[Note: Names used in these and other such articles on my blog are data privacy pseudonyms.]
On the afternoon of Sunday, 28 February 2016 (yesterday as I write this), the remarkable life transformation of a family about whom I’ve written in prior articles posted on this blog continued to gather gale-wind force.
What transpired in the academic session that I conducted with three members of this family carried multiple messages pertinent to the revolution of K-12 education in the United States as the debt that we owe to the African American people >>>>>
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In the manner recorded in my accounts of other Sundays, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM to conduct my academic sessions for the day. I drove over to the apartment building occupied by Evelyn Patterson, her significant other Marcel Gifford, and her sons Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (Grade 1).
As I have noted, this is the economically poorest family whom I have ever served, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. I followed this family through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to a lower-rent Section 8 housing unit, their current bedbug-ridden apartment, on the East Side of St. Paul.
Evelyn texted me earlier in the day that she was going to have trouble honoring our agreed-upon academic session time of 2:00 PM, because Marcel was working at his Excel Energy Center concessions stand job for the day, and she did not want to leave the boys alone.
I often work with Damon and Javon on Saturday but on the previous day (27 February 2016) was so busy recording two hours of my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, shown Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17) and conducting two other academic sessions that I could not squeeze in a meeting with Damon and Javon.
So the plan on this particular Sunday, having deferred my meetings with Damon and Javon from Saturday, was to work with Evelyn at New Salem first, then go back for Damon at 4:30 PM for transport to his own academic session with me at New Salem, then work in the hallway back at the apartment with Javon.
Remember that the apartment itself is too ill-lit and devoid of furniture to be tenable for my academic work with members of the household.
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And remember Evelyn’s life story to date:
She is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits.
But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. To her dismay, other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
And remember my longtime relationship with Damon and Javon:
Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now.
Damon is a Grade 7 student who is now so advanced that he has already read two chapters in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (my book written at a college preparatory level and featuring fourteen chapters written as mini-courses in economics, political science, psychology, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics).
Javon, now at Grade 1, is reading and performing mathematical operations that typically describe the skill and knowledge level of the Grade 3 student.
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When I got the text from Evelyn, I suggested that we combine the academic sessions for her, Javon, and Damon; so that I would pick them up all up at 2:00 PM for transport to New Salem.
I did so, and thus began a remarkable day with the numerous implications noted in the opening of this article >>>>>
I positioned Evelyn, Damon, and Javon in individual rooms and gave them assignments of wide variance one to the other.
With Evelyn, I continued our intense review and recovery of mathematical skills. Remember that thus far we had done two hours of intensive math review, covering the basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; and we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. So again we went to work:
I gave her a very quick review of the skills mentioned above, then we worked on algebraic equations. We began with very basic equations, which she quickly grasped, then I began to increase the complexity of the equations, giving Evelyn challenges involving multiple steps; thorough knowledge of adding, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative integers; and application of work that we had done for all basic operations with fractions. Evelyn once again grasped everything that I explained very quickly. We will soon be moving through all material typically covered in Algebra I and into fundamental and intermediate geometry.
Classrooms at New Salem have excellent-quality old-fashioned chalk boards and tables with folding and sturdy, ergonomically comfortable plastic chairs. My modus operandi for the day was to sketch out exercises for Evelyn, dash over to Javon’s room to ask him questions about books that I had him reading, and then move on to Damon’s room, where the latter was looking up unfamiliar words in Chapter Three, Psychology, from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
Javon and Damon excelled as much as did their mother:
Javon read 25 short to medium-length books ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 3 level. I asked him close questions about the characters and story lines in each of these books, to which he responded with animated, insightful, accurate responses. Subject matter covered reparation of friendships after altercations; the consequences of lying and the enduring rewards of telling the truth; role reversal that comes when a monkey starts to imitate a little boy; the sublimity of clouds of many shapes; and the classic story of Dumbo the elephant.
Damon did a highly adroit job of putting definitions pertinent to my coverage of neuropsychology into his own words, rendering the meaning of the cerebellum, pons, medulla, midbrain, and brain stem in clear, descriptive language. He also requested that I review with him multi-step algebraic equations involving multiple operations with integers and fractions that he knew I was covering with his mom.
When I announced that we had to wrap things up after our two hours together, so that I could get them home and move on to my next group, they all lamented that we had to go:
Evelyn was all aglow for the success that she was having recovering concepts that she had long forgotten and some for which she was only now getting explanation that allowed for breakthroughs in understanding.
Javon loved all of the stories in the books that he read, was energetic throughout the entire two hours of reading all of those 25 books that I provided for him, and excelled at all of the multi-digit addition and subtraction problems and the fundamental multiplication exercises that I provided when he had gobbled up the books--- in all of this demonstrating just how advanced Javon is for a Grade 1 student, and how quickly he can move through material that challenges him properly.
And Damon beamed as if he were going to get the most highly prized new electronic gadget when I told him that for our next academic session I would bring him a book on the brain with multiple neuro-anatomical illustrations as a follow-up to my section in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education on neuropsychology.
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When I delivered Evelyn, Damon, and Javon to their apartment building, I showed them the cold-weather gear stored in my trunk as a follow-up to a conversation that we had had on the way back from New Salem on the importance of dressing properly in subzero weather.
I told them that I go for my daily run right on through the winter, and that I love how I can actually get hot during a run with prevailing temperatures ranging down to, say, twenty below zero Fahrenheit. I both made believers out of them and brought smiles to their faces when I showed them my three ski masks, topped by a full-coverage, moisture-resistant mask, that I layer over my head and face when the truly cold temperatures abide.
Javon told me that I looked spooky. I chased him to the door of his apartment building.
A he was running,
Javon shouted, “Thanks for all the books!”
I couldn’t have scripted the end to this day’s encounter with Evelyn and the boys any better.
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For all three of these highly intelligent people, these were two hours spent away from their squalid apartment, escaping from pealed paint and biting bugs to mental tracks leading to high academic accomplishment.
They are all in route to collegiate or university experiences and lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are now in the midst of life transforms through the power of knowledge-intensive education.
This is the education that they deserve.
As I have detailed in many articles on this blog, the many African Americans who embarked on the Great Northern Migration were shuttled into areas left to them in the context of restricted housing covenants that denied them residential access to most parts of the city and certainly the suburbs. Whether in the rural South or the urban North, our collection of inadequately United States has abused most African American people with lousy schools.
This has been true for people whose families were intact and extolled the value of education.
And as to those families facing circumstances accrued in the context of a brutal history and particularly wretched conditions of survival, the education establishment of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized systems of public education have never articulated a program for imparting an education of high quality to those whose families that feature stark levels of poverty and significant dysfunction.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States.
The provision of knowledge-intensive education is the tangible manifestation of the apology that our society owes to the African American people.
This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
All of our people deserve the quality of education that Evelyn, Damon, and Javon are receiving in the New Salem Educational Initiative.
The provision of such an education is my apology to the African American people on behalf of the citizenry of the United States.
We as a society must extend this apology in tangible manifestation to all people in the overhaul of K-12 education.
Only through the power of a knowledge-intensive K-12 experience to all of our people can we become the democratic society that we imagine ourselves to be.
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 24, 2016
Note to My Readers on the Importance of the Following Three Articles Concerning Teacher Quality and Curriculum
Note to My Readers on the Importance of the Following Three Articles Concerning Teacher Quality and Curriculum
As members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education put excess time and energy into the continued search for a new superintendent, they allow themselves--- whether purposely or unconsciously--- to avoid the real issues that vex all locally centralized school districts in the United States, including the Minneapolis Public Schools.
I have detailed in previous articles the real and abiding problems in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools, those related to classroom management and the unrewarding learning experiences that our students have in the context of inadequate curriculum and mediocre teachers.
The following three articles are therefore the most important that you will ever read with regard to the core problems that yield such a poor quality of education for our precious young people.
The first two articles as you scroll down will appear in the order of most recent posting and concern the systems that gives us undertrained and mediocre teachers; the third article as you scroll down, posted before the other two, explains the origins of our errant approach to curriculum.
Please read these articles especially carefully and reread them from time to time to avoid the constant distractions that keep us from focusing on the issues of true importance in the overhaul of K-12 education.
Teacher Quality, Part Two >>>>> The Disappearing Legitimate Master's Degree for K-12 Teachers
Disciplines Very few K-12 teachers earn master’s degrees from departments of legitimate academic disciplines.
Consider my conversation of August 2014 with the person who at that time was Chair of the History Department at the University of Minnesota:
I asked her,
“Can you think of any graduate students who aspire to be K-12 teachers who have been in your program in recent memory?”
“No, I can’t think of any in the last ten years or so.”
In the case of the History Department, her answer was fully anticipated. For at least ten years, the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) Department of History has had no terminal master’s degree. This means that all graduate students in history enroll with the intention of seeking the Ph. D., typically for the purpose of gaining the expertise expected for one teaching at universities or four-year colleges. If these aspirants have their programs interrupted for some reason, and have studied sufficiently into their programs, professors in the department may agree to grant such a student a master’s degree. But no graduate student in the History Department starts out seeking the master’s.
This is now a common situation at the University of Minnesota:
The same essential situation prevailing for history applies to the departments of political science, sociology, and chemistry. The departments of biological sciences, economics, physics, and English do have terminal master’s degrees, but no one connected to graduate studies in the those departments remembers any student in recent memory who was aspiring to, or proceeded to, teach in a K-12 system.
Of the administrator for the graduate program in English at the University of Minnesota, I inquired:
“Why would a graduate student seek a terminal master’s degree, since all universities and four-year colleges these days require their professors to have the Ph. D.?”
“Usually, our master’s students want to get editing positions for journals or businesses. They are seeking positions for which advanced training in English is helpful.”
“But you can’t remember any master’s students who were intending to teach in K-12 schools?” I continued.
“Not in our program. Those students get their master’s degrees in the College of Education and Human Development,” she replied.
An interesting situation exists in the math department:
In that department at the University of Minnesota, there are actually four different terminal master’s programs. One is for students who will eventually go on to the Ph. D.; conceivably, a student might stop at the M. S. level, but this is rare. Unlike the situation prevailing in many other departments, though, doctoral students are given a masters of science (M. S.) degree before they advance to the doctoral level. Two other degrees are for clearly professional purposes: an M. S. in industrial and applied mathematics, and an M. S. in mathematics for finance.
And then there is the M. S. granted through the Center for Education Programs, also part of this math department:
This program was established almost twenty years ago by a mathematics department professor who wanted to give aspiring K-12 and community college teachers an authentic, scholarly training program in mathematics. I spoke with the current director Center for Education Programs of in August 2014.
“We typically have two to five students in this program,” this professor replied to a question of mine about the annual enrollment.
“Right now we have four.”
“How many of those intend to teach in K-12?” I asked.
“Two of the four,” he responded.
