Concentrated Poverty and Urban School Reform: “The Choice is Yours” in Minneapolis

Abstract

The subject of urban schools has received extensive scholarly and popular attention in recent years, and a wide variety of policies to address the problem of low educational achievement has been suggested. This article, based on an analysis of documents and reports, in-depth interviews, and a variety of secondary sources, examines the first several years of the implementation of a 2000 legal settlement between the Minneapolis Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the State of Minnesota regarding the Minneapolis schools. Influenced by the Sheff v. O'Neill (1996) case in Hartford, Connecticut, the Minneapolis NAACP's lawsuit challenged the State's oversight of the Minneapolis schools under the Minnesota Constitution. The settlement created two new programs intended to provide low-income Minneapolis students more options in selecting schools. This article focuses on the more wide-ranging of these two programs, which buses up to 2,000 low-income urban students annually to suburban Minneapolis schools at State expense. The creation of the suburban transfer program represents a legal and political victory for the NAACP and its supporters. Yet the transfer program highlights the many obstacles faced by low-income students and reinforces the necessity for a multi-dimensional approach to high-poverty urban schools.

Neil Kraus is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. His research interests include urban politics and education policy.

Notes

¹ The information presented in this section has been informed by 12 in-depth interviews with individuals directly involved with or knowledgeable about the case. Interviews were conducted with people associated with the plaintiffs, the Minnesota Department of Education (formerly the Department of Children, Families, and Learning), the Minneapolis School District, the Minneapolis School Board, the court system, media, and the university community. I guaranteed all interviewees that no quotations, even anonymous ones, would be used in any writing that was based on this project. While this approach certainly limits the type of data generated in interviews that can be included in research papers, I believed it was necessary in order to encourage interviewees to talk as openly as possible about the issues raised.