Audiences that assemble for meetings of the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education rarely come with issues of
concern that matter over the long haul.
They very seldom witness the proceedings of
these assemblages with any comprehension of the issues upon which focus should
be trained for making the needed overhaul of the processes and programs at the
school district.
This was true at that fateful meeting of 10
April 2018 chronicled and analyzed as you scroll on down this blog to the next
article; and it is true of all
conventions of these tortuous but important congregations of ill-suited MPS
Board of Education members and the mediocre superintendent that they apparently
hired because they thought they could control him, to what purposes they seem
not sure.
Here are the issues embedded in the rock of
reality behind the scrambled screen at these conventions of the MPS Board of
Education >>>>>
When one walks into the assembly room where
the school board meets, one sees moving from left right board members KerryJo
Felder (chair of the unofficial Community Engagement Committee), Don Samuels,
Siad Ali (MPS Board of Education Vice-Chair), Jenny Arneson (Finance Committee
Chair), Nelson Inz (MPS Board of Education Chair), Kim Ellison (Clerk and
Policy Committee Chair), Bob Walser, Ben Jaeger (Student Representative),
Rebecca Gagnon, and Ira Jourdain.
Superintendent Ed Graff sits between Inz and Ellison.
Felder is the representative for District 2,
North Minneapolis. Her main agendas are
to secure equitable funding for North Minneapolis schools, bring full-service community
schools to MPS, and engage the community of Minneapolis parents and citizens.
Samuels is an At-Large board member with a
history of criticizing MPS academic quality and asserting the case for better
education of African American youth.
Ali represents District 3, Cedar-Riverside, a
heavily Somali area; his particular
concern is the education of English Language Learners.
Arneson represents District 1 (Northeast Minneapolis) and ably chairs the Finance Committee; she has mastered a wealth of information regarding MPS history, demographics, and programs but is no more astute as to matters of educational philosophy than are other members of the board.
Inz represents District 5, South Minneaoeolis to the east of I-35; he weighs in most heavily on matters of school district funding, becoming especially animated over referendum issues.
Ellison formerly represented District 1/ North
Minneapolis but ran successfully for the At-Large seat previously occupied by
Carla Bates; she is broadly concerned
with conventional programming and as a former alternative school teacher is
favorable toward schools and programs that assist in credit recovery and
reestablish viability for graduation.
Walser represents District 4, which includes
the Bryn Mawr area and the toney Lowry Hill and Linden Hills areas; endorsed by Inz in the election of November
2016 in which he narrowly defeated Josh Reimnitz, Walser is against
standardized testing and an advocate for alternative assessment of student
performance.
Jaeger is a student at Roosevelt High Schools,
heavily enrolled in advanced and post-secondary option courses; he is a leader in citywide student government
and has quickly become the most articulate member of the MPS Board of
Education.
Gagnon is the former head of the Finance
Committee who became MPS Board of Education Chair in January 2017 but lost a 6-3
vote to Inz in January 2018; she is an
At-Large representative.
Jourdain came on board with Gagnon’s
endorsement in a narrow defeat of Tracine Asberry for the District 6 seat that
covers South Minneapolis west of I-35, a mostly middle to upper middle class
area in which are situated such schools as Burroughs K-5 and high schools Washburn
and Southwest; Jourdain is a Native
American particularly concerned with issues of importance to that
community.
……………………………………………………………………………
Not one of these school board members, with
the possible exception of student representative Jaeger, is clearly focused on
the abysmal record of student performance on assessments of objective measurement
such as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), National Assessment of
Student Progress (NAEP), or the ACT exam of college preparedness.
Letting Jaeger henceforth be a possible
exception to these overall characterizations, not one of these board members
ever asks questions that prod Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West
Broadway) decision-makers to explain how they are going to improve student
performance.
Not one of the elected board members
demonstrates any sense of what would be necessary to implement a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum throughout the K-12 years or to
thoroughly retrain teachers so as to implement such a curriculum.
Among the elected members, all but Samuels
have strong ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor
(DFL) cohort that has undermined the MCAs, eliminated the grade 10 reading MCA
as a graduation requirement, forestalled the originally intended phasing in of
the grade 11 math MCA as a graduation requirement, and done away with the grade
9 writing exam altogether. Remember that
I am a leftist with little regard for either major party as a proponent of policies
likely to improve K-12 education.
Samuels has performed poorly as a member of
the MPS Board of Education, appearing clueless as to how to move on his
reformist inclinations.