“Where do most aspiring K-12 teachers get their master’s degrees in math for the purpose of improving their credentials and place on the pay scale?” I continued.
“The College of Education and Human Development,” the director said.
He went on to describe a very mathematically rigorous program for prospective teachers, a course of study that includes numerous 5000 and 8000 level courses that range far beyond calculus and differential equations in difficulty. Those courses include, for example, Theoretical Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems and Chaos, Stochastic Processes, Manifolds and Topology, and Calculus of Variations and Minimal Surfaces.
The course of study in the mathematics education program granted from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota is very different from that in the mathematics department program:
A key graduate studies administrator in the college of Education and Human Development described that program for me, citing courses such as Algebraic Structures for Teachers and Geometric Structures for Teachers that were as mathematically rigorous as the education college program gets.
For people matriculating at the University of Minnesota, those aspiring to be high school teachers first get a bachelor’s degree in a major disciplinary field such as math, biology, physics, anthropology, or English. Then, upon graduating, students must enter the master’s degree program, which runs three semesters in duration. The first two semesters feature coursework with a mostly pedagogic emphasis. The third semester finds the prospective teacher in a fulltime internship (practice teaching), taking just a course or two (typically online). Upon successfully completing this program, the person is granted both a master’s of education (M. Ed.) degree and a teaching license.
This helps to explain why the number of terminal master’s degrees is diminishing at the University of Minnesota. Prospective high school teachers essentially must enter the M. Ed. program to gain licensure. The only case of an academic department that works in cooperation with the College of Education and Human Development to provide its own teacher training program is the math department, M. S. recipients of which also are approved for teaching licensure. Thus, there is much incentive for aspiring teachers to move into the education college upon getting a bachelor’s degree, and either much disincentive or curtailed possibility to pursue a master’s degree in an academic department.
One sees the impact of this in today’s centralized K-12 districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools:
The Lack of Legitimate Master’s Degrees in the Minneaplis Public Schools
Data provided to me in 2014 by that school district’s department of human resources for the seven high schools of Edison, Henry, North, Roosevelt, South, Southwest, and Washburn indicated that there were at that time 248 staff members teaching math, English, science, and social studies. Of those 248 teachers, 132 held master’s degrees, almost all of them granted in schools, colleges, or departments of education.
Personnel in the human resources department at the Minneapolis Public Schools have not heretofore made any distinction as to the department granting the master’s degree for teachers. Since any accredited master’s degree, whether in education or an academic discipline, gains a teacher advancement up the “step and lane” system, those working at human resources have simplified their tasks to what is absolutely necessary. That 132 teachers at these schools held master’s degrees of some kind was as close to specificity as human resources data got in my requested data collection.
Teacher websites at five of the mainline high schools, though, provided useful information in distinguishing master’s degree by department in which coursework was completed. The websites at Henry and North high schools was not helpful, but those at South, Southwest, and Washburn were serviceable, and those at Edison and Roosevelt were quite good. Data at teacher websites for those five schools showed eight (8) teachers who indicated that they held master’s degrees from subject area departments relevant to their teaching fields, rather than holding the more typical master’s degree from a program in education; a teacher at Edison actually held a Ph. D. in chemistry.
There may have been teachers holding master’s degrees in academic fields who did not record this information, but the data on the websites was highly suggestive. At the five indicated high schools, there was a total of 210 teachers, 101 of whom (48.10% of the total) had master’s degrees. If just nine (9) of those teachers held master’s degrees (or above) from academic departments, that would mean that just 4.29% of all teachers held academic graduate degrees, and that of teachers holding a master’s, only 8.91% held academic master’s (or above) degrees.
A situation in which not even 10% of all teachers hold master’s degrees granted in university departments such as math, physics, history, economics, and English, rather than in education schools, colleges, and departments seems entirely consistent with the graduate studies situation currently manifest at the University of Minnesota. Prospective teachers cannot hold degrees that do not exist (because of the trend away from terminal master’s degrees).
Further, in a system that overwhelmingly encourages teachers to pursue licensure through an education program, rather than through completion of an academically rigorous degree program such as that in the department of mathematics, also strongly indicates that most teachers hold their master’s degrees (typically M. Ed.) from education programs rather than holding master’s degrees (typically M. A. or M . S.) from academic departments.
The essential situation that weighs against teachers obtaining degrees in legitimate subject area disciplines has not changed over the last two years.
Those interested in teacher quality in the Minneapolis Public Schools must be concerned that almost no teachers as we greet February 2016 earn master’s degrees in legitimate academic disciplines.
Consider my conversation of August 2014 with the person who at that time was Chair of the History Department at the University of Minnesota:
I asked her,
“Can you think of any graduate students who aspire to be K-12 teachers who have been in your program in recent memory?”
“No, I can’t think of any in the last ten years or so.”
In the case of the History Department, her answer was fully anticipated. For at least ten years, the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) Department of History has had no terminal master’s degree. This means that all graduate students in history enroll with the intention of seeking the Ph. D., typically for the purpose of gaining the expertise expected for one teaching at universities or four-year colleges. If these aspirants have their programs interrupted for some reason, and have studied sufficiently into their programs, professors in the department may agree to grant such a student a master’s degree. But no graduate student in the History Department starts out seeking the master’s.
This is now a common situation at the University of Minnesota:
The same essential situation prevailing for history applies to the departments of political science, sociology, and chemistry. The departments of biological sciences, economics, physics, and English do have terminal master’s degrees, but no one connected to graduate studies in the those departments remembers any student in recent memory who was aspiring to, or proceeded to, teach in a K-12 system.
Of the administrator for the graduate program in English at the University of Minnesota, I inquired:
“Why would a graduate student seek a terminal master’s degree, since all universities and four-year colleges these days require their professors to have the Ph. D.?”
“Usually, our master’s students want to get editing positions for journals or businesses. They are seeking positions for which advanced training in English is helpful.”
“But you can’t remember any master’s students who were intending to teach in K-12 schools?” I continued.
“Not in our program. Those students get their master’s degrees in the College of Education and Human Development,” she replied.
An interesting situation exists in the math department:
In that department at the University of Minnesota, there are actually four different terminal master’s programs. One is for students who will eventually go on to the Ph. D.; conceivably, a student might stop at the M. S. level, but this is rare. Unlike the situation prevailing in many other departments, though, doctoral students are given a masters of science (M. S.) degree before they advance to the doctoral level. Two other degrees are for clearly professional purposes: an M. S. in industrial and applied mathematics, and an M. S. in mathematics for finance.
And then there is the M. S. granted through the Center for Education Programs, also part of this math department:
This program was established almost twenty years ago by a mathematics department professor who wanted to give aspiring K-12 and community college teachers an authentic, scholarly training program in mathematics. I spoke with the current director Center for Education Programs of in August 2014.
“We typically have two to five students in this program,” this professor replied to a question of mine about the annual enrollment.
“Right now we have four.”
“How many of those intend to teach in K-12?” I asked.
“Two of the four,” he responded.
“Where do most aspiring K-12 teachers get their master’s degrees in math for the purpose of improving their credentials and place on the pay scale?” I continued.
“The College of Education and Human Development,” the director said.
He went on to describe a very mathematically rigorous program for prospective teachers, a course of study that includes numerous 5000 and 8000 level courses that range far beyond calculus and differential equations in difficulty. Those courses include, for example, Theoretical Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems and Chaos, Stochastic Processes, Manifolds and Topology, and Calculus of Variations and Minimal Surfaces.
The course of study in the mathematics education program granted from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota is very different from that in the mathematics department program:
A key graduate studies administrator in the college of Education and Human Development described that program for me, citing courses such as Algebraic Structures for Teachers and Geometric Structures for Teachers that were as mathematically rigorous as the education college program gets.
For people matriculating at the University of Minnesota, those aspiring to be high school teachers first get a bachelor’s degree in a major disciplinary field such as math, biology, physics, anthropology, or English. Then, upon graduating, students must enter the master’s degree program, which runs three semesters in duration. The first two semesters feature coursework with a mostly pedagogic emphasis. The third semester finds the prospective teacher in a fulltime internship (practice teaching), taking just a course or two (typically online). Upon successfully completing this program, the person is granted both a master’s of education (M. Ed.) degree and a teaching license.
This helps to explain why the number of terminal master’s degrees is diminishing at the University of Minnesota. Prospective high school teachers essentially must enter the M. Ed. program to gain licensure. The only case of an academic department that works in cooperation with the College of Education and Human Development to provide its own teacher training program is the math department, M. S. recipients of which also are approved for teaching licensure. Thus, there is much incentive for aspiring teachers to move into the education college upon getting a bachelor’s degree, and either much disincentive or curtailed possibility to pursue a master’s degree in an academic department.
One sees the impact of this in today’s centralized K-12 districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools:
The Lack of Legitimate Master’s Degrees in the Minneaplis Public Schools
Data provided to me in 2014 by that school district’s department of human resources for the seven high schools of Edison, Henry, North, Roosevelt, South, Southwest, and Washburn indicated that there were at that time 248 staff members teaching math, English, science, and social studies. Of those 248 teachers, 132 held master’s degrees, almost all of them granted in schools, colleges, or departments of education.
Personnel in the human resources department at the Minneapolis Public Schools have not heretofore made any distinction as to the department granting the master’s degree for teachers. Since any accredited master’s degree, whether in education or an academic discipline, gains a teacher advancement up the “step and lane” system, those working at human resources have simplified their tasks to what is absolutely necessary. That 132 teachers at these schools held master’s degrees of some kind was as close to specificity as human resources data got in my requested data collection.
Teacher websites at five of the mainline high schools, though, provided useful information in distinguishing master’s degree by department in which coursework was completed. The websites at Henry and North high schools was not helpful, but those at South, Southwest, and Washburn were serviceable, and those at Edison and Roosevelt were quite good. Data at teacher websites for those five schools showed eight (8) teachers who indicated that they held master’s degrees from subject area departments relevant to their teaching fields, rather than holding the more typical master’s degree from a program in education; a teacher at Edison actually held a Ph. D. in chemistry.
There may have been teachers holding master’s degrees in academic fields who did not record this information, but the data on the websites was highly suggestive. At the five indicated high schools, there was a total of 210 teachers, 101 of whom (48.10% of the total) had master’s degrees. If just nine (9) of those teachers held master’s degrees (or above) from academic departments, that would mean that just 4.29% of all teachers held academic graduate degrees, and that of teachers holding a master’s, only 8.91% held academic master’s (or above) degrees.
A situation in which not even 10% of all teachers hold master’s degrees granted in university departments such as math, physics, history, economics, and English, rather than in education schools, colleges, and departments seems entirely consistent with the graduate studies situation currently manifest at the University of Minnesota. Prospective teachers cannot hold degrees that do not exist (because of the trend away from terminal master’s degrees).
