Fixing Education #6 – Don’t ignore the problems and face the numbers

Holy cow was this timely (they must have know I was talking about this..ha ha).
The Minneapolis Star Tribune releases the story on graduation rates in the Minneapolis schools and the numbers aren’t shocking to those of us who pay attention, but still are very disturbing.

Sixth: the numbers don’t lie no matter which ones you believe
It doesn’t matter if you believe the “America’s Promise” graduation rate of 43.7% during 2003-2004, or the MPS numbers of 52.8% over that same period. This is a huge failure, which requires action of crisis proportion. Everyone connected with the Minneapolis Public Schools planning guidance should resign in complete disgrace due to their incompetence. Decisive leadership and action is required so that the parents can stop scarifying their children’s future to political bungling. It doesn’t matter even if you believe the 67.2% rate this past year, it’s still more than 1 in 3 students won’t graduate. In a company if you produced at these levels you would be fired. As each year goes by that this problem isn’t addressed properly you are throwing over 1/3 of the kids “under the bus”. There is no plan in place to deal with the outcome of this inaction, and no plans to fix the root causes of the problems. Over the last week we’ve highlighted the problems and proposed solutions. This is a lot better than the Minneapolis school board has done over the last few years.
Not just the school board problem.
The “Silly Council” and the Mayor are also to blame for allowing this problem to continue without getting addressed. Yes I know what you “elected” say…It’s not a city council issue. Hogwash!! One of the biggest livability factors in any city is the quality of the education system. Granted this isn’t just Minneapolis, but all big cities. They focus their time on making things green, worrying about their popularity with the voters based on the amount of money they handout, and banding certain types of music in coffee shops. You people wanted to provide leadership on the important issues of the day, then show some leadership on this important issue…..fix the schools.