Journal of a Black Teacher

For roughly twenty-five years, Twin Cities public schools have rotated principals, launched initiatives, renamed improvement plans, and held strategic retreats, while the core student achievement data has barely flinched. Reading gaps remain. Math proficiency drifts sideways. Graduation disparities persist. Apparently, what we needed all along was just one more principal with a fresh slogan. This OpEd argues that the traditional principal-centered model has not produced transformational results and likely will not. Instead of recycling leadership titles, it proposes transferring instructional authority to high-performing teacher-leaders supported by real-time data systems and algorithmic accountability. If the numbers haven’t changed in a quarter century, perhaps the org chart should. By Don Allen, Journal of A Black Teacher (2026) Editorial Opinion Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN…Straight talk: In many public schools in the Twin Cities, the role of the principal as the instructional leader n...

By Don Allen (Editorial Opinion)  Let us just say it loud: if we really care about fairness and economic justice, then Minnesota's Somali community should get $200 million in reparations. Yes, I said it. $200 Million.. To be honest, that might be a low price. Before anyone gets upset or writes a post on Facebook, let me explain. This is not about giving them money out of kindness. This is not about favoring them over others. This is about paying a debt that's long overdue. For years, Minnesota has said it is a place where people can come to start a new life. Many Somali families came to Minnesota running away from war and violence. They did not come asking for pity. For a chance to make a new life. What they got was a bag: some good things, but also a lot of suspicion and stereotypes. They had to prove themselves over and over again. They did prove themselves. They started businesses in neighborhoods that others had given up on. They made old stores and buildings look new again...

By Don Allen (2026) Creative Writing, Teaching and Learning.  One afternoon, I walked into my high school English class carrying a worn copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz   ( 1900 ), by L. Frank Baum . My students looked up at me like I had just pulled something ancient out of a trunk. I told them this wasn’t just a children’s story. It was personal. I first met this book in the 1970s, sitting in Mr. Boone’s sixth-grade classroom at Bancroft Elementary in Minneapolis. Back then, school had a rhythm to it. We read about tornadoes, silver shoes, and brick roads in the morning. By afternoon, we were in the gym, or home economics, or waiting our turn in woodshop. The day felt full. Stories felt like doorways. So when I opened Baum’s 1900 novel in front of seventy teenagers, I wasn’t just assigning reading. I was inviting them into something that once opened my own world. We read carefully. We asked questions. By the time we reached Chapter 5, the room shifted. That’s where the Ti...

Tragedy has become a trend, not a reckoning. We reward attention without memory and outrage without outcomes. This is not moral awakening, it’s cognitive dissonance on autoplay.” Editorial Opinion | Don Allen We are no longer informed by tragedy, we consume it. There’s a difference. Being informed requires memory, context, and follow-through. Consumption requires only attention. Scroll. React. Move on. What we are doing now is tragedy tourism : riding waves of human suffering as if they were trending destinations, stopping just long enough to feel something before boarding the next outrage flight. Think about how quickly we forget. A white woman stabbed to death on a New York subway, brutal, senseless, terrifying. It lit up headlines, dominated feeds, and then disappeared. No sustained conversation about public safety, mental health, transit systems, or how we protect everyday people navigating shared spaces. Just a spike in attention, then silence. Christians being killed in the cont...

Minnesota’s competitive grant procedures are supposed to follow clear, statute-driven policies designed to protect public funds before, during, and after they’re awarded. Under Minnesota law and the Office of Grants Management (OGM) policies, all executive branch agencies, including the Department of Education, are required to conduct fair, evidence-based, competitive reviews; assess applicant capacity to perform; document reviewer decisions; avoid conflicts of interest; and monitor performance once funds are disbursed. By Don Allen, Journal Of A Black Teacher (2025) - Editorial Opinion St. Paul, MN…Here’s the plain truth: what happened in Minnesota wasn’t a “Somali problem.” It was a systems problem; a leadership problem, created and sustained inside Minnesota’s own state agencies. When billions of public dollars slide out the door with barely a question asked, the issue isn’t the people who noticed the open vault. The issue is the people who left it unlocked. Patrick Lencioni, in...

