If these
were true professionals, they would be vigorously asserting an equitable
program of academic excellence in which equity is firmly embedded. But, as I have detailed in many articles on
this blog, administrators and school board members of the Minneapolis Public
Schools have no clearly stated or viable philosophical principles. What must pass for some approximation of such
principles comes out in the form of such education professor shibboleths as “critical
thinking,” “lifelong learning,” and “social and emotional learning” that are
mere smoke-screens behind which administrators, teachers unions, and school
board members hide while rendering a skill-devoid, knowledge-poor quality of education
that mocks the very meaning of education.
Meanwhile, the education establishment does not welcome true “critical
thinking” on the part of opponents and gives very little evidence of “lifelong
learning” toward improving upon the poor
knowledge base with which those trained in departments, colleges, and schools
of education emerge. Vapid testimonies
to the importance of “social and emotional learning” enable administrators to
pretend that programs based on values that should be assumed in the delivery of
knowledge-intensive education will lead to improved educational outcomes, when
in fact such schemes become a diversion from the awful academic performance of
students in the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school
districts.
But, as long
as public school officials are pretending to inquire as to how we are to
achieve equity, understand the following:
>>>>>
Equity in
the Minneapolis Public Schools will become reality with the impartation of a
knowledge-intensive curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors. This will only be achieved when the
curriculum is thoroughly redesigned, teachers are trained to deliver such a curriculum,
a coherent program of remedial instruction is articulated and implemented,
services are delivered directly and by referral to families facing challenges
of poverty and functionality, and expenditure for the central bureaucracy at
the Davis Center is greatly reduced so as to shift resources to the four
priorities just mentioned.
Not one of
these tenets of a uniformly excellent curriculum is currently part of the
program of the Minneapolis Public Schools:
Time at the
K-5 level is mostly wasted due to curricular weakness in natural science,
history, government, economics, literature, and the fine arts Middle school curriculum is also weak; even in classes that bear titles similar to,
or include these, subjects, the knowledge base of teachers is limited, there is
an overreliance on worksheets and packets, class discussion is minimal or
absent entirely, and homework is often given in the absence of explanation or
necessary background information to contextualize the material to be
learned. Only at the high school level
in Advanced Placement (AP) classes do students gain access to a
knowledge-intensive curriculum; but many
students who take AP classes are unprepared by the weakness of their prior
educational experiences to succeed in rigorous courses, and many teachers do
not have the knowledge base or the pedagogical ability to impart information at
this level.
Teacher
training in departments, schools, and colleges of education is abysmal, so that
teachers arrive woefully unprepared to teach the classes to which they have
been assigned. This is particularly true
for teachers at the K-5 level, who earn their degrees in the weakest major on
any university campus. Middle school and
high school teachers are also undertrained for the delivery of information with
the necessary breadth and depth. Masters
degrees are pursued in education departments and do not strengthen the
teacher’s subject area expertise. And
students do not receive training placing them on the ground, in the homes, in
the communities that constitute the environments of students living at the
urban core.
In the
Minneapolis Public Schools, there is little outreach to students whose families
face challenges of poverty and dysfunction.
The slimly staffed Department of Student, Family, and Community
Engagement is ineffective. For the achievement
of equity, we need a large contingent of staff members who are comfortable on
the streets and in the homes of our most challenged student populations,
connecting with them in conversation and organized for the provision of direct
services and resource referral.
The
Minneapolis Public Schools has no cohesive tutoring program designed to get
students lagging disastrously behind academically up to grade level. Equity can only be achieved when a large
tutoring force is trained and used to render the remedial instruction necessary
to prepare all students for a rigorous, skill-replete, knowledge-intensive
education.
And if
officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools are serious about achieving equity
they will greatly reduce the central bureaucracy at the Davis Center, which has
re-staffed and is more bloated now than was the case when Interim
Superintendent Michael Goar oversaw a reduction back in spring 2015.
With the program
of curricular overhaul, teacher training, academic remediation, family
outreach, and bureaucratic paring, the officials of the Minneapolis Public
Schools would achieve the equity that they purportedly seek.
Since these
officials will not truly be seeking community opinion in this evening’s sham of
a meeting, it is all the more imperative that we call their bluff by providing
them with a vision for equity that they themselves have not articulated as true
professionals would.
No comments:
Post a Comment