Jeff Urbanek Has, Like the Typical Defender of the Status Quo, Predictably Refused to Defend His Position in a Fact-Based Formal Debate Refereed by Objective Judges in a Public Forum

Jeff Urbanek is clearly not a clear thinker or a discussant with the morality to defend his assertions.

 

As you scroll down this blog you will find an article that I wrote on 11 November 2016 concerning the professional failure of members the Minneapolis Public Schools Department of Indian Education.  In that article I conveyed the logical view that staff members of a department bearing that name are highly culpable for failing to implement a program capable of improving these disastrous results:      

 

Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs: Disaggregated Data for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, and 2016

 

Math                                               

 

Native American/ American Indian

 

                                             2014          2015          2016

 

Male                                     19.9%         16.5%     16.0%

Female                                 25.0%         21.9%     21.3%

 

Reading      

 

Native American/ American Indian

 

                                                      2014          2015          2016

 

Male                                            18.3%         13.9%     15.3%

Female                                         23.6%         26.1%     25.9%

 

 

This presentation drew a response from commentator by the name of Jeff Urbanek, who defended the staff members of the Department of Indian Education as hard working and sincere and asserted that I was engaging in personal attacks.

 

My criticism of staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools is in actuality based on 300 pages of meticulous collected facts that I will soon publish in a book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools.   Some staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools care deeply about young people and work hard in their behalf.  But caring deeply and being diligent do not unfortunately equate to acceptable professional performance.

                                           

Keep in view that I work with students of dire poverty seven days a week, moving them to grade level performance in math and reading and then putting them on a college preparatory track based on their study of another nearly complete book of mine, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, wherein I present fourteen chapters focused on the subject areas of economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.   

 

After our first exchange that featured my challenge to Jeff Urbanek to meet me in a public forum for an impartially refereed formal debate, this was his reply:

 

I have no interest in further discussing this with someone who launches personal attacks on hard-working members of the school district.

 

My own reply to this second comment of his was as follows:

 

You yourself lack both the moral courage and the factual underpinning necessary to defend the status quo that robs our precious children of the excellence of public education that we have the obligation to impart to all students, regardless of demographic descriptors.

 

 

I am an assiduous collector of facts who walks the talk seven days a week.

 

I am eminently unastonished that Jeff Urbanek and other defenders and perpetrators of the status quo would be chagrined to discuss the facts with me in a public forum.

 

But the challenge remains to any staff member of the Minneapolis Public Schools who would be interested in a public debate---  and that challenge abides also to defenders of the status quo, such as Jeff Urbanek.