Three Years and My Ongoing Effort in Waging the K-12 Revolution: And Now, How Much Do You Care; What Will You Yourself Do?

Three years ago, in June 2014, I surveyed the landscape of public education and decided that I must do what no one else was doing to promote a particular kind of change. 

 

I made this decision only after a great deal of thought, because by commonly prevailing standards I was already full to the gills. 

 

Already I was operating a seven-day-a-week program of direct academic instruction, including the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring program that I have run for 23 years now for New Salem Missionary Baptist Church;  and the seven-day weekly small-group program;  for a total of 125 people in my network of students who receive college preparatory academic instruction and mentorship during their K-12 years and, once they have graduated from high school, typically go forth to successful college and university experiences under my mentorship and continued academic support.

 

But I was manifestly dissatisfied with all of those in whom I had put faith to promote change in K-12 education.   

 

Michelle Rhee’s once-promising national organization StudentsFirst was fading.   Minnesota advocates for education change in the disparate and in some cases ideologically counterpoised organizations MinnCAN, Teach for America, the Center of the American Experiment, Put Students First Minneapolis, Center for School Change, and Education Evolving were either highly theoretical in their advocacy or focused on national and state level change.  None were active at the level of the locally centralized school district where the needed overhaul of K-12 education must take place in the United States, given the strong value attached to local control.  

 

The above-mentioned organizations remain ineffective, and Rhee’s enormously well-funded national group, StudentsFirst, is reeling;  the Minnesota chapter has ceased to function.   Organizations such as the NAACP, (National and Minneapolis) Urban League, American Indian Movement (AIM), Native American tribal organizations, and other groups representing the constituencies most hurt by inadequate K-12 public education have failed to formulate a plan for the achievement of educational excellence.

 

So I decided that I must act. 

 

Given my already heavy commitments, this meant that I would become a 16-18 hour-per-day, seven-day-a-week activist in the mold of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A. Philip Randolph, Saul Alinsky, and Malcolm X---   people I personally admire and who looked over my shoulder in ghostly admonition telling me to do what I must do.

 

This is what I’ve done:       

 

                              ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

I launched an academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, modeled on the publications placed in university library periodical sections.  The research that has gone into the articles of the journal is seminal, based on data meticulously accumulated on the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools, revealing in specificity what is typically discussed only in highly generalized terms.

 

I premiered a television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, that similarly delves deeply into issues discussed on no other program in the United States, uniquely offering programs of fact-based commentary, interviews with people involved in making decisions affecting the academic prospects and therefore the lives of young people, and academic sessions conducted with my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative.

 

I began making Public Comments at each monthly meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, signing up way ahead of time so as to be the first person appearing before the board on the second Tuesday of each month.  During the academic year, I must depart for a couple of hours to go run the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring Program, but then I return, stride right up center aisle, take a front-row seat, and exert maximum pressure with eye contact and editorial applause for the remaining two hours or so of the meeting.                                                                                   

                                                                   

I attended all key meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools involving superintendent searches, community forums, and financial operations.

 

I pounded out substantive, fact-based, multipage articles for my blog---  sometimes two and three a day, now totaling 495 in number.

 

And I copiously compiled information for two nearly complete books, each slated to be approximately 350 pages:  One tome, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, offers a complete curriculum for the advanced high school, university, and intellectually vital adult student;  the other, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, constitutes an intense investigation of the inner workings of the locally centralized school district.

 

Both of these works are seminal. 

 

Nothing remotely like them exists. 

                                                                                                                                                                                     

                              ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Those who had been nonperforming and underperforming for decades tried to hide and hoped I’d go away.

 

I didn’t go away but rather intensified my rhetoric and my action.

 

Those who knew I was telling the truth began to come up to me in the shadows and tell me that I was right and how they were so glad that someone was finally uncovering the stark truth about the failures of the Minneapolis Public Schools

 

African American, Hispanic, and Somali parents told me how much they appreciated my advocacy for the education of their children.

 

The powers that be, especially petty power-holders, will do everything that they can to silence both truth and Truth.

 

But as Mohandas K. Gandhi maintained, fearlessly and unremittingly advancing truth moves us closer to Truth.                                                   

 

                          ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

There is no extant effort such as I have been waging and continue to wage anywhere in the United States.

