The Day of Reckoning is Fast Approaching >>>>> An Overview of My Nearly Complete >Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect<: A Damning Assessment, with Hope for the Future

An advanced draft of one of my two new books, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, has been in my study for at least two months, awaiting a few additions and literary flourishes.  The other book is also nearly complete;  this is my Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, a fourteen-chapter work featuring compact courses, in economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.

As I wrap up a busy academic year in the New Salem Educational Initiative, running 17 small-group, academic sessions a week, overseeing the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, writing an abundance of articles for this blog, producing a monthly academic journal, recording my weekly television show, and making numerous public appearances, I will in the course of the early summer put the finishing touches on Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, and by October will have written the final four chapters for Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.

Thus, the day of reckoning for staff at the Minneapolis Pubic Schools (MPS) is fast approaching.

Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect will feature a damning assessment of the policies and programs of the Minneapolis Public Schools, while providing insight into the overhaul of curriculum and teacher training that will provide hope for the future.

This book proceeds in three parts:  Facts;  Analysis;  and Philosophy.

Part One constitutes a rigorous presentation of the facts while providing comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the Minneapolis Public Schools: 

>>>>>    staff composition by position and remuneration at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway); 

>>>>>    programmatic initiatives of the Department of Teaching and Learning, Department of College and Career Readiness, Office of Black Male Achievement, Department of Teaching and Learning, and Department of Student, Family, and Community Engagement;

>>>>>    most recent data from the District Report Card pertinent to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and the Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS);

>>>>>    presentation of documents for Strategic Plan: Acceleration 2020 and Educational Equity Framework

>>>>>    display of credentials of key central office administrators;

>>>>>    composition of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, with party affiliations and endorsements by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT);

>>>>>    structure, membership, leadership, teacher contract, and policy positions of  the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers;

>>>>>    school by school summary of student body by ethnicity, programmatic emphases, and academic achievement;

>>>>>    the wider context of K-12 education in which MPS functions, with salient representations of charter schools, parochial schools, alternative schools, and elite private schools;

>>>>>    MPS budgetary allocations.

While the staff of the Minneapolis Public Schools will damn itself through this relentless revelation of facts, in Part Two I will subject those facts to rigorous analysis, with emphasis on certain themes.  I will issue a scathing assessment of the process for deciding on a new superintendent, a highly negative review of Superintendent Ed Graff’s performance, a similarly unfavorable view of the MPS Board of Education, and most especially a penetrating rebuke for the district as to matters of curriculum, teacher training, remedial instruction, family outreach, and monetary resource allocations.

But in Part Three, I will provide a way toward a better future for the Minneapolis Public Schools.  I will lay out a comprehensive program for curricular overhaul, plan for the thorough retraining of teachers;  design for a coherent program of remedial instruction;  program for the direct provision of services and resource referral to economically and functionally challenged families;  and a plan for a dramatic shift in budgetary allocations.

Thus will I be in the publication of this book, depending on the response of MPS staff, the worst nightmare or the sweetest dream of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  With the publication of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, I will reveal a school district of irresponsible chronic failure, with prospects for a future of excellence in the impartation of knowledge-intensive education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Girards Features Death in Many Forms (Verse Format)

A Tale of Two Girards Features Death in Many Forms

 

(Verse format)

                                           Gary Marvin Davison

 

The history of Minneapolis

has always been a tale of two Girards.

 

And so goes the tale to this day:

 

On Girard Avenue South,

she awakens

in a warm sixteen by sixteen

space of her own

to the smell of

bacon frying,

toast toasting,

brief cases flying,

people preparing to go out buying. 

She brushes,

bustles,

bathes

and

eats

before hopping into her Honda Accord,

a gift at the dawn of her seventeenth year,

for the drive to St. Paul Academy

and

a day of college preparation.

 

On Girard Avenue North,

she awakens in a cold cubicle

that she shares with two little sisters,

washes her face,

brushes her teeth,

helps her sisters get ready

and strides to the corner

to catch the bus

and

the ride to North High School,

where a welcome free breakfast

will still the rumbling in her stomach,

if not the trouble in her heart.

 

On Girard Avenue South,

he gets up to the cheery sound

of

piped in tunes,

the smell of pancakes,

and

the promise of preparation

in his bathroom adjacent

to his

twelve by eighteen space in the world. 

Doctor Momma has already left for the clinic; 

Professor Daddy drives him to a day

where college begins at grade five,

Breck Academy,

Harvard University Preparatory School

of the Midwest.

