Well said: Early in my school board career, we invited Joe Nathan and Samuel Yigzaw (Higher Ground) to present to the school board and to school leadership. Their presentation made an excellent impression and had a continuing impact. Higher Ground is now an intervenor in the Cruz Guzman litigation, and I've been advocating to anyone who will listen, that Higher Ground should have a voice in school reform, precisely because the return on charter school funding was supposed to be learning what works.
As to Math and Science, I'm not familiar with the school at all, but I would note that according to the Minnesota Report Card, the academy has 8.4 percent free and reduced lunch eligible students, 2.6 percent English language learners and 5.6 percent special education.
However you make a great point about creating the conditions for schools to deliver more learning time. This is what we should do: We should create a pilot program for MSP, St. Paul or St. Cloud, that would allow the district to designate a fully funded pilot with all of the constraints on how to run the school lifted. There is a state out east that granted an exception to a couple of schools like that, and their test scores jumped substantially.
Above all, we need to be able to provide substantially more learning time to the kids in the early grades who are lagging behind, with high quality teachers, individual and small group tutoring, or so I think
Well said: Early in my school board career, we invited Joe Nathan and Samuel Yigzaw (Higher Ground) to present to the school board and to school leadership. Their presentation made an excellent impression and had a continuing impact. Higher Ground is now an intervenor in the Cruz Guzman litigation, and I've been advocating to anyone who will listen, that Higher Ground should have a voice in school reform, precisely because the return on charter school funding was supposed to be learning what works.
As to Math and Science, I'm not familiar with the school at all, but I would note that according to the Minnesota Report Card, the academy has 8.4 percent free and reduced lunch eligible students, 2.6 percent English language learners and 5.6 percent special education.
However you make a great point about creating the conditions for schools to deliver more learning time. This is what we should do: We should create a pilot program for MSP, St. Paul or St. Cloud, that would allow the district to designate a fully funded pilot with all of the constraints on how to run the school lifted. There is a state out east that granted an exception to a couple of schools like that, and their test scores jumped substantially.
Above all, we need to be able to provide substantially more learning time to the kids in the early grades who are lagging behind, with high quality teachers, individual and small group tutoring, or so I think