[Mpls] Peebles supporters not keeping eyes on the prize, part 1 of 2

[Socialist2001 at cs.com]

I must take issue with statements by Natalie Johnson Lee, Ron Edwards and 
others who are widely recognized as leaders of the black community in their 
response to latest controversy over Thandiwe Peebles performance as school 
superintendent. 

Ron Edwards writes,

As Natalie Johnson Lee points out, the whites have a problem with Dr. Peebles’
 “attitude.” When you have principals and teachers and the DFL all dragging 
their feet fighting reform (testing, accountability for kids not learning, and 
sabotaging minorities’ alternatives to get out of the mediocre sorry state of 
the Minneapolis Public Schools with charter schools and vouchers), we can 
only conclude that Dr. Peebles was getting too close to bar-b-q-ing the 
educational establishment’s sacred cows. They are feeling the heat...

Doug Mann responds

Yes, given the way the district is run, many parents need, have found, or are 
looking for an escape route for their children. However, it seems to me that 
the job of the Minneapolis school superintendent should be to correct rather 
than ignore the problems that are motivating parents to seek an escape route 
for their children.

The district's best schools are heavily concentrated in the district's 
wealthiest and nearly all-white neighborhoods. For a majority of nonwhite and poor 
white students, the public school options have been narrowed to low and 
middle-tier public schools, dead-end curriculum tracks in some of the better public 
schools, and charter schools. Charter schools have to make due with a lot less 
public funding per pupil than the schools that are owned and operated by the 
district. 

Complaints about Peebles that are making the school board sit up and take 
notice appear to be coming from white parents in the Southeast quadrant of the 
city. That's where many of the city's middle and lower tier schools are located. 
That's where a majority of white students are not thriving academically in 
the public schools.

One of our list members, Lynnell Mickelsen stated,

"Look, my kids are in the Southwest area schools and Dr. Peebles has 
basically left these schools alone. So if parents like me were only looking out for 
our own kids, we would too shut-up and color. Why risk bringing on a round of 
retribution? But as a citizen, I want the whole district to succeed..."

I doubt that the school board and Peebles want to rile up the school 
community in SW Minneapolis. There is a lot of support for the status quo there, which 
is why the issue of closing the education access gap is not being addressed 
by the School Board, Thandiwe Peebles and her supporters, and the Star-Tribune.

On the other hand, there is some support in SW Minneapolis for the kind of 
school reform agenda that I advocate. In the general election of 2002 the 
highest level of support for my candidacy was in ward 13 (the extreme SW corner of 
Minneapolis).

-Doug Mann, King Field
Candidate for 8th ward city council
http://educationright.com/blog