Two major circumstances in the tragicomedy that is Minnesota legislative and executive policy that purports to be seeking excellence in K-12 education are these:
1) No one in Minnesota government has a firm definition of the putative goal: an “excellent education”; and
2) No one making or executing our law has any expressed idea as to the most serious impediments to achieving an “excellent education.”
I can help.
An “excellent education” is a matter of teachers possessing breadth and depth of knowledge imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum to all students.
An “excellent teacher” is a professional having broad and deep subject area knowledge and the pedagogical ability to transmit that knowledge to all students.
Such definitions put into sharp relief the impediments that prevent us from achieving an excellent education.
At the root of the problem is the spectacle of professors in departments, colleges, and schools of education who do not believe that systematically acquired and mentally stored knowledge of the liberal arts is important. They believe in so-called “constructivist” approaches that begin with the knowledge base and life experiences of the student as a foundation for seeking information that is relevant to the particular young person.
This so-called “progressive” approach to education is implemented upon the assumption that the systematic, sequential accumulation of knowledge in math, natural science, social science, history, literature, and the fine arts is not important. Only those topics that passionately drive a given student, for which a teacher serves as “facilitator” in accumulating this particularistic information, are important. As to accumulated knowledge from the human inheritance, one can always “look it up.”
But this view of education and the teacher is deeply flawed.
Imagine going to a cardiologist with complaints about chest pains and being told that the doctor would have to take a moment to look up what is known about arterial blockage, because this was not covered in medical school.
Consider describing to an attorney an experience whereby police officers broke into one’s home without a search warrant and being told by this lawyer that this sounds like an interesting predicament that the barrister would have to research, because such instances were not part of the law school curriculum.
Taught by such professors promulgating the “constructivist,“ “progressive” approach to knowledge and pedagogy, our K-5 teachers, especially, enter our classrooms woefully underprepared. Those who teach at the grades 6-12 level are a bit better trained, because most get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., physics, math, history, economics, English literature, fine arts). But low licensure requirements mean that those who enter our middle schools and high schools are not always truly masters of their fields.
Graduate programs for teachers, in the meantime, provide programs for easily attained master’s degrees that are financial spigots for universities.
Teachers unions act in ways to protect such unprepared teachers. Most central school district and school building administrators are too busy protecting their sinecures of substantial remuneration to contest teacher union power, and thus the status quo prevails. Our children walk across stages to receive diplomas in name only. Most could not tell you the difference between debt and deficit; the Roman and Byzantine Empires; Newtonian and Einstein’s physics; Ego and Superego; or the literary styles of Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
And they could not tell you the essential differences, we might note in this Black History Month, in the approaches to the African American dilemma in the early 20th century as espoused by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Marcus Garvey.
Most of our Minnesota legislators, Governor Dayton, and education commissioner Brenda Cassellius could not tell you much about these things either. And this is the bunch of ne’er-do-wells who will continue to gut state academic standards, eliminate MCAs as graduation mandates because they reveal uncomfortable truths, and act to preserve a knowledge-poor system of K-12 education while claiming that preschools will provide the route to college readiness, whatever happens in grades kindergarten through twelve.
This is what anyone truly interested in K-12 education needs to know about educational excellence and the impediments to it in Minnesota. Then that person will understand that reform will never come at the state level.
The needed overhaul of K-12 education will ride the waves of energy emitted by local school district activists who work in the interest of children while state legislators lunge about in their chambers of ignorance.
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 17, 2014
Adoption of Common Core Standards Would Be a Statement for K-12 Cohesion--- But Central School District Activism Remains Key to the Overhaul of Public Education
Adoption of Common Core Standards would constitute a statement for cohesion in K-12 education in Minnesota.
In this respect, instituting these logically sequenced skill and knowledge sets for grade by grade introduction throughout the K-12 years would be a favorable move by education decision-makers in the state. We must always be aware, though, that the education establishment--- and both Democratic and Republican partisans--- always sweep in to undermine any positive efforts to overhaul K-12 education. Thus the key locus for activists truly desiring to make the needed change in the way we educate our young people will be the central school district level, such as that represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In an ideal world, we would adopt and forcefully move to implement the Common Core Standards. In the very real world in which these standards were devised, the results of a diverse and bipartisan committee of educators carefully crafted the Common Core Standards that present an academic program of great integrity and continuity for implementation throughout the K-12 years.
A detailed examination of the Common Core website demonstrates just how wrong and ill-informed was Minnesota House member Jim Abeler in asserting that the standards would be a move toward academic mediocrity in Minnesota. In fact, the standards are academically rigorous, offering both a route to a greater knowledge base for our students, from which Common Core also challenges students to reason and analyze based on the knowledge that they accumulate as they move from grade to grade.
