Despite the current discourse that vouchers or for-profit, private, and charter schools will save education in the United States, the real work of achieving excellence for all students will most likely occur for 90 percent of our students in the nation's free and accessible public schools. Policymakers, educators, and parents are asking that all students meet high standards. To achieve this goal, we must convert our educational system from a filter that screens some children out, to a pump that propels all children forward.
Every day, our public schools welcome students—regardless of their language, family circumstance, income, religious belief, nationality, citizenship, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, race, or ethnic origin. The inclusive nature of public schooling makes the work a special challenge, but not an impossible one. Given what we see in Minneapolis, we are increasingly optimistic about meeting the challenge.
A District Snapshot
Minneapolis, like most urban districts, is diverse. With almost 50,000 students, Minneapolis has students representing 100 languages and an ethnicity approximating 43 percent African American, 29 percent white, 15 per-cent Asian American, 8 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Native American. From 1980 to 2000, the percentage of students of color increased from 31 percent to 71 per-cent, and the percentage of students at poverty level increased from 31 percent to 65 percent. Twenty percent of our students do not speak English as their native language, and that number is growing by about 1,000 students a year. Minneapolis has a total of 127 schools, including 31 contract alternative schools—many of which have existed for more than two decades—and eight charter schools that have opened during the past five years. Entering kindergarten, students can choose from more than a dozen magnet and alternative schools, and high school students have an array of magnet and postsecondary enrollment options. School choice has been a part of the Minneapolis fabric for almost three decades.
The state requires all students to achieve mastery on the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests in reading, math, and writing to receive a high school diploma. The reading and math tests are first administered to students in the 8th grade and the writing test in the 10th grade.
The mission of the Minneapolis Public Schools is to ensure that all students learn. This mission guides the district improvement agenda, which outlines the district's goals and objectives for the year. But, all too often, poverty, language background, and ethnicity have predicted who will succeed and who will fail. Our improvement efforts are designed specifically to overcome these barriers and to give every student an opportunity for success.
Elements of Success
So what do we know and what are we doing? We've found that the following strategies make a difference.
Early intervention. Early intervention matters. Success on the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests can be predicted as early as 2nd grade. Our assessments for incoming kindergarten students indicate that many enter school far behind their peers, not knowing numbers and letters or that books are read from left to right and top to bottom. Achieving a year's growth for each year in school is not enough; we must accelerate achievement. By next year, full-day kindergarten will be available in all schools that serve primary grades. We invest $1 million annually to support community-based, early intervention programs to increase the likelihood that students will arrive with the prerequisite skills for reading. We offer Kindergarten Express for students during the summer before they start kindergarten so that they enter school better prepared.
Attendance. The correlation between achievement and attendance is strong. Poor attendance is the first step toward dropping out. We know that students who attend school at least 95 percent of the time—no more than eight days absent in a school year—are more than twice as likely as their peers to pass the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests. One of our high schools greatly improved attendance after it adopted an attendance policy with real consequences—failure of a class—for excessive absenteeism. We have begun a major campaign focused on improved attendance, involved the staff and community groups to create incentives for perfect attendance, recognized and rewarded teachers with perfect attendance, and engaged families and community agencies to carry the message that "eight is enough."
Class size. In a typical Minneapolis classroom of 25 students, 5 students may be non-English-speaking, 3 students may have special education needs, several others may receive Title I services, and 16 or 17 students may be eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Teachers must have a repertoire of skills and strategies to meet the diverse needs of these students. When class sizes are large, teachers struggle to respond to each individual's needs or to personalize learning for low- or high-achieving students.
Three times in the past 10 years, Minneapolis voters have overwhelmingly passed referendums to maintain low class sizes. We now allow no more than 19 students in each classroom for K–3 and 25 in each classroom for grades 4–8, and we average 26 students per classroom in grades 9–12.
Quality instruction. A 1997 National Commission on Education and America's Future report indicated that school success can be predicted primarily by three factors: family (49 percent), teaching quality (43 percent), and class size (8 percent) (Darling-Hammond, 1997). Because we can control 51 percent of the primary variables, investments in class size and quality instruction are essential to overcome family circumstances. Indeed, U.S. public education has a long tradition of proving that there is no limit to good schooling's capacity to compensate for limited family resources.
