Be Aware of the Decline in Prospects for Favorable Change at the Minneapolis Public Schools

Be aware that there has been a two-year decline in prospects for favorable change at the Minneapolis Public Schools that began with the exit of Bernadeia Johnson as superintendent of that school district at the end of January 2015.

 

As late winter and spring 2015 ensued, the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education began a wasteful 17-month, two phase search for a new superintendent.  The first mistake in conducting the search was tautologically in conducting the search:  I counseled against launching a nationwide quest for a superintendent, telling school board members that inadequate and philosophically unsound training provided in school administration programs at departments, colleges, and schools of education does not send forth many candidates of the kind we need to effect the requisite transformation of K-12 education.

 

But the school board botched the first phase of that search in many ways:

 

The board passed on an opportunity to hire Charles Faust, a school turnaround specialist at the Houston (Texas) Independent School District;  Faust was the best of three semifinalists in the first phase that included Interim Superintendent Michael Goar and Sergio Paez of Massachusetts.  Paez won on a 6-3 vote but lost his bid at the pre-contract stage when board members lost their spine as public pressure mounted amidst factually unsubstantiated allegations by a Massachusetts public advocacy group against the superintendent-elect.  The board was about to turn to Goar when a group led by then-Minneapolis NAACP president Nekima Levy-Pounds shut down the meeting at which a vote exercising the Goar option was to occur.    

 

The school board then launched a second-phase search that produced two finalists, opting against the better candidate, Minnesota State Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius, in favor of Ed Graff, who recently had faced nonrenewal of his contract at the Anchorage (Alaska) School District.  For me, advocacy for Cassellius was a nuanced decision, since I have opposed most of the major education policy proposals of the Dayton administration (nixing of graduation requirements, discontinuation of the grade 9 writing exam, installment of the murky Multiple Measurement Rating System assessing school effectiveness);  but in discussions with me, Cassellius proved to have genuine understanding of the need for stronger subject area instruction, rigorous retraining of teachers, aggressive skill remediation, familial outreach, and bureaucratic paring.

 

Graff’s tenure began in July 2016.  Six months into his administration, the bright beacon of policies conducive to improvement begun during the 2010-2015 tenure of Bernadeia Johnson and promising to continue under a prospective Cassellius administration has dimmed:

 

Graff began poorly.  He gave a speech at a State of the Schools event with a recurring mantra describing as “MPS Strong” a school district in which fewer than 28% of American Indian, African American, and Hispanic students read or manifest mathematics skills at grade level.  At that same event, he sat down at the piano with a proud intention to play a few notes to go with Prince lyrics he was uttering (“Dearly beloved, we are gathered to celebrate this thing called life”);  but Graff had embarrassingly practiced so poorly that he quickly had to call the music director over to bale him out.    

 

Unfavorable developments mounted.  In November, school board members Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, and Nelson Inz succeeded in political machinations that brought narrow victories for DFL/Minneapolis Federation of Teachers-backed candidates Bob Walser and Ira Jourdain over Josh Reimnitz and Tracine Asberry;  the latter, along with retiring member Carla Bates, had been the board’s two most incisive advocates for policies addressing the woeful academic performance of the district’s students, especially students of color and those on free and reduced price lunch.

 

During the opening weeks of 2017, Ed Graff has advocated for social and emotional learning without connecting that latest education professor trend to any program likely to bring elevated academic results.  Tellingly, while he did demote Susanne Griffin from Chief Academic Officer to Deputy Chief Academic Officer, he nevertheless has retained Ms. Griffin and MPS Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Macarre Traynham as leaders promoting curricular and pedagogic policies with no viable prospects for bringing the needed academic overhaul.  


Michael Thomas, now Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning;  and Michael Walker at the MPS Office of Black Male Achievement;  possess magnificent talents that are not being used properly.  And the two most brilliant members of the current MPS administration, Eric Moore (Chief of Accountability, Innovation, and Research) and Ibrahima Diop (Chief Finance Officer), exert limited influence on academic policies.     

 

In the United States, any change necessary for the improvement of K-12 education will come at the level of the locally centralized school district.  For those truly interested in the needed change at our local iteration of such a school district, the school board results of November and the unfavorable developments over the past two years should be an inducement for the exercise of citizenship.  For the abiding truth is that only with citizen advocacy at the local level will excellent K-12 education ever become a reality in the United States, enabling the nation to become the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.