Abominable Academic Results for North High School Students >>>>> Academic Years Ending in 2015, 2016, and 2017

The resurgence of North High School has gotten favorable coverage in the Star Tribune and at meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.   

 

Members of the football team were lauded for winning the state football championship in their division.  Members of that team were also given credit for maintaining a better than 3.0 grade point average (GPA).  But what does it mean to keep a 3.0 or better GPA at a school wherein not more than sixteen percent (16%) or students are at grade level in mathematics, and wherein achievement levels in reading and science top out at twelve percent (12%) and eleven percent (11%)respectively?  Grade inflation is not equivalent to actual academic achievement;  in fact, such grades indicate either professional malfeasance on the part of teachers who assign grades or courses that are woefully deficient in academic rigor.

 

As this falsely academically vaunted football team prepares to take a ceremonial part in the Super Bowl, we should realize how we in the United States just use the bodies of African American youth---  males, especially, but also those of female athletes.  We send them off to colleges and universities reprehensibly prepared to succeed in the classroom.  Both high school and college/ university graduation rates are low.  For football players, brains get battered.  In the absence of a viable chance to succeed academically, and with the sense of invulnerability often felt by those who gain campus acclaim, behavioral infractions are common.  Very little in the experience of the typical high school or college athlete, especially those who bound from urban cores such as North Minneapolis, prepares her or him for success in life.

 

We must overhaul this system that misuses young bodies and leaves powerful brains so untrained and so lacking in knowledge.  Students at North High School---  and throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools---  deserve a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that will produce the high achievement levels of which the students are capable, thereby making amends for the recent achievement levels given below (with blanks for the year 2017 indicating that assessments were not give or tabulated for the subject areas presented):   

 

Summary of MCA and all Assessment Data for North High School---  Academic Years ending in 2015, 2016 and 2017

 

Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs and all Assessments:

for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017

 

   2015                       2016                       2017

Math

 

MCA                                   16%                        2%                          ------

 

All Assessments               16%                        7%                          ------

                                            

Reading

 

MCA                                      9%                        3%                          11%

All Assessments               11%                        5%                          12%                       

 

Science

                                            

MCA                                      10%                        5%                       ------

All Assessments                  10%                      11%                      ------