Volume IV, No. 10 April 2018
Journal of the K-12 Revolution
Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota
A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative
Gary Marvin Davison, Editor
Part One
A Five-Article Series
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
New Salem Educational Initiative
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mediocrity of Star Tribune
Coverage of Issues Pertinent to the
Minneapolis Public Schools
and
K-12 Education
Part One
A Five-Article Series
Copyright
© 2018 by Gary Marvin Davison
New Salem Educational Initiative
Contents
Article #1
Introductory Comments
Factors in K-12 Mediocrity That Star Tribune Feature and Opinion
Writers Fail to Discern or Are Afraid
to State
Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education
at the Minneapolis Public Schools That You’ll Never
Read in the Star Tribune Unless I Detail Them in an
Opinion Piece
Article #2
Assessment #1 From Star Tribune, Page A1, 28 February 2018,
“Graduation Rate at High Mark:
State Record Clouded by
Persistent Achievement Gap”
Article #3
Assessment #2 “No, Learning Isn’t Booming.
Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud.”
From (Star Tribune, Commentary
by Peter Hutchinson, 2 March 2018)
Article #4
Assessment #3
From Star Tribune, Editorial Pages,
Staff Editorial, 5 March 2018
“Grad Rates Can Be Deceiving ”
Article #5
Concluding Thoughts
External Reasons for the Abominable Quality
Of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools
The Role of the Star Tribune and the Importance
of Reading with Analytical Discernment
Article #1
Introductory Comments
Factors in K-12 Mediocrity That Star Tribune Feature and Opinion Writers Fail to Discern or Are Afraid to State
Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools That
You’ll Never Read in the Star Tribune Unless I Detail Them in an Opinion Piece
In early autumn
2017, the Star Tribune ran a
multi-article series on the tendency of students, often at the behest of their
parents, to flee from the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) in the course of the
last half decade. The articles offered
only a thin veneer of reasons, citing concerns over safety, achievement levels,
or program options; fleeing students or
their families sought in suburban, charter, private, and parochial schools
specific programs and learning environments that in some way addressed these
concerns. But the articles offered no
definition of an excellent education or sought any from the students or parents
who were quoted or whose motivations for fleeing were described. The matter of whether or not students would
actually graduate from such schools and districts as truly more knowledgeable,
skillful people was not covered. And
nowhere in the article did readers get any sense of the most vexing impediments
to the impartation of an excellent education at the Minneapolis Public
Schools. This is most likely because Star Tribune staff manifest little
understanding of K-12 education or the abiding problems within the Minneapolis
Public Schools that impede the delivery of a high quality education. Except for the opinion pieces that I publish
in the Star Tribune, little
understanding of the core dilemmas of the school district are evidenced either
in articles written by the newspaper’s staff or other opinion writers.
Be reminded that
the core reasons for the abominable quality of education at the Minneapolis
Public Schools are as follows:
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 Research, Innovation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore is a
talented statistician, Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop is one of the best at his
position in the nation, and Operations Chief Karen Devet, Information Chief
Fadi Fadhil, and Human Resources Chief Maggie Sullivan are also talented; 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.
But you will get little understanding as to the core dilemmas from most of what is published in the Star Tribune. This is because staff writers at the Star Tribune have little grasp of K-12 issues, the inner workings of the school district, or the historical factors that have abetted the development and persistence of such a wretched system. And this is true also of most opinion writers who submit their articles to the editorial staff. Star Tribune staff members also give the appearance of being afraid to probe too deeply for the actual problems facing the district, dependent as they are on situations and quotable remarks that make for eye-catching copy.
This April 2018 issue of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:
Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota presents an article
by staff at the Star Tribune, a reply
from Peter Hutchinson (who in the
1990s led a firm that, in an unusual situation, formally acted collectively as
superintendent), and a staff editorial that took Hutchinson’s article as a
point of departure. I intersperse these
articles with my own commentary, exposing
the many faults of both the Star
Tribune and Hutchinson articles. In
the May 2018 of this journal, I will follow up with an examination of non-staff
opinion pieces submitted to and published in the Star Tribune, indicating that outside writers have as little
understanding of K-12 issues of the Minneapolis Public Schools as is the case
with the newspaper’s staff.
