Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter law in 1991. As blogger Sarah Lahm wrote in the Progressive in 2019, the new charters were exempt from most state regulations, including desegregation. A number of its charters are segregated by race and ethnicity, intentionally so, because the charter industry believes that segregation is culturally affirming. This situation led to a lawsuit to assure the rights of children of color in the state.
So now leading figures in the state charter lobby want to pass an amendment to the state constitution that would make segregated schools acceptable, while adding that school quality would be determined by standardized tests.
Blogger Rob Levine explains:
The Page Amendment is best understood if you recognize these foundations’ overall public education strategies. For 30 years the Minneapolis Foundation and its allies have been creating, funding, and persuading the legislature to loosen requirements on charter schools in the state. Over that same period, they have been pushing for data (test) driven education policies. The proposed Page Amendment would enshrine standardized test scores in the state constitution as measure of educational quality, and remove language courts have used to fight school segregation. So for the foundations the proposed amendment is a two-fer. But it’s even more than that…
One need only look at the two charter chains that get the most money from the foundations – Hiawatha Academies and KIPP Minnesota – to understand that threat. Hiawatha is a chain of five charter schools based in Minneapolis whose student population is about 88% Hispanic, in a city that is about 10% Hispanic…
It’s a similar story at the foundations’ second-most funded charter school chain, KIPP Minnesota, where the school population is 96% Black in a city that is less than 20% Black, and has been that way since it opened in 2008…
The proposed amendment both adds and removes language from the section of the Minnesota Constitution that involves public education. Currently, Article XIII, Section 1 of the Constitution provides, in part:
“…it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state” [emphasis added]
The Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling in July, 2018, sending the Cruz-Guzman case back to the district court, said this when ruling for the plaintiff’s motion to proceed with the case, writing:
“It is self-evident that a segregated system of public schools is not ‘general,’ ‘uniform,’ ‘thorough,’ or ‘efficient.’” [emphasis added]
But the proposed Page Amendment removes the words general, thorough and efficient, and recasts “uniform” as the results of standardized tests.
So this is what corporate reform has wrought in Minnesota. A renewed belief in racial segregation and a determination to enshrine standardized testing in the state constitution.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This does not sound like the Minnesota of Hubert Humphrey. The Farmer-labor party that made that state the envy of America in my day seems dead. Time for a wake. He was a good man.
Reports about racism in Minnesota, like other central states e.g. Iowa where U.S. Rep. King was elected, Ohio where state Sen. Stephen Huffman was elected, the Koch’s Kansas and, Missouri have surprised many of us.
In Hubert Humprey’s time, white people were advancing economically and they wanted black people to gain too. Now, 90% of white people recognize their own financial jeopardy.
how lighting the fire under racism works: be sure that the dominant culture is doing ever more poorly?
Yep.
“The New York charter community was reeling Tuesday amid revelations that the influential founder of Democracy Prep charter network was charged with stealing more than $200,000 from the schools he helped create.
Seth Andrew, a key figure in the rise of charter schools in New York who went on to work as an education adviser to the Obama administration, was charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to a financial institution. He was released on $500,000 bail, and his attorney told reporters that his client would plead not guilty.”
The worst part of this story is the Obama Administration hiring him. They had a person in a senior policy position who regularly referred to public schools as a “cartel”. That’s who was setting policy for 10,000 public school district and 50 million public school students- someone who seeks to abolish public schools. Good Lord.
100% ed reform echo chamber members in that administration. It starts to be less and less of a mystery why they got so little accomplished for public school students, when you realize the entire staff were opposed to public schools.
Is it too much to ask that we have policy people in the federal government who actually support the concept of public education? That’s too high a bar? Does anyone know why the public seems to be paying thousands of public employees who are opposed to public schools?
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/4/27/22406636/democracy-prep-seth-andrew-arrested
The Chalkbeat article also includes a link to Andrew’s purchase of Marlboro College in Vermont, summer home of the Marlboro Music Festival.
