Over the course of the next few weeks, I will share the story that’s been shared with me about one MN Educator’s lived experience inside the woke-mind-virus that is public education.
Dear Jewel,
I’ve just discovered your blog about the hysteria in Minnesota. I wanted to tell you my story.
Several years ago, I called BS on the school-to-prison pipeline. I told public school families on Facebook in Saint Paul, Minnesota that kids used iPads for bullying, fights, drug deals, and paid sex — upsetting but true. That’s how to kiss a career and two master’s degrees goodbye in five minutes’ time.
In March 2016, Googling “Theo Olson, teacher” fetched a hundred hits. Now it looks like a quaint sacrifice into the bubbling American Wokecano, but then my blast radius felt huge.
I snapped. After twenty years of teaching, ten of them protecting special education (SpEd) kids, building their pride, and keeping them from dropping out, I blew up. I said, “show me how I send kids on a rail to jail. If you can’t, then apologize”.
Kids carried concealed guns at my Como Park High School, teachers were shoved around, riots of thirty to forty boiled in the parking lot, blood puddled on cafeteria tables, and police responded often, but only because our principal called them. Como Park was not a bad school. I liked it there. I loved my kids and colleagues.
What happened? Why could we no longer do our job?
Old Solutions Flopped
A lot of initiatives flopped: “authentic assessment,” “performance packages,” and “whole language” reading without phonics. In the bad old nineties, Saint Paul schools tackled many issues, not just racism — hungry kids, illiteracy, HIV, gay-parented families, huge immigrant influxes from Laos and East Africa. Later, a big surge came from Myanmar. American teachers do many things brilliantly, like teach reading to kindergartners with no books at home, and push disabled kids to graduate when no one in their family ever has. After 2000, the achievement gap remained, fanning teachers’ never-ending sense of inadequacy. Diversity awareness gained traction. Saint Paul schools spent 2006-2009 adopting, then dumping, training from several college education schools.
In 2009, the district signed up for Glenn Singleton’s Pacific Educational Group (PEG), which was steeped in Critical Race Theory (CRT). Later called “Courageous Conversation,” Saint Paul purchased it to diagnose our apparent “systemic racism.” At a cost of $1.2 million between 2010 and 2013, trainers ordered teachers to begin comments with “Speaking as a white person,” (they dropped “supremacist” after the first training) stand, and line up around a huge conference room according to results of taking a “privilege” survey from Peggy McIntosh,(1989). White men took steps forward, then white women, followed by a rainbow underclass of blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Natives, and second language English speaking immigrant staffers. Of course, I was first or second in line, an abject oppressor.
Instead of teachers beating our brains out trying to teach well on a shoestring budget, troubleshoot testing to wipe out language bias, reduce the over-representation of black boys in special education and high suspension rates, the lack of girls in STEM courses, and the old priority of closing the reading and math achievement gap, teachers now could lay all of it, one hundred percent, on systemic racism. Word spread: sign up for Glenn Singleton’s answers. Even my colleagues of Vietnamese, Hmong, Iranian, Hispanic, Native, African, and LGBT staff were told that if they did not publicly introduce their identities in large rooms, they, too, tapped into unconscious systemic bias. Leaders told us, that holding kids accountable for disruptive behavior was racist itself. You could not deny your racism (that’s proof of racism), nor be cured of it. There was no redemption. White teachers could be “allies” at best.
In 2011, we read smudged photocopies of Robin DiAngelo’s essay on white fragility. Soon, we would read Ta-Nehesi Coates and Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” about the pipeline; we would read Obama’s Dear Colleague letter, shaking our heads at how many black kids were suspended. But not till the administration stopped suspending black boys did we learn that Saint Paul paid principals stipends not to suspend them. It was quickly scuttled once word got out.
Saint Paul Public Schools Broke The Law
Piloted quietly at Como Park, SpEd mainstreamed kids with IEPs (individual education plans), leaving them helpless, in violation of IDEA, the federal disabilities act. Como’s SpEd administrator dubbed our disabled kids “scholars,” said they were deprived of “real teachers” of real content, and kicked us multiply-licensed professionals — actual legal defenders — into babysitting roles.
We pleaded, you cannot violate IEPs, and put eighteen-year-old, disabled kids who read at the first-grade level into twelfth-grade English. She said, if parents didn’t like it, they could write a letter. I helped one mom write a letter, forwarded it downtown — no answer —it sailed down a memory hole. We knew this was some covert social engineering, but couldn’t name it or do a damn thing to stop it. I challenged the reading classes for numerous kids, and the administrator threatened to remove me from Como Park. Another parent did more. She sued and won, but it took years. My disabled readers picked up new schedules, and came to me, sniffling, refusing to attend class. Most did but were ready to knock someone out.
Media told us Minnesota’s racial achievement gap was the worst in the nation. Was it? A gap means high to low scores. All states have gaps in blocks of data. Minnesota kids scored high versus the national average in some areas, especially fourth graders in math.
A big chunk of exceptional scorers down to basic scorers renders a big gap, whereas a smaller chunk of high flyers and a large swath of middling and basic testers leaves a smaller gap. Minnesota has spectacular gifted and talented programs. Low-performing schools face scrutiny; they headline the newspaper. Teachers there are miserable for the next year. Given a choice, many parents removed their kids from tests used to measure gaps. Kids were told the tests didn’t matter, that they’re racist by design, so of course, they didn’t try hard, or they opted out. There’s no way Minnesota assessments could accurately measure achievement gaps under this much pushback. The “worst gap in the nation” story felt like a Post-It on your back saying,
“Kick me.”
To Be Continued in Part Two
