New Article, Tuesday, 28 February, on the Ineptitude at the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning >>>>> From Sections in >Curriculum< and >Bureaucracy< Chapters in PART TWO: Analysis, from My Nearly Complete New Book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect

A Note to My Readers

You will observe in these recent and ongoing placements on this blog a shift toward snippets from PART TWO:  Analysis, from my nearly complete new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  This phase of the book follows sequentially upon PART ONE:  Organization, which conveys a bevy of objective facts pertinent to the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  By contrast, PART TWO:  Analysis, features my interpretation of the objective facts, giving my view of the many weaknesses but also the strengths that I see in the organization of the Minneapolis Public Schools, particularly those pertinent to the vital areas of curriculum, teaching, tutoring, family outreach, and resource allocation.   

 

Please now read another section from PART TWO:  Analysis, parts of which find their way into both my chapter on Curriculum  and the chapter on Organization.

 

Department of Teaching and Learning as an Impediment to Teaching and Learning in the Minneapolis Public Schools

 

The Department of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools is responsible for

Curriculum adoption and development, professional development of teachers, online learning, and special programming such as the college preparatory AVID program and initiatives such as Focused Instruction. 

 

This is the largest single department in the central offices (Davis Center, 1250 West Broadway) of the Minneapolis Public Schools:  The Department of Teaching and Learning has in excess of 50 current staff members, or 9.5% of the total 550 employees at the Davis Center.

 

There are three (3) staff members in office support roles, four (4) connected to the AVID program, six (6) for elementary education (including the staff member designated for “talent development and advanced academics”), ten (10) for secondary education (including the middle school and high school staff members designated for “talent development and advanced academics”), three for Focused Instruction, three (3) for material management, ten (10) for online learning,  four (4) designated at the Science Center, four (4) assigned as art, media, and physical education specialists, and two (2) for the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program. 

 

Too often public bureaucracies take on a corporate world ethos and spawn all sorts of assistants whose functions are extraneous.  The office and executive assistant positons in the Department of Teaching and Learning are not necessary;  and there are staff members in the MPS Department of Finance who could absorb the functions of the business specialist.

 

Most positions in the Department of Teaching and Learning should not be necessary if teachers were properly trained in departments, colleges, and schools of education.  If K-12 teachers came to their school districts with the kind of knowledge base possessed by college professors, their curriculum would be embedded in their brains and the eighteen (18) elementary and secondary curriculum and instruction staff members would be imminently dispensable---  as indeed they should be now, since they are so ineffective. 

 

Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools would be much the wiser for putting teachers through a rigorous, knowledge-heavy teacher training program such as I advanced in the September 2014 edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota---  before staff members officially occupy  teacher positions in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  With such well-trained and knowledgeable teachers in all classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Department of Teaching and Learning could then be disassembled and revamped as a small group of perhaps ten staff members.

 

For, indeed, most positions in the Department of Teaching and Learning would also be expendable if teachers were well-trained from the beginning of their employment experience at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  If art, media, physical education, math, science, and technology teachers arrived as genuinely skilled practitioners and scholars, at least six (6) of the above given positions would fade away. 

 

Focused Instruction is a worthy program intended to implement curriculum coherently and consistently by grade level throughout the schools of the district.  But Tina Platt does not have the subject area knowledge to direct such a program, and the program has not been effective in the half-decade of its existence.  All three (3) staff members assigned to Focused Instruction would be dismissed, to be replaced by professionals of general scholarship and familiar with knowledge-intensive curriculum such as that of E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation.     

 

Ten instructors for online learning should be examined for efficacy and necessity. 

 

Department of Teaching and Learning Director Macarre Traynham was hired by Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin to bring expertise in “culturally responsive curriculum.”  A Core Knowledge approach provides extraordinary cultural responsiveness in a meaningful context of knowledge-intensive curriculum across the key subject areas of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts.  Traynham has little knowledge of such curriculum, and her own training has been primarily in iterations of those notoriously weak programs overseen by education professors, rather than in the legitimate subject area disciplines.  Traynham should be dismissed and her position examined for its necessity and level of remuneration.

