Our brilliant reader Laura Chapman, retired educator, decided to dig deep into the politics of education reform in Minnesota in response to a post about a dubious constitutional amendment sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank.
Chapman, who lives in Ohio, writes:
I am not from Minnesota, but this post sent me deep into some policies there. The idea is to frame education as a fundamental right to “quality schools” as “measured against uniform achievement standards set forth by the state.”
No. This law is written as if the standard-setting process is a business-as usual-review of existing standards and benchmarks for learning, with periodic revisions. It is not.
Right now, there is a huge controversy over the social studies standards. The battle is about whose histories count and whether conservatives should settle for anything other than patriotism as the major purpose of teaching American history. https://patch.com/minnesota/across-mn/controversy-over-mn-s-social-studies-standards-explained
Students Learning English (ELLs), are unlikely to pass the absurd requirements being proposed by the Federal Reserve (why bankers?) and as a constitutional amendment (why bankers?).
Minnesota has NO academic tests except those in English. According to a 2020 report from the Migration Policy Institute, and the 2015 American Community Survey, at least 193,600 Minnesota residents have children still learning English. All are in harm’s way. The largest foreign-born groups in Minnesota are from Mexico (67,300), Somalia (31,400), India (30,500), Laos including Hmong (23,300), Vietnam (20,200), China excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan (c), Ethiopia (19,300), and Thailand including Hmong (16,800). One of the fastest growing immigrant groups in Minnesota is the Karen people, an ethnic minority in conflict with the government in Myanmar. Most of the estimated 5,000 Karen in Minnesota came from refugee camps in Thailand. Ojibwe and Dakota are the indigenous languages of Minnesota.
Many of Minnesota’s charter schools are devoted to segregating and strengthening the identities of linguistic/ethnic groups. There are three dual language Spanish-English schools. Eight charter schools are devoted to immersion in these languages/cultures: Chinese, French, German, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Spanish. There are at least five Hmong immersion charter schools, and two for Ojibwe immersion. Two charter schools offer ELL education for East African families and one offers education using American Sign Language/English bilingual approach.
Recent reports also show how charter schools are racially segregated. In St Paul, one hundred percent of students at Higher Ground Academy are black or African-American. This percentage is about the same for Minneapolis’s Friendship Academy. In both cities the overall population of black or African-American residents is below twenty percent. By design, many charter schools in Minnesota are segregated schools. Will these schools be subjected to the wishes of the bankers or not?
In 2021, the Minnesota Federal Reserve, having no expertise in education, called in “experts” to make suggestions on a fix for so-called achievement gaps, meaning differences in scores on standardized tests. This “we-can-fix it” program was sponsored by all 12 of the nation’s District Banks in the Federal Reserve System. In other words, what happens in Minnesota may not be limited to Minnesota but extend to the orbit of District Banks in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, New York City, Philadelphia, Richmond (VA), San Francisco, and St Louis,
Among the highly visible “experts” called in for this multi-state program were Geoffrey Canada, president of the well-endowed Harlem Children’s Zone (endowment about $148 million, and sponsor of Promise Academy brand of K-12 charter schools), and CEO Salman Khan, founder of online Khan Academy, and Kahn Academy for Kids. The papers for this program also featured the post-Katrina takeover of New Orleans schools as if exemplary. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/feds-racism-and-the-economy-series-explores-racial-inequity-in-the-education-system.
Bankers are clueless about education but they have an agenda certain to harm thousands of students in Minnesota, especially ELL students, and if applicable to charter schools, the many students ill prepared to take a test only available in English.
The last thing we need to have are the nation’s clueless bankers making permanent changes in education based on proposed Minnesota’s model of “quality.”
ELLs have never met with success in most private charter schools. Most of the schools are not willing to pay for teachers that are qualified to provide instruction. Overall, there is a lot fewer ELLs in charter schools as they are often rejected during the application process. ELLs also tend to be very poor, and they generally start their education here after having had little education in their home country. It also takes most beginner ELLs at least three years before they can reach around the 35th to 40th percentile on most standardized tests. Most charters are looking for immediate results so they can make their early claims of “victory” that will bring them more students. ELLs do not provide that immediate “return on investment” so they are generally rejected unless they are advanced students that are ready to show big gains on standardized tests.