“Racially affirming”. Now that’s an interesting phrase. It’s reverse affirmative action, but it has the word ‘affirm’ in it. More reformy word soup! They should call it racism affirming because charter schools in Minnesota affirm stereotypes. How about if we make separate bathrooms and lunch counters, and separate seating in the back of the bus. The back of the bus is racially affirming.
I do not think this is as simple as calling it racism. Does Howard University affirm stereotypes? Does Iḷisaġvik College? Does Wellesley College affirm gender stereotypes?
I wish I had lived in Germany in 1940. I would have gotten to wear a Star of David on my arm and live in a separate community. It would have been racially affirming.
Orwell! George Orwell. come to the office. George Orwell!
Yes, precisely. The conqueror becomes what what conquered. I am reading Animal Farm with one of my classes right now, as a matter of fact.
In some of my other classes, we are reading about the labor movement. Somehow, maybe since labor wins battles but not the war, workers united rarely turn into oppressors. There are exceptions, but they are few.
Segregated schools are less likely to get resources and the best teachers. Students need a lot more than a school that is “culturally affirming.” They need schools that will teach them content and skills, and they are more likely to get access to those in an integrated school. Instead of “islands of opportunity,” some policymakers want Minnesota schools to be “islands of isolation.” The state is attempting to institutionalize segregation and standardized testing while neither of these provide equity. MLK said it best, and it is true today as it was during the civil rights era. “Separate is never equal.”
While I agree that separate is never equal, I also decry what we called integration in some places during the 70s and 80s. What many experienced in schools across the nation was the worst of each culture thrown into massive schools where fights usurped education. Ask anyone who was in school then, and you will get stories of rough kids under-supervised due to lack of space and resources. A friend in Cincy told me of teaching in a school where half the kids came from the Appalachian migrant part of town and the other half were African-Americans from the Delta. The two groups fought all the time. This helped to create some of the modern racial hostility we see today in the body politic.
I would not argue we should have done nothing. We had to do something. Nor do I see this in an entirely negative light. Anecdotal evidence of success also proliferates among the tales of those who experienced this period of educational history. Still, the mistakes we made throwing poor kids in big pots together without any forethought have stayed with us.
Unfortunately, isolation often breeds contempt. Once students start to get to know each others as individuals, students of all backgrounds will benefit. When I first started working in an integrated school district, some people made jokes that I would need a bodyguard. That was never the case. While it wasn’t perfect, it was solid attempt to provide equity, particularly for minority students. The district also actively sought teachers of color to work in the district, Representation matters too.
“Minnesota Catholic Conference and its school choice partner, Opportunity for All Kids…”
“MCC and MISF (Minnesota Independent School Forum) are leading a formal coalition of nonpublic school stakeholders called Minnesota Nonpublic Education Partners.”
In 2020, Bishop Hebda stated that on the advice the Minnesota Catholic Conference he was permitted to prohibit priests from voting in the Democratic primary.
It’s unlikely that all of the various Minnesota demographic segments that have official organizations and appointed leaders who act for them, treat women as 2nd class citizens. We have public knowledge that some do. And, we have knowledge that some align with the GOP, a party that has become synonymous with racism.
R’s don’t even pretend to be unbiased anymore…
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Will adding new seats to the U.S. Supreme Court change anything? Historically, it doesn’t matter who the president is or what party holds the majority of seats in Congress, the corrupt, inferior, lying, private-sector “reform school” movement just keeps on expanding and stealing more public money.
And this is the very reason that many call the US a racist country.
A book, “The religion of white rage: white workers, religious fervor and the myth of black racial progress”, garnered the attention of Louisiana’s Chair of the House Education Committee, Rep Ray Garofolo (and Vice , 4-29-2021 and The Advocate 2-22-2021). Garofolo doesn’t like the book. He was called out for saying that the “GOOD (my caps), bad and ugly of slavery should be taught”. He doesn’t want substantiation for the U.S.’ racist history taught. He proposed a bill, like Idaho’s, that would limit discussions in schools including universities to a more white-palatable version of history.
As fully expected, review summaries of the book ‘s content singled out evangelicals as the problematic religious. Garfolo is a graduate of Holy Cross High School and Loyola University. Taboos in America.