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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Each of you must now ask yourselves:
How much do I care about K-12 education?
What am I myself willing to do?
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