Associate Professor of Education Chelda Smith Kondo recently was quoted in a Minnesota Star Tribune article about Minnesota’s record graduation rate.
From the article:
Graduation-party season may have been a bit busier in Minnesota last spring.
That’s because a record percentage of students graduated last year: 59,720 of them, representing 84.2% of the class of 2024, according to recently released data from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).
The news gets better: Demographic gaps, while enduring, narrowed. ...
The data “does tell me that we’re moving in the right direction,” said Chelda Smith Kondo, a University of St. Thomas associate professor of education. What was most notable, Smith Kondo added, was the progress among the key demographic groups. The question with the state’s education system, she said, “has not been an issue of whether or not Minnesota is capable of educating students who are white and Asian. It’s been a question of whether or not Minnesota can equally educate those who are Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaskan natives. And so, I am deeply encouraged by the gains made by those communities, because that would suggest that we are – as an education field and as teachers – learning how to make our teaching inclusive of students who are nonwhite or Asian.”
