Overview of the Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education Delivered by K-12 Institutions in Minnesota--- Including the Salient Locally Centralized School District of the Minneapolis Public Schools

Reasons for the lousy quality of education delivered by K-12 institutions of Minnesota, including the salient locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools, are grounded in history and in the nature of the education establishment that history produced.

 

Public education as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann in the 19^th century called for the establishment of “common schools” that would bestow like knowledge and skill sets on students of all demographic descriptors.  But by the time that attendance in school beyond the 6^th grade became common, the notion of knowledge-focused education was waning among those most in a position to affect the future of education in the United States.  By the 1920s, independent “normal schools” had become teacher colleges absorbed by universities and were staffed by education professors who bridled at their low status and were insecure in their roles, given that professors of psychology, philosophy, and the various subject area disciplines were more intellectually astute and better positioned to impart a knowledge-intensive education to prospective teachers.

 

Thus, led by William Heard Kilpatrick at Teachers College of Columbia University, education professors began to disseminate two harmful ideas:  1) the notion that specific knowledge acquisition does not matter and that curriculum is best generated by students themselves on their way to becoming critical thinkers ad lifelong learners;  and that 2) students should be given the education appropriate to their race, ethnicity, and social class, with African Americans, southern and eastern Europeans, and students from ill-regarded ethnicities and working class families generally being given vocational training while a few white elite students received enough subject matter education pertinent to the liberal arts to gain entrance into colleges and universities.   

 

The lack of regard for knowledge among education professors began to take a toll on teacher training, such as we now observe at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and at the universities of St. Thomas, Augsburg, and University of Minnesota at Mankato.  Only at Hamline are prospective K-5 teachers required to earn a bachelor’s degree in a legitimate subject area discipline;  at the other institutions, those aspiring to teach at the K-5 level take academically lightweight courses emphasizing pedagogy as devised by education professors, acquiring very little knowledge pertinent to mathematics, natural science, literature, English composition, history, government, economics, or the fine arts.  Prospective grades 6-12 teachers do generally receive a bachelor’s degree in a subject area outside of education departments, colleges, or schools;  but prospective middle school and high school teachers almost never get master’s degrees in any field other than education.

 

Teacher training institutions are “cash cows” for universities, and this is particularly so at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis).  At that institution, those aspiring to gain certification to teach at any level must first earn a master’s degree;  prospective K-5 teachers and most aspiring grades 6-12 teachers receive that degree from the UM College of Education and Human Resources, rather than in the subject area disciplines of the College of Arts and Sciences.  Thus at all levels K-12 teachers are undertrained in their subject area disciplines and have imbibed the anti-knowledge creed of education professors, the latter of whom are the lowest regarded professorial figures on any college or university campus.

 

College and university administrators are deeply culpable for tapping the ample teacher training revenue stream while variously observing or ignoring the terrible quality of teacher training dispensed at their institutions.

 

These institutions send forth teachers with little knowledge and very limited experience in economically challenged and culturally diverse communities.  Administrators are also all trained in the anti-knowledge creed of education professors, so that at the Minneapolis Public Schools Ed Graff and other central office staff at the Davis Center (1250 West Broadway) and principals at the site level have a debased understanding of curriculum.  At MPS, Ed Graff’s current emphasis on social and emotional learning as a means to raise student achievement provides just the latest fad and example of a nonacademic approach to education providing whatever passes for educational philosophy to guide curriculum and teacher development.

 

Thus do our students, excepting those who thrive in Advanced Placement courses, have no or very limited knowledge of the U. S. constitution, U. S. or world history, economics, psychology, mathematics, the natural sciences, or the fine arts.  Fewer than 65% (and only about 50% of African American students) graduate from high school;  one-third of those who do must take remedial courses once matriculating on college and university campuses.

 

What is true at the Minneapolis Public Schools is true in even the putatively best of our school districts. By international comparison, notably demonstrated in results of the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA), students in the United States are ill-educated.  Those who attend colleges and universities specialize in some particular liberal arts subject and may go on to train for a profession in medicine, law, or engineering.  But the broad knowledge that defines the truly well-educated person abides in very few citizens of the United States.  

 

Those who can afford to send their children to private schools do so.  Parents of humble means seek solutions in charter schools.  But most charter schools are worse than our wretched mainline K-12 institutions;  and private schools are for the very few and in any case provide an education that is at best mediocre by international standards.

 

Circumstances of history have herded African Americans, many immigrant populations, and the economically most challenged urban residents into districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools, the administrators of which are intellectually and philosophically ill-positioned to devise a program to address the vexing curricular and teacher deficiencies that effectively send many of our students forth to the life of the street, along pathways that lead to desultory lives and often to prisons.

 

This is the abominable situation in K-12 education in the United States, born of history, waiting for contemporary redress.

 

We are all culpable until we insist that key decision-making administrators such as Ed Graff, Michael Thomas, Cecilia Saddler, and Eric Moore at the Minneapolis Publics School rid themselves of the degraded education professor creed and assertively overhaul curriculum and teacher training for the delivery of the knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education for which students have been waiting a very long time.