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School segregation violates the Minnesota Constitution, whether done on purpose or not
Here’s a legal conundrum it shouldn’t take a lawyer to solve: if Minnesota children are attending failing, racially segregated schools, can the state say “Oops, it was an accident” and ignore the problem? That may seem illogical. But according to a recent court decision, that’s exactly how it works. In the Twin Cities, K-12 education […]
Desegregation can help fix racial suspension gap — Opinion
In the 2017-18 school year, Minnesota students missed more than 85,000 school days due to a suspension. More than 60% of those days were missed by children of color, who make up less than a third of the state’s students. Minnesota, like most of the US, has enormous racial disparities in school discipline. Students of […]
Brooklyn Center and the dangers of suburban resegregation | Opinion
Like most tragedies, the appalling police shooting of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center combines the predictable with the unpredictable. No one could guess in advance the exact time or place that Twin Cities police would take another Black man’s life. But no one who lived through the past year could doubt that it would happen […]
The Fed’s education constitutional amendment would turn schools over to economists and lawyers | Opinion
At first glance, the constitutional amendment proposed by Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari and former Supreme Court Justice Alan Page to give every Minnesota student a right to a “quality public education” seems like a great idea. Who could argue with a right to an education? But education law and policy is complex, and […]
The Twin Cities and suburbs used to share Minnesota’s affordable housing. Then something went wrong.
After three years of silence on the issue, Donald Trump suddenly cares about affordable housing. Several weeks ago, his HUD secretary, Ben Carson, abruptly revoked a key Obama-era civil rights rule, which would require many cities to review housing segregation within their borders and adopt plans for greater racial integration. But that wasn’t subtle enough […]
Minnesota is resegregating its schools, and it’s bad for all of us
School segregation is often thought of as a 20th century problem — ancient history, something that was solved in the 1960s and 1970s. But in Minnesota, history is moving backwards. The state has banned segregation three times since the Civil War. And yet today, its schools are more segregated than ever. To the surprise of […]