AP? IB? We want to hear from you

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I’m writing a story comparing the IB and the AP programs in Minneapolis and St Paul schools, and I’m looking for parents whose children, as high school students, have• Graduated with an IB diploma• Taken a few IB or AP classes• Taken a substantial number of AP or IB classes.I’m curious about your experience with the programs, and what guidance counselors or college admissions officers have told you about how a college views AP or IB classes on your child’s transcript, what credits they might get from those classes once they’re in college, etc.Shoot me an email at James.Sanna@gmail.com if you’d be willing to chat. Continue Reading

Anti-bullying bill seeks safe schools for all

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“It started in middle school,” Gary Skarsten said, remembering a gay student he used to mentor from a town near Braham, Minn. “He was being taunted on the playground — being called a ‘fag,’ and that sort of thing.”
It’s an all-too-familiar story for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or transsexual students or their parents – students being singled out and mercilessly harassed by other students because school administrators can’t, or won’t, act. A coalition of Minnesota LGBT advocacy groups is trying to keep this story from repeating with a bill that would require all schools to have anti-bullying policies that protect a broad range of youth, including LGBT students. “The student [near Braham] would come home in tears; his parents didn’t know what to do – they tried everything with the school district,” said Skarsten, a member of the Cambridge, Minn., chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, known as PFLAG, and a gay rights advocate in north-central Minnesota. When I met them for the first time [after this bullying had gone on for some time], they were in tears because nothing had worked.”
At one point, Skarsten said, the parents “feared for his [their son’s] life.”
Fed up with inaction by the school, they eventually pulled their son out of the district and sent him to a school in St. Continue Reading

Charter school association proposes changes in governing laws

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Wednesday, a Twin Cities charter school was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Minnesota chapter for allegedly violating the separation of church and state. Thursday, the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools announced the details of their proposed reforms to the framework legislation that regulates charter schools. At the press conference announcing the proposed legislation, the Executive Director of the Association, Eugene Piccolo, said the timing of the two events – and a section of the legislation that bans “organizations with church status” from sponsoring a charter school – was just a coincidence. The bulk of the MACS proposal is focused on clarifying, overhauling, and regulating several aspects of charter school governance, including the relationship of a charter school to its sponsor. Legislative Auditor’s reportThe Legislative Auditor’s report, released June 30, 2008, criticized charters schools:
“We evaluated the performance, oversight, and accountability of charter schools. Continue Reading

State officials “close” to resolving high school testing crisis

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Unless the Commissioner of Education and the state legislature act, a large percentage of Minnesota’s 11th graders will not be able to graduate next year, because they did not score high enough on a new math test. Introduced as part of the state’s high-stakes testing regimen, the GRAD test is given to all 11th graders. This is the first year students are required to pass the test in order to graduate. “It’s not fair to let these high schoolers get caught in the cross-hairs” of the test, said Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL-Roseville). She said the problem is that not all current 9th, 10th, and 11th graders have received the needed support and more rigorous preparation. Continue Reading

Carlos Mariani on education issues

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Charter schools, the math GRAD test, and No Child Left Behind were among the topics when Daily Planet reporter James Sanna sat down with State Representative Carlos Mariani (DFL – St Paul) Tuesday to talk about some of the issues in public education facing the legislature this year. Rep. Mariani chairs the House of Representatives’ E-12 Education Policy and Oversight Committee.TCDP: In your committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Jim Abler mentioned a proposed law to regulate charter schools – among other things, it gets more specific about a sponsor’s responsibilities or about their religious affiliation – Could you tell us a little more about that? Rep. Mariani: Well, the bill stems from the Legislative Auditor’s report last year. It’ll probably encompass most of their recommendations. There’s some pretty safe stuff, like removing the requirement that a school’s teachers make up a majority on its board. Continue Reading

Choosing a school is harder than it looks

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Parents descended on the downtown Minneapolis Hilton and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St Paul on Saturday, like sharks on a wounded surfer, for the annual School Choice Fairs, held by Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and St Paul Public Schools (SPPS). Sometimes seen as an opportunity for well-off “super parents” to compete for slots in the districts’ best schools, officials from both school districts said crowds this year seemed to attract a more diverse set this year.How do you choose a school? What’s out there? And what are the deadlines? St. Continue Reading

Schools pay, society benefits from ECE

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How do you market an investment that costs almost twice as much as the losses it’s designed to offset? One way is to wait for someone else to fund it. The Wilder Foundation released a report last week saying Minnesota’s lack of a comprehensive early-childhood education (ECE) program for the state’s poor and low-income students costs the state K-12 education system $113 million per year in remedial education costs, teacher pay, and school safety expenses. The catch: the ECE program they propose as a solution would cost over three times that. Richard Chase, a scholar with the Wilder Foundation who helped write the report, said that most of the returns – and costs – are seen at the state level or in society as a whole, in “higher personal incomes and reduced criminal justice costs,” a hard sell when Minnesota’s facing a $5.5 billion deficit.Benefits go to participants and societyWhile the study shows that proposed ECE programs cost more than they save the K-12 education system, the financial benefits of ECE to participants and to society are greater than its costs. Continue Reading

Taking it to the streets—or the meeting rooms

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Two opportunities to speak out on budgets, local and state: The Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout and the Welfare Rights Committee are organizing a campaign to demand a “People’s Bailout” of increased and extended aid to the poor, protection of public education funding, and no layoffs. The campaign kicks off with a protest at the state capitol on Tuesday, January 6 at noon, during the opening session of the state legislature. The Minneapolis Public Schools’ Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee, or CBAC, meets Wednesday, January 7 at 7 p.m. , to begin examining ways to bridge the school district’s $28 million budget deficit next fiscal year, possibly by cutting or reorganizing programs and staff. The Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee is a part of the Minneapolis school district government open to any resident of Minneapolis, and offers a way to speak directly to the school board. Committee Chair Eli Kaplan says that the CBAC will be looking at individual school budgets for “areas which have a way of saving major dollars.” Email CBAC@sihope.com for more information, including meeting place. Continue Reading

Pushing against the achievement gap

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The high schoolers in Claire Hypolite’s chemistry class are clustered in little knots of desks, heads down and pencils flying as they grapple with packets of homework problems. They toss solutions and gossip back and forth in English, Somali, and Hmong while they work. Watching this entirely generic classroom scene, it’s hard to believe more than 80% of these kids were failing this class only a few months ago. Claire Hypolite came to Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis eight years ago after completing her student teaching at North High and a doctorate in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She discovered she loved teaching while working as a teacher’s assistant in graduate school, tutoring undergraduate students, and teaching English in Japan. Hypolite chose to work in urban schools, she said, because “I connect with them more…To urban kids, entitlement means ‘you owe me, you have to help me achieve.’ With suburban kids, they look at a teacher and say ‘it’s your responsibility to let me be a star.’ Continue Reading