Article #2
Assessment #1From Star Tribune, Page A1, 28 February 2018,
“Graduation Rate at High Mark:
State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap”
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, Alejandro 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
article that I post below. Please read
the article, paying careful attention to my own comments at multiple points in
the heading and the text >>>>>
Heading
and text of Star Tribune article, >>>>> “Graduation Rate at High
Mark: State Record Clouded by Persistent
Achievement Gap” (Page A1, February 28), by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and
Faiza Mahamud >>>>>
>>>>>
“Graduation Rate at High
Mark: State Record Clouded by Persistent
Achievement Gap” by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud >>>>>
My Comment
The “Graduation Rate at High Mark” title was the large,
dark-type heading for the article. This
was most likely the fault of another Star
Tribune staffer; I know from my own experience with articles
of mine printed on the Opinion Pages that the title of the author rarely is
what goes as the heading, and in the case of staffers, as opposed to outside
contributors, they may in knowing this not even provide their own title when
they file their report.
In any case, the dark heading puts the most positive spin on a
miserable K-12 education situation in Minnesota, by emphasizing increasing
graduation rates. Anyone skimming the
pages of the Star Tribune
without paying much attention to the subtitle or to those mitigating references
in the text very well could come away thinking, “Oh, good, we’re seeing
progress in K-12 education in Minnesota.”
In fact, going from a graduation rate
of seventy-eight percent to eighty three percent in the span of five years
and calling that success should remind one of the blues lyric,
I’ve been down so long,
down looks like up to me.”
One way to look good by making
progress is to start so low in the first place that gains to a still low level
seem to indicate significant advancement, rather than the persistence of
abysmal conditions.
The text of the article began as follows >>>>>
Minnesota high school
graduation rates continued to tick up in 2017, but progress stalled in closing
a wide gap between the rates for whites and students of color.
A record nearly 83
percent of students graduated from high school on time last year, according to
data released by the Minnesota Department of Education. That’s an overall gain of about 5 percentage
points during the past five years.
Yet a gap of almost 19 percentage points separates the graduation rates of white students and their peers of color. Only about half of American Indian students graduated on time last year; roughly two-thirds of black and Latino students did, compared with 88 percent for whites.
But the state has made
marked gains toward closing those gains since 2012, with students of color
showing more pronounced gains than their white peers over time.
My Comment
The writers return again to the positive spin. This can be seen as journalistic balance, but
in the absence of a generous amount of commentary elsewhere in the newspaper at
which reportorial coverage gives way to analysis, K-12 decision-makers (both
central school district staff and school board members) are continually given
an escape route for maintaining academic mediocrity.
The central fact on which readers should concentrate is that in
Minnesota approximately half (50%) of American Indian students are not
graduating within four years and that for African American and Latino students
in Minnesota the figure is thirty-three percent (33%).
In what world is this acceptable?
The text of the article continues as
follows >>>>>
“While our graduation
rates have continued to climb and gaps are narrowing, we have too many students
who are not receiving a diploma,” Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius
said, adding that much work remains to reduce disparities. Graduation rates for low-income, special
education, migrant and homeless students as
well as English language learners also lagged significantly behind the state
average.
My Comment
Brenda Cassellius has been making these statements for seven
years now. She serves in a Mark Dayton
gubernatorial administration that terminated the MCAs (though still
administered) as graduation
requirements, issued a murky Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS) that
eased pressures on locally centralized school districts to improve, and in many
ways did the bidding of Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers (MFT), who heavily supported Dayton’s campaigns and those of other
Democrat-Farmer-Labor party politicians.
The text of the article
continues as follows: >>>>>
In Minneapolis, about two-thirds overall graduated on time in 2017--- a 1-percentage point dip--- placing the district just shy of the bottom for metro graduation rates. But that’s still up about 14 percentage points over five years ago, representing one of the biggest gains of any Twin Cities district.
My Comment
Note that the graduation rate for all student populations at the
Minneapolis Public Schools actually declined just a bit. This is a very significant fact in the
context of an article that gives a generous measure of approval for improved
graduation rates. If a school district
starts with graduation rates well under fifty percent and then improves,
failure looks like success and even decline for a given year is given positive
spin.
