As
to decision-makers, Superintendent Ed Graff and staff staged a two-part
presentation intended to make the case for Graff’s four major policy
initiatives: literacy, social and
emotional learning, equity, and a multi-tiered system of support for struggling
learners. All four of these initiatives
were mentioned during or in the aftermath of the presentation. These four programmatic emphases gained
implicit or explicit reference in the first phase of the two-part presentation,
which focused on graduation rates; the
second phase focused clearly on the social and emotional learning initiative.
All-student
four-year graduation rates at the Minneapolis Public Schools actually fell by a
percentage point from academic year 2016-2017 to 2017-2018, remaining close to
sixty-six percent (66%); graduation rates
for African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Somali, and Hmong students are
no better than fifty-five percent (55%).
But all-student percentages for meeting Minnesota state academic
standards are under forty-five percent (45%) and fewer that twenty-five percent
(25%) of African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Somali, and Hmong
students; and those students on free or
reduced-price lunch; meet those
standards. So on the strength of the
fact that the abysmal graduation rates have risen since academic year 2011-2012,
whereas achievement rates have remained flat and unconscionable, Ed Graff and
staff put the best face that they can on this academic morass by attempting a
magical feat of turning the lamentable graduation rates into a success story.
With
this smoke and mirrors show, these inept decision-makers intend to go to voters
next November with a two-part referendum request begging for more money to dig out
of the hole that they dug for themselves by accumulating a projected $33
million budget deficit for academic year 2018-2019.
Toward
the end of the presentation on graduation rates, MPS site leaders were called
forth to wax idyllic about the benefits of culturally relevant materials for
their students. Such testimony is thematically
in sync with the Social and Emotional Learning initiative and directly related
to the MTSS/ Culturally Relevant category that Graff and staff submitted to the
Minnesota Department of Education for meeting World’s Best Workforce regulations to close the achievement gap. These materials will cost the district
$1,576,903 for academic year 2018-2019, a slight rise in expenditure over the
present academic year of 2017-2018.
Among
those giving testimony to the benefits of culturally relevant materials and
social and emotional learning for impelling students at her school toward
graduation was North High School Principal Shawn Harris-Berry. The
value of Berry’s testimony is vitiated in the extreme for a high school at
which only five percent (5%) of students meet grade level standards in
math; only seven percent meet those
standards in reading; and a minuscule
three percent (3%) meet grade level science standards.
But that is not the end of the sordid
tale that is student learning at North High School:
In a Grade 10 English class at North
High, students purportedly studying The
Autobiography of Malcolm X did not actually read the book; instead, they were asked to hunt in select
chapters for clues as to whether Malcolm X’s life was affected more by experiences
in his family growing up, or by the racism that he encountered in society. Anyone who has read this classic knows that
the question posed is problematic as the key focus in reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Students learned nothing about Malcolm’s
street life in Boston, his self-education during his time in prison, his
association with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims); or his founding of the Organization of
Afro-American Unity and conversion to mainline Islam following his
transformative trip to Mecca.
And there is a geometry class at North
High in which the teacher’s classroom management situation is in such turmoil
that actual teaching has ceased and students must complete homework featuring
challenging new concepts without any preparatory instruction.
Shawn Harris-Berry has now been the
principal at North High School for many years, with nothing to show in the way
of genuine academic achievement; any
rise in graduation rates that occurs at her school of administration is
undercut severely by the fact that the piece of paper claimed by North High
School students is a diploma in name only.
…………………………………………………………………………
This degraded sort of exercise on the
part of Graff and staff to make the case for the superintendent’s programmatic
emphasis continued during the phase devoted to social and emotional learning.
Among the site leaders called forth
during this phase was Justice Page (formerly Ramsey) Middle School Principal Erin
Rathke. I have among my students in the
New Salem Educational Initiative those from Justice Page who are receiving “A’s”
and “B’s” in their classes and demonstrate high motivation as learners. Yet these students, all African American,
until I taught them could not have conveyed any sense of the significance of
the Reconstruction Amendments, Plessy v.
Ferguson, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and
the anti-lynching campaign, Northern Migration, A. Philip Randolph and the plan
for a March on Washington, or much detail regarding the 1950s-1960s Civil
Rights Movement. They come to me knowing
nothing about national or world geography.
Their knowledge of literature and science is paltry. And there is a Grade 8 mathematics class,
among others, in which behavior is so wretched and out of teacher control that
all conceptual and factual information for my student officially attending at
Justice Page is learned in her two-hour weekly academic sessions with me.
And yet Justice Page Principal Erin
Rathke gave energetic testimony to the benefits of social and emotional
learning at her school, one of the four in the district designated as Community
Partnership Schools. Seemingly oblivious
to the irony, she cited a sign posted on the walls at Justice Page that proudly
proclaims, “Confusion is okay.”
And indeed confusion of many sorts
must be fine with Rathke, others at Justice Page, leaders at other sites,
decision-makers at the Davis Center of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and the
MPS Board of Education.
…………………………………………………………………………
Members of the MPS Board of Education
were observably very impressed with this display of cluelessness and dishonesty
on the part of decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools. But then the current membership of the MPS Board
of Education is overwhelmingly politically driven, philosophically barren, programmatically
clueless, intellectually corrupt, and multi-dimensionally inept.
As if seeking to increase the pain of
the tortuous exercise that was the 13 March 2018 meeting of the Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education, one of the two very most politically
purchased (by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers-Democratic Farmer Labor
[MFT-DFL] cohort) members of the board, Chair Nelson Inz (the other is ironically Rebecca Gagnon,
whom Inz defeated earlier in the year), ended with a
ridiculously moronic exercise:
As members prepared to give final
comments and committee reports, Inz asked board members to number off while he
closed his eyes, so that he could have them report in an order determined not
by him but by this pseudo-random selection.
Inz should just keep his eyes closed.
Neither those eyes nor his reasoning
capacity increase his level of discernment or integrity one whit.
No comments:
Post a Comment