Education

“We have a crisis in public education especially for black males,” according to St. Catherine’s University Professor Nancy Heitzeg. Zero tolerance policies, born out of the language of the war on drugs which created the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994, resulted in kids being suspended and expelled at much higher rates, with “incredible racial disparity,” she said. “What we see nationally and in Minnesota is that African American males are six times more likely to be suspended from school, but there’s no indication that they have more disruptive behavior than white students.” She also suggested that No Child Left Behind era policies encourage schools to push out students who are dragging down test scores, which, combined with a growing police presence in schools, have pushed up incarceration rates for young people.

Minneapolis Public Schools is working on a new budget for 2013-2014, with substantial cuts. The budget figures are taken from the 2013-14 proposed budget allocations published by MPS, and from the 2012-2013 School and Department Allocation Spreadsheet. 

Some schools are getting cuts — others are getting increases. Want to know how your school stacks up in the first budget round of 2013-2014? Click on the dot that represents your school on the map below. 

“Most of my teachers were white women,” said Sidiq Abdullah, a young African American man who is now a sales and event manager for Brotherhood, Inc.  Abdullah said many of his teachers didn’t understand what was going on in his neighborhood. “I didn’t really have teachers push me to go on to college,” he said. He also felt that his education about African American history was lacking. “Why do we always have to learn about Christopher Columbus? They teach us about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but what about other people?”