Further, in a system that overwhelmingly encourages teachers to pursue licensure through an education program, rather than through completion of an academically rigorous degree program such as that in the department of mathematics, also strongly indicates that most teachers hold their master’s degrees (typically M. Ed.) from education programs rather than holding master’s degrees (typically M. A. or M . S.) from academic departments.
The essential situation that weighs against teachers obtaining degrees in legitimate subject area disciplines has not changed over the last two years.
Those interested in teacher quality in the Minneapolis Public Schools must be concerned that almost no teachers as we greet February 2016 earn master’s degrees in legitimate academic disciplines.
Feb 22, 2016
Teacher Quality, Part One >>>>> The Mediocrity of Teaching Quality in the United States
When a teacher rises to the level of excellence in the United States, this occurs because of the intellectual drive and personal effort of the individual teacher.
Nothing in the training that a teacher receives in route to certification makes circumstances very likely that those people who preside over the classrooms of our students possess either the knowledge base or the pedagogical ability that should define a teacher.
The Low Quality of K-12 Teacher Preparation Programs
Mediocrity of K-12 education in the United States originates in departments, colleges, and schools of education wherein professors do not believe that systematically acquired and mentally stored knowledge of the liberal arts is important.
They believe, instead, 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 would have to be researched, 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.
Teacher 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, as we recall our nominal focus on Black History in this February of 2016, 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.
Constructivist ideology and systemic flaws operate in highly similar ways from state to state, so that teacher preparation programs and institutions of K-12 education maintain the status quo of mediocrity in Minnesota and throughout the nation:
The Standard Teacher Training Program
There is a rough similarity among the major teacher preparation programs offered by colleges and universities in the Twin Cities. Programs that train large contingents of prospective teachers include the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities, Augsburg College, and the universities of Concordia, Hamline, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas.
At most of these institutions, prospective elementary school teachers major in elementary education; those who aspire to teach in secondary schools (middle school or high school) typically get a major in a relevant field such as history, political science, math, biology, or English while also taking a certain number of education courses to attain certification. But at some of the institutions that train teachers through the traditional route, getting a major in secondary education, with a specialty in one of the relevant disciplines, is also possible.
Once the college or university certification program is complete, prospective teachers must take exams that include a basic skills exam, a content-focused pedagogic exam, and a mathematics exam. Upon passing these exams, licensure is granted. The license is permanent, given the teacher’s ongoing demonstration of professional development through certified participation in teacher-in-service days, workshops, conferences, and the like; and with the option to pursue an advanced degree, typically a master’s of education in teaching elementary education or teaching a subject area such as math, social studies, science, or English.
Hamline University in St. Paul is unique among the metro area institutions offering teacher preparation programs in requiring its aspiring elementary school teachers to get a degree in a discipline other than education. At Hamline, both prospective elementary and secondary teachers get majors in subjects such as economics, psychology, chemistry, math, or English literature while also getting a co- major in education. There is a certain similarity in the required courses for elementary and secondary aspirants, with both taking courses such as Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality. A key difference is that those training to become secondary teachers take a course in Teaching Literacy in the Secondary School, while those preparing to be elementary teachers additionally take courses in Teaching Social Studies [Mathematics, Science] in the Elementary School.
In the other institutions, any route similar to the one pursued at Hamline would come through the attainment of a double major, but this is not required. The required education courses are similar from institution to institution:
Elementary level aspirants at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, for example, take courses called Social Studies [Language Arts, Mathematics, Science] Instruction in the Elementary Grades that parallel those given for Hamline. Courses at the University of Minnesota also include Schools and Society and those that incorporate matters of educational psychology, exceptionality [individual differences], and diversity. For both elementary and secondary teaching aspirants, a semester of student teaching is required, and courses include additional hours in the field, visiting and assisting in classrooms.
The indicated courses that aspiring teachers must take are academically insubstantial. The fact that these sorts of courses constitute the core of the training for prospective elementary (K-5) teachers is deeply disturbing. One may look in vain on the transcripts of these teacher aspirants for evidence of sufficient education in legitimate subject areas, so that their knowledge of mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, fine arts, and world languages is typically deficient in the extreme.
And the training of secondary (grades 6-12) teachers is also inadequate:
Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do tend to get legitimate subject area bachelor's degrees, but there is a low bar set for grade point averages in the hiring of teachers.
Further, teachers overwhelmingly do not get legitimate master's degrees, as my next article posted on this blog will carefully explain.
Nothing in the training that a teacher receives in route to certification makes circumstances very likely that those people who preside over the classrooms of our students possess either the knowledge base or the pedagogical ability that should define a teacher.
The Low Quality of K-12 Teacher Preparation Programs
Mediocrity of K-12 education in the United States originates in departments, colleges, and schools of education wherein professors do not believe that systematically acquired and mentally stored knowledge of the liberal arts is important.
They believe, instead, 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 would have to be researched, 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.
Teacher 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, as we recall our nominal focus on Black History in this February of 2016, 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.
Constructivist ideology and systemic flaws operate in highly similar ways from state to state, so that teacher preparation programs and institutions of K-12 education maintain the status quo of mediocrity in Minnesota and throughout the nation:
The Standard Teacher Training Program
There is a rough similarity among the major teacher preparation programs offered by colleges and universities in the Twin Cities. Programs that train large contingents of prospective teachers include the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities, Augsburg College, and the universities of Concordia, Hamline, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas.
At most of these institutions, prospective elementary school teachers major in elementary education; those who aspire to teach in secondary schools (middle school or high school) typically get a major in a relevant field such as history, political science, math, biology, or English while also taking a certain number of education courses to attain certification. But at some of the institutions that train teachers through the traditional route, getting a major in secondary education, with a specialty in one of the relevant disciplines, is also possible.
Once the college or university certification program is complete, prospective teachers must take exams that include a basic skills exam, a content-focused pedagogic exam, and a mathematics exam. Upon passing these exams, licensure is granted. The license is permanent, given the teacher’s ongoing demonstration of professional development through certified participation in teacher-in-service days, workshops, conferences, and the like; and with the option to pursue an advanced degree, typically a master’s of education in teaching elementary education or teaching a subject area such as math, social studies, science, or English.
Hamline University in St. Paul is unique among the metro area institutions offering teacher preparation programs in requiring its aspiring elementary school teachers to get a degree in a discipline other than education. At Hamline, both prospective elementary and secondary teachers get majors in subjects such as economics, psychology, chemistry, math, or English literature while also getting a co- major in education. There is a certain similarity in the required courses for elementary and secondary aspirants, with both taking courses such as Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality. A key difference is that those training to become secondary teachers take a course in Teaching Literacy in the Secondary School, while those preparing to be elementary teachers additionally take courses in Teaching Social Studies [Mathematics, Science] in the Elementary School.
In the other institutions, any route similar to the one pursued at Hamline would come through the attainment of a double major, but this is not required. The required education courses are similar from institution to institution:
Elementary level aspirants at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, for example, take courses called Social Studies [Language Arts, Mathematics, Science] Instruction in the Elementary Grades that parallel those given for Hamline. Courses at the University of Minnesota also include Schools and Society and those that incorporate matters of educational psychology, exceptionality [individual differences], and diversity. For both elementary and secondary teaching aspirants, a semester of student teaching is required, and courses include additional hours in the field, visiting and assisting in classrooms.
The indicated courses that aspiring teachers must take are academically insubstantial. The fact that these sorts of courses constitute the core of the training for prospective elementary (K-5) teachers is deeply disturbing. One may look in vain on the transcripts of these teacher aspirants for evidence of sufficient education in legitimate subject areas, so that their knowledge of mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, fine arts, and world languages is typically deficient in the extreme.
And the training of secondary (grades 6-12) teachers is also inadequate:
Prospective teachers at grades 6-12 do tend to get legitimate subject area bachelor's degrees, but there is a low bar set for grade point averages in the hiring of teachers.
Further, teachers overwhelmingly do not get legitimate master's degrees, as my next article posted on this blog will carefully explain.
Feb 19, 2016
The Abominably Weak Curriculum in Our K-12 Institutions
Curriculum is abominably weak throughout the K-12 experience.
The need to revolutionize curriculum is most acute in our schools for students at the elementary level, typically grouped now in grades K-5:
At this level, test results in mathematics and reading ultimately got so embarrassing that even the education establishment was impelled to make a stronger curricular response in those skill areas. But glaring deficiencies in instruction still produce unsatisfactory results, and beyond the skill areas of mathematics and reading, very little is even attempted. Go into most K-5 schools and ask to see the curriculum for natural science, history, economics, literature, fine arts, or world languages, and you’ll mostly likely receive initial blank stares that give way to a lot of double talk or fast-spewing verbal dissembling.
The situation at the middle school level is often just as bad. And here a review of the journey from “junior high” to “middle school” conceptualization is instructive:
A Review of How the “Junior High” School Concept Came into Being
Through the 19th century and into the early years of the 20th century, schools for students between elementary or “grammar” schools and those in high school were rare. There was not a pressing need for any such schools, since the grammar school that in the 19th century typically encompassed grades one through six (1-6) accounted for the educational experience of most students, who did not even continue schooling beyond Grade 6.
Then, as an increasing number of students did proceed into the years of Grade 7 and Grade 8 in the course of the first decade of the 20th century, many commentators expressed concern that there was not enough new content presented for students at these two grade levels in the grammar school curriculum. Thus was born the idea of creating a “junior high” that would be offered at grades 7-8, with grammar school now encompassing just grades 1-6.
These junior highs were in fact modeled on the senior highs for which they were similarly named and to which they sent students directly from Grade 8 into Grade 9. At both junior high schools and senior high schools, curricula focused on the subjects of mathematics, English, social studies, natural science, art, music, physical education, industrial arts, and home economics.
But well into the 20th century, graduation from high school was not the expectation of most students, many of whom truncated their education somewhere in the midst of the Grade 8 to Grade 10 years. Children of immigrant families from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe were thought by many educators to be ill-suited for continuing education. If they did reach high school, they were tracked into industrial arts courses, away from the classical liberal arts, and as soon as these students felt ready to take and extend what they knew into the workaday world, they did so.
As a consequence, “high” school really did function for much of the first half of the 20th century with a “high” level of academic instruction that in our current institutions as of the year 2016 would more nearly parallel community colleges (effectively Grades 13-14, not the 9-12 of “high” school). Accordingly, the “junior high” schools that were modeled on “high” schools tended to offer a challenging curriculum, and educators at this level also stereotypically thought of students as falling into categories within which many would drop out as unsuited to a challenging liberal arts curriculum.
At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, the educational expectations of the public differed dramatically from what they are in the context of life at year 2016. I maintain a large personal library, with volumes that are relatively old in age (published over a century ago or more), of very recent publication, and in between. A relatively old volume that I have is a Heath English Classics volume of The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, published out of Boston by D. C. Heath and Company in 1899, under the editorship of E. K. Chambers, B. A. It is especially that latter titular designation that is of interest here.