 

Macarre Traynham reports to Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin.  Ms. Griffin is a compassionate and dedicated educator, but as discussed in the pages above she has no training in any of the main academic programs that should define a knowledge-intensive curriculum.  This absence of scholarly credentials and the wretched academic performance of the Minneapolis Public Schools argue powerfully for the termination of Ms. Griffin as Chief Academic Officer.

 

The Department of Teaching and Learning saliently represents the bloat and superfluity endemic to the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

From >Curriculum>, >Chapter Thirty-Three< (the Second Chapter in PART TWO: Analysis) in My Nearly Complete New Book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect

A Note to My Readers

You will observe in the next few articles posted on this blog a shift toward snippets from PART TWO:  Analysis, from my nearly complete new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  This phase of the book follows sequentially upon PART ONE:  Organization, which conveys a bevy of objective facts pertinent to the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  By contrast, PART TWO:  Analysis, features my interpretation of the objective facts, giving my view of the many weaknesses but also the strengths that I see in the organization of the Minneapolis Public Schools, particularly those pertinent to the vital areas of curriculum, teaching, tutoring, family outreach, and resource allocation.   

 

Please now read the opening pages for Chapter Thirty-Three:  Curriculum (the second chapter in PART TWO:  Analysis) :

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

 

Curriculum

 

Curriculum is extraordinarily weak in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

So serious is the problem that, with the exception of mathematics and reading, curriculum is either entirely absent or very insubstantial and disarticulated at the elementary (K-5) level for subject areas such as history, the social sciences, natural science, literature, and the fine arts.  Curriculum at the middle school (6-8) level is a bit more substantial and has gotten much better in recent years for mathematics;  but history, the social sciences, and the natural sciences are not comprehensively or cohesively presented;  high-quality literature is limited, and student experiences in the fine arts are not dependably enriching.  Only at the high school level is a substantive curriculum available for some students;  but challenging and high-quality subject area material is mostly encountered in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, and the presence of a fully capable teacher is not dependable even in those classes.   

 

This chapter details in order of importance the reasons for that curricular flimsiness.  The problem  begins with a failure to define an excellent education and with the misguided ideological propensities of education professors that tend to fill the definitional chasm;  next are matters of inept personnel and ineffective departments that do not realize the purposes suggested in their appellations.        

 

In this snippet for the blog, I’ll begin by posting my discussion of prevailing conceptions as to the constituents of an excellent education.

 

Prevailing Conceptions of What Constitutes an Excellent Education 

                                                             

In response to an email that I sent to her, Michelle Rhee (the founder and chief executive officer of the education reform organization, StudentsFirst) defined an “excellent education” as follows:

 

An excellent education equips a person with the skills and inspiration necessary to follow their passions, achieve their dreams and become a productive member of society.

First and foremost, this requires a firm command of the foundational skills upon which our society and economy are built: reading, writing, mathematics, science and problem solving. Our schools must be rigorous—through testing and other means—in demanding that every child is proficient in these core subjects.

An excellent education, however, must move beyond the basics. Just as a command of the fundamentals of basketball—shooting, dribbling, passing—are necessary to become an effective player, an excellent player also has the ability to work well with others, analyze and strategize, and think quickly and creatively.

Our schools must foster creativity and exploration, and allow children to develop social and analytic skills. Every student should have the opportunity to learn a second language and participate in arts, music, sports and after-school programs.

Finally, in addition to arming kids with a broad and robust array of skills, an excellent education motivates kids—no matter their socioeconomic background—to use those skills to reach for the stars. This is why an excellent education cannot exist without excellent teachers, who have the special ability to identify and cultivate the potential within every child. Recruiting, rewarding and retaining great teachers must be the centerpiece of any education reform agenda.

An investment in our schools is an investment in our nation’s future; we cannot stop fighting until every student receives the excellent education they deserve.

The response from Ms. Rhee is wholly in accord with the main themes that she elucidated in her book, Radical:  Fighting to Put Students First (New York:  HarperCollins, 2013).  One of the things that struck me in reading that book, though, was the absence of the kind of explicit definition that she offered in her emailed response to me. 

