The Color of Knowledge

Hell may have frozen over.  I am going to quote something from the Strib.  On their Opinion Page of Tuesday, March 9, three Minneapolis citizens penned thoughts which tell me the castle walls of public education may be beginning to crumble, the veneer may be beginning to peel.

The three contributors, Don Samuels, city councilman, Chanda Baker, director of strategic partners for Pillsbury United Communities and Sondra Samuels, president of the PEACE  Foundation, take strategic and targeted aim at Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota.

Get this quote from their op/ed:

“Education Minnesota’s hollow defense of the status quo is a cynical, morally bankrupt agenda, which focuses more on protecting the adult members of teacher unions than protecting the interests of the state’s most vulnerable children.  Dooher (Education Minnesota’s president) has become the last holdout for the failed status quo, one that has yielded no significant change to the achievement gap over the last three decades. His commitment to thwarting real reform has blocked every bridge that spans the racial and socioeconomic performance gap.”

“So the next time we hear more statistics on the tragic inequities of Minnesota schools, we must move from naïve frustration to a passionate insistence that Education Minnesota move out of the way of progress.”

My jaw almost hit the floor.  In the past, the black community in Minneapolis could be counted on to walk across the coals for public school teachers.  The language in this summary is unequivocal – and damning.  They’re throwing down the gauntlet for public ed.  They don’t like what’s going on and they don’t see it being fixed unless, and until, there is a drastic, radical and dramatic shift in the basic structure of the unions.  This ought to signal the political class that in spite of their sky-is-falling defense of teachers and their unions – knowledge knows no color.