Transcripts

DAN OLSON: The reverend Albert Gorman understands firsthand the life changing effect of educational choice. The 51-year-old pastor is a parent, a former Minneapolis school board member, and president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP. He says his mother saw education as the way up and out of poverty. One day, Gorman says, when he was a seventh grader, his mother came home after work with the news he was not getting a satisfactory education in his segregated suburban Tampa, Florida, school.

ALBERT GORMAN: My mother did domestic work. The individuals she was working for, they had a son, and he was in the same grade that I was in. And she looked at the books that I was bringing home and the books that he was bringing home, and they did not compare.

DAN OLSON: Gorman's mother said he and his brother would be changing schools. They became the first African-American students to attend a previously all white junior high a few miles away. Nearly four decades later, Gorman leads a civil rights organization that is bringing choice to poor students in Minneapolis. Seven years ago, the Minneapolis NAACP sued the school district for not supplying poor children an adequate education. The settlement allows up to 2,000 students to attend better performing schools in eight suburban twin cities districts.

Gorman supports choice, but not the version in the No Child Left Behind act. He believes the effect of the law will be to isolate poor students of color who stay behind in inner city schools. Under No Child Left Behind, a school is labeled needs improvement if 95% of the students don't score high enough on required state tests. The law allows the students to enroll in successful schools in their districts. Minnesota children, families, and learning commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke says if second-year test scores aren't high enough, the school's poorest students will be eligible for tutoring.

CHERI PIERSON YECKE: So that after school, before school on Saturdays, any time outside of the school day, these kids would get extra help. It would come from other public schools, could apply to be providers. It could be the local private schools, local churches, the boys club, girls club, YMCA. It could be private entities that are for profit entities, Sylvan Huntington, these sorts of organizations.

DAN OLSON: If student test scores don't improve in subsequent years, the law requires the failing school undergo major reorganization, possibly a takeover by a private school. Albert Gorman says once parents see their child's school is labeled a failure, it'll take one, not several years, for the school to close.

ALBERT GORMAN: The first year that that's done, parents will take their kids out. They won't wait for the supplemental aid. They won't wait for the school to get better. They will seek a school where their kid-- because time is valuable in the life of the education of a child. So why am I going to give you three years if you've been declared a school that's not performing? And also, any new parents moving into the district are not going to choose a school that's deemed not performing.

DAN OLSON: He says. The federal No Child Left Behind law is backed by an administration that supports vouchers, which would allow tax dollars to follow students to the private or public school of their choice. Morgan Brown says the voucher charge is a red herring. Brown is a parent and a senior fellow at the center of the American experiment, the Minneapolis based conservative research group. He says the law will help needy schools stay open.

MORGAN BROWN: In states like Minnesota, for too long, we have hidden the fact that we do have this achievement gap because we've kind of averaged results for all students. And on average, we do pretty well compared to other states. But when we look at graduation rates or basic skills test scores for low income kids or ethnic minorities, we don't have a whole lot to brag about here. And the fact that No Child Left Behind is really going to point to that means that that may be pulled out in the open. So initially, you may have a number of schools on the needs improvement list when we start. And then I think gradually, you'll see schools come off of that as they do a better job of focusing on serving some of those students.

DAN OLSON: Advocates say the law supplies money to help school districts pay for testing, tutoring, staff, development, and other expenses incurred because of the No Child Left Behind Act. However, Hopkins parent and school board member Barbara Klaus says the cost of busing students from failing schools to succeeding ones is borne by the local school district. That leaves less money, she says, to improve the failing school. She says the No Child Left Behind law puts successful schools like ones in her district in jeopardy because they don't have the right to limit the number of incoming students.

BARABAR KLAUS: It's conceivable that in two years time, by having taken the neediest students from one school and transferring them to another school, that other school could end up in needs improvement status. And all we're doing is shifting people around and then limiting the resources that we had to help those students to begin with.

DAN OLSON: Hopkins Schools accept Minneapolis students as part of the NAACP equal education lawsuit settlement. In addition, Klaus says, the district's population of poor and minority students, including some who don't speak english, is growing. She guesses that when the No Child Left Behind third grade testing requirement takes effect, half or more of Hopkins 10 schools might be labeled needs improvement because the required 95% of students won't pass. Klaus says the tests don't measure progress.

BARABAR KLAUS: If they're still only at a second grade level, even if those teachers got them from below kindergarten up to a second grade level, they don't get credit for that under this system. And that seems to me that that is not a fair reflection of how you measure student progress and how you measure how the system is doing.

DAN OLSON: The No Child Left Behind Act is tied to about $25 billion in additional federal education spending. However, the increase is small when spread across 50 states and thousands of schools that might qualify for help. Albert Gorman says a better but politically unpopular remedy is to concentrate spending in existing schools with the poorest children.

ALBERT GORMAN: The conservative world will say, we've already-- you already get more money than everyone else and you're doing a poor job. Well, I would say that there hasn't been enough money poured into those areas, especially when we look at a school district like Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth, Rochester, where the diversity is increasing every year. with the resources not increasing on a yearly basis.

DAN OLSON: The No Child Left Behind provision allowing parents to send students to higher performing schools took effect this year in Minnesota. Dan Olson, Minnesota public radio.