 

I find this to be the case time after time.  Steve Perry, for example,  never gets around to defining an excellent education in his own book, Push Has Come to Shove:  Getting our Kids the Education They Deserve---  Even If It Means Picking a Fight (New York:  Broadway Paperbacks (Crown/ Random House, 2011)

               

Michelle Rhee is a passionate advocate for a quality of change in K-12 education that puts the interests of students ahead of adults in education-related jobs.  With grit, courage, and the backing of an equally steel-spined mayor (Adam Fenty, who lost an election and his job as a reward for his own efforts in behalf of students), Michelle Rhee took on the education establishment as chancellor of schools in

Washington, D. C., during 2007-2010.  As an advocate for policies and the quality of teachers capable of improving student achievement in some of the theretofore worst schools in the United States, one can extrapolate from Rhee’s book (and the documentary, “Waiting for Superman”) principles that consider math and reading skills essential to an excellent education, which also includes a strong liberal arts curriculum.  But a focused and specific definition is lacking in her book and speeches.

 

Focus, for that matter, is lacking in the definition offered by Ms. Rhee in her emailed response.  A definition as lengthy as the one she offered fails to provide a central focus around which other, desired components may be ordered.  Her definition fails to provide any conclusive comment on the relative importance of subject area knowledge versus the processes by which one acquires knowledge, a matter of great debate and dissension among those who concern themselves with change in K-12 education.

 

At a “Soup with the Supe” event in February 2013, Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson responded to a question from me on this matter of the definition of an excellent education with the laundry list approach taken by Rhee.  In the course of a 30-second ramble, the superintendent ticked off a definition that included the importance of educational technology, engaged students, lively teaching, critical thinking, and an amorphous reference to general knowledge and skills.  As with the Rhee definition, there is nothing in Johnson’s definition that comes as a surprise, and little to which one might object---   but also not much around which to build an approach to educational excellence for a K-12 public schools system.

 

……………………………………………………….

 

Thus far, I have tendered the same question as to the definition of an excellent education to many people working for educational change in Minnesota.  Three of these are at the head of their respective organizations.  Two have yet to convey to me a cogent response.  The other replied as follows:

 

“Ah, that is such a profound question.”  She then verbally raced forward with comments that she apparently thought to be of greater importance, especially the negotiations that at the time were ensuing between officials of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Whatever the level of profundity of the question posed, we need to give a clearer and more concise definition of an excellent education before we race madly to achieve it.  And the definition is not at all a matter of consensus among thoughtful observers and commentators.

 

………………………………………………………..

 

Omission of a working definition for an excellent education may also be noted in the work of prominent authors, commentators, and founders of large organizations articulating ideas for change in K-12 education.  Although I find their omissions part of the noted and regretted phenomenon, one can extrapolate from the publications of some of the best-known commentators working definitions that these notables would recognize as synchronous with their key emphases.

 

Three educators who would be properly placed in the “progressive” camp of articulators of K-12 change are Alfie Kohn, Howard Gardner, and the late Maria Montessori.  Definitions culled from their works would viably gain expression as follows:

 

An excellent education is a matter of students and teachers collaboratively investigating topics of intense mutual interest through engaging cooperative projects, demonstrating their knowledge in portfolios, presentations, and demonstrations.                              [Alfie Kohn]

 

An excellent education is a matter of students disciplining their minds in pursuit of deep understanding of the true, the beautiful, and the good while utilizing linguistic, musical, mathematic, spatial, kinesthetic, and personal intelligence as appropriate.       [Howard Gardner]

 

An excellent education is a matter of preparing a learning environment wherein children will acquire common skill and knowledge sets at their own pace, according to the means most appropriate at each developmental stage.                       [Maria Montessori]

 