In math, the Common Core sequence at the K-2 level would find students progressing sequentially through ascending levels of additive and subtractive operations, knowledge of place value, and increasing mastery of geometric shapes in two and three dimensions. By Grade 3, students move on to mastery of basic fractions and an array of multiplicative and divisional tasks. By Grade 4, students move to advanced challenges in previously acquired skill, and they focus on important geometric concepts such as parallelism, perpendicularity, symmetry, and angle measurement for a variety of figures. At Grade 5, students perform increasingly difficult tasks with fractions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; they learn pre-algebra skills such as parenthetical placement, bracketing, and order of operations; and they are challenged to make good decisions in applying mathematical operations in various real-world situations.
At the middle school (Grades 6-8) level, students move through logical sequences such as those pertinent to ratio, rate, proportion, similarity, and congruence; and they cover many concepts that once were part of introductory courses in algebra and geometry in high school: algebraic functions; linear equations; and applications of the Pythagorean Theorem. At the high school (Grades 9-12) level, there is a specified sequence of skill acquisition, at the end of which students have mastered matrices, complex exponents, multivariable equations and inequalities, geometric proofs, trigonometric functions, and statistical probability. All of this prepares students for the highest level courses offered at the high school level, most especially calculus.
Similarly, the Common Core sequence offers great rigor and logical sequence for English language arts and for history, social studies, science, and technical subjects. As students move through the K-12 years, they are challenged to acquire increasingly sophisticated vocabulary; and to read a variety of literary forms (fables, folktales, poems, short stories, novels, historical texts, scientific tracts, and technical manuals) at a high level of reading comprehension. They engage in writing tasks throughout the K-12 years, and by the middle school and high school years have advanced to highly sophisticated levels of literary expression and research capability. They also have mastered skills pertinent to becoming discerning listeners and adroit speakers, including practice with oral poetic interpretation, dramatic performance, and oratorical expression.
Thus, Jim Abeler is clearly wrong on the matter of academic rigor. If students in Minnesota truly mastered curricula implemented according to these standards, they would walk across the stage much better educated than the graduates whom we now allow to claim high school diplomas.
And yet the reality is that we already have Minnesota state standards that are similar to these descriptive of the Common Core. But the education establishment comprised of education professors and the teachers and administrators trained in traditional departments, schools, and colleges of education inevitably find ways to circumvent any move toward increased rigor, enhanced teacher quality, or meaningful change in K-12 education. Ill-informed and politically purchased politicians participate in this denigration.
In this regard, sadly, any dispute over Common Core will be as irrelevant as all of the verbiage expended in discussion over the years as to Outcome Based Education, Best Practices, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top. Unlike the best education systems internationally, which are in fact centralized at the national level, we in the United States officially opt for local control, and any effort for overhaul of K-12 education ultimately dissipates under clouds of ignorance and irresponsibility.
This is what makes mobilization and activism at the central school district level so important, and underscores the critical significance of steps being taken by Bernadeia Johnson and her team at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to bring higher quality instruction and curriculum to students. Long disserved, these students now have genuine opportunity to succeed if MPS efforts to implement Shift programs pertinent to Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools come to fruition.
Those truly interested in K-12 education in Minneapolis need to be attentive and active in support of these efforts, in the knowledge that only hard work at the local school district level can impel the needed overhaul of public education in the United States.
In this respect, instituting these logically sequenced skill and knowledge sets for grade by grade introduction throughout the K-12 years would be a favorable move by education decision-makers in the state. We must always be aware, though, that the education establishment--- and both Democratic and Republican partisans--- always sweep in to undermine any positive efforts to overhaul K-12 education. Thus the key locus for activists truly desiring to make the needed change in the way we educate our young people will be the central school district level, such as that represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In an ideal world, we would adopt and forcefully move to implement the Common Core Standards. In the very real world in which these standards were devised, the results of a diverse and bipartisan committee of educators carefully crafted the Common Core Standards that present an academic program of great integrity and continuity for implementation throughout the K-12 years.
A detailed examination of the Common Core website demonstrates just how wrong and ill-informed was Minnesota House member Jim Abeler in asserting that the standards would be a move toward academic mediocrity in Minnesota. In fact, the standards are academically rigorous, offering both a route to a greater knowledge base for our students, from which Common Core also challenges students to reason and analyze based on the knowledge that they accumulate as they move from grade to grade.
In math, the Common Core sequence at the K-2 level would find students progressing sequentially through ascending levels of additive and subtractive operations, knowledge of place value, and increasing mastery of geometric shapes in two and three dimensions. By Grade 3, students move on to mastery of basic fractions and an array of multiplicative and divisional tasks. By Grade 4, students move to advanced challenges in previously acquired skill, and they focus on important geometric concepts such as parallelism, perpendicularity, symmetry, and angle measurement for a variety of figures. At Grade 5, students perform increasingly difficult tasks with fractions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; they learn pre-algebra skills such as parenthetical placement, bracketing, and order of operations; and they are challenged to make good decisions in applying mathematical operations in various real-world situations.
