When I read that Banneker was being closed, in part as the
result of an outside review team, I didn't know what to think.
Because I don't know anything about Banneker. But I was part
of the same outside review team process. My team was assigned to
Folwell Middle School (Another team went to Northeast Middle School.)
But we all went through the same training together and were told to
ask the same questions.
Based on my experience, I think these outside reviews were
pretty worthless--both in design and execution. For example, our team
spent four highly-scheduled days at Folwell Middle School, but we
were never scheduled to spend any time in the classroom. Instead we
dragged teachers and staff and students out of the class and asked
them questions about the school's mission statement and flow charts.
I'm not making this up.
To the best of my knowledge, the same process was used at
Banneker and Northeast.
It was so bad, I decided to send my own report to the School
Board and Superintendent Carol Johnson. I attach a very long excerpt
from my report to give anyone who's interested an idea of what these
outside review teams actually did. It would all be hilarious.....if
it was simply a Dilbert parody. Unfortunately, it was real life and
something the district agreed to do as part of their legal settlement
with the NAACP.
The Minnesota Academic Excellence Foundation (MAEF) was hired
to run these review teams. MAEF receives millions in funds from the
state although I believe it's all due to run out in the next couple
of years as part of budget cuts. (Finally, a specific cut in the
education budget that I can get behind!!) Over in St. Paul, several
lobbyists and legislators told me MAEF is known as a total joke.
Based on what I saw at Folwell, I agree. But this may be the future
for schools if certain political types have their way: cut school
budgets and subject schools to these endless "business-style" reviews
as a way of "holding schools accountable."
Anyhow, here's part of my (really long, but hey really
readable) report to the board that I sent on March 8th.
Dear Superintendent Johnson and Members of the School Board:
I was a League of Women Voters representative on the Folwell
External Review team, which was run by the Minnesota Academic
Excellence Foundation. As an unpaid volunteer, I attended two full
days of MAEF training in December, followed by four days at Folwell
Middle School in late February with the review team.
MAEF will be sending its own report. Meanwhile, here are my
comments about the MAEF process and what I observed at Folwell. (And
trust me, it's far more readable than what you're gonna get from MAEF)
I suppose I should say at the outset that I think we're being
intellectually dishonest when we label Folwell as a failed school
needing "intervention" and send in a team to figure out what this
school is doing wrong.
Folwell students are mostly poor (75 percent on free and
reduced lunch.) Housing is a huge problem. Many families are
continually on the move or being evicted. During each school year, 36
percent of the students turn over (the highest percentage among large
middle schools in the city) making huge disruptions in the curriculum
and the classroom. Seven percent of Folwell students live in
shelters. Another 35 percent are English Language Learning
students--and almost half of these are new immigrants with almost no
English skills. Native American and African Americans (who together
make up about 40 percent of the student body) have the lowest test
scores in the school. And the majority of Folwell students are at
least two grades below in their reading levels.
I mean, this is hardly some school out in Eden Prairie. Or
even in southwest Minneapolis. Folwell is "failing" with a
demographic population which, unfortunately, is failing in school
after school, in the central core of cities all over this country.
So to act as if this must be a internal problem at Folwell
and subject the teachers and staff to this cumbersome, time-consuming
and ultimately, totally idiotic review (I'll get to that in a
minute).......well, it's certainly politically correct. It gets
parents, students and the larger community off the hook. It may
satisfy the terms of a legal settlement. But it's not going to help
us solve any of the deeper issues. It's not going to help us teach
these kids how to read, do math and join the larger community as
well-educated, working citizens.
And I think everyone at the district knows this in their gut.
So why are we wasting time and money on this kind of particular kind
of masquerade?
Which brings us to the Minnesota Academic Excellence
Foundation. And talk about a masquerade! I'm 44 and aging faster by
the day. Which means, I've sat through countless, stupid seminars and
waded hip-deep through swamps of jargon. But darlings, I'm here to
tell you MAEF is in a class by itself.
MAEF follows the Malcom Baldridge National Criteria for
Educational Performance Excellence. It was designed for business,
although it's so dumb, I doubt it works well for businesses either.
Baldridge assumes schools can and should be run like a manufacturing
plant, with total quality control over its raw materials and
production.
Which may explain why out of the nearly 150 questions we
asked, only six questions had anything to do with parent or student
accountability. By its very design, Baldridge assumes parents and
students play an extremely or entirely passive role in their own
education. Instead teachers and staff are held totally responsible
for student performance.
Sam Richardson, a volunteer from the NAACP, questioned this
assumption on the very first day of training. He was told that "The
Baldridge Criteria is a well-known tool that has been used in
countless schools across this country!"
"That's what worries me." Mr. Richardson said dryly, becoming
my instant hero.
The Baldridge method consists of asking extremely long,
jargon-laden questions, many of which are about mission statements
and flow charts. I had hoped that if one good thing came out of the
whole Enron mess, it would be the end of our apparent worship of
Mission Statements, since Enron had such a deeply-moving,
morally-uplifting one. But alas, no.
Here's an example of the questions MAEF taught us to ask
during our two-day training session in December:
"How are administrators and members of cooperative leadership
structures personally involved in creating an environment dedicated
to continuous improvement and educational excellence (e.g. modeling a
culture of risk-taking, openness and courage; encouraging reflective
educational practices among staff members, allocating resources,
identifying and addressing key barriers, etc)? At the district level?
At the school level?"