 

The months ahead are crucial.

 

Ed Graff brought no distinguished credentials to the Minneapolis Public Schools.  He has, though made some surprisingly adroit moves in dismissing Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin, Teaching and Learning Executive Director Macarre Traynham, and dismantling the latter’s department as well as the  Department of Communications and Department of Student, Family, and Community Engagement. 

 

Over the course of the next five months I will finish the two enormous books;  put heavy pressure on decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to implement logically sequenced grade by grade, knowledge-intensive curriculum at all grades K-12;  induce training of teachers able to impart such a curriculum;  advocate for the establishment of an aggressive skill remediation program;  impel the design of an outreach program to families struggling with dilemmas of poverty and functionality;  and apply enormous pressure for continued paring of the central bureaucracy.

 

Much has already been achieved.    Myambitious agenda is imminently viable;  once implemented, the Minneapolis Public Schools will be transformed into a national model for K-12 public education.  

 

Ed Graff’s response to the K-12 Revolution will determine his fate as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

                                   ………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

My efforts continue to be broadly two-fold:  to provide a model for the provision of college preparatory education to the economically most challenged students in our society;  and to induce change at the Minneapolis Public Schools that will make possible the provision of this excellent education to all of our precious children, of all  demographic descriptors.

 

Thus, you, dear readers, have been privy to processes working toward an unprecedented transformation in K-12 education.

 

>>>>> 

 

You have read details concerning the best program anywhere in the United States for the preparation of students whose demographic descriptors tend to augur academic failure, moving those students forward instead on an advanced track of academic success during and after the K-12 years.

 

I do this through the New Salem Tuesday Tutoring program, the seven-day-a-week small-group program, and the persistent love expressed in continuing support for students during their post-high school university and life experiences.

 

The publication of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education will deliver to posterity the academic content that I impart to the students under my personal guidance.

 

>>>>> 

 

And you have also witnessed  the most sustained, dogged, unrelenting activism exerted anywhere in this nation for pressuring the locally centralized school district to impart an excellent education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.

 

The publication of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect will deliver another gift to posterity:  a seminal penetrating analysis of a typical urban public school district, identifying with great specificity the prevailing failures and then with like detail presenting the changes necessary for achieving transformation.

 

                                  ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

This is a powerful program for change that will address those aspects of brutality in the history of the United States that have created cyclical poverty for millions of people.  The provision of excellent public education to students of all demographic descriptors is the only way to reverse cycles of familial poverty and make of this nation the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.

 

                                  ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

 

Each of you must now ask yourselves:

 

How much do I care about K-12 education?

 

What am I myself willing to do?

Education: Promise of the Nation

Education:  Promise of the Nation

                                                   

Overwrought

didaction,

accumulated

substraction

from each

disparate,

desperate

faction

placing

a grasping

finger

in the

pie.

 

Mounting

deduction,

ongoing

reduction,

producing

a huge

suction,

reducing

everything

to a

cry.

 

Myriad

encounters

countless

shouters,

far too many

pouters

whining forth,

“Not you but

I.”

 

And so we

find ourselves

sinking

beneath

layers of

stinking

refuse

piling,

reviling

the

ever-blinking

eye.

 

And thus will

it be

until not

you nor I

but

We

value

education

the promise

of the

nation

now

languishing low

but

wanting, waiting,

to be

lifted

high.

 

Introduction to Lyrical Observations on the Fate of Rebecca Gagnon, Ed Graff, and Other Decision-Makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools

The poems that you will read by scrolling on down this blog most recently total six in number.  These expressions in verse offer in lyrical form a multiplicity of observations on the state of public education from the viewpoint of the K-12 revolutionary.  These poems are in a thematic range consistent with prior entries that include “The Entreaty of Melissa McCoy,” “Don’t Know Much About Nothin’ At All,” and “Education.”

 

But the most recent poems entered on this blog focus more acutely on Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff and MPS Board of Education Chair Rebecca Gagnon.  I had been trending more positive on the policies and future prospects for Ed Graff, but he has recently given me new cause for concern;  Gagnon is an impediment to academic improvement at the Minneapolis Public Schools and must be given notice by the public for termination in her position during the next voting cycle.  