At the turn of those centuries, to have graduated from high school and gone on to college placed a person in the very highest educational levels of the American populace. Obtaining a bachelor’s degree was regarded as an accomplishment approaching the kind of status that having a Ph. D. would bring today.
Today, it is not very likely that an editor of such a volume would even shout about her or his holding a master’s degree. The expectation would be that a person with the right to comment authoritatively on works of Shakespeare would be a scholar holding a Ph. D. By extension, we would say that at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, those people who graduated from high school commanded the status of someone graduating with a bachelor’s degree today. “High” school really meant “high” school, and junior high students were treated as high school students in training, expected to master a curriculum much broader and deeper than middle school curriculum in the year 2016 at which I now write.
So how did we go from “junior high school” to “middle school,” anyway?
The Advent of the “Middle School”
This transition began in the middle reaches of the 20th century and accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s:
As the student population grew, and as Grade K (kindergarten) became more of an exercised option, decision-makers in many school districts across the nation moved Grade 6 into the junior high with Grade 7 and Grade 8. Either by changing the name, or putting the designation on a new building, those making decisions increasingly opted for the appellation of “middle school,” rather than “junior high school.”
And these changes coincided with an ideological movement among educators and those who took some sort of elevated interest in public education. By that time, there was a burgeoning “Middle School Movement” that was an offshoot of the so-called “progressive” approach to education that envisions many purposes of education aside from the impartation of knowledge from teacher to student.
The "progressive" creed that had taken hold at departments, colleges, and schools of education values process of delivery and the manner of information acquisition over the systematic dispensation of knowledge from teacher to student; the "constructivist" approach, which is a subset of the "progressive" creed, eventually came into particular favor among professors of education.
Thus it was that standards had already been lowered by the 1970s, when the Middle School Movement took off. People who belonged to the National Middle School Association took the lead in this movement, the adherents of which argued that the main task of educators in the middle school context was to assist students in developing socialization skills and negotiating the emotions and physical changes of early adolescence. By the early 1980s, this movement was taking hold among decision-makers in locally centralized school districts, and by the early 1990s the notion of middle school purpose as socialization dominated the thought of middle school public educators.
The rise of the middle school was accompanied by an increasingly popular theory holding that human brain development plateaus during ages 12-14, and that the brain at this point should not be overburdened with a lot of new information. By the early to middle 1990s this theory had been thoroughly debunked by abundant neuroscientific evidence, but its popularity did not abate among middle school educators.
Thus, for two decades, students had undergone a boring and unchallenging middle school education, impelling many parents to move students into suburban, private, and charter schools in search of more rigor (rarely finding it in charter schools). The standards movement that inspired No Child Left Behind legislation undercut the socialization-as-purpose premise, but middle school education has not recovered from the errant curricular approach of the Middle School Movement.
Continuation of Inadequate Education During Grades 9-12 (High School)
The degeneration of academic quality at grades 6-8, together with the absence of logically sequenced, systematically delivered, knowledge-intensive education at grades K-5, means that any effort to deliver anything resembling substantial subject area knowledge typically awaits the grades 9-12 years. Students suffer, though, from teaching that on average is mediocre, is frequently terrible, and only occasionally rises to very good or better quality.
If they are to graduate from high school with a decent quality and quantity of subject area knowledge, students must quickly master great amounts of information for which they should have arrived at grades 9-12 with better foundations on the strength of prior knowledge from the K-8 years. Even if they finally get high quality curriculum through Advanced Placement (AP) courses, students do not have the academic weight and ballast for long-term knowledge retention; and in many cases the quality of instruction falls short of that demanded by AP courses.
Thus it is that curriculum is weak at all levels of the K-12 experience, and even in the most knowledge-intensive courses instruction is frequently inferior and rendered to students who come to the course with extraordinarily poor preparation.
We cannot have excellent education until we overhaul curriculum and the instructional quality for imparting curriculum,
Stay alert for articles on teacher quality coming soon.
The need to revolutionize curriculum is most acute in our schools for students at the elementary level, typically grouped now in grades K-5:
At this level, test results in mathematics and reading ultimately got so embarrassing that even the education establishment was impelled to make a stronger curricular response in those skill areas. But glaring deficiencies in instruction still produce unsatisfactory results, and beyond the skill areas of mathematics and reading, very little is even attempted. Go into most K-5 schools and ask to see the curriculum for natural science, history, economics, literature, fine arts, or world languages, and you’ll mostly likely receive initial blank stares that give way to a lot of double talk or fast-spewing verbal dissembling.
The situation at the middle school level is often just as bad. And here a review of the journey from “junior high” to “middle school” conceptualization is instructive:
A Review of How the “Junior High” School Concept Came into Being
Through the 19th century and into the early years of the 20th century, schools for students between elementary or “grammar” schools and those in high school were rare. There was not a pressing need for any such schools, since the grammar school that in the 19th century typically encompassed grades one through six (1-6) accounted for the educational experience of most students, who did not even continue schooling beyond Grade 6.
Then, as an increasing number of students did proceed into the years of Grade 7 and Grade 8 in the course of the first decade of the 20th century, many commentators expressed concern that there was not enough new content presented for students at these two grade levels in the grammar school curriculum. Thus was born the idea of creating a “junior high” that would be offered at grades 7-8, with grammar school now encompassing just grades 1-6.
These junior highs were in fact modeled on the senior highs for which they were similarly named and to which they sent students directly from Grade 8 into Grade 9. At both junior high schools and senior high schools, curricula focused on the subjects of mathematics, English, social studies, natural science, art, music, physical education, industrial arts, and home economics.
But well into the 20th century, graduation from high school was not the expectation of most students, many of whom truncated their education somewhere in the midst of the Grade 8 to Grade 10 years. Children of immigrant families from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe were thought by many educators to be ill-suited for continuing education. If they did reach high school, they were tracked into industrial arts courses, away from the classical liberal arts, and as soon as these students felt ready to take and extend what they knew into the workaday world, they did so.
As a consequence, “high” school really did function for much of the first half of the 20th century with a “high” level of academic instruction that in our current institutions as of the year 2016 would more nearly parallel community colleges (effectively Grades 13-14, not the 9-12 of “high” school). Accordingly, the “junior high” schools that were modeled on “high” schools tended to offer a challenging curriculum, and educators at this level also stereotypically thought of students as falling into categories within which many would drop out as unsuited to a challenging liberal arts curriculum.
At the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, the educational expectations of the public differed dramatically from what they are in the context of life at year 2016. I maintain a large personal library, with volumes that are relatively old in age (published over a century ago or more), of very recent publication, and in between. A relatively old volume that I have is a Heath English Classics volume of The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, published out of Boston by D. C. Heath and Company in 1899, under the editorship of E. K. Chambers, B. A. It is especially that latter titular designation that is of interest here.
At the turn of those centuries, to have graduated from high school and gone on to college placed a person in the very highest educational levels of the American populace. Obtaining a bachelor’s degree was regarded as an accomplishment approaching the kind of status that having a Ph. D. would bring today.
Today, it is not very likely that an editor of such a volume would even shout about her or his holding a master’s degree. The expectation would be that a person with the right to comment authoritatively on works of Shakespeare would be a scholar holding a Ph. D. By extension, we would say that at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, those people who graduated from high school commanded the status of someone graduating with a bachelor’s degree today. “High” school really meant “high” school, and junior high students were treated as high school students in training, expected to master a curriculum much broader and deeper than middle school curriculum in the year 2016 at which I now write.
So how did we go from “junior high school” to “middle school,” anyway?
The Advent of the “Middle School”
This transition began in the middle reaches of the 20th century and accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s:
As the student population grew, and as Grade K (kindergarten) became more of an exercised option, decision-makers in many school districts across the nation moved Grade 6 into the junior high with Grade 7 and Grade 8. Either by changing the name, or putting the designation on a new building, those making decisions increasingly opted for the appellation of “middle school,” rather than “junior high school.”
And these changes coincided with an ideological movement among educators and those who took some sort of elevated interest in public education. By that time, there was a burgeoning “Middle School Movement” that was an offshoot of the so-called “progressive” approach to education that envisions many purposes of education aside from the impartation of knowledge from teacher to student.
The "progressive" creed that had taken hold at departments, colleges, and schools of education values process of delivery and the manner of information acquisition over the systematic dispensation of knowledge from teacher to student; the "constructivist" approach, which is a subset of the "progressive" creed, eventually came into particular favor among professors of education.
Thus it was that standards had already been lowered by the 1970s, when the Middle School Movement took off. People who belonged to the National Middle School Association took the lead in this movement, the adherents of which argued that the main task of educators in the middle school context was to assist students in developing socialization skills and negotiating the emotions and physical changes of early adolescence. By the early 1980s, this movement was taking hold among decision-makers in locally centralized school districts, and by the early 1990s the notion of middle school purpose as socialization dominated the thought of middle school public educators.
The rise of the middle school was accompanied by an increasingly popular theory holding that human brain development plateaus during ages 12-14, and that the brain at this point should not be overburdened with a lot of new information. By the early to middle 1990s this theory had been thoroughly debunked by abundant neuroscientific evidence, but its popularity did not abate among middle school educators.
Thus, for two decades, students had undergone a boring and unchallenging middle school education, impelling many parents to move students into suburban, private, and charter schools in search of more rigor (rarely finding it in charter schools). The standards movement that inspired No Child Left Behind legislation undercut the socialization-as-purpose premise, but middle school education has not recovered from the errant curricular approach of the Middle School Movement.
Continuation of Inadequate Education During Grades 9-12 (High School)
The degeneration of academic quality at grades 6-8, together with the absence of logically sequenced, systematically delivered, knowledge-intensive education at grades K-5, means that any effort to deliver anything resembling substantial subject area knowledge typically awaits the grades 9-12 years. Students suffer, though, from teaching that on average is mediocre, is frequently terrible, and only occasionally rises to very good or better quality.
If they are to graduate from high school with a decent quality and quantity of subject area knowledge, students must quickly master great amounts of information for which they should have arrived at grades 9-12 with better foundations on the strength of prior knowledge from the K-8 years. Even if they finally get high quality curriculum through Advanced Placement (AP) courses, students do not have the academic weight and ballast for long-term knowledge retention; and in many cases the quality of instruction falls short of that demanded by AP courses.
Thus it is that curriculum is weak at all levels of the K-12 experience, and even in the most knowledge-intensive courses instruction is frequently inferior and rendered to students who come to the course with extraordinarily poor preparation.
We cannot have excellent education until we overhaul curriculum and the instructional quality for imparting curriculum,
Stay alert for articles on teacher quality coming soon.