As a result of a National Science Foundation-funded professional development program and a $1 million donation from the Medtronics Corporation, every K–8 teacher of science uses hands-on science activity kits. The district has built new science laboratories for all middle schools, K–8 schools, and high schools. A new $5 million, five-year National Science Foundation program will address high school science and K–5 mathematics. Mathematics instruction in Minneapolis makes extensive use of nationally validated, National Science Foundation-supported programs: Everyday "Chicago" Mathematics at the elementary level, Connected Mathematics in middle grades, and Interactive Mathematics in high school. In addition, we offer after-school tutoring for struggling students and encourage high-achieving students to participate in challenging mathematics competitions and enrichment activities.
We know that engaging all learners requires more than a narrowly focused curriculum. For our Arts for Academic Achievement program, the Minneapolis Public Schools accepted a $3.2 million challenge grant from the Annenberg Foundation and successfully exceeded it with a $3.2 million match from the local private sector and a $3.2 million contribution from district funds. This project builds on research that indicates that an arts-infused curriculum improves performance in the basic academic disciplines (Fiske, 2000). Schools participating in the Arts for Academic Achievement program are seeing greater student engagement and improved attendance, and teachers are using a wider array of techniques to engage learners.
Our professional development efforts are embedded in schools and help staff examine student work as evidence of learning. To address the problems of teachers who feel isolated and staff who feel disconnected from the district's mission, we link every new teacher to a teacher mentor and develop teacher leaders. We also provide teacher mentors for teachers needing additional support and offer professional development at school sites and districtwide. Our teachers' contracts define effective standards of instruction, and the route to tenure is carefully mapped out and requires portfolios, peer reviews, student and family feedback, and professional dialogue.
Expectations of excellence. We are not allowing the emphasis on basics to "dumb down" and narrow the curriculum. The programs adopted in Minneapolis emphasize active learning, inquiry, hands-on learning, and higher-order thinking skills.
Each school examines an array of student data compiled at the district or school level and works to meet the needs of its diverse student population. Every school offers gifted and talented services and help for those needing remediation. All of our high schools offer advanced placement (AP) courses and two have International Baccalaureate (IB) programs.
Good health. Students need to come to school healthy and ready to learn. This work cannot be done by schools alone. Last year, we collaborated with health providers to implement a "no shots, no school" campaign that increased our student immunization rate from 67 to 98 percent. HMOs throughout the city agreed to open clinics prior to the start of the school year to increase access to immunizations through free or low-cost drop-in clinics. Translators for those who don't speak English are available at the clinics. A new campaign helps students with asthma better manage their illness so that attendance approves.
Students need to be well rested. The results of a University of Minnesota study (Wahlstrom, 1999) convinced us to change the high school start time from 7:15 a.m. to 8:40 a.m. For students who still have trouble functioning in the morning, one high school starts in the afternoon.
Consistency. Our research indicates that the more times a student moves, the lower his or her achievement will be. To provide consistency for high-mobility students, the district adopted a common districtwide curriculum in reading, language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. A common curriculum allows teachers across the district to share ideas and contributes to more effective support, including supplemental materials, practical teaching ideas, and professional development. Consistency also means sustaining the focus of improvement efforts and strengthening student-staff relationships.
Time. An emphasis on the basics has led to more reading and mathematics instruction across the curriculum. All teachers participate in at least 10 hours of professional development in these subjects each year. Elementary students participate in at least 90 minutes of reading instruction and 60 minutes of mathematics instruction every day. Students who are behind require additional time—our summer school enrollment has increased in the past several years from 1,200 students to nearly 20,000. We also offer summer-school classes that focus on enrichment and creative problem solving.
Community support. Local foundations, businesses, and individuals have provided financial support for the Minneapolis Public Schools. These sources met the $3.2 million Annenberg challenge ahead of schedule. School suppliers have contributed $100,000 for a public relations campaign. Businesses and other local sources contributed $300,000 for our campaign to educate the public about the importance of a referendum to maintain small class sizes. Winston Wallin, former CEO of Medtronic, has committed $10 million over the next five years for college scholarships for Minneapolis students. Roosevelt High School graduates Warren Bielke and Governor Jesse Ventura have committed $1 million and $50,000, respectively, for scholarships for Roosevelt students. The district's Minneapolis Public Schools Foundation promotes and administers charitable giving for the school.
We have established community conversations in which leaders from the business, faith, and nonprofit communities share ideas about behavior, safety, attendance, and assets for youth with parents, staff, and students. We have defined family involvement standards and are a part of Joyce Epstein's National Network of Partnership Schools (www.csos.jhu.edu/p2000/index.htm). We also have family involvement and outreach staff who work in schools to increase parent participation and to educate parents about their role in student success.