 

And these two are just salient representatives of the woes that beset public education, with the Minneapolis Public Schools an iteration of the locally centralized school district, the leaders of whom preside over such terrible academic results for students in the United States.  There is no one on the current MPS school board who inspires much confidence.  In particular, we must work assiduously for the ouster of Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Bob Walser , and Kerryjo Felder in the relevant election cycles;  and we should be monitoring the performances of Jenny Arneson, Don Samuels, and Ira Jourdain---  all of whom have some potential to acquire the wisdom of the Japanese oligarchs on the Tokugawa-Meiji divide, who gain reference in the pages below.  Of the current membership, as matters stand right now, only Siad Ali serves a clearly useful purpose, in this case commendable service to his Somali community;  Mr. Ali also demonstrates a willingness to listen, learn, and respond to incisive critical comment.

 

With specific reference to the lyrical observations given most immediately as you scroll on down this blog, please note these introductory comments:

 

In “National Debt,” I urge readers to consider the cost that we have borne by failing to apologize for abuse perpetrated on members of our populace, to whom we must now express our contrition and our regret by defining and imparting the excellence of K-12 public education that we have never come close to offering most people in the United States.     

 

In “The Ancien K-12 Regime is Doomed,” I compare the current leadership at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and by extension the leadership of locally centralized public school districts throughout the United States, to those monarchical regimes that sat smugly protecting the prerogatives of aristocratic privilege, so isolated from the general public that revolutions overwhelmed them before they even had time to consider the danger that would soon envelope them.  I specifically urge Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff and Board of Education Chair Rebecca Gagnon to consider lessons from the Japanese oligarchs (who superintended the quite remarkable Tokugawa-Meiji transition), or go the way of their less adroit Romanov, Stewart, Bourbon, and Manchu counterparts.       

                                                                               

In “Last Gasp of the K-12 Monarchy,” I allude to the would-be king and queen mentioned above, catching them in that moment of quiet doom when presumed normality became startling reality.                                 

In “Face of Our Time,” I begin with an image from one of our most abhorrent social phenomena to assert the harm that our terrible institutions of public education heaps on our precious young people. 

 

And in “Illusions of Power in the Tower,” I further advance the thematic comparison of holders of petty power succumbing to the revolutionary activism of an abused public, seemingly inert, now assertively converting potential energy into kinetic expropriation of the expropriators.                               

 

Undergirding these lyrical observations is the conviction that by successfully waging the K-12 revolution we will excavate the foundation of our most pressing domestic dilemmas and replace that decaying lower layer with a new base upon which an unprecedentedly high quality of life can ensue.  These observations are consistent, then, with the conviction that has driven my writing in two nearly complete books, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect; and Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  These exhaustive works of research represent my dual programmatic approach to the K-12 Revolution, the one examining in penetrating detail the elements of our current system of public education that make the product so wretched;  the second detailing the knowledge and skill sets that will provide academic excellence in the model of the locally centralized school district that we will observe in the transformed Minneapolis Public Schools.    

 

Please, then, carefully read the following poems that provide lyrical insight into the problems of and the prospects for K-12 education in the locally centralized school district, with specific reference to the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Know then that in the United States, where the mantra of local control abides, all meaningful change must take place in our locally centralized school districts.

 

Then, if you care and can, preferably commit to the necessary course of action yourself;  secondarily, follow and firmly support those working to replacing the ancien regime of public education with a system that will provide cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction to all citizens, whatever their historical and demographic descriptors.      

To Live Is So Much Better Than Being Left to Die

Roiled          

embroiled

no option

but

cooption

and

unremitting

toil .

 

Never

thinking,

ever

sinking,

beneath

stinking,

unproductive

soil.

 

Broken,

cast as

token,

so much left

unspoken,

until all is

foiled,
spoiled,

mortally

coiled.

 

Forgotten,

sotten,

always hung

out to

dry,

till

the wind

sweeps  in

on a

raft

of

graft,

of

sin,

before life can

begin,

carrying

away the

harrowing,

narrowing,

desperate

cry.

