I know that
results will yet again be abhorrent because I listen closely to my students in
the New Salem Educational Initiative, go into schools often, and follow MPS events
more closely than anyone. The composite picture
that appears on my mental screen very clearly reveals an approach to education
and a level of organizational ineptitude that cannot produce any appreciable
change for the better.
I will put Dr.
Moore’s 8 August report together with the mass of data that I have accumulated to
yield a book (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect) that
will stress these themes:
>>>>> There is nothing at the Minneapolis
Public Schools remotely resembling professional staff of the kind that we
associate with business and the professions;
all personnel, including teachers, principals, and central office
administrators have been permanently damaged by the degraded educational philosophy
of education and low level of teacher/ administrator training inflicted on the
education establishment by professors of education.
>>>>> Decision-makers at the Minneapolis
Public Schools are not equipped to design an academic program that imparts
sequential skill and knowledge sets capable of improving MCA, MMRS, and ACT results,
much less give students solid grounding in mathematics, natural science,
history, economics, literature, fine arts;
or the technological and vocational arts.
>>>>> Accordingly, seventy percent of students
enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools are not performing academically at
grade level; only sixty-two percent of
students graduate; one-third of those
students who do graduate need remedial instruction in mathematics and reading
once landing on a college campus; and
those who trek across the stage at graduation claim a piece of paper that is a
degree in name only.
>>>>> Graduates typically have little understanding
of history and current issues pertinent to a range of domestic and international
issues; cannot identify the 1600s as the
17th rather than the 16th century; have no understanding of the multiple meanings
of terms such as conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, revolutionary,
radical, reactionary, fiscal, monetary;
cannot identify the essential differences in the ideas of Isaac Newton
or Albert Einstein; have no idea of the
approaches to psychology offered by Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, or Abraham
Maslow; could not give an account of
major genres of music with salient examples of musicians, whether classical,
blues, jazz, or the multiple forms to which the latter two gave rise; cannot describe how the electoral college
works or the function and composition of the United States Supreme Court; cannot differentiate the roles of the United
States Senate and House of Representatives or convey any information as to the
day-to-day functioning of those two bodies;
have no idea as to the defining qualities of major categories of art, whether
in the United States or in the traditions and nations of Europe, Africa, Asia,
or Latin America; manifest the ability consistently
to perform operations pertinent either to basic fractions, decimals, and
percentages or those relevant to algebra or geometry--- much less trigonometry or calculus.
>>>>> Although the Minneapolis Public
Schools does have certain caring and capable individuals such as Chief of Academics,
Leadership, and Learning Michael Thomas;
Chief of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability Eric Moore; and Associate Superintendent Ron Wagner; in-house training of teachers and
administrators is woefully inadequate and the staff as a whole is not remotely
equal to the tasks set before them.
>>>>> Chief Financial Officer Ibrahima
Diop is enormously capable, but he is routinely handed a budget that is ill-designed
to deliver an academic program of excellence:
Financial resources are with irresponsible regularity wasted that should
be directed toward the most important academic concerns of students.
>>>>> There is a middle class viewpoint
that dominates MPS decision-makers and school board members the falls far short
of understanding programmatic imperatives for students from families facing
challenges of economy and functionality.
>>>>> The Department of College and Career
Readiness, Office of Black Male Achievement, and Department of Indian Education
are not capable of fulfilling their most important academic imperatives.
>>>>> There is a murkiness in the authority
structure at the Minneapolis Public Schools that results in the imprecise location
of decision-making in some netherworld between superintendent (currently Ed Graff)
and MPS Board of Education members Rebecca Gagnon, Kim Ellison, Jenny Arneson,
KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser, Siad Ali, Nelson Inz, Don Samuels, and Ira Jourdain.
>>>>> The current membership of the school
board is not capable of making decisions impelling the academic program
forward: KerryJo Felder is refreshingly irascible
but errant of aim; Bob Felser is a silly
and irritating distraction; Rebecca
Gagnon, Kim Ellison, and Nelson Inz are politically conniving; all members aside from Don Samuels are deeply
connected to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers; and Samuels is bombastically ineffective.
>>>>> Superintendent Ed Graff came to MPS
with an undistinguished record from the public schools of Anchorage, Alaska,
the board members of which did not renew Graff’s contract after three years; the latter left the district rife with the
same essential failures as those of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and while
he has made some favorable moves in reducing the central bureaucracy, he shows
little promise for the design and implementation of an academic program of
excellence or instituting proper supports for struggling students.
……………………………………………………………………….
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect will proceed in three parts:
Part One:
Facts
Part Two:
Analysis
Part Three: Philosophy
In Part One staff and school board members
will damn themselves on the basis of objective data.
In Part Two I will analyze the precise
problems that suffuse the district.
In Part Three I will detail the philosophy
and program that must undergird the needed overhaul.
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect will shake MPS staff and school board members
to their core and confront the public with the facts.
Then the remaining
questions will be:
Does anyone
really care about public education?
Does anyone,
pretensions and attestations aside, care about making of ourselves the
democracy that we imagine ourselves to be?
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