Five-Point Program for Achieving Equity in the Minneapolis Public Schools

At Southwest High School on the evening of 23 February 2017, the administration at the Minneapolis Public Schools is sponsoring a community discussion on the issue of equity, to be held from 6:00 until 8:30 PM.

 

The theme of this forum is therefore synchronous with the purposes of this blog, which is in essence a 390-article discussion of the achievement of academic equity for all of our precious young people.

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Pertinent to the mission of the locally centralized school district, there is an identity between the impartation of an excellent education and the achievement of equity in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Be reminded that the purpose of K-12 education is to give students the opportunity to go forth at graduation to experience lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction. 

 

Know that an excellent education is defined 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.

 

And understand that the definition of an excellent teacher is the following:

 

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.

 

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Equality is a matter of providing the same opportunity to every person.

 

Equity is a matter of ensuring that everyone is positioned to take advantage of equal opportunities.

 

Hence, in K-12 education, equality is necessary but not sufficient to attain equity.  Equity encompasses equality and ensures that students of all demographic descriptors have the support that they need to receive an excellent education and to graduate with the opportunity to fulfill the great purposes of educational excellence.

 

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To provide an equitably excellent education to all students, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must establish the following five-point program:

 

1)  Overhaul curriculum, so as to provide a knowledge-intensive education in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 experience of every student.

 

The core of the curriculum should consist of the subject areas of mathematics, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts.  These most important constituent subject areas of a liberal arts curriculum should feature very specific content to be delivered in all schools at all grade levels during the K-5 years.  The Focused Instruction program begun during the tenure (2010-2015) of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson is a very viable conduit for such a curriculum, of the kind that has gained fullest development at the Core Knowledge Foundation of E. D. Hirsch.

 

Curriculum at the middle school level should continue the logical grade by grade sequence in the above subject areas, with additional foci on foreign languages and on the technological and vocational arts.

 

Curriculum at the high school level should continue the logical sequence and, given that students in the overhauled approach to curriculum will already have a strong liberal arts foundation, course offerings beyond middle school will be ever specialized in the liberal arts and abundant in the realms of the technological and vocational arts.  Implied in the presence of an advanced curriculum and universally well-prepared students will be the preparation of almost all students to take Advanced Placement courses in mathematics, English, world history, biology, chemistry, and physics;  only those students with special intellectual and learning challenges would not be prepared to take AP courses.

 

2)  Train teachers capable of delivering such an overhauled curriculum.

 

Prospective teachers of K-5 students receive insubstantial subject area training in departments, schools, and colleges of education.  They will have to be trained at the level of the locally centralized school district before they can deliver the advanced curriculum summarized above. 

 

I detailed in my August and September 2014 editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota  the full curriculum and the details for teaching training that will be necessary.  Prospective teachers at K-5 will engage in a full, intensive year of study and thesis writing to attain a Masters of Liberal Arts degree;  they will then spend a full academic year of internship under the guidance of the best veteran teachers available before gaining a judgment as to fitness to teach in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Prospective middle school and high school teachers must earn both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fields other than education (e.g., mathematics, English, literature, history, chemistry, fine arts) at the four-year college or university level, then serve an internship similar to that given for prospective teachers at K-5.  

 

3)  Design a coherent, district-wide tutoring and academic enrichment program for all students.

 

Currently any tutoring provided in the buildings of the Minneapolis Public Schools is rendered by a variety of mostly external organizations, with variance from site to site.

 

Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must rectify this situation, so as to provide highly intentional, cohesive tutoring to those students who are currently struggling below grade level in mathematics and reading.  Tutoring should be provided at designated times of the school day in the context of a delivery system that gives each student the most beneficial academic supplement;  for students functioning fully at grade level, the time set aside should be used for enrichment activities that provide opportunities for academic advancement and exploration of subjects of driving personal interest.  Tutoring and enrichment, in addition to provision at the designated class time, should also be rendered after school.

 

4)  Develop programs of outreach to students and their families, right where they live.

 

Currently the MPS Department of Student, Family, and Community Engagement has fewer than 15 members and is not prepared to deliver the services necessary to ensure that students of all demographic descriptors receive an equitably excellent education.

 

Economically and functionally struggling families should receive services directly delivered by well-trained MPS staff of appropriate personal disposition and street-level comfort;  and services rendered by external agencies, to which students are referred by MPS personnel.    

 

5)  Greatly pare the MPS central school district bureaucracy at the Davis Center (1250 West Broadway).

 

With well-trained teachers, principals, and counselors (and a numerical expansion of the latter), costly departments such as the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning and the MPS Department of Career and College Readiness could be eliminated, with any truly necessary positions subsumed under other departments.  Many other positions in the central bureaucracy should also be pared, so as to increase salaries for the newly professionalized teacher corps and to provide the needed resources for the items given in points 1-4 above.

 

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The ideal of an equal education delivered to all students will be achieved with the realization of points one (1) and two (2) above.

 

Equity will be achieved with the realization of points three (3) and four (4), so that all students are prepared to receive the benefits of an excellent academic program and superbly trained teachers.

 

The realization of point five (5) will ensure that resources are available for the programmatic features of points one through four (1-4).

 

This is the five-point program for achieving equity in the Minneapolis Public Schools, according to which the great purposes of an excellent education, rendered by excellent teachers, are realized for the enduring life benefit of those most precious beings imaginable:  our children, our responsibility, our future.