CHARTER SCHOOL | CLOSED
OPENED: 2000 - CLOSED: 2005
Minnesota Business Academy
2 grants received for $ 250,000
view grants received | view grants received chart
505 Wabasha St
St. Paul, MN 55102
Stopping Serving Students in 2005 - 2006
From City Pages in 2005:
Q: What Happens When You Run a School Like a Business?
A: You Go Broke.
The students learned how to sit in cubicles and write memos. The staff learned how to ask for a bailout.
...Laura Mirsch, who graduated from the school with honors in 2004, says the MBA's problems were never strictly financial. She thinks arrogance and inexperience on the part of some of the MBA's founders played a large role, too. "Basically, it was run by a bunch of businesspeople who thought they knew more about education than public educators," Mirsch says.
When Mirsch arrived as a freshman, she recalls, the students were each shown to a personal cubicle with a computer and a phone. The idea--that kids would learn well in a businesslike setting--didn't mesh with the reality of lightly supervised 14-year-olds left to their own devices. "It was total bedlam," Mirsch remembers. "You were supposed to do your work in the cube, but a lot of the kids were making prank calls and screwing around all the time."