 

On Girard Avenue North,

he arises, his ears still ringing

from a night of scattered gunshots

and
sirens racing into dark less dark

than the tenor of his soul. 

Mama never came home,

daddy never has been,

so since he’s on his own,

he thinks he’ll just skip school this time.  

Down on Humboldt, a new family awaits,

not the best dudes,

he knows that,

but offering

protection,

perilous profit,

gratification now

for mortality coming too soon. 

Seems better than Bethune Elementary.

 

Once back at Girard Avenue South,

she greets her private tutor; 

she only got a 33 on her first try at the ACT so,

knowing that many of her Yale competitors

these days are scoring a perfect 36,

she obtains the professional boost

that purchased their success. 

She’s not sure what the latter means,

but she knows it’s grand

and

will make mom and dad proud.

 

Once back on Girard Avenue North,

she does her worksheets for history homework,

given to her by a teacher without explanation

and

in the absence of contextual discussion. 

She tries to do her algebra II homework,

but she passed algebra I and geometry

with a “C” without really grasping the subjects,

and

her current teacher shows no interest

in advancing her skill; 

from her roost at the creaky dining room table

her little sisters are way more noisy than creaky,

so she gives up. 

Momma won’t be back until late,

the little ones will need to be fed,

and not long after dinner and television

they’ll all get sleepy enough for bed.

 

Once back at Girard Avenue North,

after violin lessons,

he does his algebra homework,

carefully,

because he knows mastery will be

important for understanding calculus

a few years hence: 

Doctor Momma and Professor Daddy

told him so. 

Algebra done, he saves history homework

and

an initial draft of his English research paper

for after dinner,

tortellini

professionally presented

by the cook with Caesar salad and home-baked bread. 

Homework done,

a look at his Chinese assignment for the Saturday school,

another round of the violin,

and he’s off to bed.

 

Springing from Girard Avenue South,

having successfully attained that 36 on the ACT,

she's off to Yale in the autumn,

faces of mom and dad all aglow.

 

Still stuck at Girard Avenue North,

she endures a pregnancy

incurred out of ever-present

boredom

and

options

never offered.

 

Proceeding from Girard Avenue South

from grade 5 to grade 6,

he’s at the top of his class

and

on a path to succeed; 

although success remains a mystery,

he’s seen it many times.

 

One day the fast life grabs him

walking out of Girard Avenue North,

throws him down,

and

puts a bullet in his head. 

Momma returns home

and

even

daddy returns now to groan

about

“My baby.” 

The teachers and principal at Bethune,

those who had ignored him as one of those

bringing the problems of society into their hallways,

feign concern,

mumbling something about,

“He was a mighty fine boy when he got himself to school.”

 

And thus goes the tale of two Girards,

where hypocrisy abounds,

success is elusive even when attained,

and death is often premature

but comes in many forms. 

Understanding the Depth of Incompetence on the Part of Superintendent Ed Graff, the MPS Board of Education, and Our Public Institutions: The Subtext of the Current Crisis

Our iteration of the locally centralized school district, the Minneapolis Public Schools, is in crisis.

You must look at the subtext in any reportage of recent events to understand the genesis of the crisis.

 

First, the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools operates in the context of an education establishment of multi-culpability for the low quality of our K-12 institutions.  Departments, schools, and colleges of education operate from a philosophically debased ideology that with head-scratching cluelessness devalues the impartation of knowledge as the purpose of public education.  University administrations are deeply complicit in this situation, content to celebrate the revenue generated by their teacher and administrator training programs, cash cows contributing heavily to the coffers of institutions of higher education while producing lightweight bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees.

 

Second, we get the result that we should expect from this situation.  A few teachers of excellence find their own way to the delivery of knowledge-intensive education, while the generally mediocre teacher corps serves under even more incompetent central office and site administrators.   In the Minneapolis Public Schools, merely our local manifestation of the inadequacy of public education in the United States, the K-5 years are mostly wasted;  some students learn to read and do math acceptably, most do not, and no students learn what they need to know about history, government, economics, or natural science;  and none of these precious specimens who are our future have quality experiences at the K-5 level with fine arts and literature.  The middle school curriculum at grades 6-8 represents continuation of knowledge depravity;  at the high school level of grades 9-12, a few students who can claim adequate preparation thrive in Advanced Placement courses, but otherwise most students go forth either without graduating or claiming a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only.      

