Posted on 05/29/2015 7:00:05 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
A student walks down a Harding High hallway wearing headphones, chanting along to violent rap lyrics. Teacher Erik Brandt taps him on the shoulder. Turn it down, he gestures.
The kid stares at Brandt with chilling intensity. He points at the older man, fingers bent in the shape of a gun, and shoots. Then moves on.
Within Harding's corridors is a turbulent clutter of students who push and cuss and bully their way from one end of the building to another. Brandt, a finalist for Minnesota's Teacher of the Year and a 20-year veteran of the English department, doubles as a hall monitor. It is his job to somehow tame them.
When the bell rings, the majority trickle into classrooms. But 50 or so roamers remain. They come to school for breakfast and lunch and to wander the halls with their friends. He commands them to get to class, but his authority is empty.
Brandt, a bespectacled Shakespeare devotee who leads Harding's International Baccalaureate program, doesn't know the majority of kids in this school of 2,000 on St. Paul's East Side. Calling the principal on dozens of kids each day is impractical. Written requests for disciplinary action are a toothless paper trail of unenforceable consequence.
Harding isn't much different than most big city schools. It squats in St. Paul's most economically depressed zip code, where 83 percent of kids receive free or reduced-price lunch. This is a multi-ethnic, multi-national place, the majority the sons and daughters of Asian immigrants.
By the inverted logic of poverty, some of the lowest-achieving students ironically have the best attendance. Even on snow days, they can still count on free breakfast, heat, and wi-fi.
Every year kids reach the 12th grade with elementary-level reading skills. Still, the teachers here, who share centuries of experience, say they love their students and they love their jobs. That makes it harder to admit that over the last few years, Harding has suffered a breakdown of safety and order.
When the bell sounds the start of class, students remain in the halls. Those who tire of lectures simply stand up and leave. They hammer into rooms where they don't belong, inflicting mischief and malice on their peers. Teachers call it "classroom invasion."
Instructors who break up fights get beaten in the process, thrown into bookcases while trying to bar their doors.
Says Brandt: "There is a sizable chunk of students that — for a variety of very complex reasons — don't know how to behave in a decent, sociable way with other people in a school setting."
St. Paul's "Revolutionary Change"
Harding's tribulations are reflected in schools district-wide, most of which have undergone bold changes. In 2011, St. Paul canceled cross-city busing in order to cut transport costs and boost attendance at neighborhood schools. Sixth-graders were moved to middle schools, which used to house only seventh- and eighth-graders.
Two years ago, kids who'd spent their academic lives in specialized classrooms for behavioral issues and cognitive disabilities were mainstreamed into general classes, along with all the kids who spoke English as a second language. More than 3,000 made the transition.
The district also shifted its thinking on discipline, influenced by data that showed black kids being suspended at alarming rates. Such punishment would now come as a last resort. Instead, disruptive or destructive students would essentially receive a 20-minute timeout, receive counseling by a "behavioral coach," then return to class when they calmed down.
The changes came at the behest of Superintendent Valeria Silva. When she took up the torch of St. Paul's schools in 2009, she inherited an urban district like so many others — one with a dire achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts.
She charged teachers with the job of fixing this gap, lest they be complicit in the cycle of poverty among black and brown communities.
Silva's solution, called Strong Schools, Strong Communities, was touted as "the most revolutionary changes in achievement, alignment, and sustainability seen within SPPS in the last 40 years." At least according to the district's website.
To kick it off, St. Paul spent more than $1 million on Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco consulting firm that purports to create "racially conscious and socially just" schools.
Pacific offered racial equity training for teachers and staff, where they practiced talking about race. Teachers were asked to explore their biases, to preface their opinions with "As a white man, I believe..." or "As a black woman, I think...."
"The work begins with people looking at themselves and their own beliefs and implicit biases," says Michelle Bierman, the district's director of racial equity. If teachers could recognize their subconscious racism, everyone would work together to bridge the gap.
The final piece was a tech rollout. Since St. Paul wanted to fit students of widely differing skills into the same classes, teachers needed to customize lessons for individual kids. In 2011, the district invested $4.3 million in Dell for a website that offered videos, homework, and quizzes. But Dell delivered an embarrassingly archaic site, and the deal collapsed within three years. Students received iPads last year instead. Teachers Were Blindsided
Teachers were expected to rally to Silva's call. They were to aggressively accelerate the skills of students who'd struggled for years while simultaneously challenging middle-of-the-road learners. And they had to do it while spanning languages from Hmoob to Espanol, Karen, and Soomaali.
The special ed and foreign language students began arriving in the middle of the 2013 school year. They were thrust into classes far too rigorous for their skills, prompting them to act out and flee.
Meanwhile, the new discipline plan wasn't working. If a child threw a tantrum, behavioral coaches would intervene with short-term counseling, which often failed to prevent kids from acting out time and time again.
Becky McQueen, who comes across as a five-foot-three mother hen, heads Harding's college prep program for middle and low-income kids. She says the percentage of kids causing problems at Harding is very small, and they're not all special ed. Last spring, when she stepped into a fight between two basketball players, one grabbed her shoulder and head, throwing her aside.
The kid was only sent home for a couple of days.
In March, when a student barged into her class, McQueen happened to be standing in the doorway and got crushed into a shelf. The following week, two boys came storming in, hit a girl in the head, then skipped back out. One of them had already been written up more than 30 times.
Yet another student who repeatedly drops into her class has hit kids and cursed at an aide, once telling McQueen he would "fry" her ass. She tried to make a joke of it — "Ooh, I could use a little weight loss."
Her students interjected: "No, that means he's gonna kill you."
Now, to know who to let in, she tells her students to use a secret knock at the door.
