An Evaluation of Christina (Tina) Platt as Project Manager for Focused Instruction at the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning, with Responsibility for Focused Instruction

Christina (Tina) Platt is the Project Manager in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools, with responsibility for overseeing the development of Focused Instruction and integration of that project into the schools of the district.

 

Focused Instruction was initiated during the 2010-2016 tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson.

The project constitutes an effort to ensure that students throughout the district at each grade level are receiving a common curriculum.  This is very important, especially to highly mobile student populations, typifying students whose families face housing insecurity, whether homeless and moving from shelter to shelter or living erratically from relative to relative;  and all impoverished families tend to be frequently on the move, seeking ever cheaper Section 8 housing.

 

Further, common curriculum occurring at each grade level is important to all students.  Knowledge builds upon knowledge and is only maximally effective when delivered in careful sequence, grade by grade.  Focused Instruction has resonance with the Core Knowledge approach;  Core Knowledge is the premier knowledge-intensive curriculum for grades K-6 and has been extended in the course of the past two decades to grades 7-8.  I have developed my own curriculum in the New Salem Educational Initiative with reference to the Core Knowledge sequence and in my nearly complete book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education have extended that sequence to include the advanced high school and university level.

 

Focused Instruction had a promising beginning under former Director of Teaching and Learning Director Mike Lynch and was embraced by former MPS administrator for school innovation Sara Paul.  But Lynch departed before the 2015-2016 academic year and was eventually replaced in that position by Macarre Traynham, who now heads Teaching and Learning;  Tina Platt reports to Trayhham.  During the turbulent superintendent search that unfolded in that 2015-2016 academic year when Michael Goar served as Interim Superintendent, the Focused Instruction program languished.  

 

Here I note that Bernadeia Johnson initiated three of the most promising programs ever launched at the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Shift (designed to get resources targeted to the greatest need at the classroom level), High Priority Schools (with special efforts made to address the needs of the lowest performing student populations), and Focused Instruction.  But she also launched the Community Partnership School concept that under Michael Goar became reality for four schools (Nellie Stone Johnson, Ramsey Fine Arts, Folwell, and Bancroft);  these schools have considerable scope to forge their own programs in the manner of charter schools and fundamentally are at odds with the cohesive curriculum approach of Focused Instruction.

 

Focused Instruction has had the support of many classroom teachers but others have quibbled, following the anti-knowledge inclinations that are much in the ether due to education professor banter, further fanned about by leaders of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).  Goar favored Community Partnership Schools, originally opposed by MFT leaders, who nevertheless eventually contractually agreed to the initiation of these schools and favored the curricular freedom implied in the Community Partnership School concept over the delivery of a knowledge-intensive curriculum that would come with Focused Instruction if the latter were properly integrated into the subject area content pertinent to each grade level.

 

Current MPS Superintendent Ed Graff has imbibed the anti-knowledge rhetoric of education professors, whose instruction has dominated his entire academic training, at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels.

 

Under these adverse circumstances, Focused Instruction would need a courageous, knowledgeable advocate:

 

That person is not Tina Platt.

 

………………………………………………………….

 

Tina Platt’s academic credentials are given as follows:

 

Christina Platt, Project Manager for Teaching and Learning

 

Master of Public and Nonprofit Administration, Metropolitan State University

 

B.A.: Sociology, University of Minnesota–Minneapolis

 

Certification:   Career Development Facilitator, Normandale College

 

 

Thus, Ms. Platt's training gives little evidence of broad, deep knowledge of subject areas that should constitute the core curriculum of the Minneapolis Public Schools:  mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, literature, and the fine arts.  Her undergraduate major, sociology, while having some place as a high school elective, is peripheral to the core curriculum.  And her advanced training offers little indication of advanced subject area knowledge pertinent to the core K-12 curriculum.

 

Tina Platt until very recently had no familiarity with Core Knowledge, the premier knowledge-intensive curriculum developed by a team of scholars led by E. D. Hirsch.  She also gives little evidence of having the confident, assertive personality that would allow her to advance the case for knowledge-intensive education for which Focused Instruction at full development would be a powerful conduit.  Such an assertive and personally knowledgeable person will be necessary for the advancement of knowledge-intensive education, since the education establishment comprised of education professors and their acolytes opposes an emphasis on that quality and quantity of knowledge of which they have so little.

 

Tina Platt receives an annual salary of $73,237 and leads Curriculum Assets Assistants Jake Hirschman and Nancy Mai in the tepid effort to advance knowledge-intensive, grade specific instruction throughout the K-12 curriculum of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  That salary is certainly very good in a nation for which the median income for a family of four (including many two-income households) is approximately $67,000;  and the median individual income is about $32,000.  Platt’s salary is also above the approximately $65,000 median for teachers at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  But by the standards of the bloated and overpaid bureaucracy of the Minneapolis Public Schools, $73,237 is middling remuneration and signals the lack of value that is placed on Focused Instruction.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

Tina Platt works under the direction of Macarre Traynham and ultimately of Susanne Griffin, to whom Traynham reports.  Neither of these latter two individuals, as detailed in articles as you scroll on down this blog, are proponents of grade-specific, knowledge-intensive curriculum.  This is a contingent that needs to be removed from their current roles.

 

Thus, as to the specific emphasis of this article, assessing the preparation and propensity of Christina (Tina) Platt for the role of Focused Instruction point person at the Minneapolis Public Schools, the prevailing facts and indicators strongly argue for Ms. Platt’s termination in the staff position as Project Coordinator with responsibility for the implementation of Focused Instruction at the Department of Teaching and Learning of the Minneapolis Public Schools.