Minnesota governor Tim Walz stands at a crossroads. The headlines surrounding fraud, mismanagement, and oversight failures have eroded public trust, not because voters expect perfection, but because they expect candor, ownership, and competence. Press conferences built around talking points won’t repair that damage. Crisis communication will. The shift means acknowledging failure without defensiveness, getting ahead of investigations instead of reacting to them, and pairing transparency with real accountability that Minnesotans can verify. It means elevating auditors, whistleblowers, and independent experts rather than partisan surrogates. Most importantly, it reframes criticism as data, not attack. If Walz wants to compete, and win in 2026, he must demonstrate a governor who learns, corrects, and leads through truth. The comeback pathway isn’t political theater; it’s disciplined crisis leadership that shows taxpayers their government is capable of cleaning its own house. By Don All...

I’ve taught for 15 years. I know what a classroom should feel like: welcoming, with whiteboard markers, curiosity, a little chaos, and a whole lot of learning. What it should not feel like is a pulpit. Yet that’s precisely where Minnesota seems to be steering our schools with its new ethnic-studies mandate . By Don Allen, Ed.S., M.A.Ed., MAT (ABD) Abstract The new requirements for Ethnic Studies in Minnesota , which are slated to go live during the 2026-27 school year, come with a liberationist pedigree that all too often reads like empty pedagogy that substitutes slogans for scholarship. This is a call to “disrupt,” “dismantle,” and “challenge systems,” but it never answers the most fundamental question every teacher must pose to every lesson plan: does this help kids read, write, compute, reason, and flourish? As Frantz Fanon cautioned, “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” This mandate forces politicized ideas into a scho...

By Don Allen - Journal Of A Black Teacher (2025) Minnesota’s newest export isn’t innovation or justice, it’s exclusion. And not just the old Jim Crow kind, but a slick, bureaucratic variety wrapped in buzzwords like “ equity ” and “ accountability .” Let’s call it what it is: the new racism , state-sanctioned exclusion of Black Minnesotans from economic opportunity, masked as progressive policy. Take the multi-billion-dollar Feeding Our Future scandal . According to reports, over half of the $1.8 billion billed through state programs was tied to fraud, waste, or abuse, source: KSTP News . Where was Minnesota’s Department of Education ( MDE ) during this free-for-all? Asleep? Willfully blind? Busy scrutinizing the wrong people? While fake meal sites raked in millions, actual Black-led churches across the state were feeding congregations daily with no help from the state. These churches, often run by Black Minnesotans born, raised, and educated right here, were left out of the fundin...

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The lawsuit between Minneapolis Public Schools and the U.S. Department of Justice could be fixed overnight, if only someone dared to say the obvious: the district is too big to succeed. That’s right, shrink it. Fewer layers, fewer “executive directors of innovation equity leadership,” and more actual teachers who know their students' names. Instead of bloated bureaucracy and selective “diversity” programs that only help insiders, a smaller, leaner system might actually... function. Imagine that. The DOJ wouldn’t need to sue if we stopped outsourcing equity to policies that protect the privileged few. Cut the district, trim the egos, and maybe, just maybe, Black and Native male educators would be hired for their qualifications, not their connections. Wild idea, right? Common sense. Too dangerous for policy. Read the filing here PDF. By Don Allen (Editorial Opinion) Journal of A Black Teacher (2025) The lawsuit that the United States Department of Justice filed against the Minneapol...

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become.” — No Name in the Street (1972) The idea was to layer in financial literacy education from kindergarten onward. The lesson plan could have been as easy as having a piggy bank for every kindergartener to save a quarter (.25 cents) each week over the 10-month school year. I can't be upset Maryland's BlackFem; it's local decision-makers who continue to show malfeasance in decision-making.  By Don Allen (Journal of A Black Teacher - 2025) - Editorial Opinion I get the frustration. It's like watching someone skip the obvious local talent pool to roll the dice on an out-of-towner, only for it to blow up in a $900K lawsuit. I break this down step by step based on the details from the Star Tribune piece , and I'll weave in some context on why it might've gone sideways (and yeah, why ignoring the Twin Cities' deep bench of financial literacy pros feels like a head-scratche...