MTSS/ Culturally Relevant Materials >>>>> Article #9 in a Multi-Article Series >>>>> Programs Projected to Raise Academic Achievement of Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools--- With No Viable Hope of Doing So

This article is the ninth article in a series presenting figures for programs identified by the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) administration and MPS Board of Education as the key initiatives of the MPS district to raise student achievement levels, especially those for African American, Hispanic, American Indian (Native American), Somali, and Hmong students, for which not even 25% meet grade level standards on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).

 

Most of these programs have been in place for many years, with meager results.  

 

Other than these programs, the Superintendent Ed Graff administration is placing its hopes on the training of staff and students in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and the implementation of a new reading curriculum for grades PK-5.

 

For reasons that I have detailed in past articles posted on this blog, none of the programs articulated by the Graff administration and approved by the MPS Board of Education is adequate to the task of raising student achievement levels or imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education. 

 

That will only come with complete curricular overhaul, comprehensive teacher retraining, highly intentional tutoring, resource provision and referral for struggling families, and bureaucratic trimming so as to direct resources to the students themselves.

 

These observations will be discussed at length in my substantially complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, for which I will continue to post snippets in the run-up to publication this coming May 2018.

 

The program under review here is MTSS/ Culturally Relevant Materials, identified for three of the six goals identified under Minnesota Department of Education World’s Best Workforce regulations.  The three goals given for MTSS/ Culturally Relevant Curriculum are Third Graders Reading at Grade Level, Closing Racial and Economic Achievement Gaps, and Graduation from High School.

 

In adopting Culturally Relevant Materials, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools are seeking to heighten student interest by using curricula that resonate with particular ethnic groups, on the implicit assumption that focus on such materials will raise mathematics, reading, and science achievement levels.  But while these materials have value, they do not contain the bevy of information needed in a truly knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum across the liberal, vocational, and technological arts, imparted in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years. 

 

Cultural relevance is embedded in the knowledge-intensive curriculum for which I advocate, and which my students the New Salem Educational Initiative are studying in my book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.This work presents the essence of subject areas as followings

 

Economics

Psychology

Political Science

World religions

World history

United States history

African American history

World literature

English usage

Fine arts

Matematics

Biology

Chemistry

Physics

 

Subject matter in such a curriculum appeals to students according to their particular ethnic identities and according to the great cultural inheritance in cross-cultural knowledge shared by all students.

 

Culturally Relevant Materials are especially focused for use at level K-5, involving at that level 5,022 students;  for middle school and high school students the corresponding figures are 971 and 991.  Although these numbers are substantial, in a school district of approximately 20,000 students of color, the program is still limited to thirty-five percent of students of color;  and in a district of approximately 36,000 students, the program only covers fourteen percent of that total student population. 

 

So while there are worthy goals associated with MTSS/ Culturally Relevant Materials, the impression still builds with the review of each program purported to raise overall achievement levels that decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools dwell in a fantasy world, are cynical in advancing programs that they know cannot work, or are joltingly incompetent.

 

Consider now the data pertinent to MTSS/ Culturally Re3levant Materials:          

 

>>>>>   

 

Program for                                       

World’s Best Work Force (WBWF)

Alignment, 2017-2018

 

Major (WBWF) Academic Program #9

 

MTSS/ Culturally Relevant Materials

 

Projected WBWF Goals Addressed  >>>>>

 

Third Graders Reading at Grade Level

 

Racial and Economic Achievement Gaps Closed

 

Graduation from High School

 

    2016                       2017                      2018

Budgetary           Budgetary           Budgetary

Allocation           Allocation          Allocation          

 

      $0                  $1,520,000        $1,576,903              

 

Students Served (K-12)

 

Academic Year Ending in 2018                  

 

K-5          Middle       High        Academic Year

                  School        School     2017-2018            

 

5,072          971             991

 

Students Served by Race                                                             

 

 

 (Academic Year               Ending in 2018)

 

African American    >>>>>

 

3,068

 

American Indian     >>>>>

(Native American)

 

   209

 

Asian >>>>>

 

    350

 

Hispanic >>>>>

 

  1,406

 

White  >>>>>

 

  2,001

 

Total  >>>>>

 

6,984