It seems to me that Minnesota is already in violation of the 1974 Lau Consent Decree from the Supreme Court. In Lau vs. Nichols the Supreme Court determined that schools had to provide meaningful education to ELLs. Not providing appropriate education was considered a violation of the Civil Rights Act. Many ESL/Bilingual programs were started to fill that void. In New York standardized testing had to be provided in the native language of the student unless the test was supposed to provide information about English or English reading. If Minnesota is testing only in English, its ELLs are not being treated in compliance with the Lau decision.
I do not know what the Federal Reserve Bank is doing in Minnesota, but I do know that the World Bank is involved in “pay for success” projects around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lau_v._Nichols
Thank you, Laurs Chapman. So TRUE. Bankers are bankers … NOT educators. DUH … bankers know how to count money, not measure what kids know.
I know of no one who knows how to “measure what kids know”.
What does it mean to be a patriot?
According to Oxford Languages, patriotism means “the quality of being patriotic; devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country.”
How does that definition support this pledge presidents take when they are sworn in after an election that is about the same as the same pledge that everyone that joins the military takes, too.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
That Oath is in our Constitution. That oath was written by the Founders. The first president to take that Oath was George Washington.
What is the difference between what that Oath means and what it means to be a patriot?
I imagine that space aliens would find patriotism a rather absurd concept.
They would also undoubtedly find all our wars based on patriotism absurd.
So: “Fed’s ‘Racism and the Economy’ series explores racial inequity in the education system”
Right.
Better yet: Fed’s “Racism and the Economy” series explores racial inequity in the Federal Reserve System
From Fed’s “Racism and the Economy” series explores racial inequity in the education system:
“The presidents of the Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Minneapolis Feds all pointed to the key role the education system plays in the nation’s economic success. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan explained that investments in our educational ecosystem are ‘essential to improving GDP for our country, to greater employment and greater prosperity for our country.’”
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/feds-racism-and-the-economy-series-explores-racial-inequity-in-the-education-system
However, “Doughnut economics” offers an alternative said to be radical:
“Laid out by British economist Kate Raworth in a 2017 book, [Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017),] the theory argues that 20th century economic thinking is not equipped to deal with the 21st century reality of a planet teetering on the edge of climate breakdown. Instead of equating a growing GDP with a successful society, our goal should be to fit all of human life into what Raworth calls the ‘sweet spot’ between the ‘social foundation,’ where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the ‘environmental ceiling.’ By and large, people in rich countries are living above the environmental ceiling. Those in poorer countries often fall below the social foundation. The space in between: that’s the doughnut.”
[…]
“In fact, the doughnut model doesn’t proscribe all economic growth or development. In her book, Raworth acknowledges that for low- and middle-income countries to climb above the doughnut’s social foundation, ‘significant GDP growth is very much needed.’ But that economic growth needs to be viewed as a means to reach social goals within ecological limits, she says, and not as an indicator of success in itself, or a goal for rich countries. In a doughnut world, the economy would sometimes be growing and sometimes shrinking.”
https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/
Interestingly, Doughnut economics seems reflected in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2004), a book by the late renowned systems thinker Donella Meadows as lead author. Limits to Growth gives an update on models of the carrying capacity of Earth systems variously and warns of systemic overshoot and systemic collapse, much like Doughnut economics does in regards to “overshoot” and “shortfall.”
So, it would seem the Federal Reserve System messing with education in the style of Geoffrey Canada and such others aims to maintain the status quo of traditional economics, lest the Fed must change to be relevant in the 21th century onward. It always seems the ones who fear change the most are very ones accustomed to prescribing change for others.
As someone with nearly ten years with Fed Atlanta, I say the Federal Reserve System must not be involved with our nation’s education systems in any way, shape, or form. Unless it has changed its leopard spots, Fed leadership and management of people is a paragon of “racial inequity” practices. And rest assured, it is not by chance that the new Atlanta Fed president who is out front with the Fed’s “Racism and the Economy” series is a black person.
Thanks for the informed response about the Fed’s and introduction to the economic thinking of Kate Raworth. She is not alone in criticizing the unrelenting focus in the USA on GDP as the only indicator that mattered.
Why the Federal Reserve Bank doing it? Wolves gotta eat, same as buzzards and worms.
Robbin the Hood
Robbin the hood
Of public schools
Fillin with flood
Of charter tools
Out of the wood
With his Merry Men
Robbin the Hood
Has struck again
The Robbertunist
While opportunist makes
The most of every day
The robbertunist takes
The most in every way