Scroll on Down to See What to Expect as I Put the Finishing Touches on My Substantially Complete Book, >Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect< >>>>> Relentless Focus on Staff and Programs Responsible for Low Student Achievement Rates

As I put the finishing touches on my substantially complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, I am going to be relentlessly focused on the people and programs responsible for the low achievement rates of students attending the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

 

As you scroll on down this blog, first to the immediately following five articles, then to any number of the information-packed, carefully considered articles posted on the blog, you will develop a very good feel for the focus and topical considerations of this monumental effort, due for final presentation in May 2018.

 

I divide the book into three major parts, containing in all about fifty chapters.  The three major parts are Facts, Analysis, and Philosophy. 

 

Part One: Facts gives entirely objective factual information, a great deal of which is posted on the website of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), but also a bevy of information produced as the result of my own painstaking methods of discovery.  In this section I focus especially on the people and programs most important in the delivery of education to MPS students.  In the course of this part, I give a wealth of factual information concerning the central office staff of the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway);  building principals;  Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers;  the professional preparation of teachers at levels PK-5 and grades 6-12;  curriculum at grades PK-5, 6-8, and 9-12;  the membership, structure, and functioning of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education;  finances of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and student achievement.

 

Part Two: Analysis contains my critical examination of the facts, focused on those people who, and programs that, have prevented the impartation of an education of excellence to the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Part Three: Philosophy provides information on the history of education in the United States, a history of the Minneapolis Public Schools, contending philosophies of education, and a presentation of my five-point program for the delivery of an excellent education to MPS students, so as to make of the Minneapolis Public Schools a model for the locally centralized school district.

 

As you scroll on down this blog, first to the immediately following articles, then to the more than 550 articles posted for the last decade, you will gain in-depth knowledge of education in the United States, education in Minnesota, the nature of teacher training, national and state programs and assessments (No Child Left Behind, Every Student Succeeds, Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments [MCAs], Minnesota State Graduation Standards, regular and alternative teacher licensure), and all manner of items pertinent to the history, philosophy, and current circumstances of education in the United States and in Minnesota.

 

This is the best blog on education in the United States.

 

Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect will be a seminal, path-breaking book.

The people and programs that you see immediately as you scroll on down the blog will be receiving intense scrutiny in the book, and the many articles as you more deeply peruse the blog provide snippets of this book and the other tome on which I am also moving toward completion, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, the latter of which provides the education in economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, United States history, African American history, literature, English composition, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics that is not now being delivered by the Minneapolis Public Schools.  

 

Be keenly aware, then, of these two books.

 

Understand the relentlessness and seriousness with which I am approaching the production of these books---  the same approach that has yielded my other books, among them the following:

 

Culture and Customs of Taiwan (with St. Olaf College professor, Barbara Reed, 1998)

A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (2003)

State of African Americans in Minnesota (for the Minneapolis Urban League, 2004)

Tales from the Taiwanese (2004)

A Concise History of African America (2008)

State of African Americans in Minnesota (for the Minneapolis Urban League, 2008)

 

I am thus pouring all of the experience that I have gained as a teacher and researcher over the course of five decades into the production of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

People such as those to whom I refer in the immediately succeeding articles should take stock, start producing an education of excellence for the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools, or prepare to make their exit.

 

Keen brains have been undernourished for too long.

 

My patience is exhausted.

 

And those staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools, including the best among them for whom I have considerable personal regard and respect, should be diligent in their current roles and prepared for the facts, analysis, and philosophy that I will be detailing in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.