 

Third, school boards are elected with the support of teachers unions and echo their dictums, which ideologically resonate with the debased ideology learned in those institutions of teacher training.  This is true now in St. Paul, where the school board is dominated by the union-backed Caucus for Change.  On the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, KerryJo Felder, Siad Ali, Nelson Inz, Rebecca Gagnon, Bob Walser, Jenny Arneson, and Ira Jourdain were elected with Minneapolis Federation of Teacher (MFT) endorsement or that of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, politicians from which are elected with heavy DFL support.  Of the current Minneapolis school board members, only Don Samuels did not receive MFT or DFL backing;  but Samuels has not lived up to his reformist reputation.

 

Fourth, local media figures such as Star Tribune reporter Beena Raghavendran and Minnesota Public Radio hosts Tom Weber and Keri Miller are, whether by sins of omission or those of commission, mere mouth pieces for the education establishment, content to report their failures without probing deeply into the causes for perennial K-12 deficiency.  Either these journalists have little idea of the questions that they should be asking, or where to look for the truth, or they are more insidiously culpable for proceeding on the basis of the fact that failure and incidents provoked by failure make good copy.

 

Thus we have situations such as that currently prevailing in Minneapolis, where an incompetent and politically coopted school board wasted 17 months to hire a predictably mediocre superintendent.  Neither Superintendent Ed Graff nor the school board is in a position to offer the strong leadership necessary to overhaul curriculum and teacher training, to design a coherent approach to remedial instruction, to articulate a program of outreach to families of struggling students, or to scale down the central bureaucracy so as to shift resources to such efforts with the capability of upgrading the quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

We are as a result ever in a crisis mode, here provoking and there assuaging sensibilities of particular constituents and staff members, as in the recent controversy over the jettisoning of junior staff members of color by principals operating under the exigencies of a $28 million dollar budgetary shortfall, the school board recommendation to rehire those members, and the vigorous opposition of principals to that perceived affront to their efforts to make tough staff cuts that they were requested to make by the central administration.

 

Strong leadership would present a program of K-12 overhaul suggested above, pertinent to curriculum, teachers, remediation, outreach, and stewardship.  Such leadership would move us out of perpetual crisis toward academic excellence.

 

But the necessary overhaul is beyond the capability of either Ed Graff or the school board that hired him. 

 

For the necessary change to happen, you the public must be ever aware of the subtext that bespeaks the grave flaws of the education establishment and the complicity of the media.  To avoid being yourselves culpable in the processes that produce the inadequacy of K-12 education, once aware of the subtext, you must be ever active in demanding the changes that will bring skill-replete, knowledge-intensive education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.

What the >Star Tribune< Editorial Board Will Not Tell You Concerning Al Franken's Deleterious Effect on K-12 Education

Whether out of cluelessness or collusion, the editorial board of the Star Tribune is not in a position to tell you the truth about Al Franken, that sub-species of the creature known as “progressive Democrat,” who speaks loudly and carries a small stick when it comes to improving systems of K-12 education in the United States.

 

Keeping in view that I am a leftist activist who commits my energies to the overhaul of K-12 education for sixteen to eighteen hours each day my feet hit the ground, know that I have no patience whatsoever with liberal Democrats whose political coffers are beholden to teacher union entities such as the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Education Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).  Listen carefully to any Democrat politician, whether Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Dayton, Bobby Joe Champion, or Jeff Hayden, and you’ll either be subjected to verbal assemblages echoing the utterances of the NEA, Education Minnesota, or the MFT, or you’ll hear the deafening sound of silence;  Barack Obama resisted that act of puppetry, but in the end these entities undermined his own best inclinations to improve the rigor and teaching quality of K-12 education.

 

And so it goes, with derisive shibboleths such as “teaching to the test,” “all this standardized testing,” and “narrowing of the curriculum” pouring forth from putatively progressive lips that also back the step and lane system of teacher advancement, recoil from promotion and pay based on merit-earned performance, and cheer or stand on the sidelines as the Dayton administration undermines the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and eliminates graduation standards.

 

And so it came to pass that on Saturday, April 22, 2017, the editorial board of the Star Tribune presented as its lead editorial one of those expressions of opinion with which many would ingenuously find themselves in accord.  That editorial, “Franken bill would help get Minnesotans the skills, education needed for jobs that need filling,” lauds the recent conference convened at Franken’s behest to promote collaborations that train young people for jobs requiring skill sets now in short supply but highly sought by employers.  The editorial also commends Franken’s efforts to get his Community College to Career Fund Act passed in Congress;  the bill would extend federally funded competitive grants to collaborative efforts by businesses, two year colleges, and training programs that provide registered apprenticeships, on-the-job training, and paid internships.  Franken’s legislation is touted by the editorial board for its potential to close the current skills gap between the needs of employers and the credentials of job seekers.