At the middle school (Grades 6-8) level, students move through logical sequences such as those pertinent to ratio, rate, proportion, similarity, and congruence; and they cover many concepts that once were part of introductory courses in algebra and geometry in high school: algebraic functions; linear equations; and applications of the Pythagorean Theorem. At the high school (Grades 9-12) level, there is a specified sequence of skill acquisition, at the end of which students have mastered matrices, complex exponents, multivariable equations and inequalities, geometric proofs, trigonometric functions, and statistical probability. All of this prepares students for the highest level courses offered at the high school level, most especially calculus.
Similarly, the Common Core sequence offers great rigor and logical sequence for English language arts and for history, social studies, science, and technical subjects. As students move through the K-12 years, they are challenged to acquire increasingly sophisticated vocabulary; and to read a variety of literary forms (fables, folktales, poems, short stories, novels, historical texts, scientific tracts, and technical manuals) at a high level of reading comprehension. They engage in writing tasks throughout the K-12 years, and by the middle school and high school years have advanced to highly sophisticated levels of literary expression and research capability. They also have mastered skills pertinent to becoming discerning listeners and adroit speakers, including practice with oral poetic interpretation, dramatic performance, and oratorical expression.
Thus, Jim Abeler is clearly wrong on the matter of academic rigor. If students in Minnesota truly mastered curricula implemented according to these standards, they would walk across the stage much better educated than the graduates whom we now allow to claim high school diplomas.
And yet the reality is that we already have Minnesota state standards that are similar to these descriptive of the Common Core. But the education establishment comprised of education professors and the teachers and administrators trained in traditional departments, schools, and colleges of education inevitably find ways to circumvent any move toward increased rigor, enhanced teacher quality, or meaningful change in K-12 education. Ill-informed and politically purchased politicians participate in this denigration.
In this regard, sadly, any dispute over Common Core will be as irrelevant as all of the verbiage expended in discussion over the years as to Outcome Based Education, Best Practices, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top. Unlike the best education systems internationally, which are in fact centralized at the national level, we in the United States officially opt for local control, and any effort for overhaul of K-12 education ultimately dissipates under clouds of ignorance and irresponsibility.
This is what makes mobilization and activism at the central school district level so important, and underscores the critical significance of steps being taken by Bernadeia Johnson and her team at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to bring higher quality instruction and curriculum to students. Long disserved, these students now have genuine opportunity to succeed if MPS efforts to implement Shift programs pertinent to Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools come to fruition.
Those truly interested in K-12 education in Minneapolis need to be attentive and active in support of these efforts, in the knowledge that only hard work at the local school district level can impel the needed overhaul of public education in the United States.
Feb 10, 2014
Denise Specht, Mary Cathryn Ricker, and Lynn Nordgren Manifest the Resistance to Meaningful Change That Characterizes the Education Establishment
Denise Specht, Mary Cathryn Ricker, and Lynn Nordgren manifest the resistance
to meaningful change in K-12 schools that characterizes the education establishment.
Specht is the director of Education Minnesota, the state’s hybrid teachers union that affiliates both with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA). Education Minnesota is the second best funded lobbying organization in the state, behind only the National Rifle Association (NRA). During the last legislative session of 2013, this organization prevailed upon a Minnesota State Legislature controlled by the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party to eliminate the necessity for students to pass the Grade 9 GRAD Writing Test and the Grade 10 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) for reading in order to graduate. As a chief financial contributor to the campaigns of DFL members, Education Minnesota is always positioned to secure the votes it needs to resist measures that raise academic standards, improve teacher quality, and offer alternative paths to teacher certification.
Specht recently argued in an opinion piece written for the Star Tribune that Education Minnesota cares about the views of the students, families, and community members served by the union’s teachers. She offered as evidence the forums that have been held around the state, at which members of the public were invited to give their views on the schools: what they like, what they dislike, and what they would like changed. She contrasted this solicitation of public opinion with the personal and corporate agendas promoted by those attending a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event held recently in St. Paul, advancing ideas for change in K-12 education.
But in fact so-called community events staged by the teachers union are always well-controlled, and every effort is made to quash any voice of genuine dissent. Certainly, Lynn Nordgren was not interested in hearing what I had to say at the negotiations between her Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT, a school district level affiliate of Education Minnesota) and representatives of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). I attended five of these sessions before the MFT called for mediation, which under the prevailing protocol proscribes public participation. I spoke just three times in the course of the negotiations that I attended.
