Candidate Questionaire
Responses below are by Doug Mann, Minneapolis School Board candidate,
citywide, seeking Green Party endorsement.
1.The Minneapolis Public Schools have struggled for some time to raise the
achievement of low-income students and students of color.
a. What in your opinion are the most important factors in raising student
achievement?
Accountability, best practices, curriculum, and stability of the teaching
staff.
b. What measures should the school board take to improve student outcomes?
I call for an end to ability-grouping practices that result in watered-down
curriculum tracks. The district should provide effective reading instruction to
all students, beginning in early elementary grades, not just for those
identified as being academically gifted in Kindergarten. To eliminate
watered-down curriculum tracks, the district can utilize a program sponsored by
the Education Trust, Arts for Academic Achievement, which is proven to boost
test scores in Minneapolis Public Schools, but is not used to its full
potential as a means to eliminate watered-down curriculum, the purpose for
which it was designed.
To bring stability to the teaching staff in all schools, I propose ending the
practice of firing and replacing most teachers before they complete their 3
year, post-hire probationary period. I also advocate repeal of a Jim Crow era
teacher tenure act for cities of the first class (Minneapolis, St. Paul, and
Duluth) that allows the Minneapolis School District to arbitrarily fire probationary
teachers every spring on the pretext of financial uncertainties, and then to
replace many of them. These teachers must reapply for their jobs and may be
replaced by the district in any event. The teacher tenure act for the rest of
the state allows a district to fire and replace teachers, including those on
probation, only for misconduct or poor performance.
c. If the school board follows your suggestions, how soon would you expect to
see significant results?
Based on the district's experience of stabilizing the teaching staff at North
Star and Hall elementary schools in the 1990s, and the reported benefits of
utilizing the Art for Academic Achievement program in Minneapolis Public
Schools, I would expect significant improvement in test scores, student
behavior, and parental involvement the first year that the above suggestions
are implemented, especially in schools that have been plagued by high teacher
turnover rates and are filled with students of color.
2. Some people are concerned that focusing on academic achievement for
low-income students may lead to insufficient attention being paid to the needs
of average and higher performing students. How do you respond to that concern?
The achievement gap was being closed in the 1970s to late 1980s. According to
the report of a panel of K-12 education experts selected by the Reagan-Bush
administration, A Nation at Risk (released in April 1983), the gap was being
closed at the expense of high achievers. But an analysis of data done by the
Sandia National Laboratories, commissioned by GHW Bush and released during the
Clinton administration, showed modest improvement in standardized test scores
for high achieving students while the gap was being closed. Since the late
1980s we have seen a widening achievement gap accompanied by increased racial
segregation, greater exposure of students of color to new teachers and rapid
teaching staff turnover, and the promotion of ability-grouping practices that
result in watered-down curriculum tracks that have a disparately negative
effect on students of color.
3. It has been suggested that certain provisions of the teachers' contract make
more difficult the staffing of schools adequate to meet the needs of all
students. What is your view?
I don't agree that certain provisions of the teacher contract and teacher
tenure law are to blame for the lack of stability in teacher staffing in many
of the district's schools, especially those that few white students attend.
High teacher turnover rates are primarily an affect of arbitrarily firing and
replacing most new teachers before they complete their probationary period.
Eliminating provisions of tenure laws and teacher contract provisions that
restrict the district's ability to involuntarily reassign teachers while
ignoring the underlying cause of the high turnover is only going to make a bad
situation worse.
4. One idea to improve student outcomes is to have a longer school day or a
longer school year. Do you favor increasing learning time for students, and if
so, how would you like to see that happen?
I do not favor a longer school day. This will tend to drive more students out
of the district's schools. It would require increasing the workday for
full-time teachers, presumably without increased compensation. And it is unlikely
that the positive effect of a longer school day would be very great, other
things being equal. The achievement gap is mainly a reflection of the quality
of instruction received by students, and it seems to me that the most effective
and efficient way to boost achievement is to stabilize the teaching staff and
eliminate watered-down curriculum.
5. Early childhood education is often offered as an important strategy for
addressing the achievement gap.
a. What are your views on investing in early childhood education?
I think that making quality, early childhood education accessible to all is a
wonderful idea. My concerns about promoting early childhood education as the
solution to the achievement gap are that the district must rely on the state
legislature to make this happen, it takes the focus away from fixing the
schools, and it is connected to the idea that an early education achievement
gap reflects differences in innate abilities between racial and income groups,
which I believe to be false and racist.
b. How can there be better alignment between pre-k programs and the K-12
system?
I am not familiar with how pre-K and K-12 programs are currently aligned.
6. Some people suggest we need more flexible or innovative models of delivering
education.
a. Do you favor or oppose charter schools?
I oppose the replacement of public schools with charter schools. The failure to
take effective action to fix the schools, and the perpetuation of practices
that are setting up many public school students and teachers for failure, will
lead to the establishment of a charterized system, a fully privatized public
school system. However, I see the problem of unequal access to quality school
programs by race and poverty persisting and continuing to get worse if the district
continues down the path of school reform it is following.
b. What should the relationship be between the charter schools and MPS?
