In June, one of the nation's first charter schools abruptly shut down after almost thirty years. Cedar Riverside Community School was located in a central Minneapolis neighborhood with an important population immigrants from East Africa.
It opened in 1993, just two years after the Minnesota state legislature be allowed to create charter schools that receive public funds.
Children who live in poverty but still perform well on standardized tests are the stuff of wealth-saturated, neoliberal dreams, where inequality is but a stepping stone to greater things—provided one learns to pull oneself up. his own boots.
ONE message on the school's website it says the school office is closed as of July 1st and therefore all student records have been transferred to either Minneapolis Public Schools or another school district, depending on where the students live.
Cedar Riverside Community School operated directly from Cedar Riverside Plazaa concrete housing estate built in the 1970s in a boom of utopian exuberance that has yet to manifest itself.
A wealthy couple bought land in the area in the 1960s, obviously on the advice of their investment strategist, and envisioned a glittering community of rich and poor people rubbing elbows and being content with their place in the world.
Cement housing complexes were supposed to spread out for blocks and blocks, with swimming pools and other amenities for those who could afford it.
This has not happened. Instead, Cedar Riverside Plaza is more of a reflection of how we address underserved communities. The main housing stock consists of two slender concrete monoliths, sparsely decorated with occasional strips of colored paneling and precariously hemmed in by busy highways.
Two years ago, a fire broke out in one of the area's public housing units, killing five residents and causing research in the dangerous condition of the building.
Cedar Riverside Community School needed to provide a better path forward for children living in the area. For a while, he seemed to live up to that ideal.
The climax came in 2010, when the Star Tribune considered it a “beat the odds” school whose students performed well on standardized tests, according to a report by Becky Dernbach of the local Sahan Journal.
Before proceeding further, it is important to unpack the very concept of “beat the odds.”
In recent years, the Star Tribunewhich is owned by a Minnesota billionaire Glenn Taylorpublished annual rankings of K-12 schools.
Rankings are determined by comparing students' standardized test scores to their school's poverty rate, according to federal free and reduced lunch Criteria. Schools with large numbers of students living in poverty who score well on annual reading and math tests are thought to be “beating the odds.”
This is exactly the type of measurement of school success that suits a newspaper owned by a billionaire.
Children who live in poverty but still perform well on standardized tests are his stuff wealth saturated, neoliberal dreams, where inequality is but a stepping stone to greater things – provided one learns to pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps.
Host Democrats they have embraced this narrative, so this is not a partisan belief.
In Minneapolis, often considered one of the more liberal cities across the United States, prominent Democrats helped expand charter schools such as Cedar Riverside Community School, in damage of the local public school system.
And to the detriment, we must say, of the families who came depend at Cedar Riverside Community School.
Dernbach shared some of their stories over the past year while making one deep diving in the collapse of the school.
Many of the parents Dernbach spoke with were grateful that their children could attend a school right where they lived, as the majority of families were new to the country and appreciated the peace of mind such a convenience afforded them.
Since 2010, when the school was praised for its test score gains, it has fallen, Dernbach noted. Staff turnover prevailed, especially in the administrative ranks. Until 2018, the position of executive director had been filled and then vacated several times, until Bert Strassburg was hired.
Strasburg came to Cedar Riverside Community School from a school district in northern Minnesota where he was superintendent but had resigned under conditions that remain unclear.
Strasbourg immediately fired or oversaw the departure of every teacher at the school, while maintaining their career as psychic with a stake in a Minneapolis-based metaphysical store.
While parents at the school had reportedly asked Strasbourg to make some staffing changes, his mass-termination approach also pushed out those who had “demonstrated familiarity with refugee life” in favor of inexperienced teachers, Dernbach found.
Cedar Riverside Community School was overseen by a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, Pillsbury United Communities, which is acting as trustee. Such an arrangement is required for charter schools in Minnesota, and authorizers are Paid annual fees worth thousands of taxpayer dollars to provide some level of oversight for schools.
Pillsbury United Communities has a large stake in Minnesota's charter school industry, with list of names twenty of these privately managed and publicly funded schools.
In March, Pillsbury United Communities met with Cedar Riverside Community School stakeholders. Because a quorum was not reached, in terms of the number of school board members present, the meeting was not open to the public or the press, according to Dernbach's report.
At this meeting it was announced that the school would be closed in June. While the move apparently caught many parents off guard, the decision to shake off a “failing” school is featurenot a fault, of neoliberal education reform.
Minneapolis Public Schools could never simply decide to close a school without a public hearing, Dernbach notes, because it is a public, governmental entity. Pillsbury United Communities is neither of those things and therefore not subject to the same level of scrutiny.
And now, it seems likely that the Minneapolis Public School District will be left to pick up the pieces of the Cedar Riverside Community School collapse.
