[Mpls] school closings: Penny-wise, pound foolish?

[Michael Atherton]

Doug Mann wrote:

> Regarding Pratt school: Enrollment at Pratt was 67 on Oct 
> 2002, 47% students of color. The Prospect Park area has a 
> huge public housing project adjoining one of the city's 
> wealthier residential districts. I imagine that about half of 
> the students come from that housing project. And it sounds like 
> Pratt Elementary School is doing a good job of educating all of 
> those students. They must be doing something right if their third 
> grade students are outperforming 3rd grade students in the Edina 
> Public Schools.

That is what supporters of Pratt want you to believe, but they
don't seem to want you to know the details.  I was told that
18 third grade students took the basic skills test.  I've 
been trying to find out the ethic distribution of these students.
Pratt parents state that, "Pratt has a large Somali population 
and 51% of the children qualify for free or reduced lunch."
The implication being that this is representative of the students
who took the Basic Skills test.  Here is the ethnic distribution
of the 2002-2003 third grade class (as reported to me by the MPS):
11 White students
4 Asian students
0 African American
0 Hispanic
In other words 73% of the students were White.  You may have
noticed a discrepancy here.  Supposedly, 18 students took
the test, but only 15 students are in the ethnic distribution.
This is because the ethnic survey and the tests are given
at different times of the year.  I would like to see the
actual distribution by race of the students who took the test,
as well as the numbers of ELL and Free or Reduced Lunch. At
a minimum, these statistics shed some doubt on the Pratt
Miracle and the reliability of the "facts" cited by the
Pratt parents.

> I think that most parents want their children to get an 
> education that will maximize their intellectual development, 
> with instruction based on a college bound curriculum and 
> individualized educational planning. That's what some 
> students in the Minneapolis Public Schools get. Why not made 
> that kind of education accessible to everybody?

Someone asked me why Pratt shouldn't be a model for the
rest of the District.  Well I suppose it could be if we 
exclude all the Black and Hispanic students (or at least 
excluded them from the Basic Skills Tests).  The problem with
neighborhood schools is that if you use fixed attendance
areas the educational opportunities become correlated with
the SES of those areas.  Pratt has the benefit of having
a housing project within its attendance area, but this
has not convinced me that it provides educational equality.
You also need to look at the turn over rates in the
project and the actually scores of the minority students
before we can draw any conclusions.

Michael Atherton
Prospect Park