Minneapolis schools respond to Latino parents' demand for improvement

The Latino parents Rosita Balch works with are frustrated. They’re worried about their kids and the time they spend at school. Every Friday, through a Hennepin County program called the Latino Youth Development Collaborative, 10 to 20 families gather at Sabathani Community Center (310 East 38th St.) to eat dinner and learn about topics like college applications, parent conferences and who’s who in the school. And they talk.

“They see that there are a lot of things happening in the school,” Balch said.

“They think there are a few teachers that really care, but there are a lot of teachers that don’t,” she said. “Parents would like more rigor in the homework. They want more opportunities to talk with the teachers.”

And they have reason to worry. Minnesota’s Latino students join African American and American Indian kids in scoring significantly lower test scores than their white counterparts. Statewide, only 55 percent of Latino third graders’ Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment reading scores met or exceeded standards this year, compared to 85.6 percent of white students. Only 21.7 percent of Latino eleventh graders met math standards – over 30 percent worse than their white peers. Test scores aren’t an ideal measure of success, but they indicate that something isn’t right. Only 49.2 percent of Latino students graduated on time last year; 82.8 percent of white students did.

The stakes are high for all Minnesotans in making sure Latino and other non-white students succeed. According to the 2010 American Community Survey, the median age of a Minnesota Latino is 24, and the median age of a U.S.-born Latino in Minnesota is 14. Minnesota’s overall median age is 37. Other non-white communities are similarly young, and the baby-boom generation has already begun its slow march into retirement. By 2030, the Wilder Foundation predicts Minnesota’s dependency ratio (the number of individuals over age 65 compared to those ages 18 to 64) will be 36 percent.

Our aging, white population will depend on young people of color, but if those people don’t complete high school, what kind of economic contribution will they be able to make? What kind of state will we live in? A Georgetown University study predicted that by 2018, 70 percent of Minnesota’s jobs will require post-secondary education.

“The kids are failing. The whole world should be furious,” Balch said. And although the parents she works with are taking steps to educate themselves, she said, “At the end of the day, it is the job of the school.”

Working together to make things better

Many school leaders would agree, and some would have something to say. Catalina Salas, principal of Green Central elementary school (3416 4th Avenue South, Minneapolis) might raise her hand. Shannon Blankenship of Hiawatha Academies charter school (3810 E. 56th Street, Minneapolis) might do the same.

The Spanish-speaking English learners at Green Central used to spend hours in ELL classrooms, separated from their peers. But on a recent Thursday morning, students with little English sat side-by-side with native speakers in Megan McCormick’s first grade classroom. McCormick stood side-by-side with ESL teacher Sara Pimental, who helped lead a lesson on foods of the Northeast Native Americans.

If you weren’t clued in, you might not notice the class was structured to address ELL kids’ needs. The teachers called on kids of all language levels to explain what they were learning. Little voices ooooh-ed and ahhh-ed when McCormick put up photos of berries and oysters, paired with English words. Pimental took time to explain the difference between “eat” and “ate,” but it didn’t seem out of place in a class of new readers.

Team teaching is no longer unusual in Green Central’s classrooms, and it’s part of a strategy the school is using to address the achievement gap.

Latino students share many of the same qualities often blamed for other groups’ lack of school success — their parents make less money, live in less secure neighborhoods. They have less stable housing and higher mobility. But one characteristic stands out — the language. Spanish is the most common language spoken by English learners in Minneapolis schools (in St. Paul, it’s Hmong). Of 6,256 Latino students enrolled in Minneapolis district schools last year, 5,375 reported Spanish as their home language.

School principal Catalina Salas is the daughter of migrant workers and remembers what it was like being a language learner in school. “When you get pulled out of class, it’s like, ‘Oh I can’t do that,’” she said. Salas, who started at Green Central this year, believes that a combination of oral learning and collaboration among teachers could turn the school around.

Green Central is one of the many Minneapolis schools marked as not making adequate yearly progress by No Child Left Behind standards. Only 12 percent of its students met MCA math standards this year; 26 percent met reading standards. Approximately 60 percent of the test takers were English language learners, mostly native Spanish speakers.

The district’s multilingual department agrees with Salas’ approach and is sending reinforcements. They hired consultant Virginia Rojas to guide teachers in bringing language learning into the classroom. She visits Green Central a couple times a week and is also working closely with Roosevelt High School. The result is lessons like the one in McCormick’s first grade class.

Salas said that between literacy specialists, special education teachers and other teaching assistants, classroom teachers at Green Central are on their own for only one to two and a half hours per day this year. “It’s a bit of a change when it’s been your classroom and now it’s our classroom,” Salas said. “I’m urging teachers to think outside the box.”

Hammering Away

Three quarters of charter school Hiawatha Leadership Academy’s student body is Latino. Over 90 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch. And approximately half of the school’s MCA testers this year were labeled as having limited English proficiency. Those numbers would typically add up to low test scores.

But at Hiawatha, they don’t. This year in math 70.5 percent of the students scored proficient; 73 percent scored proficient in reading. That’s higher than the district average.

According to school principal Shannon Blankenship, the secret is mindset. “If you believe this problem can be solved, it can be solved,” he said. But there’s more than positive thinking behind those scores. There’s brute force.

Students are in class from 7:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. – two hours longer than most Minneapolis schools. And a yearlong schedule means kids are in school 14 days longer than the average district student. Even after kids go home, teachers are on call. They carry cell phones that they are expected to answer until 8:30 pm every night, in case a kid gets stuck on the homework or a parent has a question.

Expectations are high for parents, too. Blankenship said that before kids start at Hiawatha, staff explain that parents must meet with teachers quarterly to talk and to review data. Along with MCAs, Hiawatha kids take STEPs and MAPs and teacher-designed assessments. Teachers spend planning days looking at the results and setting goals for each kid. At conferences, they make sure parents on the same page. “They’re greeted as professionals, as a partnership,” Blankenship said. And for the ten percent who don’t show up, Blankenship said teachers will do home visits.

“Let’s not blame the parent or blame the situation at home or blame poverty,” he said. “Let's make sure that we don’t make those excuses.”

“Our parents say all the time, ‘This is why I’m here in Minnesota is to provide a better life for my child,’” Blankenship said. “I think it weighs very heavy on our parents' mind.”

That’s certainly true of Balch’s Friday families. She said they don’t plan to leave it to the schools or to the district. The families plan to start training parents to document the issues they see in schools. They want to start knocking on the doors of parents who don’t show up Fridays and listen to their questions. “I think probably parents come and say these things here because they feel safe,” she said. “I don’t know if they voice these things in the schools.”

“We have to provide these safe spaces for parents to speak,” she said. “They need to find that voice without a middleman.”

The families give her hope, and she knows there are glimmers of hope elsewhere. But she remains skeptical. “I think great – let’s keep our fingers crossed,” she said. But, “If I look to the past, how many kids didn’t get that? Where are those kids? Who is accountable for that?"

Translations of signs in photo: When was the last time you went with your kids to the library?

Do you know what an ACT is?

You are Latino. You can achieve the goal. Listen to your heart. You have the strength and the courage to achieve your dreams. Graduate.

Did you know that even though you weren't born here, you can get help to go to college?

Alleen Brown

Alleen Brown (alleenbrown@tcdailyplanet.net or Twitter @AlleenBrown) is a freelance writer from Minneapolis.