Again, we remember >>>>>
I’ve been down so long,
down looks like up to me.”
The article continues as
follows >>>>>
St. Paul graduation
rates inched up to 77 percent, and the districts made modest headway toward
reducing disparities for students of color.
In both urban districts, rates remained lowest for blacks and American
Indians, while Latino students made significant gains in recent years.
Districts in the west
and north suburbs led the metro pack in overall graduation rates: The St. Anthony-New Brighton district
graduated almost 98 percent of its students on time last year and posted the
largest gains in the past five years.
Minnetonka, Orono, and Edina flowed close behind.
On the flip side,
Brooklyn Center ranked at the bottom of the metro, with half of students
graduating in four years. There,
officials noted that a majority of students attend two alternative high
schools, including a statewide online program loosely affiliated with the
district. They noted the district’s
traditional high school outperformed the state as a whole.
The state education
department touted a decrease in the percentage of high school graduates who
took remedial classes at Minnesota colleges and universities over the past five
years--- a sign that more students are
leaving high school ready to tackle college.
But those rates remain high, particularly for some students of
color: In 2016, more than 40 percent of
black high school graduates took such courses, which have been shown to reduce
the odds of finishing college.
My Comment
>>>>>
The stark fact here is that forty percent of African American
students statewide have to take remedial courses once matriculating on college
and university campuses. Since many of
those students attend two-year colleges and those institutions are now frequently
addressing academic deficiencies of entering students via remediation not
officially labeled remedial, the figure is even higher. And for less that fifty percent (50%) of
African American students who do actually graduate from the Minneapolis Public
Schools, the substantial majority require remediation and, worse, given their
initial deficits just cannot perform academically at the college and university
level. They drop out and all too often
go forth to lives that are not at any level as rewarding as they should
be.
The article continues as follows
>>>>>
Because of federal law
changes, the state tweaked the way it calculates graduation rates. Changes included adding categories for
students who identify as two or more races, migrant students and those who
experience homelessness. The education
department recalculated rates for the past five years using the new approach
for an accurate comparison.
In an interview,
Cassellius voiced confidence that the state can meet ambitious goals it set last
year: a 90 percent statewide rate and
racial group rates of at least 85 percent by 2020. She singled out notable gains in recent years
for the new category of multiracial students.
She also highlighted a plan to extend state support this spring to more
high schools with lagging graduation rates, reserved until now for schools with
high numbers of low-income students.
“We need to keep
pressing the accelerator down to make sure every kid graduates on time and
ready,” she said.
In a statement, Gov. Mark
Dayton called the report great news for the state even as he acknowledged that
“unacceptable disparities” remain.
My Comment
>>>>>
Remember my comments above regarding the Dayton administration
and the political corruption of the DFL on K-12 education issues.
Brenda Cassellius is a friend of mine.
She is a sincere and dedicated educator.
I came to favor her selection as Superintendent of the
Minneapolis Public Schools when she was in the running along with the
ultimately elected Ed Graff.
Cassellius has a strong sense of what must be done to move
toward excellence at the level of the locally centralize school district, but
at the state level she must do the biding of the DFL and Dayton.
The article continues as
follows >>>>>
In Minneapolis,
Superintendent Ed Graff highlighted the “on track” program, which uses
attendance, behaviors, and grades to promptly identify struggling students, who
are then put on a help plan. He also
noted the credit-recovery efforts that helped more than 2,000 students earn
credits during the school break.
Michael Thomas, chief of
academics, leadership, and learning, noted that the district’s high number of
English language learners and students with disabilities who struggle to
graduate in four years and touted increases in the district’s seven-year rate,
to 73 percent in 2017--- data the state
released for the first time this year.
Still, a 28 percent
percentage-point graduation rate disparity between white and minority students
persists. Graff acknowledged that the
district must redouble efforts to narrow the gap and ensure graduating students
are ready for college and jobs.