"There are those that believe that by suspending kids we are building a pipeline to prison. I think that by not, we are," McQueen says. "I think we're telling these kids you don't have to be on time for anything, we're just going to talk to you. You can assault somebody and we're gonna let you come back here."
Harding teachers are terrified the district is sending kids into the world with distorted expectations of reality. They're unprepared for college. They're taught to disrespect authority. Sooner or later, they'll realize they were cheated, Brandt says.
But most teachers are afraid to speak out. Tenure, after all, doesn't come until after three years on the job. And even those with tenure fear transfers and endless performance evaluations.
At John A. Johnson Elementary on the East Side, several teachers, who asked to remain anonymous, describe anything but a learning environment. Students run up and down the hallways, slamming lockers and tearing posters off the walls. They hit and swear at each other, upend garbage cans under teachers' noses.
"We have students who will spend an hour in the hallway just running and hiding from people, like it's a game for them," says one despondent teacher. "A lot of them know no one is going to stop them, so they just continue."
Nine teachers at Ramsey Middle School have quit since the beginning of this school year. Some left for other districts. Others couldn't withstand the escalating anarchy.
In mid-April, staff at Battle Creek Elementary penned a letter to their principal over "concerns about building wide safety, both physical and emotional, as well as the deteriorating learning environment."
A week later, the principal announced that he would be transferred next year.
"It's still just as crazy, with kids slamming doors and yelling and not listening to any teachers, running up and down the halls," says one Battle Creek Elementary teacher. "We had two behavior aides who come to the room if there's an issue or if a kid's left the class. They try to calm the kids down, and then they just put them right back in class after 5-10 minutes. It's not working. You know how kids are. If one gets away with it, then they're all gonna do it."
That discontent came to head this spring. The Caucus for Change, a teachers' movement backed by the DFL, vowed to oust all four school board members who are up for re-election this fall. They blame the board for backing Silva's changes despite teacher outcry.
Complaints to the board are routinely dismissed, says Roy Magnuson, a social science teacher at Como Park High. And those who speak out are race-shamed into silence.
"There is an intense digging in of heels to say there is no mistake," says Magnuson. "For the people who are saying there has been a mistake, the practice deflection is that people like me have issues with racial equity and that is the reason we are challenging them. That makes for a very convenient way of barring the reality of the situation."
He cites an incident at Como Park this spring. A special ed student had a meltdown, attacking a lunch lady in her 60s. Still, this is a modest improvement over last year, when a student with a history of aggression pummeled a kid so viciously that staff thought they had a fatality on their hands.
“When the bell rings, the majority trickle into classrooms. But 50 or so roamers remain. They come to school for breakfast and lunch and to wander the halls with their friends. He commands them to get to class, but his authority is empty.”
There is a job for retired Navy Seals, Delta Force and other special forces types; hall monitors.
Wanna bet the few Whiteys obey the rules and don’t cause trouble but get beaten up by the protected savages?
Truly frightening.
As long as we are allowed to choose where we live, these districts quickly turn 100% minority; what kind of parent exposes their child to an environment where dozens of turds wander around after getting fed?
Urban livestock, lining up at the trough...
As long as schools are run by liberals that will never happen. Liberals are the biggest impediment for the perhaps 50% of minorities who stand a chance with a decent education. Liberals operate under the assumption that all students can be educated/civilized. Conservatives know better.
Get rid of the troublemakers, and a larger number of minority kids can have a shot at a decent life. The troublemakers would get sent to disciplinary schools where they adapt or get expelled. Only very tough discipline would work on those types.
If your widget mill jumped a gear and caused a minor injury, a hangnail to the operator, and you restarted the machine!
OSHA would put you out of business and possible in jail. Zero tolerance for any possible injury.
Well this school is a perfect example of what happens when you allow Liberal Social Justice Advocates run your education system.
Unfortunately they are running the education system for the entire country and Common Core will cement that control.
Illiterate, amoral, violent “teens” with no impulse control, propagandized by liberal pedagogy in “white privilege” and how whitey is at fault for everything wrong in their lives, getting free meals and wi-fi courtesy of the tax-payers until they are put out on the streets to join gangs, flash mobs, knockout games, looting and riots, and carry on the tradition of “you didn’t build that”.
And they routinely murder each other and innocent bystanders by the dozens each month in the cities where they are the majority, and it barely merits a note until after committing 2 felonies in 10 minutes or during their 30th arrest one of them dies at the hands of a white cop, when they become “saints” in the Hyphenated-American community, proving white racism exists just as they were taught in school.
Rinse/repeat.
The Harding High webpage says they are a World Class School. US News says they are one of Minnesota’s best schools.
US News also says that their proficiency in reading, math and college readiness runs from 25 to 35 %.
51% Asian
21% Black
16% Hispanic
10% White
Diversity is our strength.
Hard to believe this story is true though.
After all, is not Minnesota a Demorat paradise?
Then why is the child in the 12th grade if he isn't doing 12th grade work?
Fundamentally,....The teachers and principals who passed these children along are LIARS!!
Chances are if you are speaking to a government school teacher you are conversing with a LIAR!
A solution would be the establishment of Amish-only schools, resourced to the standards that are appropriate for Amish students.
And then the remainder of resources can be used to educate students who want to be educated.
This is why Americans moved out of the cities.
‘zackly.
The folks left behind in big cities are minorities that can’t move or recent arrivals, attracted to cheap rents and government handouts.
Pick up a copy of any big city newspaper and you’ll see they’ve recognized their transformed audience and it ain’t us.
My sister just retired from teaching high school. Thanks be to God.
That ethnic breakdown will probably mirror every district in the US soon (though the allocations for Hispanics and Asians may vary). Black neighborhoods rarely have any diversity; the schools quickly become 100% black once a certain threshold is passed (probably about 25%).
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