Where Is Minnesota’s Office of Black American Education?

For years, Minnesota’s Black education leaders have gathered in conference rooms, school board meetings, professional development sessions, equity summits, community forums, listening sessions, strategic planning retreats, and enough panel discussions to power an entire cable television network. We have discussed achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, graduation gaps, discipline gaps, teacher diversity gaps, and every other gap imaginable. Yet somehow, amid all the PowerPoint presentations and carefully crafted mission statements, almost nobody appears to have stopped and asked a remarkably simple question: Where is Minnesota’s Office of African American Education?

The silence is particularly interesting because Minnesota has never lacked for experts willing to explain the problems facing Black students. We can produce reports, commission studies, and host community conversations with Olympic-level efficiency. What we seem less interested in producing are institutions. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously warned, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” While Minnesota’s educational leaders continue discussing the challenges facing African American students, the absence of a dedicated statewide office raises an uncomfortable possibility: perhaps we have become so accustomed to talking about disparities that we have forgotten to build the systems necessary to eliminate them. Of course, we still cash our checks every two weeks.

To its credit, Minnesota does have an Office of American Indian Education—not a committee, not a task force, and certainly not yet another stakeholder group created to develop yet another report doomed to end up on the shelf. It is an actual office, with actual personnel and actual resources dedicated to actual work to improve the education of Native students. This office should exist. Native communities have a rich educational history and experience, which need to be addressed. Minnesota understood that and built its infrastructure accordingly.

Therefore, it is logical to assume that there should be something similar to the Office of American Indian Education for Black American students since, throughout the years, Minnesota has produced countless reports, presentations, strategic plans, and discussions regarding achievement gaps, graduation rates, discipline disparities, teacher diversity, and the college readiness of Black Americans. Surely, Minnesota should have an office responsible for the problems of Black American students.

I was wrong.

Truthfully, I already suspected what I would find before I started searching. Nevertheless, I looked anyway. I searched for the Minnesota Office of Black American Education. I searched for an Office of African American Education. I searched for every variation I could think of, assuming that perhaps the office existed under a different name or within another division of state government. It did not. After exhausting the possibilities, I arrived at a simple conclusion: no such office exists in Minnesota. That realization immediately raised an even simpler question: Why not?

Minnesota has documented the educational disparities involving Black American students for decades. Minnesota officials repeatedly acknowledge that Minnesota maintains one of the biggest racial gaps in educational performance in the entire country. New reports come every few years, describing the same patterns over and over again. Literacy rates are low. Mathematics rates are low. Graduation rates lag behind those of White students. Teacher diversity is insufficient. But no matter how much attention it receives, Minnesota’s solution looks like an eternal cycle of meetings, reports, and recommendations instead of the construction of real structures to solve the problem.

Minnesota excels at rhetoric, particularly in the assembly of task forces and committees, holding listening sessions, and conducting strategic planning. Minnesota is a master at creating committees to find out why previous committees were unable to solve the problem assigned to them. If educational improvements could be accomplished by means of PowerPoint presentations, Minnesota would be at the top of the list. Alas, the children cannot graduate from a strategic plan. Culture often determines whether a strategy succeeds.

But what strikes me the most is that Minnesota knows very well the importance of dedicated educational support when it decides to give it. The very existence of an Office of American Indian Education proves that Minnesota realizes the importance of building the infrastructure around the needs of a particular student population. And the question here is not whether the office is possible. The question is why Black American students are deprived of such attention and investment.

Imagine what a statewide Office of Black American Education would look like. Its mission could be dedicated to improving academic achievement, increasing graduation rates, improving college and career readiness, providing culturally responsive teaching, recruiting and retaining Black teachers, and increasing family-school-community partnerships. Such an office could have the necessary leadership, technical assistance, accountability measures, and community partnerships to deal with educational disparities.

But imagine even more if each school district had professionals who were dedicated to the improvement of Black American students’ performance. Black American Education Navigators could assist families in navigating the educational system and advocating for their children. Black American Career Navigators could help students with internships, apprenticeships, and workforce development. Postsecondary Success Coaches could facilitate the process of college admissions and career planning. Family Engagement Specialists could help in strengthening family-school partnerships. These ideas are not revolutionary. They are practical approaches based on the idea that many families navigate an educational system that was not created for them.

Predictably, some people will immediately start opposing my idea. They will say that the establishment of a statewide Office of Black American Education would be exclusionary and would show discrimination against other groups of students. Suddenly, some people will find their passion for making sure that everybody is treated the same. Interestingly, these concerns never arise when programs for sports, gifted students, English learners, and students with disabilities are introduced. Only with Black American students is it of paramount importance to ensure fairness.

Let us be frank with ourselves. This debate is not about exclusivity; it is about fairness. If we are pushing for equity, it means not only the recognition of the disparity but also the creation of the structures necessary to address it. Minnesota has gathered many years of proof that good intentions are not enough to solve educational problems. Reports do not close the achievement gap. Plans do not raise graduation rates. Committees do not diversify the teaching profession. Systems change when people deliberately create systems that produce different results.

The problem of educational disparity is not an instructional problem. It is an organizational, communication, and health problem. There are problems of leadership, policies, resource allocation, and, most importantly, of the system as a whole. Systemic problems require systemic solutions. And these solutions require infrastructure, staffing, accountability, and sustained investment instead of temporary excitement.

For too long, the discussions of Black Americans’ educational disparities have been dedicated to the identification of problems. The state is a master at diagnosing these problems. What Minnesota lacks is the skill to find solutions. It is time to move away from the documentation of disparities and build the institutions capable of overcoming them.

And that is why I believe it is high time to talk about the establishment of a Minnesota Office of Black American Education. Not tomorrow, not after next year, not after another report, but right now. The future of Black American children is too precious to be left to chance.

I am ready to convene stakeholders and develop the concept paper for the implementation of this idea. I invite Black educators, school board members, parents, community organizations, faith-based organizations, workforce development specialists, businesses, higher education, and legislators to join me. We have spent enough time discussing whether the shot should be taken. It is high time to get into position and take it.

If Minnesota really needs different outcomes for Black American students, then Minnesota should build different systems. And the future? It would seem that someone does not care.