[Text of double-sided half page brochure]

Doug Mann for School Board

All of the district-run schools can be good schools

There were about 1,700 full time teacher positions in the Spring of 2004. And the School Board planned to eliminate about 150 full time teacher positions not already vacated. Yet the Board laid off 608 teachers! In 2005, the board laid off 575 teachers! And again a large majority were rehired or replaced.

The teachers laid off in 2004 were employed with the district for less than 5 full years, and 455 were on probationary status (employed for less than 3 full years). Even more astonishing is the fact that the board had eliminated over 20% of the teacher positions that existed in the fall of 2001.

• Phase out “low-ability” Curriculum tracks

As early as Kindergarten, MPS students are reassigned to separate classrooms for reading instruction according to ability. Once labeled and sorted, the "low-ability" students generally fail to thrive academically and are eventually assigned to "low-ability" curriculum tracks in other subject areas.

The general student population could be integrated into "high-ability" tracks without watering down the content of the high-ability tracks, if the Board stopped laying off teachers it planned to rehire or replace.

Prepared & paid for by Doug Mann for School Board

PO Box 8514; Minneapolis, MN 55408

Phone (612) 824-8800

http://educationright.com http://dougmannlnc.com

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The Education Access Gap

Back in the 1970s the school board was compelled to shut down schools with high concentrations of black students and to integrate the students and TEACHERS into white schools. That's how desegregation was done after the US Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Green v. Kent County Schools. That reduced the exposure of black students to the least qualified / least experienced teachers.

On National Assessment of Education Progress exams (the federal testing program) average differences between blacks and whites in scores for reading decreased by about 50% during the 1970s and early 1980s. The math score gap also narrowed, though less dramatically.

However, since the late 1980s, average differences between blacks and whites in NAEP reading and math test scores greatly increased and are now closer to what they were during the mid-1960s than to what they were during the mid-1980s.

Harvard researchers have noted an increased level of racial segregation of students in the US public school system since the late 1980s. Students of color are also more heavily exposed to the least experienced teachers now than 20 years ago.

Since 1990 African American students in Minneapolis have been more segregated and more exposed to the district’s least experienced teachers. The class size reduction program in the early 1990s helped to increase the black-white gap in exposure to the district's least experienced teachers. The 1995 community school plan increased racial segregation and the exposure of students of color to the district's least experienced teachers.

The teacher assignment system should be modified so that the district's least experienced teachers are more evenly distributed to all of the district‘s schools.

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Doug Mann: Age 49 years, married, parent of MPS student. Legal Nurse Consultant, volunteer advocate for MPS students & parents. Served on the Minneapolis NAACP branch education advocacy committee & Minneapolis Parents Union board of directors. Knowledge of Spanish & French.