At the first negotiation session of my attendance, Nordgren was at one point claiming that the MCAs (which the schools of Minneapolis are still administering this academic year of 2013-2014) are not well-matched to the skill sets designated by state standards as most important for student mastery at various grade levels.
In fact, when one goes online at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) website and peruses, for example, the Item Sampler for the Grade 3 Math MCA, one observes items testing for skills that are exactly what a third grader needs to master: word problems involving decisions as to whether to add and subtract, items calling for “regrouping” (“carrying” or “borrowing” respectively) for addition and subtraction, tasks calling for multiplication or division, fundamental conceptualization of fractions, and tasks necessitating understanding of basic tables, charts and graphs. Similarly, the reading exercises on the Grade 3 Reading MCA Item Sampler utilize vocabulary and paragraph structures that a student at the third grade level should understand for good reading comprehension.
When I asked a fellow attendee what the procedure was for a member of the public rising to speak, he told me that there really was no such procedure, but that getting a note to one of the negotiators might secure the opportunity. I did get a note to Rick Kreyer (MPS Human Resources chief and lead negotiator for MPS), who asked for the assent of Nordgren, who responded with a cheery, “Sure.”
Nordgren did not seem cheery for long. When I voiced my own view about the grade and skill appropriateness of the MCAs, she was not pleased, but she gathered her social skills and approached me in the aftermath of the session as she approaches so many, to gain their goodwill. When I stood firm on my own assertions and voiced concerns about the instructional level in the schools of MPS, Nordgren took offense, and she and I had a heated exchange.
When I asked for a similar chance to speak at the second session of my attendance, I was told that public comment would henceforth be heard only informally, at breaks. Nevertheless, as I departed on that occasion, I stated that the Harvest Prep schools hire freely according to the perceived ability of the prospective teacher, calling Nordgren on her false claim that MPS does the same. On one other occasion I asked a question pertinent to the basis for hiring of teachers once positions became vacant due to resignation or leave of absence.
These questions of mine were the only three public comments made at the three negotiation sessions that I attended. And yet this limited public input was apparently too much for Nordgren, whose objection to such public participation was among the reasons that the MFT filed for mediation.
As mid-February approaches, Mary Cathryn Ricker (head of the St. Paul Teachers Federation [SPTF]) is saying that her negotiators are becoming frustrated at the refusal of those negotiating for the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) to consider class size reduction and the quantity of standardized testing as contract issues. The district representatives counter that these are not contract issues.
Nevertheless, Ricker says that she is considering putting a teachers strike on the basis of these issues before her membership. In making such comment, Ricker has claimed widespread support from parents and community members, estimating that 2,000 people showed up at one event in demonstration of support for the union.
Whatever the truth of the latter claim, those who truly support the overhaul of K-12 education for the benefit of our precious children should get busy organizing such large--- and larger--- congregations of supporters for an agenda of change. The changes would include greater hiring flexibility to get the best teachers in the classroom, regardless of seniority; the institution of a new curriculum that delivers broad and deep subject information across the liberal arts; and highly targeted interventions to address the severe academic deficits of the most challenged students.
Teachers unions do what they should do, inasmuch as they agitate for good wages and working conditions for teachers. But leaders and union stalwarts by definition have their own, rather than student, interests in view during contract negotiations, and in the ongoing effort to maintain the status quo.
Hence, those who know that school systems should be about serving the best interests of students must construct their own agenda for change and agitate for those changes at public forums and in an ongoing mass movement.
Those working for the overhaul of K-12 education will always support teachers of true excellence, but they will oppose public figures such as Denise Specht, Lynn Nordgren, and Mary Cathryn Ricker who maneuver to preserve the interests of a powerful political block, rather than the interests of either teachers of excellence or the students who will only be served properly when teachers of the highest caliber are the norm, rather than the exception.
Specht is the director of Education Minnesota, the state’s hybrid teachers union that affiliates both with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA). Education Minnesota is the second best funded lobbying organization in the state, behind only the National Rifle Association (NRA). During the last legislative session of 2013, this organization prevailed upon a Minnesota State Legislature controlled by the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party to eliminate the necessity for students to pass the Grade 9 GRAD Writing Test and the Grade 10 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) for reading in order to graduate. As a chief financial contributor to the campaigns of DFL members, Education Minnesota is always positioned to secure the votes it needs to resist measures that raise academic standards, improve teacher quality, and offer alternative paths to teacher certification.
Specht recently argued in an opinion piece written for the Star Tribune that Education Minnesota cares about the views of the students, families, and community members served by the union’s teachers. She offered as evidence the forums that have been held around the state, at which members of the public were invited to give their views on the schools: what they like, what they dislike, and what they would like changed. She contrasted this solicitation of public opinion with the personal and corporate agendas promoted by those attending a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event held recently in St. Paul, advancing ideas for change in K-12 education.
