Aggressive New Skill Remediation (Tutoring) and Academic Enrichment Program Inaugurated by Alternate Universe Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Gary Marvin Davison

Students for whom I have responsibility as the Alternate Universe Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools will progress in the K-5 years through a sequence of skills in math and reading that I have identified for grade by grade acquisition in the August 2014 edition of Journal of the K-5 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, summarized in detail as you scroll on down to the immediately following articles on this blog;  the skills identified for acquisition are identified with careful attention to Minnesota state academic standards and with curriculum generated by the Core Knowledge Foundation.

 

In math during the K-5 years, students need to progress through skill acquisition that includes pre-math positional terms (up, down, under, over, and the like), time telling (analog and digital), units of money, the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, data representation (graphs, charts, tables), and introductions to geometry and algebra.

In reading during the K-5 years, students need to progress through alphabet recognition, phonemic awareness, vocabulary of ascending syllables and degrees of abstraction, sentence construction and recognition, paragraph construction and comprehension (with use and understanding of topic sentences), and reading of a variety of fictional and nonfictional works of thematic variety and topical diversity, allowing for an expanding and ever-richer vocabulary.

One hour a day will be set aside for K-5 students to work on enrichment activities connected to the skill level that each student is manifesting:

For students who have mastered grade level skills, this will mean working on advanced material that challenges students to solve intriguing math problems or read for the enhancement of literary appreciation or knowledge acquisition.

For students who are lagging below grade level, this will mean working one on one with a well-trained tutor until the necessary math and reading skills are acquired.   Work with a tutor should be viewed as an opportunity to master important math skills and to read an array of interesting and high quality fictional and nonfictional material.  Students should receive positive feedback for progress made;  tutors should convey a sense of joy in learning and delight in the opportunity to spend time with the young person.

Over time, most struggling students will gain the basic skills that they need in the course of remediation during the K-5 years.  But tutoring will most certainly continue at the middle school (grades 6-8) and high school (grades 9-12 levels) also, and at those levels the new rigorous curriculum that we are implementing will provide the enrichment opportunities manifest in subject area specialized courses, Advanced Placement, and the array of world languages that will be available in the curriculum that I have detailed.   Via continued skill remediation and the rigorous and engaging curriculum, students will ascend to academic challenges either for mastery at grade level or advancement from already secured grade level position.

Except for those facing particularly severe learning challenges, all students will be provided masterful instruction in Advanced Placement courses;  they will conduct research, engage in specialized study of topics of driving interest, and gain training of the type needed for success on ACT and SAT exams.  For those students who do face particularly elevated learning challenges, standards will be high and encouragement will abound for these students to reach their maximum learning potential in our knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.   

The programs for skill and knowledge enhancement will under my leadership as Alternate Universe Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools be administered in the spirit of challenging students to know all that they can know and to become all that they can be.

Such a program of academic remediation and enrichment will necessitate well-trained teachers of the type that I have specified in my academic journal and in articles as you scroll on down this blog. 

The program will also require a great increase in the number of tutors and very careful training of these tutors.

An aggressive program of volunteer solicitation will secure high quality talent among college students, workaday professionals, and academically astute and pedagogically adept parents and retirees.  We will train and integrate any tutors that have come to us from the conventional universe via Generation Next, Community Volunteers, Elementary Literacy Tutor Program, Adult Education Volunteers, Math Corps, Reading Corps, City of Lakes Americorps, and VISTA. 

 

But expansion of professional staff hired for the express purpose of tutoring will also be necessary.

Academic enrichment (advanced and remedial) will be a budgetary priority of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

This will make the dramatic central bureaucratic paring that I have indicated as a priority all the more imperative.

 

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As in the case of the knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher training discussed in the next articles on this blog, I will be swiftly and efficiently implementing the skill remediation and enrichment programs as Alternate Universe Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  I and my Alternate Universe MPS Board of Education will in doing this be preparing for that time in the months to come that we supplant conventional universe MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and the conventional universe MPS Board of Education, providing the vision and the leadership that these ineffective non-decision-makers have failed to provide.