 

My people

suffer from

a lack of

Knowledge,

no chance at all

for time in

college;

thus the

Fated,

Mandated,

Unabated

Revolution

K-12

Restitution,

because

to

Live

is so much better

than being

condemned to

die.

 

Illusions of Power in the Tower

There is a most

assured

mendacity,

a strikingly

warped

tenacity

with which

those

in the

Tower

who fancy

they have

Power

hang on

prolong

deceive

delay,

forestall,

their

hasty leave,

lost pay

inevitable fall.

 

So pleasant

in the

Davis Palace

sipping from

The Chalice

while

deceptive

tranquility

induces

imbecility

even as

the masses

penetrate

the passes

to remove

royalty

who imagined

loyalty

from those

whom they

abused

but

before whom

they now

stand

accused.

 

And thus

those of

ephemeral

authority

yield to the

permanent

majority

and leave

their illusions

of Power

in the Tower

now occupied

by those they

tried to

delude

but

could not

forever

elude.

 

Face of Our Time

Faces              

lifted

sifted

shifted

for

lost youth

shreds of truth

but forsooth

only

finding

binding

grinding

vainly

vainglorious

vanity

in the

temper

of the

time.

Youth

wasted

pasted

tasted

while

fleeting

cheating

eating

away

at the

gift of

Sublime

Prime

Time.

 

And thus

for

lack of

firm

station 

for

knowledge

preparation

for

college

education
never given

rather

lives riven

by

our driven

driverless

Time.

 

Notes from Dallas, 24 June 2017: Observations on the Educational Advantages of Having a Genuine Interest in People

My nearly 96 year-old mom continues to astonish with me with her resilience.

 

After enduring various challenges during February to May of this very year 2017, she is now highly mobile, reasonably agile, and as dexterous as can be expected within the limitations of her rheumatoid arthritis and remnant impact of the small left-brain venous blockage that occurred 14 months ago.  On Thursday, 22 June, Mom walked all the way to the dining room without stopping.  She negotiates her way around the apartment quite well, and moves in and out of the Toyota Matrix with considerable skill.  I treasure her mobility and recovery from the challenges of February to May, never taking for granted the manifestation of physical and physiological skill, nor Mom’s tenacity in exercising those skills as long as her body gives her a chance.

 

Mom’s appetite is very strong---  as strong as I’ve observed in her for many moons.  She packed the food away at a Father’s Day repast that included generous amounts of fresh shrimp and smoked salmon, also eating up her watermelon chunks, a chicken wing, and a sizable piece of coconut pie.  And in like manner has she continued during these days at mid-June, including a lunch of my preparation on Friday, 23 June, eating with gusto my avocado and cream cheese sandwiches and my fruit (apples, oranges, bananas) salad.  

 

I arrived in Dallas on Saturday, 17 June, eager to spend time with Mom in an earthly sojourn that best evidences suggests eventual mortality for us all.                 

                               ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Having an interest in people makes for never-ending leisure-time opportunities.

 

I continue to learn so much in talking to Mom about her life as a child and adolescent in McKinney, Texas, when this now burgeoning exurban area was a town of 16,000 residents.  With each conversation, I learn in great detail everything from positive matters such as the propensity of Mom and her tight group of friends to create their own scenarios for healthy fun, to the darker side of life of McKinney, with regard to manifold prejudices and petty socio-cultural stances.

 

And I’ve learned a ton from talking to a friend that I’ve made in Dallas, a very classy social service worker.  This new friend of mine has a family history that is a fascinating subset of the racially and classist circumstances of American society, but not the stereotypically downtrodden tale of African American woe:  Rather, hers is a story that would make Booker T. Washington proud, of folks migrating to California to forge black middle class communities of physicians, lawyers, landowning large-scale farmers, teachers, shop-owners of many sorts;  and schools with erudite teachers, segregated and much better academically than many of those artificially desegregated institutions spawned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

 

I continue to marvel that most people are so insecure as to be more interested in their own navels that they are in expressing some interest in other fellow sojourners on the planet. 

 

Openness to information from other people and to objective anecdotal accounts creates understanding that goes far beyond either the closed environment in which the typical time occupier on the globe dwells and the level of understanding that results from most sociological studies of the conventionally academic sort.