But in fact so-called community events staged by the teachers union are always well-controlled, and every effort is made to quash any voice of genuine dissent. Certainly, Lynn Nordgren was not interested in hearing what I had to say at the negotiations between her Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT, a school district level affiliate of Education Minnesota) and representatives of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). I attended five of these sessions before the MFT called for mediation, which under the prevailing protocol proscribes public participation. I spoke just three times in the course of the negotiations that I attended.
At the first negotiation session of my attendance, Nordgren was at one point claiming that the MCAs (which the schools of Minneapolis are still administering this academic year of 2013-2014) are not well-matched to the skill sets designated by state standards as most important for student mastery at various grade levels.
In fact, when one goes online at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) website and peruses, for example, the Item Sampler for the Grade 3 Math MCA, one observes items testing for skills that are exactly what a third grader needs to master: word problems involving decisions as to whether to add and subtract, items calling for “regrouping” (“carrying” or “borrowing” respectively) for addition and subtraction, tasks calling for multiplication or division, fundamental conceptualization of fractions, and tasks necessitating understanding of basic tables, charts and graphs. Similarly, the reading exercises on the Grade 3 Reading MCA Item Sampler utilize vocabulary and paragraph structures that a student at the third grade level should understand for good reading comprehension.
When I asked a fellow attendee what the procedure was for a member of the public rising to speak, he told me that there really was no such procedure, but that getting a note to one of the negotiators might secure the opportunity. I did get a note to Rick Kreyer (MPS Human Resources chief and lead negotiator for MPS), who asked for the assent of Nordgren, who responded with a cheery, “Sure.”
Nordgren did not seem cheery for long. When I voiced my own view about the grade and skill appropriateness of the MCAs, she was not pleased, but she gathered her social skills and approached me in the aftermath of the session as she approaches so many, to gain their goodwill. When I stood firm on my own assertions and voiced concerns about the instructional level in the schools of MPS, Nordgren took offense, and she and I had a heated exchange.
When I asked for a similar chance to speak at the second session of my attendance, I was told that public comment would henceforth be heard only informally, at breaks. Nevertheless, as I departed on that occasion, I stated that the Harvest Prep schools hire freely according to the perceived ability of the prospective teacher, calling Nordgren on her false claim that MPS does the same. On one other occasion I asked a question pertinent to the basis for hiring of teachers once positions became vacant due to resignation or leave of absence.
These questions of mine were the only three public comments made at the three negotiation sessions that I attended. And yet this limited public input was apparently too much for Nordgren, whose objection to such public participation was among the reasons that the MFT filed for mediation.
As mid-February approaches, Mary Cathryn Ricker (head of the St. Paul Teachers Federation [SPTF]) is saying that her negotiators are becoming frustrated at the refusal of those negotiating for the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) to consider class size reduction and the quantity of standardized testing as contract issues. The district representatives counter that these are not contract issues.
Nevertheless, Ricker says that she is considering putting a teachers strike on the basis of these issues before her membership. In making such comment, Ricker has claimed widespread support from parents and community members, estimating that 2,000 people showed up at one event in demonstration of support for the union.
Whatever the truth of the latter claim, those who truly support the overhaul of K-12 education for the benefit of our precious children should get busy organizing such large--- and larger--- congregations of supporters for an agenda of change. The changes would include greater hiring flexibility to get the best teachers in the classroom, regardless of seniority; the institution of a new curriculum that delivers broad and deep subject information across the liberal arts; and highly targeted interventions to address the severe academic deficits of the most challenged students.
Teachers unions do what they should do, inasmuch as they agitate for good wages and working conditions for teachers. But leaders and union stalwarts by definition have their own, rather than student, interests in view during contract negotiations, and in the ongoing effort to maintain the status quo.
Hence, those who know that school systems should be about serving the best interests of students must construct their own agenda for change and agitate for those changes at public forums and in an ongoing mass movement.
Those working for the overhaul of K-12 education will always support teachers of true excellence, but they will oppose public figures such as Denise Specht, Lynn Nordgren, and Mary Cathryn Ricker who maneuver to preserve the interests of a powerful political block, rather than the interests of either teachers of excellence or the students who will only be served properly when teachers of the highest caliber are the norm, rather than the exception.
Central Task at the Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement Will Be More Difficult to Accomplish Than Was the Core Goal at the First Stage
Any meaningful observance of Black History Month will include recognition that the overhaul of K-12 education is the central task at the second stage of the Civil Rights Movement. That task will be even more difficult to accomplish than was the core goal at the first stage.
