An introductory Note to My Readers >>>>>
Contributing
to the environment of wretched K-12 education at the Minneapolis Public Schools
is the mediocrity of coverage by reporters at the Star Tribune. The past
several reporters at the Star Tribune covering
the Minneapolis Public Schools have been Steve Brandt, Alejandra Matos, and Beena Raghavendran; Faiza Mahamud now seems to have replaced
Raghavendran, with Anthony Lonetree now covering the St. Paul Public
Schools. Articles written by these
journalists are at best serviceable;
often, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete.
Star Tribune writers Mila Koupilova and Maryjo Webster are
now also covering K-12 education for the Twin Cities Metro and the state; they joined Faiza Mahamud in writing the
first of three articles that I posted this week, asking readers to look for
meaning in subtext and to analyze the articles for quality of reporting.
Please now read these articles again, paying
careful attention to my own comments at multiple points in the heading and the
text; the article given for
consideration below was written as the lead editorial rendered in the name of
the editorial board of the Star Tribune on
5 March 2018 >>>>>
Star Tribune,
Editorial Pages, Staff Editorial, February 5, 2018
“Grad
Rates Can Be Deceiving ”
Minnesota
high schools reached a milestone last year:
Nearly 83 percent of students got their diplomas on time--- a record high graduation rate. According to the state Department of
Education, that’s an improvement of just over 4 percentage points from 2012 to
2017.
For
the same period, the number of graduates taking remedial, catch-up courses
during their first two years at state colleges and universities dropped by 26
percent, suggesting that more Minnesota students are leaving high school
prepared.
The
trend lines are slowly moving in the right direction, but too many kids are
still too far behind. Other measures
show that even as more Minnesota teens finish K-12, unacceptably high numbers
of them are not mastering the basics:
Statewide test scores have remained flat in recent years, and the
stubborn achievement gap between white students and students of color persists.
My
Comment
In the aftermath of publishing the
mediocre article of 28 February 2018,
“Graduation Rate at High Mark: State
Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap,” written by Star Tribune staffers
Mila
Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud;
and then publishing an opinion
piece, “No, Learning Isn’t Booming. Our
Diplomas are Still a Fraud,” written by former Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Superintendent Peter Hutchinson (Star Tribune Opinion Pages, 2 March 2018); the editorial staff tried to wander onto the
thematic terrain traversed by Hutchinson.
>>>>>
The
editorial continues as follows >>>>>
As
former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Peter Hutchinson argues in a Star Tribune commentary, the National
Assessment of Student Progress assessments, given every four years to a state
sample of students, have shown no significant improvement in the past decade. Only 40
to 50 percent of Minnesota students taking those texts were considered
proficient in both reading and math. And
although Minnesota regularly has among the highest ACT college entrance exam
scores among the states, only 30 percent of students taking the exam here meet
all of the ACT benchmarks for college readiness.
The
graduation data showed varying levels of improvement for all groups and some
districts where disparities have narrowed.
Still, a difference of almost 19 percentage points remains between the
two groups. More than 88 percent of
whites graduated, compared with about half of American Indian students and
about two-thirds of black and Latino students.
My
Comment >>>>>
Star Tribune editorial board
members and reportorial staff have diligently recorded those failures for the
decade cited and, furthermore have given K-12 education mediocre coverage for
prior decades. Much like the MPS Board
of Education and the Ed Graff administration, Star Tribune decision-makers and
writers reveal themselves to be alternatively clueless or dishonest.
Just as No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
was putting severe pressure on school districts to make needed changes,
staffers at the Star Tribune joined the national chorus led dually by forces of
the left and the right to terminate the most promising national legislation
that had ever been passed (under the dual leadership of Democrat Ted Kennedy
and Republican John Boehner). Never
grasping the details of NCLB, editors and writers at the Star Tribune
nevertheless felt emboldened to echo the forces that eventually undermined
legislation that put a deservedly harsh spotlight on the universally wretched
level of K-12 education in Minnesota and the other 49 states, especially when
disaggregated data necessitated by NCLB regulations revealed that while K-12
education in the United States is generally terrible, the quality of education
rendered to impoverished young people and to African American, Hispanic, Native
American, Somali, and Hmong students represents a moral abomination.
