President Dooher calls for teamwork to close the achievement gap

By Tom Dooher
President, Education Minnesota

We won’t know until next month why the federal government rejected Minnesota’s application for Race to the Top money. Yet many people have wasted no time in blaming Education Minnesota.

We are as frustrated by the persistent achievement gap in our schools as anyone.

That’s why Education Minnesota has proposed a series of thoughtful, research-based, proven methods of dealing with the achievement gap.

• Our proposals put more teachers in the schools to reduce class sizes.
• We’ve suggested longer school days or school years where it’s appropriate.
• We’ve suggested a “grow-your-own” system of recruiting new teachers, with particular emphasis on teachers of color.
• We’ve suggested parent and family outreach programs, home visits by teachers, and various other incentives to help get parents – crucial players in all of this – more deeply involved in educating their children.

We brought all of these ideas and more to the table in meetings over Minnesota’s Race to the Top application. Our ideas were largely ignored by the Pawlenty administration, and we believe the application suffered as a result.

The real causes of the achievement gap are complex. A child who comes to school hungry or struggling with problems at home finds it harder to learn. I met again just this week with Art Rolnick, senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, to talk about how we can continue to work together on expanding early childhood development programs. He agrees with me that any solution to the achievement gap must start early and address the true social roots of the issue.

Our critics take the position that teachers are the problem. Such finger-pointing puts blame where it doesn’t belong and doesn’t get any of us closer to solving the problem that so urgently needs attention.

Minnesota tops the nation on ACT scores. Minnesota’s graduation rate is among America’s best. Does it make sense that teachers in Minnetonka are great while teachers in Minneapolis are not? Of course it doesn’t. It makes more sense that other factors are at work.

Here’s an example. Last week I visited Nellie Stone Johnson School in north Minneapolis to read to first- and second-graders. The children were bright, attentive and eager. It was easy to see the hard work of their teachers and how deeply they cared for their students. During our visit, the principal had to unlock each classroom to let us in. The school was on partial lockdown, a safety precaution because of recent shootings in the neighborhood. The challenges to learning that day came from outside factors.

Children struggling to learn need the best-trained teachers possible. Why in the world, when we rightfully demand more from students, would we demand less of teachers? Minnesota is a national leader in teacher excellence. That’s why we’re speaking up against the Teach For America program, and we believe parents should too. This program, which has been around for years, puts people in charge of classrooms after only five weeks of training. Parents would never send their children to doctors who got their license in a five-week summer course. They shouldn’t send their children to teachers who got their license that way, either.

Education Minnesota does not oppose alternative paths to teacher licensing. But we do oppose diluting the standards for getting that license. Stanford University researchers have examined Teach For America type programs and confirmed what common sense suspects: They don’t help. We have posted that research on our Web site, with a link on this page.

To be clear: Education Minnesota favors any change that truly helps children learn and helps teachers teach. It’s become fashionable in some quarters to label Education Minnesota as obstructionist, morally bankrupt or worse for simply standing up for what we believe is right.

Despite what critics claim, we truly want what’s best for our students. Because we’re in the classrooms every day, we know how to do that.  Let’s work together instead of against each other, or this problem may never get solved.

March 11, 2010