Feb 18, 2016
The Misguided Protracted Search for a New Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools: Distraction from the Real Issues of Importance
This past Tuesday, 16 February 2016, members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education voted to continue the search for a superintendent into another extended phase, with a decision now prolonged until this coming summer 2016.
This action is misguided, extending the process with all of the formality of hiring a new search firm, gathering public input, and conducting interviews of the candidates deemed strongest among applicants. We will not know who shall emerge form this overinvestment of time and money until this coming summer 2016.
Remember that the search for an new superintendent has now gone on for about a year, beginning soon after Bernadeia Johnson resigned at the end of January 2015:
The school board on 7 December 2015 voted 6-3 for Sergio Paez as the prospective new Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, but they reversed themselves on 12 January 2016 in deciding not to pursue contract negotiations with Paez. This came after staff of the public advocacy organization, Disability Law Center (DLC), issued suspiciously timed (9 December 2015, two days after the first vote) allegations of abuse of special education students at Peck School in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where Paez had served as superintendent from June 2013 until April 2015.
These were old issues that had involved issuance of a complaint by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MDESE), a Holyoke school district correction program addressing the complaint, and approval of the corrections program in a letter from the presiding MDESE official on 1 October 2015.
But two months after this letter closed the case within Massachusetts government, the DLC issued similar allegations and, in a similarly delayed and politically suspicious pattern of response, the Hampden County Attorney announced on 14 December 2016 that there would be investigation into possible criminal conduct at Peck School.
Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education panicked and backtracked on pursuing contract negotiations with Paez. Then they allowed protesters to shut down that same 12 January 2016 meeting when the board seemed poised to pursue contract negotiations with Interim Superintendent Michael Goar. Now, in the aftermath of the recent decision to hire another search firm and continue the search, members of the school board have once again become distracted by the search for a superintendent while the real problems that vex the district go unresolved.
A year ago, I counseled the school board to forego a protracted search for a new superintendent. The system that trains prospective superintendents is not geared to produce great candidates. Most superintendents only last two or three years. A tenure of five years is typically the outlier. Superintendents conventionally collect big salaries and leave amid controversy or political pressure to resign, taking substantial pensions or buy-outs with them.
Interim Superintendent Michael Goar had served as CEO under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and had been involved in generating her signature programs. A year ago, I maintained that Goar should be given a chance to see what he could do as the new superintendent. My counsel in the aftermath of the current controversy was to avoid another protracted search and go with third preferential candidate Charles Foust. Another candidate touted by some at this point is Michael Thomas, who currently supervises Minneapolis Public Schools Associate Superintendents. Either candidate would be fine and would jettison the distraction of another extended search.
But the school board went forward with its search.
Meanwhile, all of the old conditions endemic to the education establishment and the debased culture of the Minneapolis Public Schools remain unchanged >>>>>
>>>>> Teachers are still trained terribly according to the errant philosophical precepts and programs of professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
>>>>> Once in the classroom, most teachers prove to have too little knowledge and to be mediocre at imparting necessary knowledge and skill sets to the students with whose education and therefore lives they are entrusted; a few teachers find their way to excellence, but a like number are so inept that they never should have entered the classroom.
And, specifically, in the schools and classrooms of our students at the Minneapolis Public Schools, >>>>>
>>>>> too many videos or DVDs are shown;
>>>>> too many worksheet-filled “packets” are distributed;
>>>>> too little discussion and teacher-dispensed knowledge occurs;
>>>>> too many field trips occur in which students have little preparation and limited idea of the purpose;
>>>>> too many students endure the presence of inept substitutes due to teacher absences and midyear resignations;
>>>>> and students move forward on a very slim skill base in mathematics and reading; and abominable training in literature, fine arts, natural science, history, government, economics, psychology, world languages, and the industrial and technological arts.
To move the Minneapolis Public Schools in the direction of delivering knowledge-intensive education with retrained teachers possessing the knowledge necessary to impart such an education; and bequeath to our students that excellence of education that will send them forth culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally rewarded; we must cease succumbing to the distraction of the moment and get on with addressing the problems that most vex all systems of public K-12 education in the United States.
And the overriding problems that incorporate all of the others pertain to curriculum and teacher quality.
Look for articles in the near future in which I will review and vigorously reassert the need to maintain focus on these vital matters of curriculum and teacher quality that define excellence in K-12 education, necessitating a change in the habitual tendency of public education officials to allow themselves, sometimes intentionally so as to mask their ineffectiveness, to get lost in the splashy distraction of the moment.
This action is misguided, extending the process with all of the formality of hiring a new search firm, gathering public input, and conducting interviews of the candidates deemed strongest among applicants. We will not know who shall emerge form this overinvestment of time and money until this coming summer 2016.
Remember that the search for an new superintendent has now gone on for about a year, beginning soon after Bernadeia Johnson resigned at the end of January 2015:
The school board on 7 December 2015 voted 6-3 for Sergio Paez as the prospective new Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, but they reversed themselves on 12 January 2016 in deciding not to pursue contract negotiations with Paez. This came after staff of the public advocacy organization, Disability Law Center (DLC), issued suspiciously timed (9 December 2015, two days after the first vote) allegations of abuse of special education students at Peck School in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where Paez had served as superintendent from June 2013 until April 2015.
These were old issues that had involved issuance of a complaint by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MDESE), a Holyoke school district correction program addressing the complaint, and approval of the corrections program in a letter from the presiding MDESE official on 1 October 2015.
But two months after this letter closed the case within Massachusetts government, the DLC issued similar allegations and, in a similarly delayed and politically suspicious pattern of response, the Hampden County Attorney announced on 14 December 2016 that there would be investigation into possible criminal conduct at Peck School.
Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education panicked and backtracked on pursuing contract negotiations with Paez. Then they allowed protesters to shut down that same 12 January 2016 meeting when the board seemed poised to pursue contract negotiations with Interim Superintendent Michael Goar. Now, in the aftermath of the recent decision to hire another search firm and continue the search, members of the school board have once again become distracted by the search for a superintendent while the real problems that vex the district go unresolved.
A year ago, I counseled the school board to forego a protracted search for a new superintendent. The system that trains prospective superintendents is not geared to produce great candidates. Most superintendents only last two or three years. A tenure of five years is typically the outlier. Superintendents conventionally collect big salaries and leave amid controversy or political pressure to resign, taking substantial pensions or buy-outs with them.
Interim Superintendent Michael Goar had served as CEO under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and had been involved in generating her signature programs. A year ago, I maintained that Goar should be given a chance to see what he could do as the new superintendent. My counsel in the aftermath of the current controversy was to avoid another protracted search and go with third preferential candidate Charles Foust. Another candidate touted by some at this point is Michael Thomas, who currently supervises Minneapolis Public Schools Associate Superintendents. Either candidate would be fine and would jettison the distraction of another extended search.
But the school board went forward with its search.
Meanwhile, all of the old conditions endemic to the education establishment and the debased culture of the Minneapolis Public Schools remain unchanged >>>>>
>>>>> Teachers are still trained terribly according to the errant philosophical precepts and programs of professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education.
>>>>> Once in the classroom, most teachers prove to have too little knowledge and to be mediocre at imparting necessary knowledge and skill sets to the students with whose education and therefore lives they are entrusted; a few teachers find their way to excellence, but a like number are so inept that they never should have entered the classroom.
And, specifically, in the schools and classrooms of our students at the Minneapolis Public Schools, >>>>>
>>>>> too many videos or DVDs are shown;
>>>>> too many worksheet-filled “packets” are distributed;
>>>>> too little discussion and teacher-dispensed knowledge occurs;
>>>>> too many field trips occur in which students have little preparation and limited idea of the purpose;
>>>>> too many students endure the presence of inept substitutes due to teacher absences and midyear resignations;
>>>>> and students move forward on a very slim skill base in mathematics and reading; and abominable training in literature, fine arts, natural science, history, government, economics, psychology, world languages, and the industrial and technological arts.
To move the Minneapolis Public Schools in the direction of delivering knowledge-intensive education with retrained teachers possessing the knowledge necessary to impart such an education; and bequeath to our students that excellence of education that will send them forth culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally rewarded; we must cease succumbing to the distraction of the moment and get on with addressing the problems that most vex all systems of public K-12 education in the United States.
And the overriding problems that incorporate all of the others pertain to curriculum and teacher quality.
Look for articles in the near future in which I will review and vigorously reassert the need to maintain focus on these vital matters of curriculum and teacher quality that define excellence in K-12 education, necessitating a change in the habitual tendency of public education officials to allow themselves, sometimes intentionally so as to mask their ineffectiveness, to get lost in the splashy distraction of the moment.
Feb 15, 2016
Decision-Makers in the Minneapolis Public Schools Must Address Problems of Curriculum and Teacher Quality: Focused Instruction Must Take Precedence Over Community Partnership Schools
Much in the manner of Pierre Bezukhov, decision-makers in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) are ever busy turning a screw stripped of its threads, committing their energies to great whirls of action that have little favorable effect.
Pierre Bezukhov is the character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace whose flings with altruistic action (attempting but failing to free his serfs, embracing the ideals of the Masonic Brotherhood) never match his propensity toward the life of a wastrel womanizer whose esteem in high society masks the deep failure to respond to a soul that longs for purpose.
Tolstoy writes,
No matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
And so it is with the officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Ever awhirl in the distraction of the moment, they never get around to locating the principal reasons for their dilemma and therefore never address their most vexing problems.
The key problems are those pertinent to curriculum, teachers, and the proper allocation of resources. During the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, the three signature programs of Shift, High Priority Schools, and Focused Instruction went into effect with the goal of addressing these problems.
The aim of Shift is to concentrate resources close to the classroom so as to address the needs of all students. Interim Superintendent Michael Goar, who took over for Johnson just over a year ago, did eliminate 120 positions in the central offices at 1250 West Broadway. But student-based budgetary allocation has been delayed in deference to well-heeled Southwest Minneapolis residents who are concerned about shifting more resources to schools with many special needs students, or those with many children receiving free or reduced price lunch.
High Priority Schools are now under the supervision of Associate Superintendent Laura Cavender, who has demonstrated seriousness of intent and some measurable progress; but we need to see much more improvement in mathematics and reading skills of students in schools at which achievement has lagged for many years.
Focused Instruction, which aims to define grade by grade knowledge and skill sets for consistent implementation throughout the school district, gathered momentum as a program under the tenure of MPS Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch. Well-received by many teachers trained for implementing a more knowledge-intensive curriculum, Focused Instruction also faced a great deal of push-back from union chief Lynn Nordgren, other representatives of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and even some personnel working closely with Lynch at the level of the central office.
Energy and attention devoted to Focused Instruction have waned under Interim Superintendent Goar. New Teaching and Learning Executive Director Macarre Traynham and Focused Instruction Project Manager Tina Platt have had very low profiles compared to Lynch.
