The Questions That >Star Tribune< Reporter Beena Raghavendran Should Have Asked MPS Superintendent Ed Graff in the Place of Her Proffered Fluff

Either out of naivete or as a result of effective collusion with the education establishment, Star Tribune Reporter Beena Raghavendran failed to ask any of the truly important questions that should be asked of Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff in her article, “A Great Balancing Act,” published in the Star Tribune on Sunday, 12 March 2017.

 

There is not very much evidence that Raghavendran asked Graff many questions at all.  She did either ask questions or frame her interaction with Graff so as to allow him to convey, or to relate from her own observations, that the new superintendent initiated the mantra, “MPS Strong,” and that he touts North High School’s 2016 football championship as an example of the school district’s success.  She also presents the case that Graff is endeavoring to create a culture of common purpose that delivers coherent messages to students for their benefit, citing communications letting all staff know what they were supposed to do in a recent power outage, and in statements made by Graff giving as a point of conversational departure his view of the Ramsey County case against the officer charged in the Philando Castile shooting.   

 

Raghavendran also faithfully records Graff’s fixture on social and emotional learning as the major new pedagogy for district-wide implementation.  And she cites his decisions pertinent to the $28 million shortfall as focusing on 10% central office and 2.5% school-based budget cuts.  Beyond this information, garnered either in interviews or in readily available source material, Raghavendran probes very little and fails to ask any of the most pressing questions that should be posed to Graff.

 

Those question would be as follows:

 

1.  What is the philosophy of K-12 education that will drive programming under your direction as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools?

 

2.  What will be your programmatic vehicle for upgrading curriculum so as to deliver stronger subject area knowledge and skill sets to students in the Minneapolis Public Schools?

 

3.  Do you intend to use the Focused Instruction approach still identified for programmatic implementation at the MPS Academic Affairs website to achieve greater curricular coherence in the schools of the district?

 

4.  What specifically do you intend to do to address the abysmal academic performance of African American, Hispanic, and American Indian students;  and students on Free and Reduced Price Lunch;  at the Minneapolis Public Schools---   as similarly revealed in the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS)?

 

5. Given the fact that tutoring programs at the Minneapolis Public Schools are disarticulated and rendered by a polyglot array of external providers, do you have plans for developing and overseeing a district-wide program of tutoring for students who are not according to MCA, NAEP, and MMRS results performing academically at grade level? 

 

 

5.  Do you have a plan to expand the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement or otherwise connect more effectively so as to meet the needs of economically challenged or troubled families--- thus giving the children from such households a chance to succeed academically?

 

6.  Do you have a plan to provide thorough training of teachers to assure that a competent (and, as we look toward the future, truly excellent) teacher occupies each classroom of the Minneapolis Public Schools?

 

7.  Do you intend to use the current budgetary crisis permanently to cut unnecessary staff positions at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools (Davis Center, 1250 West Broadway), so as to ensure that every central office staff member is serving a useful function pertinent to the provision of an excellent K-12 education?

 

8.  Do you plan to superintend the development of a new strategic plan, given the fact that your major consulting reviewer of the current plan cited the unviability of the current approach?

 

Raghavendran asks no such questions.  Her limited experience and knowledge probably explains her

failure to do so.  But the fact that she works for decision-makers at the Star Tribune who, either due to sins of omission or commission, are not inclined to ask such questions, certainly sets the context for such vapid examples of journalism as that delivered in her recent fluff piece on Graff.