Aug 19, 2017

An Eventful Week of 13-19 August in the K-12 Revolution


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.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment