Let’s Unschool Minnesota’s MCA Results to Look at School Site and District Leadership because, It's Not the Students!
By Don Allen, JOABT Every Fall, Minnesota parents, teachers, and policymakers await the release of the MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments) results. And every year, the story remains depressingly consistent: public and charter schools in the Twin Cities have campuses that have never once broken the 70% proficiency barrier in reading, math, or science. Disclaimer : In some schools that sit on the fringes of districts where the dominant culture is the majority, those schools have seen good numbers. The further you move into the Twin Cities, the lower the numbers dip. Let’s be blunt, this is not the fault of the children. This is a direct indictment of site leadership, district leadership, and charter management organizations that continue to run schools without accountability, vision, or urgency. For too long, we’ve accepted the easy narrative that blames “the kids” or “their families” for not being 'academic.' We hear the same tired talking points: poverty, trauma, abse...