Focus, Focus, Focus--- and Cut the Hocus-Pocus

With my younger students, especially, I am always engaging in verbal patter to make them laugh, and to sharpen their attention. Among my jests are the following:


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“Go, go go, don’t be slow---
  ‘cause that’ll make me sad,
  don’t you know.”




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“Don’ be lazy:
  It’ll make me crazy,
  and then my brain’ll
  get all hazy.”




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“Focus, focus, focus---
 and cut the hocus-pocus.”


While the latter is a great little ditty in motivating my students to concentrate on the task at hand, the message conveyed is also my succinct counsel to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education at this time of controversy swirling around Prospective Superintendent Sergio Paez.


Events extraneous to the delivery of an excellent education are always distracting school board members and personnel of the Minneapolis Public Schools from the most fundamental duty properly to educate the students whose academic and therefore life futures will be determined by their K-12 experience.


Thus I went on record last spring in counseling against a nationwide search for a new Superintendent, stating that the quality of the pool of potential candidates is very low, Interim Superintendent Michael Goar was in place and alert to the prevailing programs bequeathed to him by the Bernadeia Johnson administration, so Goar should get the nod to see what he could do for the limited (two to five years) period of time that most superintendents are able to avoid the political or ethical troubles that inevitably short-circuit the tenures of people in the position of central school district superintendent.


At that time I wanted members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education to


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“Focus, focus, focus---


  and cut the hocus-pocus.”


This meant first getting the definition of an excellent education right, understanding that


an excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive, logically seqauenced curriculum in the liberal (mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, fine arts), technological, and industrial arts to students of all demographic descriptors throughout the K-12 years.


School board members will need quite some time fully to internalize this definition and to understand that for the delivery of such a knowledge-intensive education, we will have to train teachers at the level of the central school district, remembering that


an excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.


That also will take a long time to get lodged into the collective mental consciousness of the school board, who then must remember that


the purpose of a strong K-12 education in the liberal, technological, and industrial arts is to provide maximum probability that students will graduate with the likelihood of living lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.


With those succinct definitions and observations, I have provided the vision that is lacking in Strategic Plan: Acceleration 2020.


In other many articles posted on this blog, I have explained what will be involved in actually delivering an education of true excellence, training teachers who possess great stores of knowledge, and sharpening the purpose for which we deliver an excellent education in the interests of a high quality of life for all of our precious students.


Strategic Plan: Acceleration 2020 can work, but we need a leader who can fill in the missing details and articulate the needed plan of action--- as I have done in my writing and my many venues for public commentary, including the time designated for such at the meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education each month.


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But the members of the school board allowed the distraction of a nearly 10-month search for a new Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools to divert their attention from those most important fundamentals of educational excellence and purpose given above.


And now they are further distracted by exactly the kind of controversy that seems always to impinge on any meaningful action for the achievement of excellent education.


The new Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools will have to fill in the many gaps of Strategic Plan: Acceleration 2020 with appropriate detail and specific definitions as to what constitutes an excellent education and who may be properly identified as an excellent teacher.


What a shame, then, that after many months of a national search for the right leader, the processes--- although followed conscientiously by members of the MPS Board of Education--- have proven to be just as inconclusive as I have judged all such processes to be that swirl around an insubstantial talent pool and a history of superintendent selections in school districts across the United States that so often end in short tenures, ethics allegations, or both.


Interim Superintendent Michael Goar is now a lame duck.


A cloud of uncertainty hangs over Sergio.Paez.


And nothing would be gained now by going through another prolonged search for a new Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. After nearly a year of searching for a new leader, no candidate with experience in overseeing an entire large urban school district as the official superintendent of schools emerged.


Under these circumstances, the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should now move forward with further vetting of Charles Foust, the promising young assistant superintendent and academic turn-around specialist from the Houston (Texas) Independent School District who, of the three finalists, is the unwounded candidate from a multi-month search who handled all questions with candor and grace.


Foust was also the candidate who in conversations with me conveyed the likelihood of lending substance to Strategic Plan: Acceleration 2020 by promoting knowledge-intensive education, imparted joyfully by pedagogically skilled teachers who possess the requisite breadth and depth of knowledge.


Thus school board members should move with care, but as quickly as care allows, to do the necessary vetting for aversion of another distracting fiasco--- then hire Charles Foust as the next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.




In doing this, school board members and personnel throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools should >>>>>


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“Focus, focus, focus---
and cut the hocus-pocus.”


Our students have been waiting for an excellent education for a very long time, and the policies that will ensure that quality of education will require full focus on the part of all of those responsible.