Introduction to a Five-Part Series on Multi-Culpability for the State of K-12 Education in Minnesota and the United States

Public K-12 education in the United States is wretched. 

The public schools of Minnesota constitute a subset of the public schools of the United States.  The school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools is a salient representative of the locally centralized school district in a nation that extols local control.  Change in K-12 public schools must in the United States come at the level of the locally centralized school district and must include the following definitions and features.

 

An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the liberal, vocational, and technological arts, with grade by grade specificity 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.

 

The purpose of K-12 education is to send forth citizens who are culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally satisfied.

 

The unit of change in education must be the locally centralized school district and must proceed on the basis of an overhaul of curriculum, teacher training, academic remediation, family outreach, and the central office bureaucracy.

 

There was a time when I assumed that there were others who must be operating from such definitions, upon the principles embedded in the purpose, with an understanding of the nature of the K-12 dilemma and the ability to conduct thorough investigation into the inner workings of at least one locally centralized school district.

 

I now have no such faith.

 

For years I have observed and had conversations with good hearted philanthropists and others of the upper middle and upper classes who express interest in the public schools while sending their own children to private schools.

 

I have interacted extensively and intensively with decision-makers and personnel at colleges and universities who should but do not have a vision of excellence of education or integrity in training teachers.

 

I have read, heard, and seen the work of print, radio, and television journalists who address K-12 issues.

 

I have written books for the Minneapolis Urban League, studied the history and met local leaders of the NAACP, worked with members of the American Indian community and acquired considerable knowledge of Native American history, talked with people working to provide education to Native American youth, and considered with great care the education of students of color.

 

And I have interacted often with others who share with me the conviction that we must change K-12 education as conducted in the United States and in Minnesota.

 

But after many such interactions and having at times placed considerable hope in representatives from each of these categories, I have found all of them to lack an understanding of educational excellence and the overhaul necessary to achieve excellence, all of them culpable for the wretched state of education in the United States.

 

The articles in this series as you scroll on down this blog explain this conclusion and the nature of the culpability.