A Communication of Great Importance as We Look Toward the Meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education on 13 October 2015

As we look toward the meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, 13 October 2015, I urge Interim Superintendent Goar, all administrators at MPS, and all members of the school board to consider very carefully the following actions necessary in any program of effective education for all of your students--- and what I intent to do if you do not take those actions:


First   >>>>>   Recognize the weakness of your curriculum and begin working immediately to define a logical grade-by-grade knowledge-intensive sequence.


Scroll on down to other articles on my blog for details of the weakness of your curriculum, how I observe the consequences for your students when I am training them to take the ACT and to read serious academic material with genuine comprehension, and why I am writing a new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, to atone for the deficiencies in your K-12 curriculum.


The level of knowledge that your students possess as they move across the stage at graduation--- if they graduate at all--- is unacceptable and must change. Revive Focused Instruction and proceed to define the necessary logically sequenced skill and knowledge base that your students must receive as their right to an excellent education.


Second   >>>>>   Know also that you must assume responsibility for training the teachers capable of delivering such a knowledge-intensive curriculum.


As I have also detailed in past editions of my academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the knowledge level of your current teaching staff is inadequate for delivering the knowledge-intensive curriculum that your students must have to be the beneficiaries of an excellent K-12 education. They came to you undertrained, because of the abysmal nature of the training that all prospective teachers receive in departments, schools, and colleges of education.


Your K-5 teachers are particularly knowledge deficient:   This is the reason why I can ask any student who comes to me after having spent six years in your schools and find them unable to answer any questions of substance in matters pertinent to history, government, natural science, fine arts, literature, or English usage.


You should be ashamed, and you must recognize that you must thoroughly retrain your teachers at all levels, most particularly your K-5 teachers, if you are going to succeed in sending forth students possessing the high level of knowledge that they must have as they move across the stage at graduation and into the world of postsecondary education.


I can imagine that most of you have not taken advantage of my journal, my various articles, or the instruction that I offer on my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, 6:00 PM, Channel 17, Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] every Wednesday--- and on YouTube at Holly4Grace)--- in order to understand the training that you must provide for your teachers, so I will in the coming days offer you a summary of my recommended program.


Third  >>>>>   Eschew false steps and misguided policies--- and know what I am going to do to maximize your chances of getting things right.


Because you, Interim Superintendent Goar and others at MPS with the futures of our young people in your hands, have no firm idea of the constituents of an excellent K-12 education, you are forever making distracting and ineffective motions of activity with no positive result.


Quit throwing “Hail Mary” passes to Community Partnership Schools, creating task forces to study problems to which you should already know the solutions, and saying that you are going to get things right this time when you have never demonstrated an ability to get things right.


I am going to continue the investigation of your processes at Minneapolis Public Schools, reminding you that your salaries are paid by the public, and that you must respond to your students, families, and their advocates with humility, respect, and effective action.


I will support those of you who respond positively to your students and those close to them, and those of you who set about doing what is necessary to provide the young people at your schools the excellent education that they must have.


For those of you who don’t, I will be advocating your removal from your current positions in my publications and my media resources, and organizing community efforts aimed at getting the curriculum and the people we need to organize and deliver knowledge-intensive education.


I will proceed as I have already begun--- with huge nods to my models in the work of Saul Alinsky, Mao Zedong, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Gloria Steinhem--- patiently, persistently, with the goal of transformation of hearts and the conversion to just action, as well as victory.


The time is now. You must respond.