               

                               ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

I’ll be in Dallas until the first of July, departing sometime between Saturday, 1 July, and Monday, 3 July.

 

I’ll arrive back in Minnesota in time to spend the 4^th of July with Beloved Barbara, read my extended-length compressed version of Comedy of Errors (as always, maintaining all Shakespearean, Elizabethan language) with six students, take those students to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona on Sunday, 9 July, and give Superintendent Ed Graff and the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education my wisdom on 11 July.

 

Sometime soon thereafter, Barbara and I will head back southward on I-35 for the series of days that will include the arrival of Beloved Son Ryan Davison-Reed on 16 July, in the midst of the multi-day celebration of Mom’s Number Ninety-Six.

 

Be attentive, Dear Readers, to continued pungent messages for Ed Graff, Rebecca Gagnon, and other pretenders or ephemeral occupants of the throne at the Minneapolis Public Schools;  to numerous observations on the Human Drama;  and to forecasts for the storm of The K-12 Revolution that is looming with ever-darkening clouds over Davis Center Palace of the Minneapolis Public Schools.   

Last Gasp of the K-12 Monarchy

The King

had swept

the palace clean,

occupants scattered,

reputations

deservedly tattered  

but what

really mattered

was left undone.

 

The masses,

unplacated,

though approving 

the sinecures

vacated,

gathered

without the King’s

knowing

outside the palace

in the

glowing

of the

searing

late afternoon

sun.

 

The Queen,

meanwhile,

meanly

perused

The Edict,

this attempt

to restrict

to bridle

to idle

Public Voices.

 

But the Queen

was oblivious

as to how

her insidious

action would

leave her

undefended

by those

upon whom

she depended

in her grab

for power

in the Tower

from which

the fury of

the Public

now demanded

her removed.

 

Thus did the

would-be

throttled Masses

the too oft-

offended Public

swarm the Palace

without malice

but with purpose,

determined to feed

the Intellects,

the knowledge hunger

in their

children’s brains.

 

Upon the

metaphorical

gallows,

upon the

academic fields

left

fallow,

 

The King

Bore ‘round his neck

a sign that read,

“Disparaging.”

 

The Queen,

beside him,

bore ‘round her gullet

a placard that read,

“Not Respectful.”

 

And upon the

loose language

of their own

lamentable edict,

did those of the

K-12 monarchy

emit their last

professional,

institutional

gasp. 

Beware Ed Graff and Rebecca Gagnon: The Ancien K-12 Regime is Doomed

The Ancien Regime

is ever

Doomed,

Fated,

to be swept away

as

detritus

in the

Tide of History:

Romanov,

Bourbon,

Stuart,

Manchu,

Tokugawa:

 

Gone,

Anachronistic,

Irrelevant

except as

Cautionary Tale.

 

And thus it will be

with those who

would maintain

Knowledge-Poor

Skill-Deplete,

abominable iterations

of the

locally centralized

school district:

 

The K-12 Revolution

will sweep the

Ancien K-12 Regime

away.

 

Thus should you,

Ed Graff,

and you,

Rebecca Gagnon,

beware:

 

Your time is past.

You must convert

with the

dexterity  

of the

Oligarchs

on the

Tokugawa-Meiji

Divide,

or face the

Tide of History

sweeping you

toward your

professional,

institutional,

Doom.   

National Debt--- Payable with the Impartation of Excellent Education

National Debt 

Three hundred ninety-eight years,

exceeding Plymouth,

transgressing ethics,

plaguing the nation

with

abiding,

mounting,

debt.

 

Debt

never paid,

never

even

acknowledged

by the debtors,

not always

even understood

by those

to whom

the

debt

is

owed.

 

Mounting,

though,

and

costing

both

debtor

and

creditor

trillions in

dollars,

years in

lives,

for lack of an initial,

“We’re so sorry,”

and a

“Here’s what we

plan to do."

 

Know now,

all ye people,

that the

apology

must be made,

debt

must be paid,

injustice

must be stayed.

 

The dollars

must be tallied.

The lives

must be counted.

The debt must be calculated,

in

excellence of education,

imparted

with

liberty

and

justice

for

all.