What unites these progressive commentators is an emphasis on process.  For progressive educators, the process by which one acquires subject area knowledge supersedes what is learned.  Most extreme in this regard is Alfie Kohn.  His vision of “the education our children deserve” embraces the “learning how to learn,” “lifelong learning,” and “constructivist” approaches that overwhelmingly dominate professorial pronouncements in our schools, colleges, and departments of education.  This approach devalues knowledge for definite, sequenced acquisition and promotes the notion that facts can always be looked up when one needs them.  What is important to progressive educators is a classroom driven by the particular and passionate interests of students and a teacher who acts more as facilitator than disseminator of factual knowledge.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, one finds the politically conservative William Bennett and the politically liberal E. D. Hirsch.  The latter deserves a lot of credit for disentangling the term “progressive,” which holds sway in so much of the education establishment, from “liberal,” which often metamorphosed into “progressive” as the other term became the pejorative “L” word from the Reagan era forward.  One who emphasizes a content-focused education may be politically liberal while considering as anathema the principles that undergird the approach to education commonly known as “progressive.”  

 

As distinguished from the progressive educators Kohn, Gardner, and Montessori, the content-focused Bennett and Hirsch present ideas in their publications and public talks that can be distilled into the following definitions of an excellent education:

 

An excellent education is a matter of parents modeling a love of learning and an enthusiasm for knowledge that is then tapped by teachers who engage students with a rich and rigorous core curriculum in grade by grade sequence.                  [William Bennett]

 

An excellent education is a matter of transmitting specified skill and knowledge sets mastered to the point of automaticity, broadening and deepening core knowledge in careful grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.                                [E. D. Hirsch]

                                                                                               

Thus, for Bennett and Hirsch, strong liberal arts content knowledge is the heart of an excellent education.  I have heard Hirsch comment that he considers lively teaching and student engagement important;  for him, though, the process is that which delivers the subject area content.  It is content, not process, around which he centers the Core Knowledge books under his editorship, the foundation of the same name, and his conception of the schools that he says we need but rarely get.

 

                     …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The definition of an excellent education is important.  The widespread tendency for upholders of the status quo and advocates for educational change alike to avoid clarity and specificity in defining an excellent education is notable and lamentable.

 

If we agree that process is paramount, then those whom we want to hire to preside over our children’s classrooms should be good facilitators, asking good questions for students to ponder critically, eliciting articulations from students as to their most passionate interests, and guiding them toward sources of information on those personally chosen topics for study.  Educational facilitators (teachers) in the progressive conception need not be experts in subject areas;  rather, they should be reliable human portals to a world of knowledge open for exploration rather than mastery.

 

If we agree, on the other hand, that content is paramount, what we want is a specified, sequenced, grade-by-grade curriculum across key areas of the liberal arts.  Adapting Hirsch’s presentation of subjects to be studied for Core Knowledge acquisition, we could define these prioritized subject areas as math, science (chemistry, biology, physics), history, economics, literature, and the fine arts.  Teachers in this conception of an excellent education should be broadly and deeply knowledgeable at the K-5 level and experts in their fields at the secondary level.

 

So it matters. 

 

Our failure properly to educate so many of our children lies to a large extent in our own failure to decide what being an educated person means.

 

In the hope that I have represented both the progressive and core knowledge views fairly, let me now be clear that I come down unequivocally on the latter side, emphasizing the knowledge acquired over the process of delivery.  Accordingly, in line with my conception, I assert the need for a revamped and upgraded curriculum that specifies in definite sequence what students should learn at each level from kindergarten through Grade 12.  We have little curriculum at all now at the K-5 level.  We consider middle school a time primarily for socialization.

 

We wait until high school to deliver anything approaching a content-rich curriculum, and we try to do this with too many teachers who are not knowledgeable enough to deliver the content.

                                                                                               

Having revamped, upgraded, and sequenced the curriculum, I would then hire teachers with the knowledge to teach specified skill and knowledge sets and the ability to transmit these sets to students.

 

And for the benefit of the large swaths of people, working variously to uphold or change the status quo, who have not been forthright in detailing the components of the education that they are either upholding or working to create, let me be clear as to my own definition:

  

An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts in grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors throughout the K-12 years.

This brings forth another important definition:

 

An excellent teacher is a person of broad and deep knowledge, with the pedagogical skill to impart that knowledge to all students.