Charter schools operate independently of the Minneapolis Public Schools. They
wouldn't be charters if effectively controlled by the Minneapolis School
District.
c. Do you favor or oppose self-governed (teacher-led) schools?
I am opposed to moving toward a self-governed school model for governance of
the Minneapolis School District. This takes the idea of site-based management a
step further, and reduces the role and responsibility of the MPS leadership for
operating the district's schools. Moving to this model of governance will
create new obstacles to solving problems embedded in the public school system.
7. A group of Northside residents have formed a Northside Achievement Zone,
aiming to replicate some of the outcomes experienced by the Harlem Children’s
Zone in New York.
a. How should the School Board respond?
I think the board should willing to work with the Northside residents who set
up the Northside Achievement Zone. And in connection with that, there should be
a public discussion about the Harlem Children's Zone experience: What
conclusions should be drawn?
b. Is it appropriate for the School Board to make special efforts or
investments in a particular portion of the city?
Currently, in the fund for regular education teacher payroll costs, accounting
gimmicks conceal a disproportionate payout to teachers in the SW quadrant of
the district, where the mean average pay reflects a high concentration of the
districts best paid teachers there. On the other hand, the district saves
enormous amounts of money by preventing a large proportion of the teaching
staff from becoming permanent, or 'tenured' employees. And it happens that the
lowest paid teachers are concentrated in schools that few white students attend
on the Near North Side. It has been said that teacher salaries only account for
35.9 per cent of the district's income, but teachers salaries make up a much
larger part of the district's operating fund, and closer to 80% of the payroll
costs that come out of the operating budget.
8. With 65% students of color, the Minneapolis Public Schools face significant
challenges with regard to integration. Some people prioritize integration
efforts, while others argue that that it is more important to improve the
quality of schools in low income neighborhoods. What is your opinion on this?
Do you favor efforts to increase integration in the city schools? If yes, what
steps would you take to make that happen?
I think we could do a much better job of racially integrating the schools and
improving the quality of schools in low income neighborhood. It is not a matter
of choosing integration versus improving the quality of education. We can do
both. I do not favor a return to the controlled choice desegregation plan that
was in place in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, much can be done to better
integrate the student population by the way school attendance boundaries are
drawn, new school sites selected, etc. Since implementation of the community
school plan in 1996, the district has gone out of its way to make the schools
less racially integrated and less equal in quality. Also, the city government
promised to take steps to better integrate the city's neighborhoods, but
effective action was never taken. The best, most effective way to racially
integrate the city's neighborhoods is to aggressively enforce fair housing and
employment laws, utilizing survey teams to gather evidence of unlawful
discrimination. The credible threat of action to enforce the law will produce
changes in the behavior of discriminators.
9. Improving governance of our public schools is a big topic of discussion.
a. What in your opinion are the main governance challenges for public
education?
In my opinion, changes in school governance promoted by the No Child Left
Behind agenda in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since 2001, and
through the Obama administration's Race To The Top grants are a disaster for
the public school system. It is bad public policy, at least from the point of
view of the poorer 80% to 90% of the population who cannot easily afford to put
their children in good private schools.
b. Are there different governance models that you believe are worth exploring?
I think the best governance model is the public school model that immediately
predates No Child Left Behind. The school system is failing to provide a
quality education to all on an equal basis, not because of a more-or-less
traditional public school governance model, but because of specific policies
that I have already addressed, as well as diminishing levels of funding for the
public school system.
c. The Governor has recommended that the Minneapolis and St. Paul school
districts be managed by the cities’ mayors. What is your opinion of this
recommendation?
I am opposed to this idea. Where this idea has been implemented, e.g., Chicago
and New York, it has been easier for the school district administration to do
corporate-style reforms and privatize the public school system. I think it is
better for the voters to directly elect the school board.
10. Your role in the school board
a. How do you define the role of a school board member?
The school board members are responsible for setting policy, and are directly
involved in developing budgets and overseeing the school district operations
with assistance from administrative staff.
b. How much time each week do you expect to spend on school related matters?
I expect to spend about 10 to 20 hours per week. However, this would involve
going above and beyond the call of duty, and is more than one can expect of
board members who are employed elsewhere on a full time basis. I am currently
working on-call as an Educational Associate / Instructional Assistant for the
Edina Public Schools and working as a volunteer ESL tutor and classroom
assistant for the Adult Basic education program, Minneapolis Public Schools. In
2008, board members reported that they typically spent 10 to 20 hours per month
fulfilling their duties, and sometimes as many as 40 hours per month in
exceptional circumstances.
11. Finally, what does success in the Minneapolis Public Schools look like to
you.
My goal, which happens to be the strategic goal of the district, at least on
paper, is to make a quality public education accessible to all on an equal
basis. To the extent we are successful in achieving that goal, we should see a
diminishing racial test score gap, and reduced disparities in other outcomes,
including rates of placement of students in special Ed programs for
emotional-behavioral disorders, fewer students forced to take psychotropic
drugs to control their behavior, less need to resort to disciplinary action for
student behavior, and increased enrollment of K-12 students in the Minneapolis
Public Schools. One measure of the district's failure in this regard over the
past dozen years is enrollment of students on the Near North Side in regular
district-run schools falling to about 25% of all K-12 students residing there.
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