Susan Griffin is Chief Academic Officer of the Minneapolis Public Schools, receiving a salary of $151,000 annually.
Ms. Griffin is a caring and experienced educator who is not likely to morph into the proponent of knowledge-intensive education central to the definition of academic excellence.
Inasmuch as that is so, Ms. Griffin should be terminated in her present position as Minneapolis Public Schools Chief Academic Officer and reassigned to a position more appropriate to her talents.
A portal of the MPS website gives the duties of Ms. Griffin as Chief Academic Officer, as follows:
Chief Academic Officer
Susanne Griffin
The chief academic officer oversees the academic division and implements the academic agenda to provide world-class education for all MPS students. Areas of focus include accelerated academic achievement for all students, shared accountability for student learning, professional development for teachers and principals and respectful and welcoming school environments.
Information on those offices and department under Ms' Griffin's supervision are as follows;
Susanne Griffin (Chief Academic Officer)
Responsible for the following:
Community Education
College and Career Readiness
Early Childhood Education
Educational & Cultural Services/ Indian Education
Professional Development
Special Education
Teaching & Learning
Ms. Griffin's academic credentials are given as follows:
Susanne Griffin, Chief Academic Officer
Superintendent Licensure, Minnesota State University-Mankato
Educational Policy and Administration (58 credits toward Doctorate)
and Administrative Licensure, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
M.S.: Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin–Madison
B.S.: Secondary Education and Speech/Language Pathologist Licensure, University of Wisconsin–River Falls
As is the case with most of those in leadership positions at the Minneapolis Public Schools, Susanne Griffin's university training is entirely in education programs. She has no training in key academic disciplines such as government, economics, physics, mathematics, world literature, or music. She does have training in the very important field of speech pathology, but this commendable expertise does not readily translate into curricular design for a broad K-12 education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.
According to the best information available to me, Susanne Griffin has internalized the emphasis on critical thinking and lifelong learning advanced by education professors who, as explained in many places on this blog, use such a definition to avoid the knowledge intensity that they themselves lack in their own training: They are as a rule neither critical thinkers nor seekers after broad and deep knowledge.
Ms. Griffin has working under her supervision two very weak staff members at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools: Macarre Traynham (Director of Teaching and Learning) and Tina Platt (Project Manager and MPS point person for Focused Instruction). Traynham and Platt have very little grasp of the prime curriculum for knowledge intensive-education, that developed at the Core Knowledge Foundation of E. D. Hirsch. And, as I will detail articles in other of this series, neither Traynham nor Platt have subject area expertise most pertinent to the development of knowledge-intensive education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Susanne Griffin did not hire Platt, but she has kept her in her position for the three years of Ms. Griffin's tenure as Chief Academic Officer. And she did hire Traynham, drawn to the latter's emphasis on culturally relevant curriculum. As I have detailed in many articles, culturally sensitivity should be integral to every aspect of life in the Minneapolis Public Schools, best imparted in academic terms in the context of broad and deep subject area knowledge of the kind that Traynham neither values nor is positioned to develop.
Many of the departments under Susanne Griffin's responsibility are nowhere close to meeting the standards suggested by their names, and for which they were presumably created. This is discussed in many places on this blog and is a major focus in my book, now in advanced draft form as Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Present Condition, Future Prospect. This observation is particularly true for the Department of College and Career Readiness and the Department of Indian Education. Special education is far from ideal at the Minneapolis Public Schools, and professional development does not even remotely approximate the level of teacher retraining that will be necessary to achieve an education of K-12 excellence.
Then there is the matter of academic performance of students at MPS as given in Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) scores from spring 2016:
Percentage of Students Recording
Grade Level Performance on MCAs:
Disaggregated Data for Academic Years
Ending in 2014, 2015, and 2016
Math
African American 2014 2015 2016
Male 20.8% 22.0% 19.1%
Female 21.2% 20.7% 20.5%
African (Somali, Ethiopian, Liberian---
(late 20th/early 21st century immigrant populations)
2014 2015 2016
Male 24.2% 25.0% 23.6%
Female 24.1% 25.9% 21.5%
Hispanic 2014 2015 2016
Male 32.1% 33.5% 32.1%
Female 29.4% 30.3% 30.4.%
Native American/ 2014 2015 2016
American Indian
Male 19.9% 16.5% 16.0%
Female 25.0% 21.9% 21.3%
Asian 2014 2015 2016
Male 44.1% 47.4% 45.4%
Female 51.3% 53.4% 54.1%
White/ Caucasian 2014 2015 2016
Male 76.7% 78.4% 77.4%
Female 77.0% 77.9% 78.4%
All Students 2014 2015 2016
Male 43.1% 44.3% 42.9%
Female 43.9% 44.5% 44.4%
Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs:
Disaggregated Data for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, and 2016
Reading
African American 2014 2015 2016
Male 18.8% 18.5% 18.2%
Female 24.0% 24.5% 23.4%
African (Somali, Ethiopian, Liberian---
late 20th/early 21st century immigrant populations)
2014 2015 2016
Male 18.8% 19.3% 20.4%
Female 27.6% 24.3% 23.2%
Hispanic 2014 2015 2016
Male 22.0% 22.9% 24.7%
Female 24.5% 26.6% 27.6%
Native American/ 2014 2015 2016
American Indian
Male 18.3% 13.9% 15.3%
Female 23.6% 26.1% 25.9%
Asian 2014 2015 2016
Male 36.0% 35.8% 38.8%
Female 44.7% 44.1% 50.6%
White/ Caucasian 2014 2015 2016
Male 75.3% 74.3% 74.0%
Female 81.0% 80.2% 80.0%
All Students 2014 2015 2016
Male 39.2% 38.7% 39.6%
Female 45.3% 45.1% 45.8%
These scores testify to dismal academic performance at the Minneapolis Public Schools, for which someone bearing the title of Chief Academic Officer must bear responsibility.
.............................................................
Susanne Griffin has a range of valuable experiences in education. She served as teacher, principal, and central office administrator in the school district of Rochester, Minnesota. At one point in her personally successful career in Rochester, she made the courageous decision to seize an opportunity to go to Atlanta, Georgia, to gain experience in working with students from impoverished families and with communities of color.
Susanne Griffin is a compassionate educator who truly aspires to serve the academic needs of all children. Her philosophical predispositions, however, do now and are likely always to impede her from designing the knowledge-intensive program that must be at the core of K-12 academic excellence.
Susanne Griffin's philosophical propensities are not suitable to the position of Chief Academic Officer, but they could translate well to positions involving more specialized focus on special education, speech pathology, or interaction with families of students.
Thus it is that Susanne Griffin should be terminated in the position of Chief Academic Officer at the Minneapolis Public Schools, with prospects for transfer into a position more consonant with her training, experience, talents, and compassionate nature.
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