This
has been an amazing week in the K-12 Revolution.
On
Monday (14 August) from 9:00 AM until 4:00 PM, the members of the Minneapolis
Public Schools MPS) Board of Education met for their annual summer
retreat, this one held in a conference room in the Davis Center (MPS
central offices, 1250 West Broadway); the meeting continued the following
late afternoon (Tuesday, 15 August) for almost two hours at the Minneapolis
Park Board Headquarters on West River Parkway, just about a three minute
drive from New Salem.
The
agenda for the meeting focused on the board's ineffective Strategic Plan
Acceleration 2020, which errantly focuses on the school as the
unit of change (as opposed to the necessary and critical systemic change in the
district as a whole), sets ambitious goals for student achievement without any
plan for achieving those goals (and thus no resulting achievement gains
halfway through the six-year period for which the plan is to be in effect), and
lists priorities as 1) student outcomes; 2) equity; 3)
student, family, and community engagement; 4) effective teachers, school
leaders, and staff; 5) stewardship; and 6) resources to students
and schools--- in an atmosphere in which neither the school board
nor the Superintendent Ed Graff administration has a clue as to how to realize
any of those priorities.
In the
course of the nine or so total hours of the meeting, stretched across
those two days, there was no resolution or even movement toward resolution of
the key issues that should be the chief concerns of the board.
Perpend:
1) There is not even a clear means of
measurement for determining student achievement;
for
reasons that I have detailed on the blog, the Minnesota Comprehensive
Assessment (MCAs, excellent measures of student achievement) have been
vitiated by Minnesota Department of Education policies, and by the
opposition of the reactionary and deleterious teacher unions and (Education
Minnesota; Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers [MFT]). Furthermore, that very harmful presence,
school board member Bob Walser, has voiced his opposition to objective
measurement of student achievement. Much of the board agrees but is
less vocal. And there has been no discussion of Walser's lamentable
position, with the resulting lack of clarity as to how the ambitious
goals for student achievement (five percentage point annual gains for the
general student population, eight percentage point gain for those students who
have languished most dramatically below grade level in math and reading)
will be achieved. Only the four-year graduation rate (with the goal of
ten percentage point increases per year) can be measured objectively---
and the results on that matter are not good: The graduation rate has not
substantially improved, languishing at about sixty-five percent for
students as a whole and below fifty percent of African American students
and other students of color.
2) In the absence of academic gains for students
of color and for those on free and reduced- price lunch, equity is a
fantasy.
3)
No one among MPS decision-makers understands that student, family, and
community engagement should mean clear articulation of a program of academic
excellence, feedback from the community within the context of that clearly
promulgated plan, and staff on the ground to respond to the life
challenges of people living at the urban
core.
4)
No one among decision-makers understands, much less having a plan to address
the depths and chronic nature of teacher and staff mediocrity;
5)
In the absence of generous resources allotted to teacher training and family
resource provision and referral, stewardship is ever askew; and
6)
the observation in number five above also weighs against
proper distribution of resources to students and schools.
The
school board is clueless on all of these six matters, and thus Strategic
Plan Acceleration Plan 2020 is junk, as the consult (Michael
Casserly) presiding over the annual summer retreat a year ago essentially told
them; Casserly was especially clear on the matter of the
district as a whole (rather than the individual schools) being the unit of
change in any effective strategic plan for improvement.
Superintendent Ed Graff is
clueless in the extreme:
As his
answer to the problems which plague the Minneapolis Public Schools, formed
in reference to conversations with teachers, staff, and community
members, is grounded in measures focused on literacy, social and emotional
learning, equity, and a multi-tiered system of support to address the issues of
achievement, equity (notice the redundancy in which means and goal are not
meaningfully differentiated), engagement, and accountability. Graff
conveys that all of this is to be achieved with attention to fiscal stability,
building parental trust, rendering customer service, staying true
to district-wide values, and following through on programs once
articulated.
In
other words, Graff offers the typical mumbo-jumbo.
Compare
my own program clearly focused on 1) the installation of knowledge-intensive
curriculum; 2) thorough training of teachers capable of imparting such a
curriculum; 3) coherent, district-wide, aggressive tutoring
program; 4) family resource provision and referral; and 5)
dramatic paring of the central office bureaucracy.
The
summer retreat of 14 and 15 August clearly demonstrates the need for an
entirely new membership on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
and a merely presiding rather than
leading superintendent on a course toward continued failure--- meaning a
probable short tenure for said superintendent, now already one year into a (likely-to-be-shorter-than)
three-year term.
The
week featured many other significant moments for the K-12 Revolution:
These
included attendance and first-up Public Comment on the evening of 15
August at a meeting explaining a new system of accountability developed by the
Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) as their latest iterative response to
the present regulations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I
continue to have rather surprisingly favorable interactions with my friend
Commissioner Brenda Cassellius, who has instituted many wrongheaded
policies as a member of the Education Minnesota-dominated Mark Dayton administration
but who understands that the local school district is the key for meaningful
implementation of accountability measures--- and also has
a grip on many of those initiatives (synchronous with my five-point
program) that must be taken at the level of the locally centralized school
district.
An
increasing number of people are now flocking to my blog and giving me calls
seeking my advice on education change.
Many
of these conversations point toward cooperation in ousting the current school
board and inducing better leadership of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The
week of 13-19 August has been of high importance to the K-12 Revolution.
Keep
reading.
Get
moving.
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