired by St. Paul Rep Carlos Mariani.
Minnesota has one of the highest achievement gaps in the nation and we believe alternative teacher licensing is one of the missing links as to why Minnesota’s urban core schools have not yet realized the success of many of its counterparts in other cities.
We have been reporting in this blog and in our Op Ed’s about the many, many successful inner city schools in some of America’s toughest urban areas: New York City, New Orleans, Washington, DC, Houston. We as a CSP Team have visited dozens of these successful urban schools first hand. Many components make up the success of these schools. But the one constant variable is the utilization of great (yes, often young) teachers who have come from the ranks of Teach for America (TFA) or The New Teacher Project (TNTP). One of New Orleans’ successful new schools, The KIPP Central City Academy, which we visited three weeks ago, had 80% TFA corps members or alum teaching in the school. This is not unusual for these ‘beating the odds’ schools.
Given this, CSP has developed a unique partnership with Teach for America to place corps members in our Partner charter schools. Also check out a previous CSP Blog welcoming TFA to Minnesota.
There is a broad and diverse coalition supporting the ALT CERT legislation. It is made up of community and minority organizations, urban school districts, and many foundations and businesses. These include:
Education Organizations
• Minnesota School Boards Association
• Hamline University
• Charter School Partners
Community Organizations/Foundations
• Northside Policy Action Coalition
Members include: PEACE Foundation, Northway Community Trust, West Broadway Coalition, Minneapolis Urban League, NorthPoint Health & Wellness Inc, Turning Point, Emerge Community Development, KMOJ Communications
• The Itasca Project
• Minneapolis Foundation
• The McKnight Foundation
• The Saint Paul Foundation
• The Robbins, Kaplan, Miller, and Ciresi Foundation for Children
• Minnesota Chamber of Commerce
• Minnesota Business Partnership
Community Corporations
• General Mills
• Medtronic
• TCF Bank
• Best Buy
• US Bank
• Allianz
Schools/Individuals
• Minneapolis Public Schools
• Brooklyn Center Public Schools
• Charter Schools:
o Saint Paul: Achieve Language Academy; Higher Ground Academy; Hmong College Prep Academy, College Prep Elementary
o Minneapolis: Harvest Preparatory and BEST Academy; Hiawatha Leadership Academy; KIPP: Stand Academy; Lighthouse Academy
Community Members
• Alberto Monserrate, CEO and President of Latino Communications
• Don Samuels, Minneapolis City Council Member, Fifth Ward
• Eric Mahmoud, President and CEO of SEED Academy and Harvest Preparatory School
• Sondra Samuels, President, PEACE Foundation
• Sheila Wright, Dean, School of Education, Hamline Universi
An article in yesterday’s MinnPost.com reports on Minneapolis School District’s efforts to create two new charter-like, self-governed schools. In the coming weeks, the Minneapolis school board could give formal approval to move forward with the 2011 openings. In addition to the district, this new initiative, which was pushed by Ted Kolderie’s Education Evolving in last year’s legislative session, has been strongly supported by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. To have the district and the local teachers union working together on such innovation is a promising development in the district’s effort to close the achievement gap.
One school, a K-12 science program is run by Concept Schools, a highly successful non-profit charter management organization (CMO) headquartered in Chicago, which runs over a dozen such schools in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Congrats to the district’s Office of New Schools who have courted them to come to Minneapolis. To bring such a quality group to Minneapolis is really a huge development in our collective efforts to close one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps. The other school is The (K-6) Pierre Bottineau French Immersion School, which would be run by the teachers of the school.
In his State of the State address, Governor Pawlenty suggested St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak should consider the national trend of Mayors taking over their underperforming public schools. R.T. was cool to the idea. Mayor Coleman said it’s “a conversation worth having”. Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis said Ryback and Coleman “would do a fine job” running the schools. We should consider it”. The Pioneer Press editorialized extensively in support of the notion.
It is too bad the Governor did not engage in this discussion much earlier in his administration. Eight years ago, Minnesota had one of the highest achievement gaps in the nation. Today, Minnesota still has one of the highest achievement gaps in the nation. While Mayoral control is not the panacea in closing the achievement gap, it is one of the important factors in several of the cities that have experienced significant movement toward gap closing, most notably in New York City (which we have written about several times in this blog).
So bring it on. Let us have the discussion about ensuring that our inner city under-served minority kids have the same opportunities in life as their white suburban counterparts.
New Orleans Blog 3.
Read the headline and thought ‘ouch’. Secretary Duncan and nervous aides spent time over the weekend clarifying the Secretary’s remarks regarding New Orleans. In his interview with Roland Martin late last week, Duncan stated:
“I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’ And the progress that they’ve made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that — that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior, and the amount of progress and the amount of reform we’ve seen in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing.”
KIPP CENTRAL CITY ACADEMY, one of six new KIPP schools in New Orleans What struck us as we saw and analyzed the New Orleans turnaround was that it didn’t “just happened”. Like other successful public school turnarounds (New York City, for instance), there was a tremendous vision, focus and a strategy put together by state and local leaders to attract national (particularly) charter resources and leaders to serve in new high-achieving schools. In addition, New Orleans developed several charter support groups like New Schools for New Orleans, which is focused on improving the quality of New Orleans schools by recruiting strong school leaders, improving teacher quality and having several other best practices that we at Charter School Partners are providing and encouraging for use in all Minnesota schools.
The New Orleans story, while a long way from Minnesota and different in so many ways, was a sober reminder that closing one of the nation’s highest achievement gaps is going to take a lot more focus, resources and intentional implementation of best practices than we are presently putting toward the problem. It also says, it can be done.
So, it’s been fun. Signing off from New Orleans.
Al and Brian