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
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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