One
year ago, in the conventional universe, at the annual retreat in August 2016,
consultant Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools stated that he
had never seen a strategic plan such as Acceleration 2020, with its focus on
the school as the unit of change, work. He
conveyed to the conventional decision-makers that in those systems wherein
meaningful change had occurred, the departure from the previously prevailing processes
and programs was system-wide, rather than site-focused.
Casserly
is a boring speaker who heads an organization with an oxymoronic title,
inasmuch as there are so few even merely good urban schools in the United
States; nevertheless, Casserly is
correct in his fundamental observation that the current conventional strategic
plan is not viable and that change in the culture and programming of the school
district must be system-wide.
Strategic
Plan Acceleration 2020 has many more vexing problems beyond the
errant focus on site-based change. A
previous candidate in the conventional universe, school turn-around specialist
Charles Foust, asked MPS school board members how they knew that this plan was
going to work. In a real head-scratcher, the board offered no answer. Conventional MPS board member Kim Ellison later
told me that she regarded Foust’s question as rhetorical, leaving me to wonder
if Ellison understands rhetorical questions and other literary devices, since
Foust clearly expected an answer to a question that was in no sense rhetorical.
With
reference to Ellison’s stupefying, ignorant comment, you have yet another reason
as to why I went to voters in our alternate, better universe, and asked for a
completely new school board, to which they agreed and gave to me in November of
last year 2016. Thank you for your
important presence at this current gathering, now that we have ousted Rebecca
Gagnon, Kim Ellison, Nelson Inz, Bob Walser, and Don Samuels--- relegating Siad Ali, Ira Jourdain, Jenny Arneson,
and KerryJo Felder to our new advisory council.
The
deficiencies in Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 are manifold.
Perpend:
1) The targets for annual academic growth (yearly
five percentage point increases in math and reading proficiency for the general
student population, eight percentage point increases for the lowest achievers,
ten percentage point increases in the four-year graduation rate) over the
course of school years ending in 2014 through 2020 are worthy, but the
strategic plan has no viable program for attaining these goals.
2) Likewise, the key goals of student outcomes,
equity, student/family/ community partnerships, effective teachers/school
leaders/ staff, stewardship, and resource focus on students and schools are fine--- but in view of the lamentable academic
quality in our schools, these goals become just so much verbiage.
3) Verbiage rather than a plan for academic excellence
characterizes Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020; in the absence of true programmatic features
for achieving academic excellence, the plan simply gives us words: close reading, literacy strategies, core instruction,
personalized learning opportunities, readiness at grade-grouped transitions,
behavioral interventions, and high school ethnic studies courses.
We
must admit that our Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 is philosophically errant in
making the school rather than the entire system the unit of change. And we must as we move forward in our
overhaul of the entire district make our goals clearer and most importantly
achieve absolute clarity as to our program for achieving academic excellence.
…………………………………………..
Know,
then, that this is what we are going to do:
1) Immediately, as we enter the 2017-2018
academic year, we are going to teach the grade-level based academic standards
for the state of Minnesota and then go beyond those standards with a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that will be based on the Core Knowledge series of E. D. Hirsch
and my own program detailed in the August 2014 edition of my academic Journal
of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
2) In recognition that teachers come to us woefully
ill-trained from academically insubstantial programs in departments, schools,
and colleges of education, we are going to drop the term, “professional
development,” in favor of a much more rigorous academic training program along
the lines that I detail in the September 2014 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
3) We are going to implement district-wide
tutoring for students languishing below grade level in reading and math, paired
with a daily academic enrichment program for all K-5 students--- thus
allowing each student, each day, to extend levels of knowledge and skill on the
basis of current level of achievement;
at grades 6-8 and 9-12, tutoring will be aggressive and of the same
spirit as that prevailing in grades K-5, while increasing course specialization
will offer the academic enrichment component.
4) We are going to train an ample staff of
people comfortable on street corners and in the homes of our most challenged
student populations, conveying our enormous respect for all families and our pledge
to provide needed resources directly or referral to social agencies with which
we will be building enhanced, very strong, relationships.
5) And I will be dismissing most of the current
staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools, moving from a typical staff burden of
500 to 650 to a core financial, legal, operations, employment, and academic
staff of at most 150--- thus allowing
for new staff for tutoring and for family outreach, and for the shift of other
resources to teacher training.
.........................................................................
The
aim of this program is offer a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to
students of all demographic descriptors, so that all students are achieving at
grade level or above in a program much more academically fulfilling and rigorous than
prevails in the conventional universe.
We
will define an excellent education as a
matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts, delivered in grade
by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors throughout the
K-12 years.
We
will define an excellent teacher as a
professional of deep and broad knowledge, possessing the pedagogical ability to
impart that knowledge to all students.
We
will identify the three main purposes of an excellent education to be cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and
professional satisfaction.
……………………………………………………………………………
As alternate universe Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools I will
continue to work with you, newly selected members of the alternate universe MPS
Board of Education, to implement this program of educational excellence.
I
will with you and our new and vigorous staff deliver the program of academic
excellence given above to all students of the Minneapolis Public Schools. We will be clear as to student progress in ascending
to the elevated academic level that we expect of those students and of ourselves; and we will be clear as to how we are moving
forward to bring all students to that level.
As
we offer this program and succeed in our alternate universe with the delivery
of a knowledge-intensive education to all of our precious young people, we will
also serve as a shadow administration and school board in the conventional
universe, for imminent replacement of current MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and MPS
Board of Education members.
……………………………………………………………………………………..
The
time is now for the K-12 Revolution, which we will imminently move from the
alternate to the conventional universe.
Wow! This is an excellent article and way overdue. One thing I would add in this model is a rigorous vetting process to assure we have leaders who are competent,love kids, and are connected to the community in which the population they serve.
ReplyDeleteYour comment is well-taken and deeply appreciated. Please keep reading and work toward the defeat of Rebecca Gagnon, Nelson Inz, and Don Samuels in November 2018--- with continued attention to what exactly should happen with Jenny Arneson.
ReplyDelete