Apr 5, 2017

An Open Letter Demanding Improved Performance from MPS Superintendent Ed Graff


An Open Letter
Demanding Improved Performance
from MPS Superintendent Ed Graff

>>>>>


New Salem Educational Initiative

A Program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church

Gary Marvin Davison, Director

 

2507 Bryant Avenue North                                         

Minneapolis  MN  55411                                

                                           

 

April 5, 2017

 
Superintendent Ed Graff

Office of the Superintendent

Minneapolis Public Schools

1250 West Broadway Avenue

Minneapolis    MN    55411-2533

 

Dear Superintendent Graff:

 

This note comes to you nine months into your tenure as superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

 

Your performance thus far does not augur success for you as leader of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), because you have thus far done nothing to overhaul MPS curriculum or to address the problem of teacher quality, so that the abysmal academic outcomes that we have become accustomed to seeing are likely to continue.

                       

Failure to impart an excellent education to students who have been waiting a very long time for MPS Davis Center administrators to deliver on promise after promise to do so is unconscionable.

 

Take that statement to heart:  You have a moral responsibility to deliver a knowledge-intensive education of excellence to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.

 

Right now, you are on a course of immorality.

 

For several months now you have had in your possession the questions that I have tendered to you concerning your philosophy of education and with regard to critical questions facing the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

You have not answered.

 

That failure, too, is immoral and demonstrative of a philosophically adrift and cowardly superintendent who has lacks the knowledge and guts to respond to questions that go right to the core of issues that will determine excellence or lack thereof at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Be reminded that these questions, to which I am now demanding an immediate response, are as follows:

 

For Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff

 

1.  Please state as succinctly as possible the philosophy of K-12 education that drives programming under your direction as Superintendent of  Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

2.  What is your vision for the Focused Instruction program that began during the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson?

 

3.  Please explain what you are doing 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).

 

4.  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?


Do you have plans to designate a person with overall responsibility for tutoring, and to develop a well-articulated, coherent tutoring program that is consistent from school to school?

 

5.  Do you have a plan to expand the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement or otherwise connect with economically challenged or troubled families?

 

When young people are hungry, have heard gunshots in the night, have family members who suffer from substance addiction, have parents who cannot pay to keep the heat on in winter, or face other problems associated with grinding poverty, getting to school or staying focused if managing to attend may be challenging.

 

Do you have a plan for reaching out to these families right where they live, either to provide services directly or to connect them with services that meet their needs?

 

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?

 

Do you acknowledge the problem of teacher quality?

 

If so, what is your plan for providing the necessary training for prospective teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools?   

 

The “Grow Your Own” program seems inadequate to the severity of the problem.  Do you agree?   
 

7.  Do you have a plan for cutting staff positions at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools at 1250 West Broadway (Davis Center) and ensuring that every central office staff member is serving a useful function pertinent to the provision of an excellent K-12 education?


As readers of my blog know, your fulsome answer to this latter question is very important, considering that my research for my nearly complete book, Understanding the Minnespolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospects has yielded the following discovery of ongoing bureaucratic bloat at the Davis Center:

 

Among the most dramatic of my findings in conducting research that 300-plus paged new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, is the fact that despite the fanfare around then-Interim Superintendent Michael Gore’s 16% budget paring in the spring of 2015, the bureaucratic bloat resumed and intensified during a time period that has included your tenure to date.  

 

My figures show that from autumn 2015 through this early spring of 2017, staffing at the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway) increased from 551 to 655.  Expenditures for staff salary alone went from $37,361,274 to $43,322,790.

 

This is a dramatic and notable development as a discrete occurrence, now amplified by the fact that faced with a $28 million budgetary deficit, the administration of new MPS Superintendent Ed Graff is proposing a 10% cut at the Davis Center. 

 

But as so many exercises in persiflage at the Davis Center, this apparent central office budget cutting does not constitute bureaucratic paring at all.  If the current cuts go through, there will still have been a $1,629,237 increase since that autumn of 2015, in the aftermath of the putative paring of the Goar phase.