Goar has emphasized a less promising program also articulated during the Bernadeia Johnson years: Community Partnership Schools. Approved institutions (of which there are now four within MPS) function much like charter schools, operating on the basis of site-based management, with much input from building administrators, teachers, parents, and students.
Focused Instruction and Community Partnership Schools potentially function at cross purposes: Focused Instruction is a program emanating from the central office; Community Partnership Schools are given much autonomy in exchange for an as yet ill-defined accountability.
Local control resonates with many people, and the use of pejoratives like “top-down management” has a facile appeal to those who do not understand the importance of common purpose. But understand that the best school systems in the world are found in nations (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Finland) in which curriculum is set at the national level. In the United States, our fixation on local control undermines initiatives at the national level.
Thus, I am working to impel personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools to rid themselves of distractions, proceed with district-wide implementation of Focused Instruction, and assume responsibility for training teachers at the level of the central school district who have the ability to impart information pertinent to mathematics, natural science, literature, history, economics, the fine arts, and world languages at all grade levels; with reading embedded in all of these knowledge-intensive subject areas.
Only by rectifying the current deficiencies in curriculum and teacher quality can officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools ensure the knowledge-intensive education of excellence for which students have long waited.
Otherwise, in adaptation of Tolstoy, these officials will be always returning to the same improperly addressed questions, acting ineffectually, as if the thread of the chief screw that should hold the Minneapolis Public Schools together has been stripped, unable to get in or out, turning uselessly in the same place.
Pierre Bezukhov is the character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace whose flings with altruistic action (attempting but failing to free his serfs, embracing the ideals of the Masonic Brotherhood) never match his propensity toward the life of a wastrel womanizer whose esteem in high society masks the deep failure to respond to a soul that longs for purpose.
Tolstoy writes,
No matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
And so it is with the officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Ever awhirl in the distraction of the moment, they never get around to locating the principal reasons for their dilemma and therefore never address their most vexing problems.
The key problems are those pertinent to curriculum, teachers, and the proper allocation of resources. During the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, the three signature programs of Shift, High Priority Schools, and Focused Instruction went into effect with the goal of addressing these problems.
The aim of Shift is to concentrate resources close to the classroom so as to address the needs of all students. Interim Superintendent Michael Goar, who took over for Johnson just over a year ago, did eliminate 120 positions in the central offices at 1250 West Broadway. But student-based budgetary allocation has been delayed in deference to well-heeled Southwest Minneapolis residents who are concerned about shifting more resources to schools with many special needs students, or those with many children receiving free or reduced price lunch.
High Priority Schools are now under the supervision of Associate Superintendent Laura Cavender, who has demonstrated seriousness of intent and some measurable progress; but we need to see much more improvement in mathematics and reading skills of students in schools at which achievement has lagged for many years.
Focused Instruction, which aims to define grade by grade knowledge and skill sets for consistent implementation throughout the school district, gathered momentum as a program under the tenure of MPS Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch. Well-received by many teachers trained for implementing a more knowledge-intensive curriculum, Focused Instruction also faced a great deal of push-back from union chief Lynn Nordgren, other representatives of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and even some personnel working closely with Lynch at the level of the central office.
Energy and attention devoted to Focused Instruction have waned under Interim Superintendent Goar. New Teaching and Learning Executive Director Macarre Traynham and Focused Instruction Project Manager Tina Platt have had very low profiles compared to Lynch.
Goar has emphasized a less promising program also articulated during the Bernadeia Johnson years: Community Partnership Schools. Approved institutions (of which there are now four within MPS) function much like charter schools, operating on the basis of site-based management, with much input from building administrators, teachers, parents, and students.
Focused Instruction and Community Partnership Schools potentially function at cross purposes: Focused Instruction is a program emanating from the central office; Community Partnership Schools are given much autonomy in exchange for an as yet ill-defined accountability.
Local control resonates with many people, and the use of pejoratives like “top-down management” has a facile appeal to those who do not understand the importance of common purpose. But understand that the best school systems in the world are found in nations (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, Finland) in which curriculum is set at the national level. In the United States, our fixation on local control undermines initiatives at the national level.
Thus, I am working to impel personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools to rid themselves of distractions, proceed with district-wide implementation of Focused Instruction, and assume responsibility for training teachers at the level of the central school district who have the ability to impart information pertinent to mathematics, natural science, literature, history, economics, the fine arts, and world languages at all grade levels; with reading embedded in all of these knowledge-intensive subject areas.
Only by rectifying the current deficiencies in curriculum and teacher quality can officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools ensure the knowledge-intensive education of excellence for which students have long waited.
Otherwise, in adaptation of Tolstoy, these officials will be always returning to the same improperly addressed questions, acting ineffectually, as if the thread of the chief screw that should hold the Minneapolis Public Schools together has been stripped, unable to get in or out, turning uselessly in the same place.
Feb 10, 2016
Two Other Academic Sessions Featuring Remarkable Cases of Life Transformation on Sunday, 7 February
The academic session recorded in the immediately prior article posted on this blog was just one of three that I ran on that Sunday, 7 February.
The other two also featured very needy cases >>>>>
My second academic session was with a Grade 6 girl, Janine (data privacy pseudonym, as in all cases of students and their family members about whom I write on this blog), who has languished in unchallenging special education classes since she was in the early grades; the third academic session involved two more parents of students, neither of whom advanced beyond Grade 10 in school.
Even as my days become full beyond full, I could not turn the entreaties of these aspiring students down:
The Grade 6 girl lives in the adjoining apartment in the run-down building where Evelyn and family live; her Mom is gravely worried about the girl if her educational prospects don’t rise above those with which the mother herself was inflicted by terrible schools. Janine is tall and stout for her grade level. She is the frequent target of physical bullying and verbal taunts.
Janine is functioning far below grade level in math, reading, and by extension all of her other subjects in school.
But she proved herself highly capable in my initial academic session with her in the room that I use for small-group tutoring at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church:
I put her through my quick-acquisition method for learning multiplication tables; Janine gained firm mastery over seven such items that had long proven vexing for her.
We then read an African American folk tale, "The People Could Fly," which Janine loved and read orally quite well, with a bit of pronunciation and vocabulary instruction from me. With regard to the latter, I noted the words with which she struggled and went over the meanings of these very carefully in a list that I constructed on the spot. By the end of the two-hour academic session. Janine could define and spell all of these words--- and use them in sentences.
Assuming that I am now able to keep Janine in my universe of students and families as I typically do for the long haul in the New Salem Educational Initiative, the productive future that her mother wants for her daughter will come to pass.
Janine is yet anther case of a student consigned to the graveyard of special education who can reach her potential, given an atmosphere of confidence and sequentially designed and demonstrated progress.
...................................................................
My third academic session after church attendance on this Sunday, 7 February, was with two mothers (Carla and Sonia) of my younger students (these young ones, numbering five in all, filling two of my other academic sessions), adults in their early 30s who can triple their current pay as health care workers if they are able to get their GEDs. They are rooted in an immigrant family from Mexico, hard workers giving life everything they have to forge a better future for their children.
Sonia could not remember multiplication tables beyond those with the number five (5) when we began our session; Carla was shaky in her mastery of those beyond six (6). Within 30 minutes, though, they had both mastered all multiplication tables for the numbers one (1) through nine (9).
For the remainder of our two hours together on this Sunday evening, 7 February, we carefully went over multiplication with two-digit numbers top and bottom and three-digit numbers top with two-digit numbers on bottom.
Both of these parents-become-students attended the Minneapolis Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Carla finished only Grade 8; Sonia dropped out in the middle of Grade 10. They both told tales of schools (Green Central K-8 and Washburn High School) in behavioral turmoil, staffed by teachers too often indifferent to the academic needs of struggling students.
They acted as if I were a miracle worker in teaching them to multiply.
But I have no doubt that both Carl and Sonia will soon be on a course to obtaining their GEDs and that they will move thenceforth toward advanced study with me as we travel through the exciting world of knowledge that I have compiled in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
........................................................................
Thus, these two parents are now also my students, among the 55 that I now enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative small-group program--- in addition to the 25 who participate in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program attended mainly by children of the church.
As an extension of my work with these students, I also keep track of those who have now graduated from high school and were among the participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative, monitoring their progress in college and university attendance and continuing to help academically as necessary.
One twenty-one year-old male, for example, started as a student of mine at Grade 6 and is on the throes of getting his bachelor’s degree in Public Relations but needs a math credit in College Algebra; so we are meeting two hours a week as in days of yore, reviewing the concepts in quadratic equations, functions, and the like that he needs to master as he goes online to get that final credit.
And so it goes with an approach that seeks to serve multiple and varied requests, in a program that manifests the love that never goes away.
Because my efforts in the New Salem Educational Initiative are well-known in North Minneapolis, I get requests all the time to address critical academic needs of the moment, or to help families work through difficulties of many kinds. I have knowledge of, and connections to, many government and social service agencies, so that in addition to offering my personal counsel, I can act as a resource referral unit to families in need. In all, I have 125 people in my personal network of academic instruction and counsel. I envelop all of these people, both those I see every week and those I see in the midst of particular crises, in the spirit of love that abides eternally.
All students deserve this experience, an education of excellence and enduring relationships in the context of the love that never goes away.
And this is the sacred mission with which we must imbue personnel in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The other two also featured very needy cases >>>>>
My second academic session was with a Grade 6 girl, Janine (data privacy pseudonym, as in all cases of students and their family members about whom I write on this blog), who has languished in unchallenging special education classes since she was in the early grades; the third academic session involved two more parents of students, neither of whom advanced beyond Grade 10 in school.
Even as my days become full beyond full, I could not turn the entreaties of these aspiring students down:
The Grade 6 girl lives in the adjoining apartment in the run-down building where Evelyn and family live; her Mom is gravely worried about the girl if her educational prospects don’t rise above those with which the mother herself was inflicted by terrible schools. Janine is tall and stout for her grade level. She is the frequent target of physical bullying and verbal taunts.
Janine is functioning far below grade level in math, reading, and by extension all of her other subjects in school.
But she proved herself highly capable in my initial academic session with her in the room that I use for small-group tutoring at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church:
I put her through my quick-acquisition method for learning multiplication tables; Janine gained firm mastery over seven such items that had long proven vexing for her.
We then read an African American folk tale, "The People Could Fly," which Janine loved and read orally quite well, with a bit of pronunciation and vocabulary instruction from me. With regard to the latter, I noted the words with which she struggled and went over the meanings of these very carefully in a list that I constructed on the spot. By the end of the two-hour academic session. Janine could define and spell all of these words--- and use them in sentences.
Assuming that I am now able to keep Janine in my universe of students and families as I typically do for the long haul in the New Salem Educational Initiative, the productive future that her mother wants for her daughter will come to pass.
