To understand just how wretched was the presentation of the document, Acceleration 2020/ Educational Equity: Developing a Framework for Student Achievement for All by Kim Matier and Lanise Block at the Tuesday, 11 August 2015, meeting of the Minneapolis Board of Education, you must first grasp the major conditions for educational equity.
Understand this first, then, with regard to educational equity:
Educational equity results from three sources:
1) excellent education;
2) excellent teachers;
3) warm relationships with students and their families.
Hence, with this understanding, we have again the definitions for excellent education and excellent teachers, with a comment also on building relationships with students and their families
1)
An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum in math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts in grade-by-grade sequence to all students throughout the K-12 years.
2)
An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When educational excellence (by definition including excellent teachers who, in turn by definition, have the ability to impart knowledge to all students) prevails, educational equity is attained. Therefore, we must set about specifying curriculum for each grade throughout the K-12 years, and we must at the central school district level retrain teachers capable of delivering the challenging, deep, and broad liberal arts curriculum to all students by the time they walk across the stage at high school graduation.
3)
An excellent teacher, building principal, and any central school district personnel responsible for imparting an education of excellence to all of our precious children, should have a high level of comfort in connecting with families of students, necessarily entailing comfort with people of numerous ethnicities and economic levels.
When families understand the steps that are being taken to ensure excellent education for their children, they will respond with gratitude. So we must make sure that all school district personnel are highly adept and sensitive as they establish connections and relationships with the families of the students for whom they have the sacred duty to provide an excellent education.
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Rather than focus on the delivery of excellent education in the context of excellent relationships with students and their families, Lanise Block and Kimberly (Kim) Matier delivered a jargon-infested travesty of banal generality as apparently the best that the Office of Academic Affairs at the Minneapolis Public Schools can promote as a program for achieving equity.
In their presentations, Matier and Block stuck closely to a power point document that stated goals for the presentation to be the provision of the rationale and history for achieving educational equity; explanation of this new effort’s relationship to an existing Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment (EDIA); and designation of the timeline for steps toward finalizing the framework of the equity program, with reference to ongoing efforts synchronous with this new initiative.
The need for an equity framework was stated to be the elimination of racial predictability, development of racial and cultural skill, and the acceleration of student outcomes.
This verbiage was then tied to a stated Equity Policy 1304, which reads: “Embracing our diversity through inclusion creates an environment that leverages diversity and creates schools where students, families, community members, and employees feel welcomed, valued, and supported; and where students and staff can perform to their personal bests."
Clustered around the goal of equity, a graphic presented the following priorities: culturally linguistically responsive practices, inclusive and innovative systems, positive school-wide engagement, and effectively assessed quality core instruction and 21st century skills.
Matier and Block stated that they started by convening a group of “internal equity practitioners,” reviewing research and existing equity frameworks in the interest of developing a common understanding. They vow that they “committed to key elements of the framework” and then requested initial feedback from key community partners.
The “Draft for Educational Equity” was presented in triangular visualization placing “Collective Accountability” at the center, with “instructional transformation,” “personal transformation,” and “structural transformation” each located pictorially at one of the three angles. Then outside the triangle, on each of the three sides were given the values, “evidence-based research”; “families and communities”; and “integrated systems”; with “pedagogy of equity” topping the visual at the triangle’s apex.
These values then gained a bit of additional comment on another page with the heading, “Desired Outcomes for Systemic Change.“
Additional comment highlighted the following:
>>>>> “evidence-based policy, program, and practice,” so as to “integrate racial/ cultural competency in the development and implementation of systems to rapidly improve outcomes";
>>>>>
"pedagogy of equity," so as to “ensure targeted groups access learning with the cultural and linguistic assets of students in mind";
>>>>>
“integrated systems,” so as to “build and manage interdependent relationships that create and sustain adaptive systems to meet diverse needs” ;
>>>>>
“families and communities as education partners,” so as to “normalize the inclusion of the perspectives of our families of color and American Indian communities to interrupt marginalization.”
The next steps in the process are given according to the following timetable:
Phase One
>>>>> April 2015-October 2015
>>>>> Identify Desired Outcomes
>>>>> Develop Draft Framework and Recommend Changes to EDIA
Phase Two
>>>>> November 2015-June 2016
>>>>> Stakeholder Groups Formed
>>>>> Action Plans Developed for Desired Outcomes
>>>>> EDIA Piloted, Feedback Collected, and Final Adjustments Made
Phase Three
>>>>> January 2016-June 2016
>>>>> Board Update on Equity Framework and EDIA (January and June)
>>>>> Board Training
>>>>> Equity Audit
The document and presentation ends with a citation of work that will continue, according to certain existing offices and programs: Racial Equity Institute/ Professional Development, Coaching for Equity, B.L.A.C.K. (not listed in the power-point, so that Block explained helpfully that this acronym stands for “Black Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge”), Ethnic Studies Courses, Social Justice Fellows, Vendor Diversity Work, and EDIA.
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Phew. That’s a lot of verbiage, which we can decode as follows:
Since we’ve got a raging achievement gap, we’re going to pretend one more time that we’re addressing a problem by creating a program. We created the Office of Black Male Achievement to no noticeable effect, but no matter. You, school board members; and you, the public; can be distracted as always from the problems at hand as we assure you that we are going to move forward with processes designed to make teachers, administrators, and people throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools more culturally sensitive. Even though we already have offices and highly paid personnel in place who should be reaching out to all parents and creating a climate that embraces ethnic diversity---- we’re really, really, really going to do it this time.
Really.
Really, really.
Really.
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But school board members squirmed almost as much as I did during this presentation.
Each in her or his own, way, District Members Samuels, Bates, Asberry, Gagnon, Inz, Ali, and even Ellison and Arneson asked,
“But haven’t we heard this before? How will this program be measured more effectively, and don’t we already have the Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment (EDIA) for doing this? Do we really have the luxury of time?”
To the latter question, District Member Reimnitz noted, in essence, that the board had not itself been vigilant enough as to previous equity issues and needs now to give this new process time to work.
Bates, having been among the most forceful in objecting to the innocuous generality of the presentation by Matier and Block, agreed with Reimnitz that at this point the board did need to be patient, but with a heightened sense of vigilance.
To all questions, Matier and Block offered more banal bromides and empty rhetoric, with Interim Superintendent Goar chiming in to the prevailing atonality with his usual choral double-talk.
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So again be reminded that
Educational equity results from three sources:
1) excellent education;
2) excellent teachers;
3) warm relationships with students and their families.
These sources of educational equity should be observable right now, and could be if we had the abiding components of an excellent education in place.
But since these components of an excellent education are not in place, and decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools have not the vision to recognize educational excellence, the understanding of the teacher training necessary, or the empathic ability to reach out to students and families right where they live--- we are forever creating distractions that divert us from the pathway to educational excellence.
Thus it is that I have decided that the time is now for saying that the time is now. We cannot afford to wait.
Babies are dying.
Young people, especially young African American males, are headed disproportionately to prison.
Young African American female bodies are being sold.
Human beings of great potential are missing their chance in this one earthly sojourn for lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparedness, and professional satisfaction because we do not care enough.
But I intend to broadcast the message that all we need to do is get the right vision of an excellent education, apply the elbow grease necessary to realize the vision, and thus complete the last stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
Hence, we must have a revolution in K-12 education.
And for that to happen, you must look again in the mirror.
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