Why an Ex-Mayor Sees Minority Students as Assets for Globally Competitive Businesses

When R.T. Rybak left office as mayor of Minneapolis, in 2014, the achievement gap between white and minority students in the city’s school system was one of the largest in the nation, having grown during his 12-year term. In a liberal, affluent city packed with Fortune 500 companies, often cited as one of the country’s most literate, that gap came as a surprise.

Despite putting his heft behind school reform and giving dozens of pep talks to local students, Mr. Rybak, a Democrat, regretted not having done more. (That the mayor doesn’t control the city’s school system limited him somewhat.) So when he left office, he became executive director of Generation Next, a nonprofit organization that works with communities, businesses, researchers, and schools to close the gap in high-school graduation rates between white and minority students. Next month he will become president of the Minneapolis Foundation, which grants millions of dollars to education-oriented programs.

With a burgeoning population of Mexican, Southeast Asian, and African immigrants and refugees, Minnesota needs to figure out how all students can excel, Mr. Rybak says. The Chronicle spoke with him recently about how a state goes about that. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. Minnesota is one of the wealthiest and most educated states in the country. Why — despite the resources and focus on education — is there this tremendous achievement gap?

A. There are some connections with income, where we have some of the largest gaps. However, it’s increasingly clear to me that we have to address the issues of race and racism. The system needs to react much more significantly to changing demographics. We as a community and, I believe, most schools have tried to take an increasingly diverse population and fit it into an old frame. We are now a different place. We need different schools, different learning philosophies. And most important, we need to truly believe that diversity is an asset. We are sitting on a global gold mine if we do this right.

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Read stories from an occasional series exploring that question:

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• Engine of Inequality
• Poor Kids, Limited Horizons
• On the Path to Graduation, Life Intervenes

When I talk to white students in primarily majority-culture schools, I remind them that they have an enormous global-fluency gap that a white kid in a far more diverse school does not have. It’s easy to hold up the asset of the immigrant kid with language and cultural skills that can help a global company compete. It’s harder but equally important to hold up the fluency that the African-American or Native American kid has when they have navigated comfortably through places where they are not part of the majority culture.

Q. Explain what you mean when you say that if we solve this problem, it’s a gold mine.

A. Pentair and Ecolab are two companies here that work on water issues. Well, where do they need water? All around the African continent and in Southeast Asia. We have not just a few students who speak the languages and dialects of Africa, but thousands of them. Part of what we have to do is see their assets. Obviously, they have to master English, but we can’t let them forget their core language so they can go do business over there. Almost equally important is the white kid who sits in the classroom with those kids, who now gets exposed to other cultures.

Q. Those companies will be seeking students with not only a solid K-12 education but also college degrees. Isn’t that also a major hurdle in closing the achievement gap?

A. We’re doing work that the Lumina Foundation supported with research and funds to bring postsecondary classes into alternative settings. It’s interesting when you think about it: Why in the world would you give college-level classes to kids who are not mastering their high-school classes?

We’re doing it because it works. It often goes to relevance. I understand that as a very poor high-school student who wound up being a good college student. I frankly did not understand why the heck I was taking any of that stuff in high school. I did very poorly, but I was surrounded by supports and expectations of a culture that said different things to me as a white kid than they would if I were a kid of color.

Q. “You’re just not trying” versus “You’re dumb.”

A. Exactly. I was given a second, third, fourth, and 15th chance. And eventually I made my way to college, where it all came together. I have had the very clear realization that if there was one factor that was different — if my skin were black — I would not be here today. It’s just that simple.

We’re spending a lot of time looking at alternative schools and environments that have too often been a warehouse. There are kids that go off track and then come back on track. We think that the work of alternative schools is really undervalued in the community. We’re trying to do something that has the best analogy in baseball. The starting pitcher was always the hero until some smart statistician in the 1960s came up with the term “the save.” Once you could measure the relief pitcher’s quality, he suddenly became a hero. Same thing with graduation. We only hold up the measurement of the four-year graduation rate. We’re trying to develop a measurement of “the save” in graduation, where kids may drop out, not graduate in four years, but this alternative setting turns them around.

Q. Is the philosophy to try to press all low-income students to attend a four-year college, or should some of them go into career and technical education?

A. I personally have had a huge evolution on this. I had college-access forums in every high school for the last seven years as mayor. I absolutely said, “We expect you to go to college, period” — “college” meaning four-year schools. I thought that I was doing the right thing by giving them high expectations.

I moderated that over time, to “We expect you to get something after high school,” encouraging them to do other forms of postsecondary — some certification or vocational education. But when you are dealing with large percentages of kids of color, who I believe are inundated with subtle and not-so-subtle messages about expectations, I would rather err on the side of a higher expectation.

Q. You see a direct line between investment in education and economic vitality.

A. There is no question in my mind that investment in education is totally about economic growth, for the middle class especially. My father was from a small town of Czech immigrants, and he was the first in his family to go to college, at the University of Minnesota. He got a pharmacy degree, then put the rest of his family through college. That is the path.

I don’t think money is the only thing here. There is a real necessary reinvention of the relevance of college to the new economy. I get frustrated with so many students coming out of college with degrees that can’t apply, and then they say, “I am going to go back to get a master’s degree.” There are wonderful times to get a master’s and beyond, but I am really frustrated that too many young people drift through too much of college without a core focus.

Q. Is that the fault of the students or the colleges?

A. Well, all the way through. As families, as communities, as schools, we have to do more to get kids grounded. I went into every ninth grade in Minneapolis and did a forum about going into postsecondary. I would get real clear with students and say that if they wanted to do any kind of postsecondary, the first thing that a college would look at would be their ninth-grade transcript. If you don’t take the classes you need by 10th or 11th grade, I’d say, you can’t go back and take ninth grade over. We don’t do enough of that.

When I first started going to high schools, I tried to be so relevant and meet kids “where they are.” Then I realized what they really need — especially urban kids who are facing a lot of poverty — is a clear push from authority figures in the community saying, “I expect a lot out of you, and you have a responsibility here.”

I don’t think that we as adults do that enough. You have to ask kids to be grown-ups sometimes, especially when mapping out the incredibly expensive path through higher ed. Yeah, the college has a responsibility, and the high school has a responsibility, but the community does, too. And so does the student.

Scott Carlson is a senior writer who covers the cost and value of college. Email him at scott.carlson@chronicle.com.