At the core of the first stage of the Civil Rights Movement was the matter of equal political rights for people, regardless of race or ethnicity. This was the concern of W. E. B. Dubois when he and others in the Niagara Movement launched the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Dubois had not agreed with Booker T. Washington that economic issues should be resolved first. The latter had argued that African American people should train themselves for adroit mastery at gainful occupations, securing themselves economically before making an aggressive push for equality of political participation. DuBois and his fellow founders of the NAACP touted a strategy in joint pursuit of full political and economic rights under the United States Constitution as promised particularly in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
The years between 1910 and 1954 represented the heyday of the NAACP. Patiently and persistently, NAACP lawyers chipped away at the Jim Crow framework of segregation until desegregation of schools was recognized as mandatory in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision won by Thurgood Marshall and his team of NAACP lawyers in 1954.
The main thrust on the first stage of the Civil Rights Movement for another ten years continued as agitation for political rights. Martin Luther King and others made good on the seminal idea of A. Philip Randolph for a March on Washington. Participants in this event of mass mobilization of 1963 joined those who rode buses as integrated contingents of riders into the heart of the segregated Old South, and those who conducted sit-ins at lunch counters, in applying the kind of political pressure that culminated in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
At this point, the goal that had animated W. E. B. DuBois was substantially accomplished. The Old South would not give in easily, but the end of Jim Crow was in sight as of 1965. There followed a bevy of legislative initiatives that ended segregation in residential areas and gave people long denied access to the halls of higher education and the seats of corporate power a genuine chance to realize professional success of the middle class sort.
As violent and difficult as the struggle for political rights had been, though, there remained the even harder task of achieving the goal that had motivated Booker T. Washington and that became the prime focus of Martin Luther King during the last two years of his life: equity of economic opportunity. The legislative initiatives of the 1960s had forged a viable path for those African Americans positioned to grasp the newly opened opportunities for middle class economic success.
But left behind in central urban districts, festering with anger, were the poorest of the poor, those who saw little path of the own for a better way of life.
In this Black History Month of February 2014, we must realize that only with the overhaul of K-12 education can those dwelling in varying moods of dissolution and rage find their path to economic opportunity. The issues involved in this struggle are more complex than were those that could largely be accomplished by winning court cases and passing enforceable political legislation.
The education establishment is labyrinthine, loaded with vested interests at many points in the maze. There are education professors who impart to the teachers whom they train an impoverished curriculum and weak pedagogy, embarrassingly bad teacher training programs that are nevertheless huge lucrative revenue producers for universities, teachers unions that will always fight against merit pay and objective evaluations of their performance, and K-12 administrators and officials occupying highly remunerative sinecures while overseeing schools that deliver a quality of education of the most egregious sort.
Thus, attainment of the key goal of economic justice at the second stage of the Civil Rights Movement will be even harder to achieve than was the goal of political parity that was central at the first stage. The opposition is located in a more convoluted system and is not always as prominently positioned as were execrable personages such as Bull Connor and Lester Maddox.
This opposition is entrenched at many positions in the education establishment. To uproot this opposition will require an informed strategy for persistent struggle and will necessitate the personal involvement of many of you reading this article. But the effort is of paramount importance: Only a revolution in K-12 education can resolve the issue of economic justice that was the central concern of both Booker T. Washington at the advent of the 20th century and Martin Luther King in the late 1960s.
Attainment of economic justice necessitates a revolution in K-12 education with you, the public, as participant. The struggle will not be easy. It will be opposed my many entrenched interests. But nothing could be more important. Only with economic justice for all citizens will the United States become the democracy of our imagination.
At the core of the first stage of the Civil Rights Movement was the matter of equal political rights for people, regardless of race or ethnicity. This was the concern of W. E. B. Dubois when he and others in the Niagara Movement launched the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Dubois had not agreed with Booker T. Washington that economic issues should be resolved first. The latter had argued that African American people should train themselves for adroit mastery at gainful occupations, securing themselves economically before making an aggressive push for equality of political participation. DuBois and his fellow founders of the NAACP touted a strategy in joint pursuit of full political and economic rights under the United States Constitution as promised particularly in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
The years between 1910 and 1954 represented the heyday of the NAACP. Patiently and persistently, NAACP lawyers chipped away at the Jim Crow framework of segregation until desegregation of schools was recognized as mandatory in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision won by Thurgood Marshall and his team of NAACP lawyers in 1954.
The main thrust on the first stage of the Civil Rights Movement for another ten years continued as agitation for political rights. Martin Luther King and others made good on the seminal idea of A. Philip Randolph for a March on Washington. Participants in this event of mass mobilization of 1963 joined those who rode buses as integrated contingents of riders into the heart of the segregated Old South, and those who conducted sit-ins at lunch counters, in applying the kind of political pressure that culminated in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
At this point, the goal that had animated W. E. B. DuBois was substantially accomplished. The Old South would not give in easily, but the end of Jim Crow was in sight as of 1965. There followed a bevy of legislative initiatives that ended segregation in residential areas and gave people long denied access to the halls of higher education and the seats of corporate power a genuine chance to realize professional success of the middle class sort.
