Superintendent Ed Graff's Lack an Educational Philosophy Undermines Both Academic Achievement and Administrative Efficiency at the Minneapolis Public Schools

Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff’s lack of an educational philosophy forecloses hope that the students of the school district are going to advance during his tenure.  His lack of any philosophical orientation, aside from what he imbibed from education professors at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he received his master’s degree, furthermore undermines administrative efficiency and all processes pertinent to the functioning of the school district.

 

The meeting of the MPS Board of Education on 12 December, just two days ago as I tap out this article, was an abominable  waste of time, due most especially to Graff’s weak leadership in the absence of a driving educational philosophy.  When I returned to the meeting after running the Tuesday evening tutoring program at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the focus of the meeting was the community survey conducted by Research, Assessment, and Accountability Chief Eric Moore.

 

There were several problems evident in the proceedings.

 

First, Ed Graff is attempting to lead the district by putting his finger in the wind to see which way community opinion is blowing.  He wants to know how community members feel about student outcomes, equity, teacher effectiveness, and stewardship as priorities for determining policy and programming.  Even these categories are derived from conversations that he had with community members, students, teachers, and MPS staff;  he conveyed these soundings to members of the school board at a retreat held last August.  Getting a sense of what community and staff are thinking should come naturally as a superintendent gets out and about in the schools and neighborhoods of Minneapolis.  But such soundings should be placed in a mental file already containing a firm educational philosophy that he in turn conveys to those with whom he is having conversations.  His own educational philosophy should be communicated clearly to community members and staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools and should drive everything that the district does by way of academic programming and policy formulation.

 

Second, in the absence of a driving educational philosophy, administrative decision-making determining academic programming flounders.  Chief of Academics and Leadership Michael Thomas and Associate Chief of Academics and Learning Cecilia Saddler have no firm guidance from the superintendent, nor does Eric Moore, who has assumed a role in academic policy-making, as well.  Other key staff at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) move forward in what should be the performance of important functions without any firm sense of goals in service of the academic programming that should be at the core of all endeavors of any locally centralized school district.  The Office of Black Male Achievement, the Department of Indian Education, the Department of College and Career Readiness do not do what they should be doing as suggested by the appellations borne by those administrative entities.  The associate superintendents have little guidance as to the messages that they should be conveying to the principals whose leadership they are supposed to be supporting and improving.

 

Third, meetings of the MPS Board of Education become wildly inefficient.  Board members, the superintendent, and all other participants flail wildly in the hopes of finding something of value to discuss and to determine.  KerryJo Felder tries to advocate for her Northside constituents without any idea of what will actually improve academic quality.  Jenny Arneson articulates commendable views in favor of uniform rigor throughout the district, but in the absence of a driving philosophy that installs a rigorous, logically sequenced curriculum from Grade K through Grade 12, her best intimations cannot be acceptably realized.  Board discussion pertinent to equity and student outcomes proceeds as mere verbalization, noble sounding goals without any notion as to their actual meaning as determined by a driving educational philosophy.  The board gets mired in its own bureaucratic muck, with conversations focused on the internal functioning of the board itself.  Board members stare at their own navels while students awaiting knowledge and skill sets are deprived of an education of excellence, or any approximation thereof, year after year.

 

Imagine health professionals relying on their patients to provide medical cures or law professionals telling their clients to provide representation on legal matters.  This is analogically what Ed Graff is doing in asking those whom he serves to determine education policy at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

But Ed Graff cannot articulate an educational philosophy if he has none.

 

Thus, his leadership will flounder, student achievement will not advance, and the public will have to await a leader of the future willing to be the professional that departments, colleges, and schools of education do not train.

 

We are ever caught in the maze created by the strange world of the education establishment.

 

Only a rare leader able to think and act outside of that strange world, upon a philosophy centered on knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education, can lead the public out of the maze.