Our district improvement agenda states, "Each student will acquire the assets they need to achieve academic success and develop in healthy ways." This objective refers to the Search Institute's 40 assets for the healthy development of adolescents (Benson, 1997). For example, one of the assets of a healthy adolescent is that he or she "receives support from three or more nonparent adults." An example of how businesses contribute to this asset is the Franklin Middle School/Reliastar program, in which 8th graders visit Reliastar each week for tutoring to prepare for the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests. Of the 35 students participating, all improved their scores, 32 passed the reading test, and 32 passed the mathematics test. We have increased the number of volunteers in our schools and the number of partnerships with the faith community. Church and synagogue bulletins now include messages to parents about study skills, tutoring support, upcoming test dates, and available resources and reading materials.
Multiple measures. Accountability is not about a single test, on a single day, at one grade level. Educators continuously look for ways to measure and report student results more precisely. Tests are a useful tool. A single test, however, does not provide a comprehensive picture of a student's knowledge, thinking, or understanding. Watching students in class, analyzing student work, observing how students interact with other learners, and seeing how they apply and transfer learnings in new situations provide tremendous information about what works and what doesn't work. Competing arguments about high-stakes strategies like retention and promotion fail to answer the most important question of what interventions are necessary for students to succeed.
Our schools don't rely on test data alone. Schools use attendance and safety data; suspension rates; parent, staff, and student surveys; gender and race differences; participation rates in advanced classes; and extracurricular and performance trends. This feedback becomes a quality-of-life index for every school's effort to continuously examine its work and use this feedback to improve.
Curriculum, instruction, and assessment alignment. Any effort to improve achievement needs to align what we teach, how we deliver content and skills, and how we measure student performance. Instead of using only standardized, norm-referenced tests for assessment and having those tests dictate our curriculum and instruction, we established district standards that are aligned with state and national standards. Our testing program consists primarily of mandated state tests at grades 3, 5, and 8 and Northwest Achievement Level Tests at grades 2 through 7. These tests have a tremendous advantage over traditional standardized tests because we are able to construct our own tests with items that are aligned with local and state standards. In addition, the Northwest Achievement Level Tests give us information about individual student progress from year to year, information about which standards are being achieved, and comparisons with national achievement at each grade level.
Accountability. If educational success belongs to all of us, how do we hold everyone accountable? Each school has a school improvement plan that focuses on district goals as defined by the district improvement agenda and measured by our citywide assessment program. In addition, all staff have professional development plans that establish individual goals linked to and aligned with the district improvement agenda. Principals have individual profilers—a 360-degree assessment tool that focuses on the skills important for effective leadership and helps leaders identify areas of success and growth. Our accountability structure uses multiple indicators rather than a single test. The school board and the district are accountable for providing support. To illustrate our priorities, our district organizational chart places the board and superintendent at the bottom and the students, families, and schools at the top.
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, the Principals' Forum, and the district administration work together to provide struggling teachers and principals with mentoring, professional support, and, where necessary, intensive assistance. If those strategies are not successful, we collaborate to support the staff member in making a career change. Not everyone who chooses to teach or lead is suited to serve in public education. Accountability extends beyond schools to central office departments, students, and families. We have reconstituted two schools and the district human resources department, and we continue to challenge families and the larger community to do their part to support academic excellence.
Forward-looking union leadership. Building relationships among teachers and administrators, schools and districts, is essential for success. We are helped by the excellent relationship we have with our unions. Our last three teacher and principal contracts have used principled negotiations focused on our mission of ensuring that all students learn (Fisher & Ury, 1991). We have produced a break-the-mold contract that begins to move from traditional salary schedules based solely on years of service and college credits toward compensation based on competencies needed to produce achievement. We ask the question, What skills produce the best results, and how do we ensure that our teachers not only know them, but also, more important, use them? Our contract links accountability, professional development, student achievement, recruitment, staff retention, and compensation. All teachers receive feedback from students and families; teachers use the feedback to modify their professional development plans and their daily practice.
Goals, feedback, and teamwork. Mike Schmoker (1996) identifies three criteria—measurable goals, the use of feedback and performance data, and effective teamwork—as preconditions for moving and guiding schools to environments where learning is the focus and continuous quality improvement is ubiquitous. In Minneapolis, we have found that public education can and does work when these three criteria are present.
Ongoing Efforts
We are not finished. In our continuous-improvement community, our work is never done. Poverty, an influx of non-English-speaking students, teacher and principal recruitment and retention, and a more competitive marketplace challenge us today, and we will face new and different demands and expectations in the future. We are seeing impressive gains in achievement across all populations at all levels. We attribute this success to our measurable goals, our system of feedback to individual schools and the district, and our team effort. Our community expects the best from us—and we expect to deliver exactly that.