Now just imagine you're a middle school teacher who has been
pulled into a room during your one free period and asked this
question by a group of impassive, unsmiling strangers who carefully
read it verbatim. Because we were told by our MAEF trainers to stick
to our script; don't smile, nod or fidget in our seats. We were to
keep our faces completely blank.
Just like the faces of the poor Folwell staff. Because, of
course, no one at Folwell had any idea what the hell these questions
meant. I couldn't blame them. I have a master's degree from Columbia
University and I couldn't figure 'em out either. I can't tell you how
embarrassing it was for me to sit in a room at Folwell with the
school psychologist, social worker and various support staff and ask:
"How do you and your colleagues design, organize and manage
your work to meet the needs of your internal customers and to achieve
the school's vision, mission and goals?
Or to stand up in front of a group of parents and ask, "How
does the school communicate information about the school's mission,
vision, goals; about student and school performance; and about other
key school matters to families and to its community?"
Huh? they asked. Could you please read that again? You see,
under the Baldridge method, there isn't just one question--but
usually five or six , all of which are impenetrably vague and broad.
At my own school, Lake Harriet Upper--which got a stellar 4.0 on the
Measuring Up Report, our parents would have been totally baffled by
this stuff. At Folwell, I had the English speaking parents. But you
can only imagine how these questions went down via translators with
the Hmong and Latina parents. Eventually, the translators gave up and
tried to craft their own versions. I have no idea what they actually
asked, but it couldn't be worse than what Baldridge came up with.
Then we asked groups of sixth and seventh graders questions
like "What are your educational goals? How did you develop them? How
are you doing in meeting them? What is the school doing to help you
meet your goals?....."
Puhleeze. I have an eighth grade son who just got accepted to
the International Baccalaureate Program at Southwest High School and
received a perfect score on his English Advance Placement Test. I
asked him the above question. He looked blankly at me.
"Jeez, I dunno," he said. "What are you talking about?"
Now according to our MAEF trainers, this kind of answer shows
the school is doing something wrong. "If they can't answer, that
should tell you something," MAEF's Kathy Jenson kept insisting.
But in fact, I believe what it showed is that these MAEF
questions are contentless. After awhile, Jenson told us we could
re-write the questions as long as we followed the basic intent.
Unfortunately, we usually couldn't find one. The questions were
basically meaningless.
My favorite point during the training was when Willie
Dominguez of LaFamilia Guidance Center, wondered if we could just ask
teachers what they needed to in order to do their best work.
The MAEF staff went slackjawed with horror. "Absolutely not.
That kind of question would be far too specific," said Zona
Sharpe-Burk, one of our trainers. "The Baldridge method does not
allow those kind of questions."
No, it certainly doesn't.
By the way, we spent four days at Folwell. And we were never
scheduled to visit a single classroom. Because by MAEF/Baldridge
standards, the interactions in the classroom weren't relevant to our
team. On the last day, after many of us complained, we were given 30
minutes to pop into various classes. But there was no format or way
to report what we saw.
If any good information comes out of our External Review
Team, it will be despite, not because, of the MAEF process. MAEF's
assumptions and questions were hopelessly flawed. So was MAEF's
execution, which involved various people taking notes on different
questions and handing them off to other folks to write the report.
This is a highly inaccurate way of getting information. Because it's
hard to read someone else's notes. And if you weren't there, it's
hard to know the context of any of the remarks.
Garbage in. Garbage out. And the district spent thousands of
precious dollars, not to mention time, on this mindless crap.
I have to say none of this is personal. Our three MAEF staff
people were unfailingly gracious, courteous and organized. But they
were also like the Jehovah Witnesses who come to your door. They
stuck to their gospel. Never went off script.
In the future, I would urge that:
a) the district design their own process: a group of
intelligent people, with some background in education as teachers,
community folks or parents, asking specific, common-sense questions
could get far more and better information;
b) the district never hire MAEF again. At one point during
our December training, a district official I know walked in during a
break and asked me how it was going. I told her that from what I
could tell, MAEF was totally mindless blather, sort of a cross
between a Dilbert parody and the old EST seminars.
"I know," she said sheepishly. "They're really dumb. Almost cultic."
"So why did you hire them?"
"Because we need their imprimatur of approval", she said.
"And for some reason--I can't figure it out--MAEF has one"
Well, find another imprimatur...........
Okay, List members and Lurkers. Thus ends this particular
excerpt from my letter to the School Board. I went on (okay, okay
and on and on) about what I observed at Folwell in terms of what the
school is doing. Which I could post at a different time on the List.
But my conclusion remains this: academic performance is closely tied
to family income, stability and commitment to education. Everyone
knows this. So to continue to hold school staffs solely and 100
percent responsible for student performance is pure bullshit and a
great political strategy. Certain conservatives love to do this as
part of their endless attack on public education and as preparation
for their attempt to replace public schools with a private voucher
system. And it's also convenient for certain lefties who seem loathe
to ask for personal responsibility from parents and families and
would rather blame Entire Systems.
I prefer to hold both parents AND systems responsible. As far
as the schools go, darlings, there's ALWAYS room for improvement. But
our present system of putting all the responsibility on the schools
is just plain nuts. Families are also responsible. Big time. It's
time we said it straight out and came up policies that reflect what
we all know is true.
Lynnell Mickelsen
Ward 13, Linden Hills and no, I ain't running for school
board because I couldn't sit through that many meetings and I'd have
to start speaking (and writing) very carefully and correctly. All of
which would drive me nuts.
--
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