Meanwhile, Star Tribune staff
lauded the now moribund efforts of former mayor R. T. Rybak at the ineffectual
Generation Next; Rybak soon shifted to a
much more remunerative and cushy job heading the Minneapolis Foundation. And from time to time the Star Tribune
editorial board would sound off in favor of alternative licensure, great scope
for Teach for America candidates, and other peripherally significant items
touted by reformers (who have little idea themselves as to the constituent
features of an excellent education).
Worse, Star Tribune staffers sounded favorable notes for school choice
and for charter schools, the latter of which are as a rule even worse than
conventional public schools.
One would search in vain for any
indication that the editorial board or staff writers at the Star Tribune has
much idea of the actual impediments to achieving excellent K-12 education at
the level of the locally centralized school district, where the needed overhaul
must go forth.
The
editorial continues as follows >>>>>
State
Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and Superintendents Joe Gothard in St.
Paul and Ed Graff in Minneapolis were pleased with the limited progress, but
acknowledged the pressing need to do more to improve academic achievement for
more students.
“While
we recognize the accomplishments, we must be sure [Minneapolis Public Schools]
graduates leave school fully prepared for college and career,” Graff said in a
statement. “We know what we’re doing
right--- but what can we do now to see
the same gains in achievement that we’re seeing in graduation?”
To
address that question, the Minneapolis Public Schools is focusing on literacy,
expanding student support systems and increasing credit-recovery
opportunities. In St. Paul, the district
recently announced a plan for improving literacy and math skills as well as
kindergarten readiness. And Cassellius
says her department will send support to high schools with low graduation rates
to address school-specific needs.
My
Comment >>>>>
Editorialists and staff writers at
the Star Tribune are forever inclined to give serious credence to the
inevitably failing efforts of education establishment figures such as Graff,
Gothard, and Cassellius. In these
specific cases, the former two are superintendents who left their prior school
districts still struggling with major issues of educational quality. Graff was a conspicuous failure during his
three years as superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska (where the school board
declined to renew his contract;
achievement levels were woeful, in many areas even worse than the abysmal
achievement levels at the Minneapolis Public Schools. As to Cassellius, she is a talented and
perceptive educator who would make a good superintendent but whose tenure as
Minnesota Education Commissioner has been vitiated by the need to follow the
dictates of Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Governor Mark Dayton and DFL
legislators similarly politically purchased by Education Minnesota and local
teachers unions such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).
The
editorial continues as follows >>>>>
Those
are worthy initiatives, but they’ll require sticking with models that work and
letting ineffective programs go. It will
take focused instruction and support from families and communities. The state has set a goal to have a 90 percent
graduation rate statewide by 2020, with no student group falling below 85
percent. With students of color still
below 70 percent, that target will not be met given the current rate of
improvement.
Steps must be taken to speed up the use of strategies that
work for struggling learners. Unless
that happens, higher graduation rates won’t necessarily translate into
well-educated students.
My
Comment >>>>>
Phrases
such as “worthy initiatives,” models that work,” “ineffective programs,” ‘steps
must be taken,” and “well-educated students” quintessentially represent the
vacuous verbiage of Star Tribune editorialists and staff writers. The term “focused instruction” actually
denotes in one manifestation a promising program of Bernadeia Johnson that had
resonance with the Core Knowledge approach of E. D. Hirsch; that program, so full of merit, has been
jettisoned by Ed Graff and other current decision-makers at the Minneapolis
Public Schools. Here the Star Tribune
editorial board uses the term murkily and cluelessly, as is that board’s wont.
……………………………………………………………………
Summary
Comments >>>>>
Editors at the Star Tribune are not
sufficiently interested in the matter of improving K-12 education. They are not knowledgeable enough on
education issues to make the proper advocacies even if they were inclined to do
so. Furthermore, as employees of a
mainstream newspaper, editors are hesitant to offend the offenders who give
them access for interviews to do lightweight, sycophantic stories even when
articles tend toward the feature rather than the reportorial.
In this situation, readers must
always apply their own analytical reasoning in considering K-12 articles in the
Star Tribune.
For that reasoning to be effective,
readers must ever endeavor to increase their own knowledge of K-12 issues.
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