Alternate Universe MPS Superintendent Gary Marvin Davison Engages in Straight Talk with >Star Tribune< Staff Writers Mila Koumpilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud--- and Takes Them Under His Journalistic Wing

Disgusted by the article, “Graduation Rate at High Mark,” produced by Star Tribune staff writers Mila Koumpilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud as a page one story in the Wednesday, 28 February 2018 edition of the Minneapolis-based newspaper, Alternate Universe Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Gary Marvin Davison called these reporters to a meeting at which he set them straight on several matters pertinent to education in the conventional universe inhabited by MPS superintendent Ed Graff.

 

Saliently, Davison conveyed to Koumpilova, Webster, and Faiza that they should have written the following article, rather than the undiscerning piece published by the Star Tribune:

 

Academic performance of students in Minnesota
continues to languish and is abysmal for students
of color and those of low income.

 

The four-year graduation rate for all students in
Minnesota in academic year 2011-2012 was 78%
and was still only at an 83% level in academic year
2016-2017.  Furthermore, a gap of nineteen
percentage points continues to exist between the
four-year graduation rate for white students and
the four-year graduation rate for students of color.

 

Astonishingly, only about half of American Indian
students in Minnesota graduate in four years; 
and only approximately two-thirds of African
American and Latino students across the state
graduate within that time frame.        

 

In the Minneapolis Public Schools, the overall
graduation rate actually declined by a percentage
point in academic year 2016-2017 by comparison
with the previous year.  The overall rate at MPS
was 66% during 2016-2017, compared with the 77%
rate recorded by the St. Paul Public Schools.  And
for MPS students of color, the graduation languishes
at forty-eight percent.

 

But the situation is even worse when one examines
actual academic achievement in the Minneapolis Public
Schools, the locally centralized school district
encompassing the city where this publication is based. 
Fewer than 45% of students in the Minneapolis Public
Schools meet state standards for mathematics, reading,
or science;  fewer that 25% African American, American
Indian, Latino, Hmong, and Somali students meet these
standards.  The district is currently in year number four
of its six-year Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan, by which
time academic achievement was supposed to have risen
by five percentage points each year for all students and
an ambitious eight percentage points per year for
chronically under-performing students.


Catastrophically, actual performance has been flat.

 

The situation is made all the more grievous in view of the
fact that a plan for multiple pathways to graduation have
artificially inflated graduation rates, as has a curriculum in
which the number of required courses has been reduced. 
Programs such as “on-track to graduate” and “check and
connect” have helped to lift graduation rates slightly.  But
the reality is that with the multiple pathways approach in
the context of a generally weak curriculum, a diploma
presented upon graduation from a high school of the
Minneapolis Public Schools means very little in terms of
knowledge accumulated and skills acquired.

 

Of all graduates at the Minneapolis Public Schools, 33%
need remedial courses once matriculating on a college
or university campus;  for African American students,
that figure is 40%.  Remember that for African Americans,
these figures appear in a context of a four-year high school
graduation rate of less than 50%, even with a multiple
pathway scheme and curriculum of reduced academic rigor.

 

This situation is why Dr. Gary Marvin Davison has assumed
the role of MPS superintendent in the Alternate Universe. 
As recorded in many articles on his blog, he has shown
Ed Graff a route out the Davis Center door, made numerous
staffing changes at the Davis Center, and installed a five-point
program featuring 1) curricular overhaul for grade by grade
knowledge intensity;  2) rigorous new teacher training; 
3) a highly intentional, district-wide tutoring program; 
4) a new department for resource provision and referral,
replacing the old community engagement department;  and
5) great slimming of the Davis Center bureaucracy.

 

.....................................................

 

Koumpilova, Webster, and Faiza expressed contrition for their article of 28 February 2018 and promised to do the reading and research that will allow them to produce more discerning articles in the future.  They have in the meantime swung over to MPS central offices to examine the exits of staff members out the Davis Center door.

 

Thus it goes in the Alternate Universe, where answers are candid and impending reality in the conventional universe is envisioned.