Pawlenty, community look to KIPP to bridge achievement gap

The achievement gap is like the weather: everyone talks about it, but everyone has seemingly been powerless to do anything about it, until now.

In a collaborative effort between community organizations, big business, and his administration, Governor Tim Pawlenty announced in a press release that they will try to bridge the Twin Cities public school achievement gap with KIPP. By bringing KIPP to Minnesota, Pawlenty is making good on his promise in his 2006 state of the state address, in which he said:

Success for Minnesota in a global economy also demands that we develop the potential of all our citizens. Disparities in graduation rates and academic performance between white students and students of color continue to be a moral, social, and economic crisis.

I've proposed school choice as an alternative for poor, failing or disabled children. The legislature should pass school choice as an alternative for at least our most disadvantaged students.

In the meantime, we should pursue other new and innovative approaches that produce results, such as the The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP schools.

These are rigorous, public, college prep schools where disadvantaged students develop the knowledge, skills and character needed to succeed in top quality high schools, colleges and the competitive world beyond.

I'm directing our Department of Education to seek out and authorize KIPP charter schools in Minnesota, focusing on areas where our needs are the greatest.

The group that is bringing KIPP to Minnesota is a broad-based coalition of community groups, educators, and business: Somali Action Alliance; William A. Cooper, TCF Financial and chater school sponosor Friends of Ascension; DFL primary candidate for Congress Ember Reichgott Junge; Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs; Black Alliance for Educational Options; and the Minnesota Department of Education, among others.

The KIPP approach incorporates high expectations and "quantity time" for students. The school day is long, 7:30 am to 5:00 pm weekdays, plus every other Saturday and three weeks in the summer. (Somewhere, controversial former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Thandiwe Peebles must be smiling.) Parents, taxpayers, and the community will be looking to KIPP to repeat its past successes here in the Twin Cities.

Fuzzy math revisited

In her recent Star Tribune column, "Teachers group takes lint-remover to 'fuzzy math,'" (a.k.a. "integrated math") Katherine Kersten reports that the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is taking a second look at fuzzy math.

The "math wars" launched in 1989 are still playing out today. Now, probably thanks in part to fuzzy math, one in five college freshmen needs a remedial math course, according to the National Science Board. In 2003, U.S. eighth-graders ranked a humiliating 15th on an international math test, while kids from Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong swept the top three spots.

Last month, though, a new report on pre-K-8 math instruction announced a remarkable reversal in emphasis. The report, called Curriculum Focal Points, recommends that elementary students become fluent in math facts and focus on a few basic topics each year, in place of today's "mile-wide and inch-deep" curriculum.

Who wrote the new report? The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the very folks who gave us fuzzy math in 1989.

If you're not sure whether your child is being taught integrated math, as opposed to a traditional, sequential, mastery-based curriculum, he or she may be getting integrated math if:

• You are having trouble helping with homework, even if you did well in math in school


• Your child's in-class work or homework in math involves art projects that seem to have little to do with math


• Your child does not have a math textbook


• Your child is not learning basic math facts (addition, subtraction, and multiplication tables)


• Your child is calculator-dependent, and cannot work out problems using paper and pencil (for example, long division)


• Worksheets and workbooks come from curriculum such as Everyday Mathematics, Connected Math Project, or the Core-Plus Mathematics Project.

This is a timely topic for Minnesotans. The Department of Education is reviewing the state's Academic Standards in Mathematics. The public comment period is ongoing through next Tuesday, December 5. To get involved or to just check it out, see the Minnesota Department of Education's math standards home page.

Where's Scholar?

Scholar has been missing in action at this blog, due to heavy coverage of the 2006 elections at my "other blog," North Star Liberty (http://northstarliberty.blogspot.com). We now resume our regularly scheduled programming.