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.