The Lack of a Cohesive, Staff-Administered Tutoring Program for Raising Achievement Levels at the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>> Register Your Dismay with a "No" Vote on the 8 November Referendum

Today I received an answer to a question for which I had been waiting two weeks, a response to the third of four queries posed at the same time to officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). 


This one concerns tutoring programs coordinated by staff at MPS.


I correctly anticipated the answer to this question, given in my wording as follows:



3) Is there any one person at the Minneapolis Public Schools whose responsibility is to coordinate and provide cohesion to the multiple tutoring programs?


Surmised answer >>>>>


No.


We have no one with this responsibility.


Please confirm or provide the name of the person.


This was the response that I received today, reported by an able official after receiving information from the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning:


Teaching & Learning (in other words from the district level) does not oversee any specific tutoring programs. We definitely have outside agency’s [sic] such as Reading Corps and Reading Partners that work with individual schools implementing their own programs within the schools. These mostly include volunteers trained by the agency to work with students identified by teachers as needing additional supports.


The lack of a cohesive, staff-administered tutoring program confirmed in this answer, while expected, is reprehensible, given that less that 46% of students at MPS achieve grade level performance in reading and mathematics.


I discussed this situation in a prior article, based on information that I had been able to obtain via perusal of MPS websites, listening to my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, personal visits to multiple schools, and talking to various MPS officials.  Ever the meticulous seeker of factual information, I posed the above question to secure a direct answer in writing that could leave no doubt about the truth that I had discovered.


In that previous article, I included the following comments:

Tutoring efforts at the Minneapolis Public Schools constitute an ineffective hodgepodge.


R. T. Rybak departed the reformist nonprofit agency Generation Next before that organization delivered on its promises to enroll a bevy of tutors to help struggling public school students in Minnesota. This was after officials at Generation Next committed two years of staff time to arrive at the obvious conclusion that aggressive remedial instruction should be rendered to ensure that all students are reading and performing mathematical operations at level of school enrollment by grade 3.


Students at K-5 and K-8 institutions in the Minneapolis Public Schools receive some help through the Beacons after school program. But academic assistance in Beacons is not high quality or properly measured for effectiveness, and students spend as much after school time in recreational pursuits as they do in striving to achieve academic proficiency. 


Those wishing to sign up as volunteers for the Minneapolis Public Schools may sign up under categories that include Community Volunteers, Elementary Literacy Tutor Program, and Adult Education Volunteers. Other programs included on the MPS website for prospective volunteers that have relevance to tutoring include Math Corps, Reading Corps, City of Lakes Americorps, and 15 VISTA. 


But there is only one person--- Kaylie Burns Gahagan--- with prime responsibility for coordinating volunteers, not all volunteers render academic instruction, and there has been no major effort to place a sufficient number of tutors working to advance the academic prospects of all students needing remedial instruction in all schools.


In asking voters on 8 November to approve the posed referendum, officials at MPS are claiming that resources generated with this tax levy will be used directly to promote the academic advancement of students.  But the careful reader of this claim comes quickly to understand that the precise amounts or percentages allocated to critical programs that can actually boost student achievement are lacking.


The absence of any outlay for the hiring and training of high-quality tutors in tandem with the failure to designate a coordinator for MPS tutoring programs, signals grave incompetence in addressing the most fundamental academic needs of students.




Register your dismay for this lack of a cohesive, staff-administered tutoring program for raising achievement levels at the Minneapolis Public Schools, along with your disgust for the general ineptitude at MPS as detailed in my recent articles >>>>> 


Vote "No" on the 8 November Referendum of the Minneapolis Public Schools.