Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools, with an Indication As to What Must Be Done to Create Bright Future Prospects

My investigation into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), detailed in my substantially complete book (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect) on course for presentation of final draft in May 2018, reveals clear reasons for the abominable quality of education delivered by this salient representative of the locally centralized school district.

 

The most important reasons are as follows:

 

1)  Those making key decisions regarding curriculum are not dedicated to a knowledge-intensive, skill replete education.  Ed Graff, Michael Thomas, Cecilia Saddler, Naomi Taylor, and Carey Seeley Dzierzak have all trained under education professors who devalue knowledge as the key pursuit of K-12 education.

 

2)  The resulting curriculum is extraordinarily weak:  Students at K-5 learn very little regarding the key subject areas of biology, chemistry, physics, history, geography, economics, and the fine arts,  and they read very little challenging, high-quality literature;  students at grades 6-8 fare little better; and high school curriculum is bolstered only by the presence of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, for which too few knowledgeable teachers are available.

 

3)  Teachers come to their positions ill-prepared;  those at K-5 have endured the weakest program on any college or university campus;  those at grades 6-8 and 9-12 may be certified even with lackluster performance in their subject area undergraduate programs, and they rarely pursue advanced degrees in any programs other than education.

 

4)  There is no district-wide, coherent tutoring program to assist struggling students.

 

5)  Efforts to reach out to families struggling with poverty and dysfunction are few and ineffective.

 

6)  Central bureaucracy staffing is bloated and staff is overpaid, with 68 staff members (of a total 444) receiving salaries in excess of $100,000.

 

7)  The guiding Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 is a mere exercise in setting goals for student achievement, none of which have been reached;  the plan offers no viable means for boosting student performance and errantly identifies the school as the unit of change, rather than correctly designating the district as a whole for transformation.

 

8)  The district’s Educational Equity Framework is a jargon-infested document that typifies the tendency of district decision-makers and members of the MPS Board of Education to profess concern for student outcomes and equity in the abstract while offering no plan for moving verbal proclamation to action.

 

9)  The fourteen programs identified for meeting Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) World’s Best Workforce (WBWF) regulations for closing racial achievement gaps or boosting academic performance for impoverished students have no prospects for success;  they serve too few students and have too little academic focus.

 

10)  Members of the MPS Board of Education, individually and collectively, have no guiding educational philosophy;  they ask few discerning questions regarding academic programming and have no committee dedicated to advancing the academic program of the district.

 

11)  The teacher’s union, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), resists objective measurement of student performance and the establishment of knowledge-intensive curriculum;  eight of the nine MPS Board of Education members have strong ties to this politically powerful union.

 

12)  Disciplinary policies in MPS schools are weak:  Many teachers have so little control over their  classes that very little learning occurs;  cases at Folwell K-8, Justice Page (formerly Ramsay) K-8, and North High School have come to my attention as particularly egregious.

 

13)  Building principals are so weak as to engender an extra layer of bureaucracy occupied by associate superintendents (four in number);  with weak academic training themselves, Ron Wagner, Laura Cavender, Lucilla Davila, and Carla Steinbach are paid $144,333 per annum to try to improve site level leadership.

 

14)  Students are not prepared well for either the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) or the ACT college readiness exam;  teachers resist the former, which has been vitiated by opt-out tactics, and few teachers are academically competent enough to prepare students for the latter.

 

15)  Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning Michael Thomas has potential for articulating a better academic program;  Chief of Research, innovation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore is a talented statistician;  and Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop is a person of enormous integrity and considerable talent;  but on the whole performance of staff members at the Davis Center ranges from wretched to merely acceptable, and high salaries promote the comfort of sinecure rather than courageous calls for change.

 

This is a school district long mired in trouble.

 

This is a school district that must be dismantled and reconstructed with dedication to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education for students of all demographic descriptors.