Ramstad: We are choosing to separate by race in Twin Cities schools

The biggest reason Minnesotans still contend with the Minnesota Paradox — a wealthy state with some of the most disparate economic outcomes by race — is plain to anyone who looks at schools in the Twin Cities:

We choose it.

When the last baby boomers left high school in the early 1980s, Minnesota families could choose the school in their neighborhood or perhaps a Catholic school not too far away. Today any family in the metro area encounters more choices for school than varieties of toothpaste at the grocery store — neighborhood schools, other public options in their district, those in adjacent districts, religious schools, private schools and nearly 200 charter schools.

In stunning numbers, they choose to send their kids to schools where their kids look like everyone else. It's happening with families of all races and across the seven-county metro area, most visibly in charter schools that have been exempted from state laws on integration — laws that other public schools must follow.

In effect, the racial division in schools that the U.S. Supreme Court sought to end in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling is back in the Twin Cities.

"There does seem to be an incredible paradox with the 1954 decision and where we are today," Joe Gothard, then-superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, told me last winter.

I am certain no aspect of the dilemma of race and money in Minnesota is more difficult than education.

Parents want the best for their children and tend to believe they have one shot to do things right. Consciously or not, their choices are often shaped by racial and cultural biases, many outdated but still present. Minnesota's school system evolved to provide numerous ways to keep separating from each other, whether it's under the guise of education innovation, cultural affirmation or free-market choice.

Numerous studies show integrated settings produce fewer disparities in learning, critics of the current system say. People who want to keep that system fall into a couple of camps — those who value choice for choice's sake and those who cite historic unfairness faced by people of color, often focusing on concepts of emotion and psychology rather than economics or achievement.

Indeed, there is no data that directly shows how the racially siloed nature of many Twin Cities schools affects the economic prospects for Minnesotans of color or the longer-term economic prospects of the state overall as the white population continues to decline.

However, Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson drew the connection between racial segregation and academic performance in an opinion last December on a widely watched case against the state Department of Education and the metro school districts.

"Between 1995 and 2021, the Twin Cities saw a twelve-fold increase in the number of hyper-segregated public schools," Hudson wrote, referring to schools that are 90% students of a single race. "Paired with this burgeoning segregation are appalling and persistent racialized disparities in academic outcomes in Twin Cities public schools."

Known as the Cruz-Guzman lawsuit for the Minneapolis parent who was the first plaintiff, the case originated in 2016 and accuses the districts and state of violating the state Constitution's guarantee of a uniform system of public schools by allowing "a high degree of segregation by race."

"The disagreement is whether racial or socioeconomic isolation is a substantial factor in causing an inadequate education," said Dan Shulman, the veteran Minneapolis civil-rights attorney who brought the case.

Twice, the case has moved up through appeals courts to the state Supreme Court over definitional matters. The Legislature in 2021 took up, but failed to pass, a bill that might have settled the case by requiring Minnesota school districts and charter schools to enact three-year plans for more racial and economic integration. Now, the case is back in Hennepin County District Court with a trial date set for early 2026.

In January, the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity in the University of Minnesota's law school released a study that ranked the metro area's 146 high schools based on the percentage of graduates who went on to highly rated colleges during the decade ending 2021. The results underscored differences in outcomes by race.

Of the 30 best-performing schools, only St. Paul's Central High School had a student body that was less than 50% white. Eighteen of the top 30 were at least 75% white.

In the bottom 30, 24 had a student body less than 50% white. Eight had a student body of at least 75% from one nonwhite race.

Getting into college isn't the only way to measure academic or economic success, of course. Some of the high schools that fared poorly in the U study are second or even third destinations for students with academic problems, disciplinary issues or other troubles in life. In those schools, it is a huge success for teachers to lift a student up to be able to work or go to further schooling.

And there's a complicating factor that I heard about again and again from school leaders and activists. While the 1954 Brown decision ended school segregation that suppressed Black Americans, ending today's de facto segregation in Twin Cities schools may also suppress Minnesotans of color.

Wealthy, usually white, people have long had the opportunity to opt out of public schools. Yet today's cross-district enrollment practices and charter schools give people of all races and incomes that same power. It's hard to blame anyone for grabbing onto those choices, and it seems unfair that the schools most likely to be forced to diversify are not the ones dominated by white students.

"It would be a very hard thing for me to explain to our parent population, to 600 people on the waitlist, why I can't take them and why I'd have to take somebody else literally because of the color of their skin," Melissa Storbakken, executive director of Global Academy in New Brighton, told me earlier this year when I wrote about the school's focus on Somali families.

While the Cruz-Guzman suit initially didn't directly involve charter schools, a number of charters banded together and hired attorneys to join the case. They did so because the case may lead to court-ordered formulas by race or income that would force them to substantially change their operating model.

"We're not talking about the best schools in the state, that they're too white. It seems to me that we're only talking about schools that have too many students of color," said Brandon Wait, executive director at Paladin Career & Technical High School in Coon Rapids, a charter school with a high number of poor and unhoused students and a racial mix that is more diverse than most charter and public schools.

The current structure, though, gives charters a competitive edge over public schools because they can respond to market demand along racial lines without violating state law.

In St. Paul Public Schools under Gothard, who recently left to become superintendent in Madison, Wis., the response to that pressure was to create magnet schools for racial or ethnic groups at the elementary and middle school level while keeping high schools fully diverse. A believer in schools that serve everyone, he said he doesn't criticize parents and students who choose schools based on race or culture.

"It's hard, right? Dozens and dozens of St. Paul students go on to historically Black colleges and universities and come back and you can see it in their faces, something is different," Gothard said. "So is an integrated experience better? I think it's more reflective of what a person is likely to experience in day-to-day life. But I think to say it's better, we'd have to talk to the students."