Minneapolis Sets 'Covenant' on Black Achievement

Agreement is aimed at closing gaps, involving parents in education.

The Minneapolis school board and the local African-American community have taken an unusual step toward healing fractured relations and improving schooling for black children by signing a "covenant" that places responsibility for improvement on the shoulders of parents and district leaders.

Capping a year of work, the agreement was adopted unanimously by the board on Sept. 9 and signed by its president and by representatives of two community groups that originated the idea and drove its development. The groups are the African American Mobilization for Education, or AAME, which is a coalition of local organizations, and the local YWCA.

The three-page agreement says education is a “shared responsibility,” and commits the district and the community to a decade of work “with a deliberate focus on African-American students in order to overcome a...