Introduction to >PART TWO: Analysis<, a Snippet of Many to Come Featuring an Interpretation of the Facts Presented in >PART ONE: Organization<, of My Nearly Complete New Book, >>Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect

A Note to My Readers
You will observe in the next few articles posted on this blog a shift toward snippets from PART TWO:  Analysis, from my nearly complete new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  This phase of the book follows sequentially upon PART ONE:  Organization, which conveys a bevy of objective facts pertinent to the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  By contrast, PART TWO:  Analysis, features my interpretation of the objective facts, giving my view of the many weaknesses but also the strengths that I see in the organization of the Minneapolis Public Schools, particularly those pertinent to the vital areas of curriculum, teaching, tutoring, family outreach, and resource allocation.   


As the first in this series of articles, please now read my introduction to PART TWO:  Analysis, from Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.


Chapter Thirty-Two

Introductory Comments on Part Two:  Analysis

Professionals in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) do not educate anyone very well, and the education imparted to low income students and students of color is abysmal. 

 

The reasons for the failure of MPS professionals to provide a fundamentally sound and knowledge-intense education are found in the following succinctly given areas:

 

1)  Curriculum

 

2)  Teacher quality                                                                                                                                                

  

3)  Tutoring

 

4)  Family outreach

 

5)  Bureaucratic bloat

 

In the chapters of PART TWO (Analysis), I will explain in detail how deficiencies in the Minneapolis Public Schools are fundamentally rooted in the misguided ideology of education professors in departments, schools, and colleges of education.

 

Readers will come to understand how key central office administrators and staff members making curriculum and professional development decisions in the Minneapolis Public Schools lack the scholarly credentials necessary for designing knowledge-intensive curriculum.

 

Readers will also come to understand in detail the abysmal training that teachers receive in departments, schools, and colleges of education.

 

Readers will in addition gain insight into the failure of professionals in the Minneapolis Public Schools to establish a well-articulated, comprehensive tutoring program to address the academic deficiencies of students whose performance is lagging below grade level.

 

Readers will witness the lack of intentionality on the part of decision-makers and staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools for designing a program addressing the particular needs of economically and functionally challenged families.

 

And readers will see clear evidence of bureaucratic overstaffing, gaining insight into why such bloat occurs.

Questions for the Very Talented Michael Thomas (Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning) >>>>> Questions as I Work Toward The Conclusion of My New Book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect

A Return to

Part One:  Questions to Those with Responsibility for the Overall Academic Program 

A Note to My Readers

 

Below is a set of questions that I sent to Michael Thomas, Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  Thomas receives a salary of $151,000 or more;  I have not updated his salary information in my records since he was seemingly elevated from his position as Chief of Schools to Chief of Academics, Leadership and Learning.

 

Michael Thomas is one of the most promising talents at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  His educational philosophy is underdeveloped, in the manner of all decision-makers in at MPS;  but he has a firm grip on the dilemmas posed by the MPS academic record, particularly for those struggling below grade level, and he comprehends the enormous impediment to achieving educational excellence found in the ill-trained teacher corps at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Mr. Thomas’s challenge now is to firm up his philosophy of education and then to marshal his considerable diplomatic skills to move the Minneapolis Public Schools toward academic excellence for students of all demographic descriptors.     

 

This is the eighth set of questions for MPS administrators that I am posting on my blog, examples of several such sets of questions that I have submitted to officials at the Davis Center, 1250 West Broadway, housing the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Scroll on down to see the questions that I have sent, and then posted on this blog, to Superintendent Ed Graff, Deputy Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Macarre Traynham, Focused Instruction Project Manager Christina (Tina) Platt), Director of the Department of College and Career Readiness Terry Henry, Department of Indian Education Anna Ross, and Office of Black Male Achievement Director Michael Walker. 

 

The latter two (Ross and Walker) occupy positions designated to serve specific student populations.  In posting the current set of questions, I return my readers to questions of the kind, specified for Mr. Thomas, that I have posed to those with responsibility for the overall academic program at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Please continue to look for articles such as this one, in which I pose questions for Minneapolis Public Schools personnel as I work toward the conclusion of my new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

Following are the questions for which I have requested answers from Mr. Thomas:

For Public Schools Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning Michael Thomas

1.  Please state as succinctly as possible the philosophy of K-12 education that drives programming under your direction as Chief Academics, Leadership, and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

As Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools, your philosophy of education should undergird your communications to the staff under your direction for developing academic programming at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Thus, your answer to this question is of great importance as a matter of public information.

 

For your reference, my own answer to that question would be as follows:

 

My philosophy of education in its most succinct rendering is that the purpose of K-12 education should be to give students the opportunity to go forth at graduation to experience lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction. 

 

Undergirding this philosophy are definitions of an excellent K-12 education and the excellent teacher as follows:

 

An excellent K-12 education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts to all students in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.

 

An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical skill to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.

My own views are similar to those of those of E. D. Hirsch.  In my nearly complete book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, the curriculum that I present is a logical follow-up to Hirsch’s Core Knowledge course of study, emphasizing grades pre-K through grade six.  My own book presents compact courses in economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics for high school students, college students, and adult readers.

In his book, The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999), Alfie Kohn wrote a detailed counterview to that espoused by Hirsch in the volume, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (1996).  Kohn and other so-called “progressive education” proponents maintain that the key components of an excellent education are “critical thinking skills” and motivation to become a “lifelong learner”;  such advocates convey the view that a sequentially, systematically accumulated body of knowledge is not important, because as to any factual information needed in a given situation, “You can always look it up.”  

In your reply to my question, please honestly and clearly tell me with whom you agree most, Hirsch or Kohn.  There is a heavy tendency to waffle on this question by blending the two views.  I am always doubtful of such waffling.  My own statement would be the following:

I heavily favor the knowledge-intensive education advocated by Hirsch:  Genuine critical thinking must proceed upon a firm knowledge base, and the propensity for lifelong learning most likely occurs in those who in childhood and adolescence developed a respect for factual knowledge.

 

Please be as clear in your answer to this question as I have been in stating my own views.

 

2.  What is your vision for the Focused Instruction program that began during the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson?

 

I am of the view that Focused Instruction languished under Interim Superintendent Michael Goar and that new Superintendent Ed Graff will not be inclined toward reinvigoration of this program.

 

Would you confirm those observations?

 

My attraction to Focused Instruction is found in the program’s promise as a conduit for knowledge- intensive education of the Core Knowledge type:

 

Is this your vision for Focused Instruction?  If not, please be clear about your non-agreement with me.

 

And whether or not you do agree, please give me a clear account of your vision for Focused Instruction and your plan of action for completely implementing the program. 

 

Please be as clear in your answer to this question as I have been in stating my own views.

 

3.  Please explain what you are doing to address the abysmal academic performance of African American, Hispanic, and American Indian students;  and students on Free and Reduced Price Lunch;  at the Minneapolis Public Schools---   as similarly revealed in the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Multiple Measurement Rating System MMRS).

 

Two and one-half years into the Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan of the Minneapolis Public Schools, performance of these students is generally flat or getting worse, despite the goal of the strategic plan that the percentage of these chronically low-performing students improving so as to attain grade level performance shall rise eight (8) percentage points per year.

 

What actions are now being taken by those under your direction to elevate student performance in accordance with the goals of the Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan?

 

Please be very clear in your answer to this question.

 

4.  Do you have plans for developing and overseeing a district-wide program of tutoring for students who are not according to MCA, NAEP, and MMRS results performing academically at grade level? 

 

Answers to questions that I have posed to staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools confirm that there is no staff member with specific responsibility for developing and overseeing a district-wide program of tutoring for students who are not performing at grade level.  Those answers also confirm that such tutoring as is provided is rendered by several different organizations and is not consistent from school to school.

 

Do you have plans to designate a person with overall responsibility for tutoring, and to develop a well-articulated, coherent tutoring program that is consistent from school to school?

 

Please be very clear in your answer to this question.

5.  Do you have a plan for assuring that the principals in each building are ready to provide excellent leadership from the time that they occupy these roles?

 

Currently you have six associate superintendents working under your direction.  Each of these staff members earns $141,500, for a total of $849,000.  The chief responsibility of these associate superintendents is to provide ongoing training and mentorship to school building principals.  This strongly implies that building principals are not properly trained or prepared before assuming their positions.