As violent and difficult as the struggle for political rights had been, though, there remained the even harder task of achieving the goal that had motivated Booker T. Washington and that became the prime focus of Martin Luther King during the last two years of his life: equity of economic opportunity. The legislative initiatives of the 1960s had forged a viable path for those African Americans positioned to grasp the newly opened opportunities for middle class economic success.
But left behind in central urban districts, festering with anger, were the poorest of the poor, those who saw little path of the own for a better way of life.
In this Black History Month of February 2014, we must realize that only with the overhaul of K-12 education can those dwelling in varying moods of dissolution and rage find their path to economic opportunity. The issues involved in this struggle are more complex than were those that could largely be accomplished by winning court cases and passing enforceable political legislation.
The education establishment is labyrinthine, loaded with vested interests at many points in the maze. There are education professors who impart to the teachers whom they train an impoverished curriculum and weak pedagogy, embarrassingly bad teacher training programs that are nevertheless huge lucrative revenue producers for universities, teachers unions that will always fight against merit pay and objective evaluations of their performance, and K-12 administrators and officials occupying highly remunerative sinecures while overseeing schools that deliver a quality of education of the most egregious sort.
Thus, attainment of the key goal of economic justice at the second stage of the Civil Rights Movement will be even harder to achieve than was the goal of political parity that was central at the first stage. The opposition is located in a more convoluted system and is not always as prominently positioned as were execrable personages such as Bull Connor and Lester Maddox.
This opposition is entrenched at many positions in the education establishment. To uproot this opposition will require an informed strategy for persistent struggle and will necessitate the personal involvement of many of you reading this article. But the effort is of paramount importance: Only a revolution in K-12 education can resolve the issue of economic justice that was the central concern of both Booker T. Washington at the advent of the 20th century and Martin Luther King in the late 1960s.
Attainment of economic justice necessitates a revolution in K-12 education with you, the public, as participant. The struggle will not be easy. It will be opposed my many entrenched interests. But nothing could be more important. Only with economic justice for all citizens will the United States become the democracy of our imagination.
Feb 9, 2014
The Overhaul of K-12 Education Requires a Mass Movement
As we move deeper into this Black History Month, we must realize that the overhaul of K-12 education is central to the Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement, and that the needed revolution in public education requires a mass movement.
Historically, the most challenging agendas for social change have required popular participation. This was true of the quest for women’s right to equal citizenship, succeeding through increasingly participatory stages from attendance at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, to agitation for passage of the 19th Amendment (1920) for women’s suffrage, to much larger demonstrations of the late 1960s for fuller equality in the corridors of professional and corporate power.
Similarly, mass participation in the quest for constitutional and statutory justice for African Americans gained momentum with the courageous protests of A. Philip Randolph and his Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1930s and 1940s. Randolph was a pioneer in the kind of agitation that would eventually materialize as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Such pressure necessitated highly aggressive action by leaders and organizations with large popular followings: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, led by Martin Luther King), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE, led by Floyd McKissick), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, led by Stokely Carmichael [later known as Kwame Toure), the Black Panthers (Bobby Seale and Huey Newton), and the Nation of Islam (“Black Muslims,” with Malcolm X as chief spokesperson).
The overhaul of K-12 education will require the sort of agitation and mass involvement that characterized these organizations. The impediments to achieving the necessary revolution are abundant, and the vested interests to be overcome are daunting. Education professors impart to the teachers whom they train an impoverished curriculum and weak pedagogy; they will not give up their approaches or positions lightly. Teacher training programs of departments, schools, and colleges of education are lucrative revenue producers for universities; administrators at these universities will hold on to these insidious programs as long as they can.
Teachers unions will fight objective evaluations of their performance and merit-based pay in order to maintain the status quo that results in so much mediocrity in the classrooms of our K-12 students. In the halls of central school district edifices, those occupying highly remunerative sinecures will give up their positions and their policies only if a courageous superintendent says that it must be so.
The quite remarkable turn of events is that Bernadeia Johnson is proving to be such a superintendent at the Minneapolis Public Schools. She recognizes that the status quo can no longer abide, and that new policies must be implemented. Very specifically, she knows that a rich liberal arts curriculum must be standardized and imparted to all students at particular grade levels; such a program is being implemented in the form of Focused Instruction. She knows that teachers must be retrained in order to implement the new curriculum; thus, she has designated Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch as her point person in this initiative.
Superintendent Johnson knows that she needs flexibility in hiring and targeting interventions in behalf of the most struggling students at High Priority Schools; accordingly, Human Resource Operations Executive Director Rick Kreyer is seeking agreement to this new “Shift” strategy from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers in negotiating a new contract.
