To: All Inner-City Parents with kids in the Minneapolis or St. Paul School Districts

From: Mitch Berg, who’s been there, pretty much.

Re: An Invitation

All,

I’m Mitch Berg.  I live in Saint Paul.  A few years back, I pulled my kids out of the St. Paul Schools, and went into the charter system.

And when I got into the charter school system, I was astounded at what I saw; in Saint Paul, the vast majority of the families were black, latino or asian.  Many were recent immigrants.   And they were among the most passionate advocates for school choice I’ve ever met.  Because they – you – are not stupid.  You can see that your school districts have among the worst “achievement gaps” in the nation between your kids and white kids.  You know that our educational-industrial complex’s boasting about the quality of our school system rings hollow along Plymouth Avenue, and down Rice Street.

Most of the parents I met, like most of you that I’m writing to now, naturally, voted DFL.  Not a few of them spat tacks at the mention of Republican politicians.

And it was fascinating, watching the cognitive dissonance when I mentioned to them that in May of 2007, when the DFL proposed a bill that would cap the number of charter schools in Minnesota, the DFL voted an almost-straight ticket in favor of capping charter schools (six of them broke with the party, only one of them from the metro). The GOP voted as a straight ticket against the cap, which was defeated by the skinniest of margins.

Let me re-emphasize that, all you parents out there: the DFL voted to cut off your kids’ lifeline, the charter schools that you all quite rightly judge to be your kids’ best shot at a quality education.

Today, the NAACP urged parents like you to pull your kids out of the Minneapolis Public Schools. But they did it for all the wrong reasons:

The Minneapolis branch of the NAACP on Wednesday urged parents to consider pulling their children out of the Minneapolis School District in response to Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson’s recommendation to close North High School.

I understand – North is, to some people, a center and rallying point for that troubled community.

And to the administration?  Well, it’s part of their meal ticket:

The accusations were an affront to Johnson, who grew up in segregated Selma, Ala. “We have the responsibility of providing a high quality education to our students regardless of where they live,” Johnson wrote in a statement to the Star Tribune. “All of our students deserve educational opportunities that will prepare them to be global citizens. I am committed to providing them with those opportunities.”

Parents – if someone, a salesman or a boss or a teacher, spoke that kind of empty gobbledygook to your face, you’d laugh at them and walk away, wouldn’t you?

The woman said nothing!

Look – closing North High should be a cause for celebration; North High, with its atrocious achievement and yawning achievement gap and by-the-numbers mediocrity that fully lived out what George W. Bush called “the racism of low expectations”, was just a cog in a machine that devalued your children just as surely as any plantation owner ever would have 160 years ago; a symbol of an education establishment that exploits your children no less cynically than any drug kingpin. Oh, their intentions may be more benign than Simon LeGree’s and Plukey Duke’s, but when it comes to the education your children got at North – at any Minneapolis Public School, or Saint Paul for that matter, look me in the eye and tell me that the intentions made a stitch of difference?

[Minneapolis NAACP President Booker] Hodges issued a statement calling for parents “who value their children’s education or future [to] seriously consider other options for educating their children.”

And I – a cracker descended from North Woods rock farmers, myself – will stand up and yell “Amen”.  Hodges is right.

Now is the time to free your children from the Minneapolis Schools’ racism of low, or no, expectations.

Of course, the Minneapolis School Board and the Minneapolis Public Schools are only the tip of the iceberg, just as they are in Saint Paul.   The problem is that the cities’ school districts are controlled by people who owe their livelihoods and futures to the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party, first and foremost.

Not to you.

Not to your children.

And they are counting on you – the African-American parents, the Latino families, the H’mong clans who votes for them by imposing margins in every election, year in and year out – to remain ignorant of the fact that for all of the DFL’s yammering about education spending, it is the GOP that supports your right to choose where your kids go to school.  It is the GOP that supports initiatives like School Choice, Charter Schools and, in many states, Vouchers to give you, the motivated, dedicated parents that I see and know from my time as a charter school parent, the power and tools – to say nothing of economic freedom – to make those choices and make them stick.

You can say “he’s just talking politics”.  And you’re right – this is about politics.  But politics control your childrens’ education just as surely as their teachers’ qualifications do.

So look at the record.  The DFL – the Democrats, the people you have been voting for since time immemorial – are actively supported by those who are harming your children.

You want hope, for your children, for real?  It’s time for change.