Only Jaeger, as student representatve unelected
by the general public, possesses the combination of political independence and powers
of analysis giving him potential to advocate for the measures needed to overhaul
curriculum and boost teacher quality.
……………………………………………………………………………
Graff is an academic mediocrity who left
behind a record of abysmal student performance in Anchorage, Alaska, during an
aborted tenure as superintendent in that district.
Graff does demonstrate acceptable ability in purely
administrative matters and in judgment of central staff quality.
In such matters, he has admirably streamlined and
rationalized the Davis Center bureaucracy, but his advocacy for social and emotional
learning; the new Benchmark reading
curriculum, and multi-tiered support for struggling students is insufficient
for improving student academic performance.
And Graff demonstrates poor grasp of the educational philosophy that
will be needed to inform the implementation of knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum.
……………………………………………………………………………
Sitting to the right of the audience at most
meetings of the MPS Board of Education are those who constitute a generally
talented group of Davis Center staff members serving as cabinet to Graff: Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop, Human Resources
Chief Maggie Sullivan, Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning Michael
Thomas, Chief of Assessment, Innovation, and Accountability Eric Moore, Chief
of Information Technology Fadi Fahill, and Chief of Operations Karen Devet.
Diop has been a great asset to MPS in the
current financial crisis; the manner in
which the majority of school board members voted in an affront to the hard and discerning
work that he has done to establish a structurally balanced budget represents a
stunning miscue detailed in the next article as you scroll on down this blog.
Sullivan, Fahill, and Devet are good in their
roles but are not positioned to make the academic programmatic decisions necessary
to move the district toward excellence of education.
Moore honestly and thoroughly documents the
abysmal academic performance of MPS students.
Thomas is a talented administrator who needs
to impress upon Graff the programmatic initiatives necessary to implement
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.
Hampering Thomas in moving on such a program for educational excellence are
academically ill-trained staff members in the Department of Teaching and Learning.
……………………………………………………………………………
Teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools are
mostly mediocre, with excellence here and there and with a substantial percentage
of teachers on staff who should have never stepped into a classroom.
To attain the necessary teacher quality,
schemes to bring in fresh talent of quality will fall short because there is no
abundance of the level of talent needed.
We will have to jettison that 15% or so of teachers who will never meet
elevated standards and retrain the remainder, thereby addressing the dilemma
posed by wretched teacher preparation programs in departments, colleges, and
schools of education.
……………………………………………………………………………
Hence, the locally centralized school district
of the Minneapolis Public Schools is hampered by an inept MPS Board of
Education, a mediocre superintendent, and by teachers and Teaching and Learning
staff who are not academically well-trained.
Curriculum at the K-5 level is devoid of
subject matter content with the exception of mathematics and reading (and the
latter is a skill rather than subject when not applied to the study of natural
science, history, government, economics, literature, and the fine arts).
Curriculum content and teaching improves
little at grades 6-8 (middle school);
only in high schools Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate
(IB) courses is rigorous content found, the efficacy of which is undermined by many
students and teachers ill-prepared to engage with and impart the material.
Thus, when parents and community members rush
in to protest cuts particular to individual schools, reading curriculum
corrupted by racist characterizations, or the advisability of having police
(School Resource Officers) in schools, they voice understandable concerns that
nevertheless do not go to the heart of the abiding K-12 dilemma, which is
inadequate curriculum and teacher quality.
And after the issues of their particularistic
concern are addressed in ways that may or may not gain resolution in accord
with their advocacy, those parents and community members withdraw into their
personal spaces and absent themselves from most meetings of the MPS Board of
Education.
Remember that the following are the
programmatic features necessary for the attainment of academic excellence at
the Minneapolis Public Schools: 1) knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum; 2) teachers retrained for the implementation
of such a curriculum; 3) academic enrichment opportunities focused on
grades K-5, including highly intentional tutoring for students lagging below
grade level; 4) resource provision and
referral for struggling families; and 5)
continued central bureaucracy paring and resource allocation so as to implement
the previously stated four features.
……………………………………………………………………………
Until parents and community members are able
to view meetings of the MPS Board of Education with more discernment; to grasp the programmatic features necessary
for the attainment of academic excellence;
and thereby to perceive the rock of reality through the scrambled screen; the effectiveness of their participation on
any given evening will be limited in the extreme.
In the absence of a more universal grasp of
the necessary features for academic excellence and the pressure points for
change, episodically attending members of the public will at meetings of the MPS Board of Education continue to give issues of evanescent importance more attention than those of permanent concern.
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