Further, Johnson has placed Associate Superintendent Sara Paul in position to examine effective approaches at schools such as Harvest Prep and the Hiawatha Academies for application at High Priority Schools and at new schools of innovative design.
Ultimately, though, we cannot depend on such outliers of charter school success or on voucher-backed privatization to serve the mass of students failed by the public schools. Rather, we must overhaul our centralized systems of public education such as the Minneapolis Public Schools.
For that to happen, more members of the public must become engaged. We need a mass movement. We need dedicated individuals willing to put in the time necessary to monitor teacher-union negotiations, promote the election of school board members supportive of innovative policies, volunteer to tutor students now languishing far below grade level in math and reading, and to agitate at any available public forum for the revolution that we need in K-12 education.
Only the overhaul of K-12 education can complete the second stage of the Civil Rights Movement for economic justice, toward which Dr. King was working at the time of his death 1968.
So go ahead and sing “We Shall Overcome” yet again if you wish, and utter those verbal platitudes to the importance of Black History Month if it makes you feel better.
But know that only vigorous personal action of your own will convey that you truly understand what needs to be overcome and the nature of the next chapter that should be written for the definitive textbook on African American History.
Historically, the most challenging agendas for social change have required popular participation. This was true of the quest for women’s right to equal citizenship, succeeding through increasingly participatory stages from attendance at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, to agitation for passage of the 19th Amendment (1920) for women’s suffrage, to much larger demonstrations of the late 1960s for fuller equality in the corridors of professional and corporate power.
Similarly, mass participation in the quest for constitutional and statutory justice for African Americans gained momentum with the courageous protests of A. Philip Randolph and his Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1930s and 1940s. Randolph was a pioneer in the kind of agitation that would eventually materialize as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Such pressure necessitated highly aggressive action by leaders and organizations with large popular followings: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, led by Martin Luther King), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE, led by Floyd McKissick), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, led by Stokely Carmichael [later known as Kwame Toure), the Black Panthers (Bobby Seale and Huey Newton), and the Nation of Islam (“Black Muslims,” with Malcolm X as chief spokesperson).
The overhaul of K-12 education will require the sort of agitation and mass involvement that characterized these organizations. The impediments to achieving the necessary revolution are abundant, and the vested interests to be overcome are daunting. Education professors impart to the teachers whom they train an impoverished curriculum and weak pedagogy; they will not give up their approaches or positions lightly. Teacher training programs of departments, schools, and colleges of education are lucrative revenue producers for universities; administrators at these universities will hold on to these insidious programs as long as they can.
Teachers unions will fight objective evaluations of their performance and merit-based pay in order to maintain the status quo that results in so much mediocrity in the classrooms of our K-12 students. In the halls of central school district edifices, those occupying highly remunerative sinecures will give up their positions and their policies only if a courageous superintendent says that it must be so.
The quite remarkable turn of events is that Bernadeia Johnson is proving to be such a superintendent at the Minneapolis Public Schools. She recognizes that the status quo can no longer abide, and that new policies must be implemented. Very specifically, she knows that a rich liberal arts curriculum must be standardized and imparted to all students at particular grade levels; such a program is being implemented in the form of Focused Instruction. She knows that teachers must be retrained in order to implement the new curriculum; thus, she has designated Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch as her point person in this initiative.
Superintendent Johnson knows that she needs flexibility in hiring and targeting interventions in behalf of the most struggling students at High Priority Schools; accordingly, Human Resource Operations Executive Director Rick Kreyer is seeking agreement to this new “Shift” strategy from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers in negotiating a new contract.
Further, Johnson has placed Associate Superintendent Sara Paul in position to examine effective approaches at schools such as Harvest Prep and the Hiawatha Academies for application at High Priority Schools and at new schools of innovative design.
Ultimately, though, we cannot depend on such outliers of charter school success or on voucher-backed privatization to serve the mass of students failed by the public schools. Rather, we must overhaul our centralized systems of public education such as the Minneapolis Public Schools.
For that to happen, more members of the public must become engaged. We need a mass movement. We need dedicated individuals willing to put in the time necessary to monitor teacher-union negotiations, promote the election of school board members supportive of innovative policies, volunteer to tutor students now languishing far below grade level in math and reading, and to agitate at any available public forum for the revolution that we need in K-12 education.
Only the overhaul of K-12 education can complete the second stage of the Civil Rights Movement for economic justice, toward which Dr. King was working at the time of his death 1968.
So go ahead and sing “We Shall Overcome” yet again if you wish, and utter those verbal platitudes to the importance of Black History Month if it makes you feel better.
But know that only vigorous personal action of your own will convey that you truly understand what needs to be overcome and the nature of the next chapter that should be written for the definitive textbook on African American History.
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