Article #1>>>>> The Prevaricating and Irresponsible Posturing of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Minneapolis Public Schools officials, spurred by the efforts of courageous and dedicated Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, are fully focused on making changes in the educational delivery system of the district that will bring a higher quality of education to students, particularly at the schools most in need of improvement.

Lynn Nordgren and her group from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers are doing everything that they can to make sure that the needed changes are not made.

Nordgren and her group reveal much of their flawed approach in a glossy flyer distributed at one of the early meetings. Entitled, “Minneapolis Teachers --- Goals for Student Success,” the flyer goes on to emphasize a number of points that would ensure that such success will not happen. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers union calls for the following:

1) a moratorium on standardized testing;

2) school leadership by committee with heavy teacher input;

3) achievement of teacher quality through teacher-led, peer-reviewed evaluations, peer mentoring, participation in residency programs, a rigorous tenure process, and strong pre-service education;

4) child-centered curriculum informed heavily by the talents and interests of students ;

5) a variety of social services, addressing problems that students bring with them to school; and

6) class sizes that would fix ratios of 1:15 for K-3 students, 1:21 for those at grades 4-5, and 1:24 for students at grades 6-12.

Some of these tenets of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers seem appealing but need to be decoded:

1)

The moratorium on standardized testing should not even seem appealing to anyone who thinks clearly about assessment. Standardized, objective testing such as that done through the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) is the best way to determine if students have achieved mastery in the major skill areas of reading and math.

Results of the MCAs and other standardized tests have deeply embarrassed the teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools, so they want to avoid further embarrassment by jettisoning such tests.

But colleges and university officials know that such standardized tests as the ACT and the SAT are good predictors of success at the college level. Military officials know that tests administered by the armed services predict with a high degree of accuracy the skill and knowledge sets that prospective soldiers bring to their service.

2) and 3)

Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers tend to use the verbiage of “collaboration” in anything that involves decision-making at school sites. But teacher hiring, evaluation, and dismissal should not be under the purview of teachers. Those are matters of administrative responsibility, for which administrators should then be held accountable as to the teacher quality represented by the professionals operating in each classroom.

4)

By child-centered curriculum, Nordgren and group mean a curriculum disastrously touted by education professors under the monikers of “progressive” and “constructionist” approaches that promote the interests of individual students and teachers as the drivers of curriculum.

In fact, anyone who truly loves children and wants them to thrive during and after the K-12 school experience should want them to learn specified skill and knowledge sets in grade by grade sequence; these inevitably go beyond the immediate personal inclinations of students and will in the long run make them well-informed citizens who actually know something about math, literature, history, economics, biology, chemistry, physics, the fine arts, and multiple languages.

5)

The nomenclature adopted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers calls for “wrap-around services,” proposed to address issues pertinent to family and community that may impede a student’s progress. The union is on solid ground in calling for better comprehensive services to address student needs. The problem is that teachers use family struggles and economic impoverishment of many children as excuses for their own failures to deliver the quality of education that is possible when highly qualified teachers are in every classroom.

6)

The class sizes touted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers are fiscally unrealistic and do not guarantee student success.

With an exercise of fiscal and pedagogical logic, Minneapolis Public Schools officials should aim for K-3 class sizes in the low 20s, grade 4-5 class sizes in the middle 20s, and class sizes at the middle and high school level in the upper 20s, lower 30s, or whatever seems best for a given classroom and subject matter.

Much more use should be made of better trained teachers’ aides and talented volunteers to draw students aside for highly focused work on skills that are lagging.