 

Here is the clearly tabulated presentation that I am including in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect:

 

Increased Staffing and Expenditures at the Davis Center

(Central Offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools)

Autumn 2015-Spring 2017

 

Number of Staff Members at the Davis Center

Autumn 2015                   _____551______  

 Spring 2017                     _____655______  

 

Expenditures for Salaries at the Davis Center

 

Autumn 2015            _____$37,361,274_______  

Spring 2017               _____$43,322,790_______  

 

Increase from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2017

 

_____$5,961,516________

 

Relevance to Projected Budget Cuts

 

Increase from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2017

 

>>>>>                                               $5,961,516

10%  of  $43,322,790 =                 $4,332,279

 

                                                        $5,961,516

                                                     -  $4,332,279

                                                        $1,629,237

 

Thus, after 10% budgetary cuts at the Davis Center to address a $28 million deficit, central office expenditures will be $1,629,237 greater than the figure in autumn 2015.

 

This is powerful evidence that the bureaucratic bloat at the Minneapolis Public Schools has continued under your tenure and persists as one the many problems that I address as I advocate for overhaul of all MPS programs and processes in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospects.

    

That book also includes the following section:

 

Abysmal Results for MPS Superintendent Ed Graff’s “Social and Emotional Learning”

Strategy As Revealed in Achievement Levels during His Tenure in Anchorage, Alaska

                                                                                                                                                          

Given Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff’s emphasis on “Social and Emotional Learning,” his record in promoting this pedagogical approach during his tenure as superintendent at Anchorage, Alaska, should be examined.  Mr. Graff won the Exemplary Social and Emotional Leadership  Award from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) in 2016.

 

Mr. Graff’s award was so impressive to school board members in Anchorage that they declined to renew his contract at the end of that very year of 2016 when he won the CASEL award.  Graff served as superintendent in Anchorage for three academic years:  2013-2014, 2014-2015, and 2015-2016.  The most recent figures available to me are for academic year 2014-2015, the second of the three academic years for which Graff served as superintendent.

 

A look at those figures strongly suggests why Graff’s contract was not renewed, and the reason why the school board was less than impressed with the Social and Emotional Learning strategy as utilized by Graff:  

 

Results for Academic Year 2014-2015

 

All Grade Levels

 

Language Arts

 

Does Not          Partially    Meets                 Exceeds

Meet                  Meets         Standard         Standard

Standard           Standard

 

Student

Categories

 

African                 35.1%                    42.1            20.5%                    2.3%

American

 

White/                 13.3%                    33.7%        44.3%                    8.5%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic               28.3%                    42.3%       26.9%     2.5%

 

 

Alaska                   42.4%                    37.5%        18.1%                    1.9%

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

All Grade Levels

 

Mathematics

 

                           Does Not          Partially Meets         Meets         Exceeds

                           Meet                    Meets                         Standard    Standard

                           Standard          Standard

 

Student

Categories

 

African                 29.5%                   51.3.%                  16.9%            2.3%

American

 

White/                 12.9%                    39.7%                    36.5%          10.9%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic               23.4%                    50.9%                    21.8%            3.9%

 

 

Alaska                   29.0%                    50.3%                    18.2%            2.5%

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

…………………………………………………………………

 

These are abysmal results, actually worse than those that I have posted on this blog many times for the Minneapolis Public Schools.


Hence, an examination of the objective academic results in Anchorage, Alaska, during your tenure as superintendent indicate that educational outcomes were worse than those that we have had for several years for students in the Minneapolis Pubic Schools.

 

What, then, emboldens you to pursue in the Minneapolis context the Social and Emotional Learning strategy that failed in Anchorage?

 

What justifies your having led members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education on a trip to Chicago to receive the wisdom of Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the organization that granted you an award during the very year that the Anchorage school board declined to renew your contract?

 

An examination of the objective data given above strongly suggests that endeavoring to instill self-confidence and social skills in young people, while clearly worthy, is not a strategy for academic achievement.

 

For academic achievement, you and Minneapolis school board members should not have attended that wasteful meeting in Chicago:  You should have stayed home and set about designing a program for basic skills acquisition, knowledge-intensive curriculum, and teachers trained to impart such skills and knowledge sets---  along with a family outreach program capable of ensuring that precious young lives of all demographic descriptors can benefit.

………………………………………………………….



You seem to be a very nice man in that Minnesota white nice sort of way---  but that is not enough.

 

The data and objective information given above strongly suggest that you the lack firm philosophical grounding and the good judgment to be superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Answer my questions.

 

Make your case.

 

I am rapidly concluding Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospects. 

 

My observations of your qualifications to be MPS superintendent and your performance thus far place you in a harsh and unrelenting bright light portending disaster for students in the community that I love.

 

Please chart a better course or resign immediately.

 

With best regards,

 

Gary

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

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