 

What goes unsaid are the many ways that so-called progressives undermine the genuine advancement of K-12 education by toeing the teacher union line.  Also appearing as subtext recondite to most readers, even those who fancy themselves K-12 advocates, is the reality that initiatives such as Franken’s should be unnecessary.  A skill-imparting, knowledge-intensive education of excellence delivered in grade by grade sequence would give students the academic foundation that they need for work and for life.  If K-5 and  grade 6-8 curricula were properly rigorous, then the high school years at grades 9-12 would provide many opportunities for students to take courses of the technological and skill-specific sort advocated by Franken and lauded by the editorial board of the Star Tribune.

 

An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts in grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors. 

 

An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.

 

Failure to define excellent education and excellent teachers, a common shortcoming for both the education establishment and would-be reformers, precludes any pursuit of excellence:   One is unlikely in the extreme to achieve a goal the nature of which goes unarticulated and ill-understood.

 

With the definitions of excellence provided, we should then be clear as to the purposes of K-12 education, which are to send students forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.  The latter purpose gets paramount attention in the currently prevailing discussions;  the former two get short shrift, for which we pay in human lives unfolding without meaning and debased political exercises such as that to which we fell victim this past November.

 

Please, you readers of the Star Tribune, look for reality in the subtext rather than the manifest word delivered in the utterances of that publication’s editorial board and in the proclamations of Al Franken and others posing as progressives while promoting a K-12 status quo that has had decidedly unprogressive consequences for the young people I have taught and about whom I have cared deeply for over forty years.

Questions that >Star Tribune< Reporter Beena Raghavendran Failed to Ask South High School Principal Ray Aponte

Beena Raghavendran once again did a kit-glove piece on a staff member of the Minneapolis Public Schools in her recent gentle and favorable treatment of South High School principal Ray Aponte (“A Portrait of Change in the Schools,” Star Tribune, April 23, 2017).  Raghavendran fails to ask any of the questions that truly matter.

 

Raghavendran’s piece finds Aponte in a flurry of motion on a typical morning, handing out pats on the back, shouting hellos, checking his email, and pondering student schedules.  Despite his exertions, he notices little details like the new braces on the teeth of one of his students.  Like one of the new-model principals, according to Ravhavendran’s portrayal, Aponte is no stuck-in-his-office leader of this school site, so busy is he bolstering achievement, supporting teacher development, and ensuring that those entering his building feel safe and welcome.  Aponte avowedly finds gratifying his opportunity to build relationships with students he knows are going to change the world.

 

Forth goes Aponte, remembering birthdays, maintaining an ordinary position in the lunch line, expressing concern when a student has missed a week of school, trying to keep classrooms small and programming  coinsistent amidst budget cuts, and advocating for Advanced Placement courses that earn college credit and save families money in the long run.  As to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) that his students are currently taking and the fact that last year 60 percent of his students opted out, Aponte says, “I have to be okay with it.  I’m an advocate for South High School.”

 

Beginning with that last comment, consider the questions that Raghavendran should have asked Aponte but did not:

 

She should have asked why, if Aponte is an advocate for South High School, he would ever be okay with students opting out of state-mandated tests.  She should have asked him if the English teacher at South High School who last spring actually sent a form home to parents that encouraged students to opt out was ever disciplined, or if anyone put pressure on that teacher or on Aponte himself to discourage such refusal to take the test by which Eric Moore (MPS chief of research, innovation, assessment, and accountability) and staff consider the main measure of student achievement.

 

Raghavendran should have further noted that according to the Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan, which articulates Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) strategies and goals for academic years running from 2014 through 2020, the general body of MPS students shall record five (5) percentage point increases in academic growth every year and those students who have been functioning far below grade level shall record eight (8) percentage points in academic growth.  Moore and staff measure progress toward goals mainly by MCA results.  How can results be measured if students are opting out?

 

According to the most recent data available from spring 2016, South High School recorded the second worst results on the MCA reading assessment, with just 14 percent of students taking the test recording proficient performance;  results from Roosevelt High School yielded that same 14 percent figure, while that for North High School (5 percent) was worse;  however, comparable results from the other traditional high schools Southwest (65 percent), Washburn (49 percent), Henry (32 percent), and Edison (28 percent) high schools were two to three times better the MCA reading assessment figure for South.