Janine is yet anther case of a student consigned to the graveyard of special education who can reach her potential, given an atmosphere of confidence and sequentially designed and demonstrated progress.
...................................................................
My third academic session after church attendance on this Sunday, 7 February, was with two mothers (Carla and Sonia) of my younger students (these young ones, numbering five in all, filling two of my other academic sessions), adults in their early 30s who can triple their current pay as health care workers if they are able to get their GEDs. They are rooted in an immigrant family from Mexico, hard workers giving life everything they have to forge a better future for their children.
Sonia could not remember multiplication tables beyond those with the number five (5) when we began our session; Carla was shaky in her mastery of those beyond six (6). Within 30 minutes, though, they had both mastered all multiplication tables for the numbers one (1) through nine (9).
For the remainder of our two hours together on this Sunday evening, 7 February, we carefully went over multiplication with two-digit numbers top and bottom and three-digit numbers top with two-digit numbers on bottom.
Both of these parents-become-students attended the Minneapolis Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Carla finished only Grade 8; Sonia dropped out in the middle of Grade 10. They both told tales of schools (Green Central K-8 and Washburn High School) in behavioral turmoil, staffed by teachers too often indifferent to the academic needs of struggling students.
They acted as if I were a miracle worker in teaching them to multiply.
But I have no doubt that both Carl and Sonia will soon be on a course to obtaining their GEDs and that they will move thenceforth toward advanced study with me as we travel through the exciting world of knowledge that I have compiled in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
........................................................................
Thus, these two parents are now also my students, among the 55 that I now enroll in the New Salem Educational Initiative small-group program--- in addition to the 25 who participate in the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program attended mainly by children of the church.
As an extension of my work with these students, I also keep track of those who have now graduated from high school and were among the participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative, monitoring their progress in college and university attendance and continuing to help academically as necessary.
One twenty-one year-old male, for example, started as a student of mine at Grade 6 and is on the throes of getting his bachelor’s degree in Public Relations but needs a math credit in College Algebra; so we are meeting two hours a week as in days of yore, reviewing the concepts in quadratic equations, functions, and the like that he needs to master as he goes online to get that final credit.
And so it goes with an approach that seeks to serve multiple and varied requests, in a program that manifests the love that never goes away.
Because my efforts in the New Salem Educational Initiative are well-known in North Minneapolis, I get requests all the time to address critical academic needs of the moment, or to help families work through difficulties of many kinds. I have knowledge of, and connections to, many government and social service agencies, so that in addition to offering my personal counsel, I can act as a resource referral unit to families in need. In all, I have 125 people in my personal network of academic instruction and counsel. I envelop all of these people, both those I see every week and those I see in the midst of particular crises, in the spirit of love that abides eternally.
All students deserve this experience, an education of excellence and enduring relationships in the context of the love that never goes away.
And this is the sacred mission with which we must imbue personnel in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Feb 8, 2016
A Mother of a Student Becomes a Student in a Recurring Pattern of Life Transformation in the New Salem Educational Initiative
[Note: Names used in these and other such articles on my blog are data privacy pseudonyms.]
A chief tenet of the New Salem Educational Initiative is my permanent relationship with students once they have entered my academic and personal universe. Now, a particularly satisfying phenomenon is gaining multiple manifestations as numerous parents of my students request their own two-hour weekly academic sessions of study with me.
Just last evening (Sunday, 7 February 2016) as I write this, I got home (at 9:30 PM) from a remarkable day of small-group tutoring.
As usual, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM, then drove over to the apartment building occupied by the economically poorest students whom I have ever taught, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. This is the residence of Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (grade 1), whom I followed through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to their current bedbug-ridden apartment on the East Side of St. Paul.
I had actually worked with these boys the day before (Saturday, 6 February) and on this Sunday of the day after was making this trip back to St. Paul, acceding to a request from their mom, Evelyn Patterson, to admit her to my small-group program for the purposes of studying toward her associates degree.
Evelyn is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits.
But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. But then other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
It was about this time that Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now. These are highly intelligent people from families to whom history has been unkind. But the boys are thriving academically in the New Salem Educational Initiative, recording accomplishments more typically associated with children of upper middle class parents.
Now Evelyn, who for many years has been so very thankful and proud of the success of her children--- but for whom life had sent her on a personal descent into drug abuse and mental illness--- has gathered the courage to put her life back together, continue her education, and get her boys out of that cheapest rental unit in the poorest area of St. Paul where bedbugs sidle up to children in the middle of the night.
I appeared at Evelyn’s apartment at 2:00 PM, I drove her over to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in North Minneapolis, and as we drove we reviewed both the gloomy past and a prospectively better future. Then we went into two hours of intensive math review. Evelyn needed review of all basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; but these came back to her quickly. We went as far as three digits top and bottom in multiplication after reviewing multiplication tables with my quick-learn method; then we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
This was astounding, even by the standards of my efficient methods that I have developed for skill acquisition and recovery. Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. When I told her that we had just risen through the mathematical ranks from lower elementary school to a level approaching Grade 7, she beamed. When I told her that with two more weeks of two-hour academic sessions we would rise into high school for a study of algebra and geometry, I could see life transformation in Evelyn’s eyes. When I walked Evelyn up to her apartment at 4:30 PM on that Sunday, 7 February, she thanked me profusely, wiping tears from her eyes but wearing a broad smile on her face.
As soon as she closed the door behind her, I could hear her proclaiming to Damon, Javon, and Marcel:
“I climbed seven different grade levels today--- and next I’ll be in high school, then back in college!”
How many Stacey’s are there in our society who have been abused by lousy schools and historical circumstances--- but whose children and personal lives could be transformed by the power of better K-12 education?
Legions.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States. This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
I must not fail.
You must not fail.
We must not fail.
A chief tenet of the New Salem Educational Initiative is my permanent relationship with students once they have entered my academic and personal universe. Now, a particularly satisfying phenomenon is gaining multiple manifestations as numerous parents of my students request their own two-hour weekly academic sessions of study with me.
Just last evening (Sunday, 7 February 2016) as I write this, I got home (at 9:30 PM) from a remarkable day of small-group tutoring.
As usual, I departed sanctuary services at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church about 1:30 PM, then drove over to the apartment building occupied by the economically poorest students whom I have ever taught, keeping in perspective that my whole teaching career has been dedicated to teaching the most impoverished and historically underserved members of our society. This is the residence of Damon Preston (Grade 7) and Javon Jakes (grade 1), whom I followed through four different living units in (mostly North) Minneapolis before they moved to their current bedbug-ridden apartment on the East Side of St. Paul.
I had actually worked with these boys the day before (Saturday, 6 February) and on this Sunday of the day after was making this trip back to St. Paul, acceding to a request from their mom, Evelyn Patterson, to admit her to my small-group program for the purposes of studying toward her associates degree.
Evelyn is thirty-three (33) years old and the graduate of a high school in one of Chicago’s roughest South Side neighborhoods. She actually rung something approaching an education out of the teachers at that school and proceeded upon graduation to attend community college. She did this while working over a five-year period and apparently amassing almost a year and one-half worth of credits.
But her education was disrupted when her mother died, a cataclysmic event in Evelyn’s life since after several years of estrangement this young woman and her mom had just begun to reestablish a relationship. Soon thereafter, Evelyn committed time to helping her ill and convalescing maternal grandmother who had raised her during a late childhood and adolescence of estrangement from her mom. But then other members of the family transported the elderly woman from Minneapolis (to which Evelyn had moved from Chicago) to Atlanta; soon after the move southeastward, this beloved grandmother died, causing in Evelyn an array of emotions grounded in guilt and a sense of loss.
It was about this time that Damon entered my program as a six year-old at Grade 1; Javon was just a newborn in arms at the time. I have thus known Evelyn, her significant other (Marcel Gifford), and the boys for six years now. These are highly intelligent people from families to whom history has been unkind. But the boys are thriving academically in the New Salem Educational Initiative, recording accomplishments more typically associated with children of upper middle class parents.
Now Evelyn, who for many years has been so very thankful and proud of the success of her children--- but for whom life had sent her on a personal descent into drug abuse and mental illness--- has gathered the courage to put her life back together, continue her education, and get her boys out of that cheapest rental unit in the poorest area of St. Paul where bedbugs sidle up to children in the middle of the night.
I appeared at Evelyn’s apartment at 2:00 PM, I drove her over to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in North Minneapolis, and as we drove we reviewed both the gloomy past and a prospectively better future. Then we went into two hours of intensive math review. Evelyn needed review of all basic mathematical operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; but these came back to her quickly. We went as far as three digits top and bottom in multiplication after reviewing multiplication tables with my quick-learn method; then we went on to decimals, the relationship of fractions to decimals, place value of mixed numbers with decimals, and all operations with both decimals and fractions.
This was astounding, even by the standards of my efficient methods that I have developed for skill acquisition and recovery. Evelyn is whip-smart and highly motivated. When I told her that we had just risen through the mathematical ranks from lower elementary school to a level approaching Grade 7, she beamed. When I told her that with two more weeks of two-hour academic sessions we would rise into high school for a study of algebra and geometry, I could see life transformation in Evelyn’s eyes. When I walked Evelyn up to her apartment at 4:30 PM on that Sunday, 7 February, she thanked me profusely, wiping tears from her eyes but wearing a broad smile on her face.
As soon as she closed the door behind her, I could hear her proclaiming to Damon, Javon, and Marcel:
“I climbed seven different grade levels today--- and next I’ll be in high school, then back in college!”
How many Stacey’s are there in our society who have been abused by lousy schools and historical circumstances--- but whose children and personal lives could be transformed by the power of better K-12 education?
Legions.
The revolution that must come in K-12 education is our most profound domestic duty for public policy in the United States. This is the next, long-delayed, Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement.
I must not fail.
You must not fail.
We must not fail.
Feb 5, 2016
Message of Deepest Hopes for Genuine Happiness in the Life of a Beloved Student
February 5, 2016
To a Beloved Student---
I hope that you have taken genuine enjoyment in these first few weeks of second semester in your first year as a university student.
Approached in the correct manner, the university years are very precious. There is an opportunity to meet new people, develop a diversity of friends, align your time so as to interact with people of high moral character and driving intellectual interests, and move toward those stratospheric heights of humanity that Plato sees beyond the Cave, pondering the realm of Ideal Forms; and that the psychologist Abraham Maslow identifies with the "self-actualized" person.
There is also the opportunity to develop those life values that Robert Kennedy attributed to those of moral courage, that Albert Schweitzer associated with those who know that happiness lies in serving others, and that Martin Luther King envisioned at the mountaintop of human experience.
We have only one chance at this earthly sojourn.
....................................................................
I have loved you as a daughter ever since you first entered my world at Grade 3, now going on eleven years ago. I have striven to give you my very best in academic instruction, moral counsel, and practical advice.
I will always be ready to help you in any way that I can.
