Macarre Traynham Should Be Terminated in Her Position at MPS, and Ed Graff Should Take Note

Macarre Traynham is the Executive Director of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools, receiving an annual salary of $122,000.

 

Anyone bearing the title of Director of Teaching and Learning must embrace the responsibility of transforming the wretched academic outcomes posted at many places on this blog, so to ensure that all Minneapolis Public Schools students are achieving at grade level or, in the case of special needs students and English Language Learners, are attaining the highest performance of which they are capable---  if quality of curriculum and teaching were to give them a viable chance to demonstrate such capability.

 

Ms. Traynham was hired by now-departed former Chief Academic Office Susanne Griffin, who presided over the most recent three and one-half years of terrible academic results for students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Macarre Tryanham should now follow the path trod by Susanne Griffin, out the door of the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway), upon termination of her employment with this school district. 

 

Ms. Traynham is not capable of overseeing curriculum overhaul, teacher training, and academic remediation (tutoring) necessary to raise student performance to grade level and then move forward toward a rigorous, college preparatory program. 

 

Traynham does not believe in broad and deep knowledge-intensive curriculum in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years, with particular upgrading necessary at grades K-5.  Her academic training is slim in the legitimate subject area disciplines other than math (i.e., history, economics, English literature, fine arts, chemistry).  She does commendably have a bachelor’s degree in math, but otherwise her training is entirely in programs granting degrees and certifications in education, the least academically rigorous and the most jargon-infested area of study on any college or university campus.

 

The aforementioned Ms. Griffin brought Macarre Traynham to the Minneapolis Public Schools expressly to emphasize culturally responsive curriculum.

 

Understand these comments:

 

1.  All curriculum should be culturally responsive. 



2.  All subjects, particularly history, government, other social sciences, and literature should give generous coverage to the specific histories and cultures of key ethnic groups in our society of many origins and belief systems;  and the culturally specific information so imparted should be contextualized by the history and culture commonly shared by citizens of all ethnic groups. 

I provide such a curriculum in my Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis Minnesota and in my nearly complete new book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  My presentation of curriculum is consistent with the approach taken by E. D. Hirsch at the Core Knowledge Foundation, on which I work my own innovations and extend logically into the high school years (Hirsch has long emphasized curriculum at grades K-6 and more recently at grades 7-8).


3.  Culturally responsive curriculum is vital, but an exclusive focus on building cultural awareness is not sufficient for academic improvement, nor is it sufficient for excellence in education.


4.  We need to simplify our approach and discard the verbal detritus and philosophical poverty of schemes hatched in our wretched departments, colleges, and schools of education. 

Be clear  >>>>>


By simplifying our approach to focus on matters relevant to curriculum and teachers throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools, we are then free to concentrate on the truly difficult work of generating a knowledge-intense curriculum and training teachers who are capable of imparting such a curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors. 

A logically adept response to the needs of all students will include as a key facet the delivery of high-quality academic remediation (tutoring) to those students lagging below grade level in mathematics and reading.

Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools need to be clear as to the reason for the existence of the Department of Teaching and Learning.  As it is, there is too little learning, and the teaching is too mediocre.  Any occupant of the top position of that department should clearly be responsible for the academic outcomes given as goals in the Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan and measured on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and other objective instruments such as the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress).

Macarre Traynham’s training is too limited to position her to lead a department in which the greatest abiding need is to overhaul curriculum for the delivery of grade by grade knowledge in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.

Thus, Macarre Trayham should be terminated in her position as Director of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

This will be one of the most important decisions that Superintendent Ed Graff and Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning Michael Thomas will make.

 

Graff has ultimate responsibility.  Given the slimness of his own academic credentials, detailed in many articles posted on this blog, he needs a strong academic officer to embrace or design a knowledge-intensive curriculum and to oversee the implementation of that curriculum, along with a highly intentional, well-articulated, cohesive program of remedial instruction for students languishing far below grade level.

 

And Graff should take note:  If he does not make these key decisions in favor of the knowledge-intensive education that is the cultural right of inheritance for students of all demographic descriptors in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Graff should be induced to follow Griffin and Traynham out that door of the Davis Center, upon termination of his own employment at the Minneapolis Public Schools.