Mar 9, 2017

Historical Context for the Lamentable State of Education in Minneapolis 2017 (Or "An Ode to Denise Specht and Michelle Wiese")


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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