In these respects you are to me as is my beloved son, Ryan--- because as fervently as I love my precious son, I have loved you in like manner.
....................................................................
In the ideas that I presented to you from great thinkers in that radiant spring 2015 of your senior year, and in my Meditations on the Art of Living document that I generated for you last summer--- my motivation was to communicate to you the joy in striving for life at the mountaintop, the life of moral courage, the full internalization of Schweitzer's dictum that "The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought--- and found--- how to serve."
Remember always to be a person of love, caring deeply about other people, treating them with kindness, sharing ideas and experiences of your own and thinking carefully about what other people have to say.
I am very proud of your perseverance during your first year at the university, and I am glad that you have been able to maneuver so as to handle the financial aspects of being a university student.
You have given yourself a chance to succeed, and to lead your family toward a better quality of life.
........................................................................
My most important counsel to you continues as ever, extended in an enduring spirit that wishes you all best in every activity >>>>>
Enjoy your life.
Treasure each moment.
Embrace the good, the wholesome, and the uplifting on this one earthly sojourn.
Give thanks to the Divine in a spirit full of gratitude for the abundant opportunities bestowed on you in the course of this academic year.
As you move deeper into second semester, put that great brain to work in full measure while building relationships with intellectually astute and ethically principled people.
Be joyful and blessed in all that you do, knowing with each careful step you take how much I love you---
Gary
To a Beloved Student---
I hope that you have taken genuine enjoyment in these first few weeks of second semester in your first year as a university student.
Approached in the correct manner, the university years are very precious. There is an opportunity to meet new people, develop a diversity of friends, align your time so as to interact with people of high moral character and driving intellectual interests, and move toward those stratospheric heights of humanity that Plato sees beyond the Cave, pondering the realm of Ideal Forms; and that the psychologist Abraham Maslow identifies with the "self-actualized" person.
There is also the opportunity to develop those life values that Robert Kennedy attributed to those of moral courage, that Albert Schweitzer associated with those who know that happiness lies in serving others, and that Martin Luther King envisioned at the mountaintop of human experience.
We have only one chance at this earthly sojourn.
....................................................................
I have loved you as a daughter ever since you first entered my world at Grade 3, now going on eleven years ago. I have striven to give you my very best in academic instruction, moral counsel, and practical advice.
I will always be ready to help you in any way that I can.
In these respects you are to me as is my beloved son, Ryan--- because as fervently as I love my precious son, I have loved you in like manner.
....................................................................
In the ideas that I presented to you from great thinkers in that radiant spring 2015 of your senior year, and in my Meditations on the Art of Living document that I generated for you last summer--- my motivation was to communicate to you the joy in striving for life at the mountaintop, the life of moral courage, the full internalization of Schweitzer's dictum that "The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought--- and found--- how to serve."
Remember always to be a person of love, caring deeply about other people, treating them with kindness, sharing ideas and experiences of your own and thinking carefully about what other people have to say.
I am very proud of your perseverance during your first year at the university, and I am glad that you have been able to maneuver so as to handle the financial aspects of being a university student.
You have given yourself a chance to succeed, and to lead your family toward a better quality of life.
........................................................................
My most important counsel to you continues as ever, extended in an enduring spirit that wishes you all best in every activity >>>>>
Enjoy your life.
Treasure each moment.
Embrace the good, the wholesome, and the uplifting on this one earthly sojourn.
Give thanks to the Divine in a spirit full of gratitude for the abundant opportunities bestowed on you in the course of this academic year.
As you move deeper into second semester, put that great brain to work in full measure while building relationships with intellectually astute and ethically principled people.
Be joyful and blessed in all that you do, knowing with each careful step you take how much I love you---
Gary
Feb 3, 2016
Interview with Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker
My readers should enjoy my interview with Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker, seen on my show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison on MTN Channel 17, this evening (Wednesday, February 3rd) at 6:00 PM.
You are only able to see the show in real time at 6:00 PM every Wednesday, either on television or live streaming at http://www.mtn.org/on_air/channel-17-webstream.
The show featuring Michael Walker will be at the standard time this evening (February 3rd), accessed as indicated, either on television or live streaming at the website.
When you tune into the show, you'll see one of three types of episodes >>>>>
>>>>> Interviews in the manner of the conversation with Michael Walker.
>>>>> Comment on philosophical matters pertinent to K-12 education, with applications to issues of current interest regarding the Minneapolis Public Schools and relevant to academic institutions across the city, state, nation, and world.
>>>>> Academic sessions as I am conducting them with my students, ranging from kindergarten through Grade 12, college and university age, into adulthood.
Readers of my blog know that this television show is one of many venues that I have created for conveying my ideas regarding a knowledge-intensive K-12 education with teachers retrained at the level of the central school district who will have the knowledge and pedagogical skill necessary to delivering an excellent education on the basis of knowledge and skill intensity.
An Exchange with a Friend Regarding Reading Instruction for an Adult
I am sharing the following exchange, typical of many requests that I get daily from people of all ages, from the K-12 years, college and university settings, and living in the adult workaday world--- all seeking academic help that they are not getting or did not get while attending public schools. While I get these requests from across the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area, and even beyond, most of my students are currently attending in the Minneapolis Public Schools--- or are adults who attended (many even graduated) from those schools without getting anything resembling a decent education.
Here is the exchange:
Hi Gary.
I have a client in need of help improving his reading skills.
Do you guys handle that at New Salem, and if so what days and times?
Please advise at your earliest convenience.
Thanks a lot,
[Your Brother at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church].
February 3, 2016
To [My Brother at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church]---
I was happy to have your email.
Your client should start attending Tuesday Tutoring at New Salem, held every Tuesday evening. We start at 6:00 PM and go until 7:30 PM on most Tuesdays. The exception is the second Tuesday of the month, on which we start at 6:30 PM and go until 8:00 PM. This latter schedule will be the one to follow next Tuesday, February 9th.
The reason for the later start on the second Tuesday of the month is to allow me time to make Public Comment at the meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education before buzzing over to the church to run the tutoring program.
So I'll be looking for your client next Tuesday at 6:30 PM.
If your client needs more intense personal help, I'll do what I can to work him into one of the 17 small-group academic sessions that I teach each week. I run two or three sessions each day of the week, after school, in the evenings; all day Saturday (up to five different academic sessions on Saturday); and after church on Sunday.
You'll need to give your client lots of encouragement, and so will I. Catching up on reading is a daunting prospect for an adult who was disserved by our terrible public schools (not just in Minneapolis, but across the nation)--- the reason for many of my efforts in agitating for big change in the way the Minneapolis Public Schools are run. In case of folks such as your client, they tend to get discouraged with the slow progress that necessarily is the reality when people are far behind because of abuse by the public school system and because, by definition, they are largely nonreaders due to ability and habit.
But I thrive on such challenges and will do everything that I can to help your client to succeed.
You would likely enjoy my interview with Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker, seen on my show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison on MTN Channel 17.
You are only able to see the show in real time at 6:00 PM every Wednesday, either on television or live streaming at http://www.mtn.org/on_air/channel-17-webstream. The show featuring Michael Walker is this evening (February 3rd), accessed as indicated, either on television or live streaming at the website.
Be blessed, my brother--
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
Here is the exchange:
February 3, 2016
To [My Brother at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church]---
I was happy to have your email.
Your client should start attending Tuesday Tutoring at New Salem, held every Tuesday evening. We start at 6:00 PM and go until 7:30 PM on most Tuesdays. The exception is the second Tuesday of the month, on which we start at 6:30 PM and go until 8:00 PM. This latter schedule will be the one to follow next Tuesday, February 9th.
The reason for the later start on the second Tuesday of the month is to allow me time to make Public Comment at the meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education before buzzing over to the church to run the tutoring program.
So I'll be looking for your client next Tuesday at 6:30 PM.
If your client needs more intense personal help, I'll do what I can to work him into one of the 17 small-group academic sessions that I teach each week. I run two or three sessions each day of the week, after school, in the evenings; all day Saturday (up to five different academic sessions on Saturday); and after church on Sunday.
You'll need to give your client lots of encouragement, and so will I. Catching up on reading is a daunting prospect for an adult who was disserved by our terrible public schools (not just in Minneapolis, but across the nation)--- the reason for many of my efforts in agitating for big change in the way the Minneapolis Public Schools are run. In case of folks such as your client, they tend to get discouraged with the slow progress that necessarily is the reality when people are far behind because of abuse by the public school system and because, by definition, they are largely nonreaders due to ability and habit.
But I thrive on such challenges and will do everything that I can to help your client to succeed.
You would likely enjoy my interview with Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker, seen on my show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison on MTN Channel 17.
You are only able to see the show in real time at 6:00 PM every Wednesday, either on television or live streaming at http://www.mtn.org/on_air/channel-17-webstream. The show featuring Michael Walker is this evening (February 3rd), accessed as indicated, either on television or live streaming at the website.
Be blessed, my brother--
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
Feb 2, 2016
An Article Engendered by a Question from One of My Readers >>>>> Teaching as A Sacred Mission Calling for Conscientious Transmission of Knowledge and Deep Respect for Students as Human Beings
I had such a thoughtful question from one of my readers in response to one of my articles ("Focus, Focus, Focus, and Cut the Hocus Pocus") that I wanted to share our exchange as a mainline article for posting on the blog, as follows:
The reader's question:
"I liked your approach to students (as given in the article, 'Focus, Focus, Focus, and Cut the Hocus Pocus') and the way you're motivating them to be more productive!
"Sir, I have a question for you:
"As a professional educator, what in your opinion are the qualities of a good teacher?
"And what if the teacher is bullying the students and harassing them?
"How can one deal with this kind of problem?"
My Response
Thanks for your comments, and for your question >>>>>
In many places on my blog, I define an excellent teacher as
a professional of deep and broad knowledge who has the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.
Education professors have ruined generations of teachers and other professionals in the education establishment by devaluing knowledge and asserting that the role of a teacher is to guide students in their personal quest for information on topics of burning interest.
This is nonsense.
The proper role of the teacher is to transmit knowledge that has accumulated from centuries of experience across the globe and to ignite student enthusiasm in many realms of knowledge--- rather than to focus exclusively on the particularistic interest that most animates a student.
Thus, we want our students ultimately to pursue their own passion on the basis of a comprehensive knowledge base from the liberal arts (natural science, mathematics, history, economics, literature, fine arts, world languages), as well as acquiring skills in the industrial and technological arts.
As to a teacher who is bullying and harassing students, she or he should be removed from the classroom and given a chance to change the behavior through counseling--- but then to be terminated in the teaching position if the behavior persists after high-quality counseling. There is absolutely no excuse for bullying and harassing students. A true teacher loves knowledge and the students to whom her or his knowledge is being transmitted.
The teacher's mission is sacred, and every teacher-student interaction should be considered correspondingly sacred.
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