The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Must Define Excellence in Education, Establish Its Own Identity, and Move Forward with No Such Wasteful Exercises as the Meeting of 24 March 2015

Seventh Major Communication to MPS School Board


All tasks are made more difficult when the fundamental basis for fulfilling them has not been established. This was revealed clearly at the wasteful exercise of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in conducting the meeting of 24 March 2015.


I was there for the first hour of that meeting before I had to depart to oversee and teach in the Tuesday Night Tutoring Program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, one facet of the multiple, seven-day-a-week efforts now being conducted under the New Salem Educational Initiative. I sat through one hour that featured mostly a simple message delivered by Michael Cassidy, Executive Director of the Council of Great City Schools. In a longwinded exposition of consultant-speak, Mr. Cassidy told the members of the school board that in hiring a superintendent, they wanted to do the following:


1) make sure that in hiring a new superintendent they choose a person whose views are in sync with the goals of the school board and administration of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and


2) be clear that while leadership and favorable personality features are desirable, these should be considered only inasmuch as they indicate ability to implement the goals of the school district, presumably already identified in the 2020 plan for improved student performance, especially outcomes at schools where student achievement has languished.


That was it. That took 35 minutes.


Then District member Don Samuels asked about the desirability of having a forceful leader, given that such a person might prove headstrong in moving the school district in a direction not consonant with the established goals of the school district.


Mr. Cassidy then took another 15 minutes to tell Mr. Samuels what should have already been clear in #2 above: Yes, be careful of being swayed by personality characteristics and ensure that commitment to the goals of the district is paramount.


That was it. Another 15 minutes wasted.


Then, for the final 10 minutes that I had for sitting at this temporally untidy and substantively uninformative affair, board members discussed when they might meet to discuss a set of priorities to which they could agree in the hiring of the new school superintendent. District Members Tracine Asberry and Carla Bates took the lead in touting such a meeting, conveying that this should be done before moving forward to hire a firm to conduct the search.


Board chair Jenny Arneson secured from Mr. Cassidy assurance that he needed no longer than an additional hour for his comments (I was hard-pressed not to laugh at that one); although District Member Rebecca Gagnon expressed concerned that this might rush the august presentation of Mr. Cassidy, the board seemed headed for a 7:00 PM discussion on the matter of consensual priorities for this gathering that was slated to end at 8:00 PM.


Here is my advice and commentary to the board on matters raised at and concerning that meeting of 24 March 2015:


1) You should have already essentially decided to hire Michael Goar. He’s good enough.
 
Any need to appear even handed via an open search should have been handled quickly, in house, under the auspices of your own human resources staff. With reference to my previous articles on the matter, don’t fantasize about there being a lot of great candidates out there.


With an in-house approach to a formal search, you might have found a candidate that you felt suited the needs of the Minneapolis Public Schools better than does Mr. Goar. And this could be true now you have opted for the more expensive search firm route.  But this is not likely.


As the district’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Goar worked with Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson in establishing Focused Instruction (curricular consistency for subject areas at each grade level throughout the district), High Priority Schools (boosting performance at schools with students who have struggled academically), and Shift (moving resources closer to students and those who actually work with them in the classroom). You should have just secured Mr. Goar’s commitment to those three most important programs and then moved forward rapidly to hire him or someone else to implement those programs.


There should have never been something called a Chief Executive Officer when there is a position called a Superintendent. But as long as Mr. Goar did occupy that duplicative position, you should now tap his familiarity with the key programs that will maximize chances of reaching the goals of the 2020 Plan.


>>>>>     In cutting district central office staff from 651 to 531 (a reduction of 120 positions, 18% lower than the previous level), Mr. Goar has done as well in that regard as even my still unsatisfied self can realistically expect for a while.


>>>>>     Now you do need to make sure that Mr. Goar is fully committed to Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools.


The promotion of Community Partnership Schools has gotten more verbal play under Goar than have two of the three landmark legacies of Bernadeia Johnson:  To his great credit, Goar has made sizable strides in moving the Shift program forward;  but he and his staff have not spoken very often about Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools during these past three months.


Community Partnership Schools are unnecessary if the school district goes forward at full throttle on Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools. Do not allow yourselves to be distracted by yet another program. Either jettison the Community Partnership Schools or insist that pseudo-charter schools at Bancroft, Folwell, Nellie Stone Johnson, and Ramsey observe the curricular coherence of Focused Instruction.


2) Decide, consistent with the goals of Focused Instruction that you embrace the following definitions of excellence;


>>>>>     An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum emphasizing math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and fine arts to all students throughout the K-12 years.


>>>>>     An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge in her or his subject area, with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.




3) As members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, commit to your own accountability and your own obligation to become informed on all matters pertinent to educational excellence and excellent teachers.


You should already have gained clarity as to your own goals and priorities before that desultory meeting of 24 March 2015.


As Albert Einstein, B. F. Skinner, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett would tell you, each according that person’s particular genius, the complexity should come in full detail, not in basic principles.


For you, those basic principles should be the following:


1) Move forward with full implementation of Focused Instruction.


2) Do everything necessary to raise student performance to grade level in math, reading, and all major subject areas, especially at the High Priority Schools.


3) Thank Michael Goar for his courageous and astute work with regard to Shift.


4) Insist that Mr. Goar or any other new superintendent follow through on the three key programs of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift.


5) Make a forceful and enduring commitment to your own accountability for an excellent education, imparted to all of our precious children.


If you so insist and she or he follows through, you will attain the goals of the 2020 plan and achieve excellence in the Minneapolis Public Schools. If you first gain clarity on fundamental precepts and overall goals, and commit yourselves to accountability for achieving these goals, you will not waste your time in degraded exercises such as that to which you subjected yourselves and observers at the 24 March 2015 meeting.


You can thereby save your energies for discussion of issues that really matter, toward the attainment of educational excellence, so that we may witness the cessation of cyclical poverty and the attainment of equitable opportunity worthy of the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.