Minneapolis prides itself on its charter schools, despite the fact that they are highly segregated by race and ethnicity. They enjoy the support of the city’s elite, who defend segregation as “culturally responsive.” Years ago, a reporter from Bloomberg News toured the city’s charters and said that it felt like the Brown decision overturning segregation had never happened.
One of those segregated (“culturally responsive”) charter schools, created for Somali children, is closing down after years of turmoil.
Eric Rasmussen of station KSTP in Minneapolis said the dysfunction was a decade in the making.
Once lauded for providing an education to children in a historically underserved Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis, one of the oldest charter schools in Minnesota and the nation is now expected to shut down next month.
After plans to abruptly close Cedar Riverside Community School were announced last month, 5 INVESTIGATES reviewed hundreds of pages of reports and complaints revealing its collapse was nearly a decade in the making.
Charter schools have long enjoyed the patronage of influential civic leaders in Minneapolis. Currently there is a movement led by charter advocates to rewrite the state constitution’s education clause,
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This will never be discussed in the ed reform echo chamber, let alone evaluated or analyzed.
They require 100% positive cheerleading for charter schools and 100% negative criticism of public schools.
Whole ed reform initiatives disappear. When’s the last time you heard about ed reform efforts in Detroit? Arne Duncan and Eli Broad did a big marketing roll out in Detroit in 2012. Then it wasn’t successful so they stopped mentioning Detroit completely.
Cleveland is an ed reform “portfolio city” but they no longer talk about it because the performance of the privatized model is mediocre. They just move on and exaggerate the successes in a different city, in this case Indianapolis is the new over-hyped “star”.
That’s what happens in echo chambers. The failures are buried and the successes are over-hyped because no one is permitted to do any real analysis.
I am curious about what you think the orthodox posters here require. Is only 80% positive cheerleading for traditional public schools and only 80% negative criticisms of charter schools sufficient?
This is a blog that supports public schools, though I am quite willing to criticize public schools that act irresponsibly or illlegally. You can expect almost all my comments and those of readers to support democratically controlled,, publicly accountable public schools. If you want to read cheerleaders for charters, vouchers, and privatization, you can read The74, Education POst, the Thomas B Fordham Gadfly or dozens of other billionaire supported sites.
This site is independent, accepts no advertising, receives no funding from any source.
If you want to root for the Red Sox, don’t sit on the bench of the other team.
Wow…once again the charter school movement has shown its inablility to police itself. I feel bad for the students affected. After years of trying, in Washington state, charter schools were finally approved a few years ago. There are very few still, and soooo many of them closed due to financial problems or mismanagement. And,as a researcher and author, along with many others, including Diane, in Minnesota and other states, the charter schools reduce the integration of our collective children. It is critical to promote our collective well being that we truly integrate students more, through traditional public schools, integrated magnet schools, and other options, to promote societal benefits.
Thanks for posting this article.
Dan Peterson