 

What if any plan do you have for providing training for prospective principals before they assume their positions, thus eliminating the need for costly expenditure on associate superintendents?

 

Please be very clear in your answer to this question.

 

6.  Do you have a plan to expand the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement or otherwise connect with economically challenged or troubled families?

 

When young people are hungry, have heard gunshots in the night, have family members who suffer from substance addiction, have parents who cannot pay to keep the heat on in winter, or face other problems associated with grinding poverty, getting to school or staying focused if managing to attend may be challenging.

 

Do you have a plan for reaching out to these families right where they live, either to provide services directly or to connect them with services that meet their needs?

 

Please be very clear in your answer to this question.

 

8.  Do you have a plan to provide thorough training of teachers to assure that a competent (and, as we look toward the future, truly excellent) teacher occupies each classroom of the Minneapolis Public Schools?

 

People in many positions at the Minneapolis Public Schools clearly acknowledge that teacher quality is a problem in your school district.  I have in many places given evidence for my view that the reason for the mediocrity of teachers lies in the low level of training and expectations inherent in the programs of departments, colleges, and schools of education.

 

Providing teacher training---  not really retraining or mere “professional development,” but the main training that teachers should receive before ever taking positions in the classroom---   will be expensive and require great skill and subject area knowledge on the part of those doing the training.

 

Do you acknowledge the problem of teacher quality?

 

If so, what is your plan for providing the necessary training for prospective teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools?   

 

The “Grow Your Own” program seems inadequate to the severity of the problem.  Do you agree?   

Please be very clear in your answer to this question.

Update on My Two Nearly-Complete Books, Revealing the Inner Workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and Providing a Comprehensive Liberal Arts Curriculum for Students and Intellectually Engaged Adults

I am now continuing to move ever closer toward completion of a final draft for one of my two new books, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

The other book is a one-volume complete curriculum for advanced high school students, university students, and intellectually ambitious adults seeking to learn for the first time, review, or extend what they learned, should have learned, or want to learn pertinent to subject area information from a high school and college or university experience.  I had completed eleven of fourteen chapters of this book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, when I set it aside for a time to assemble the mass of information that I had been accumulating for the book on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).

 

I am in the process of scheduling a final round of interviews and conducting site visits as I assemble the last components of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  Questions that I have posed to MPS personnel are important, both for the responses I get and what lack of response will say about those people who make no or insufficient responses.

 

As you scroll on down this blog, you will find snippets from this book on the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Lately these have especially concerned certain questions that I have posed to MPS staff members at the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway).  You will also find snippets from the other book, pertinent to key subject areas in the complete liberal arts curriculum.

 

I can anticipate with little difficulty that many of the staff members at the Davis Center are at a loss as to how to respond to my questions, because they have never given thought of any depth to the matters of philosophic importance that I pose.  I want to give them the chance to defy my expectations, but in the absence of such a response, I will be free to interpret their lack of response for what such a pose conveys about their inadequacy to the task at hand.

 

I have also collected enormous amounts of data and am anticipating responses from a final round of requests for MPS information that as a matter of law are in the public domain.  These include, for example, questions that I have tendered to Terry Henry at the Department of College and Career Readiness concerning numerical student participation in programs such as AVID, Check and Connect, GEAR UP, JAG, We Want You Back, and Project Lead the Way;  and questions that I have directed to Scott Weber at MPS Human Resources, similar to those that he has answered many times before, concerning current staff list, by position and salary, at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

I intend to hand the completed manuscript for Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect to a publisher no later than 1 April 2017.  This will be a major reference work for the community of people served by the Minneapolis Public Schools, and as a seminal study of the inner workings of a locally centralized school district.

 

Once this book is complete, I will take the next two or three months to complete the three remaining chapters for my fourteen-chapter Fundamentals of An Excellent Liberal Arts Education

 

With these two books complete, I will have an even more solid foundation for waging my campaign for the transformation of the Minneapolis Public Schools into a model for all locally centralized school districts---  so that our nation can achieve in reality the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.