 

As to scores on the MCA math assessment, the staff at Henry High School deserves kudos for having their students record 59 percent proficiency on a test that is a rigorous measure of high school math achievement;  other scores ranged from 7 percent proficiency at North High School to 33 percent proficiency at Southwest High School;  embarrassingly, so few students at South High School took the test that the report from Aponte’s school was “No Data.”

 

What, Raghavendran should have asked, does this say about the teachers that Aponte is developing and the academic atmosphere that he is creating?  How are students likely to change the world or go forth to successful university experiences on the strength of those Advanced Placement courses when one-third of students graduating from the Minneapolis Public Schools will need to take remedial courses in math and reading?  

 

Ray Aponte is deeply culpable for overseeing the lamentable academic results recorded by South High School.

 

Star Tribune reporter Beena Raghavendran is just as culpable for not asking Aponte the questions that should be asked.

 

A Tale of Two Girards: Death in Many Forms

The history of Minneapolis has always been a tale of two Girards.

 

And so goes the tale to this day:

 

On Girard Avenue South, she awakens in a warm sixteen by sixteen space of her own to the smell of bacon frying, toast toasting, brief cases flying, people preparing to go out buying.  She brushes, bustles, bathes and eats before hopping into her Honda Accord, a gift at the dawn of her seventeenth year, for the drive to St. Paul Academy and a day of college preparation.

 

On Girard Avenue North, she awakens in a cold cubicle that she shares with two little sisters, washes her face, brushes her teeth, helps her sisters get ready and strides to the corner to catch the bus and the ride to North High School, where a welcome free breakfast will still the rumbling in her stomach, if not the trouble in her heart.

 

On Girard Avenue South, he gets up to the cheery sound of piped in tunes, the smell of pancakes, and the promise of preparation in his bathroom adjacent to his twelve by eighteen space in the world.  Doctor Momma has already left for the clinic;  Professor Daddy drives him to a day where college begins at grade five, Breck Academy, Harvard University Preparatory School of the Midwest.

 

On Girard Avenue North, he arises, his ears still ringing from a night of scattered gunshots and sirens racing into dark less dark than the tenor of his soul.  Mama never came home, daddy never has been, so since he’s on his own, he thinks he’ll just skip school this time.  Down on Humboldt, a new family awaits, not the best dudes, he knows that, but offering protection, perilous profit, gratification now for mortality coming too soon.  Seems better than Bethune Elementary.

 

Once back at Girard Avenue South, she greets her private tutor;  she only got a 33 on her first try at the ACT so, knowing that many of her Yale competitors these days are scoring a perfect 36, she obtains the professional boost that purchased their success.  She’s not sure what the latter means, but she knows it’s grand and will make mom and dad proud.

 

Once back on Girard Avenue North, she does her worksheets for history homework, given to her by a teacher without explanation and in the absence of contextual discussion.  She tries to do her algebra II homework, but she passed algebra I and geometry with a “C” without really grasping the subjects, and her current teacher shows no interest in advancing her skill;  from her roost at the creaky dining room table her little sisters are way more noisy than creaky, so she gives up.  Momma won’t be back until late, the little ones will need to be fed, and not long after dinner and television they’ll all get sleepy enough for bed.

 

Once back at Girard Avenue North after violin lessons, he does his algebra homework, carefully, because he knows mastery will be important for understanding calculus a few years hence:  Doctor Momma and Professor Daddy told him so.  Algebra done, he saves history homework and an initial draft of his English research paper for after dinner, tortellini professionally presented by the cook with Caesar salad and home-baked bread.  Homework done, a look at his Chinese assignment for the Saturday school, another round of the violin, and he’s off to bed.

 

Springing from Girard Avenue South, having successfully attained that 36 on the ACT, she's off to Yale in the autumn, faces of mom and dad all aglow.

 

Still stuck at Girard Avenue North, she endures a pregnancy incurred out of ever-present boredom and options never offered.

 

Proceeding from Girard Avenue South from grade 5 to grade 6, he’s at the top of his class and on a path to succeed;  although success remains a mystery, he’s seen it many times.

 

One day the fast life grabs him walking out of Girard Avenue North, throws him down, and puts a bullet in his head.  Momma returns home and even daddy returns now to groan about “My baby.”  The teachers and principal at Bethune, those who had ignored him as one of those bringing the problems of society into their hallways, feign concern, mumbling something about, “He was a mighty fine boy when he got himself to school.”

 

And thus goes the tale of two Girards, where hypocrisy abounds, success is elusive even when attained, and death is often premature but comes in many forms.