As we arrive
in the year 2017, we have fallen back to the most perilous position in K-12
education that we have occupied since the late 1990s, when what passed as Minnesota
state standards bore the appellation, Profile of Learning.
Profile of
Learning was a manifestation of the education professor mantra urging students
to “show what you know,” and featured the portfolio concept for the
presentation of student projects. This
very partial display of student knowledge and skill earned the state of
Minnesota a grade of “D” by a team of external reviewers. In those days, students were also required to
pass the Minnesota Basic Skills Test (MBST);
the poor quality of education in Minnesota, especially as rendered to
the most economically challenged students, was revealed when many students
struggled to pass exams in math and reading that tested only for grade 8 skill
mastery.
This
situation was an embarrassment in a state that had built a reputation for
excellence, based on comparisons with even worse state systems, such as those
in Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
German, Singaporean, and South Korean citizens looked askance from their
perches atop the tower of PISA (Program of International Student Assessment). So, on the strength of a counter-movement
that had been building since the release of the federally commissioned 1983
study, A Nation at Risk, the educational convictions of those calling
for the development of objectively measurable standards for reading and
mathematics particularly, but also for the social and natural sciences, gained
ascendance.
I was at
that juncture in the early 2000s and remain in the year 2017 an enthusiast of
measurable academic standards. I served
as a member of the Minnesota State High School English Standards Committee,
along with others working under the direction of then Minnesota Commissioner of
Education Cheri Pierson Yecke to establish K-12 subject area standards at
various grade levels for school districts throughout the state.
This work in
Minnesota was consistent with the aims of leadership at the U. S. Department of
Education during the George W. Bush administration and with the bipartisan congressional
effort superintended by Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican John Boehner to
pass No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001.
During the ensuing months, staff at the Minnesota Department of
Education generated the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) in math and
reading for grades 3-8, along with a grade 9 writing test, a Grade 10 Reading
MCA and a Grade 11 Mathematics MCA.
Forces of
the political left and the political right worked during the succeeding years
to undermine the No Child Left Behind law, which induced the collection of objective
records that presented disaggregated data for students of distinct ethnicities
and economic categories and indicated schools that failed properly to educate
students of color and those on free and reduced price lunch. Teachers unions (American Federation of
Teachers, National Education Association, Education Minnesota, Minneapolis
Federation of Teachers) exerted extreme pressure on liberals and Democrats, and
conservatives and Republicans began to contest the law with an expressed intention
to reassert local control over K-12 education.
By 2015, the
forces of the left and right had succeeded in replacing the No Child Left
Behind Act with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which continues to employ the verbiage
of high standards but gives great scope to define standards and establish
assessments at the state level.
In
Minnesota, K-12 education has deteriorated under the leadership of Governor
Mark Dayton, Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius, and the Minnesota
legislature: high school graduation
standards in writing and reading have been abolished, and the plan eventually
to establish graduation standards in mathematics has been discontinued. The MCAs for grades 3-8 and as referential
assessments at the high school level still exist, but the power and
effectiveness of these instruments have been undermined by the rhetorical
climate against standardized testing, which has emboldened parents inclined to allow
or even encourage their students to opt out of the MCAs.
There is now
an abiding fantasy that students who failed the MCAs in droves will now succeed
better with a curriculum aligned to the much harder ACT assessment used by
college admissions officials to evaluate student readiness for college. At the Minneapolis Public Schools there is a
shift toward using the ACT alignment strategy and even a readiness to provide
excuses when high school students from economically challenged circumstances
record scores at 15 or below indicative of mere middle school skill mastery.
Under the
leadership of new Superintendent Ed Graff, the excuse that will be provided is
that students in the Minneapolis Public Schools shall, benefiting from his
programmatic emphasis on Social and Emotional Learning, possess the traits of
self-confidence, social awareness, and persistence that will allow them to succeed,
even if they flounder on the ACT and must take remedial courses once they get
to college.
This
situation greatly pleases Education Minnesota President Denise Specht and
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers president Michelle Wiese. Specht and Wiese would prefer to do away with
measurable standards all together, because in classic “shoot the messenger” style
they recoil at the continued exposure of teacher incompetence and systemic
failure. Union leaders will continue to
work toward the goal of eliminating objective measurement of student
performance, but they will for the time congratulate themselves on the partial
victories that they have achieved in undermining the MCAs and inducing the strategy
to explain away inevitably low student ACT performance.
So it goes
in K-12 public education in the United States, where the next education
professor trend always looms, the targets always move, the teachers unions
prevail, and school boards dominated by DFL/ MFT puppets always do the bidding
of the education establishment.
If hope
exists at the Minneapolis Public Schools, the bearers are Chief of Academics,
Leadership, and Learning Michael Thomas; Chief of Research, Innovation, and Learning
Eric Moore; and Chief Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop.
They’ll need
an epiphany as to the vital importance of knowledge-intensive curriculum, imparted
to students of all demographic descriptors by retrained teachers.
Then they
will need vast stores of moral courage to prevail against the many powerful and
canny actors in the education establishment who have kept our students waiting
for the reception of an excellent education for a very long time.
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