The article continues as
follows >>>>>
Michael Thomas is forced into making statements that he knows are
only fractionally revelatory, hamstringed as he is in serving boss Ed Graff,
who imagines that social and emotional learning, an emphasis on literacy,
verbal testimony to valuing equity, and externally subsidized and very limited
tracking and support mechanisms are going to produce better (very murkily
defined) academic results. Thomas is a
talented administrator who must assert the case for a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum as he prepares to be the next superintendent of the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
The article continues as
follows >>>>>
In St. Paul, officials
noted that American Indian, Latino, black, and homeless students, as well as
English language learners and those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch,
outperformed state averages for those groups.
They highlighted a “check and connect” approach in which social workers
and other mentors check in with special education high schoolers at risk for
dropping out; the district has also
worked to open opportunities to earn college credit to more high school
students.
A push is underway to
improve graduation rates for American Indian students, officials said, and the
district plans to keep closer track of five- and seven- year rates.
For some students, four
years to graduate is an arbitrary and even inappropriate bar,” said Joe
Munnich, assistant director of research, evaluation, and assessment for the St.
Paul district.
Anoka-Hennepin, the
state’s largest school system, saw a 2 percentage point drop in its graduation
rate, from the 2015-2016 school year to last year, though the district noted
that its students of color outperformed state averages.
According to the
Minnesota Office of Higher Education, about 70 percent of the state’s students
enroll in college in the fall immediately after graduation. In 2016, that number was 72 percent of white
students compared to 61 percent of students of color.
“It’s important to note
that disparities that are happening in K-12 education are also happening in
higher education,” said Meredith Fergus, manager of financial aid research for
the Minnesota Department of Higher Education.
My Comment >>>>>
Insufficient
academic preparation at the K-12 level will indeed continue to weigh heavily on
the chances of students to succeed at the collegiate and university level. All of the K-12 commenters cited and quoted
in the article continue to make excuses and to convey in subtext that they do
not feel the necessary sense of urgency in making the changes needed to create
a democratically equitable, excellent program of K-12 education
…………………………………………………………………….
The
article provided tabular and graphical material, summarized as follows >>>>>
On Time
Graduation Gains: 2011-12 to 2016-17
All
students >>>>> + 5 points
American
Indian >>>>> + 6
points
Asian >>>>> + 10 points
Black >>>>> + 19 points
Hispanic >>>>> +
11 points
Two or
more races >>>>> + 15 points
White >>>>> + 5 points
BIGGEST
INCREASES AND DECLINES IN GRAD RATES
[Note >>>>> Minnesota
Districts with the greatest six-year change
in their graduation rate
(increases
and decreases). Many districts with
large decreases had very high rates
to
begin with.
Greatest
6-year improvement, 2011-12 to 2016-2017
Richfield >>>>> +
14 points
Minneapolis >>>>> +
14 points
St.
Anthony- >>>>> +
11 points
New Brighton
St.
Paul >>>>> + 9 points
Prior
Lake- >>>>> + 8 points
Savage
Largest
6-year declines, 2011-12 to 2016-2017
Belle
Plaine >>>>> -
2 points
White Bear
Lake >>>>> -
4 points
Mahtomedi >>>>> -
4 points
Randolph >>>>> - 5 points
Shakopee >>>>> - 5 points
…………………………………………………………………….
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.
Article #3
Assessment #2
“No, Learning Isn’t
Booming. Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud.”
From (Star
Tribune, Commentary by Peter Hutchinson, 2 March 2018)
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, Alejandro 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 in the course of last week, asking
readers to look for meaning in subtext and to analyze the articles for quality
of reporting.
Please
now read this third of the 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,
Quality of Reporting, Assessment #3
From Star Tribune, Opinion Pages, March 2,
2018
“No, Learning Isn’t
Booming. Our Diplomas are Still a
Fraud.”
Peter Hutchinson
“You lied to me!”
I was running for governor
in 2006, and this young woman was on my case before I even got a word out. Once I regained my composure, I asked her
what she meant.
“I did everything you
adults told me to do,” she said. “I went
to school every day, did my homework every day, got good grades. I got a diploma from a five-star Minnesota
high school. I enrolled in community
college. When I got there, they told me I
had to take math and English all over again because I had not really learned
enough in high school. You adults told
me that high school graduation meant that I had learned. But you lied to me!”
I was stunned, mad,
embarrassed. I went to find the
facts. In 2006, 28 percent of high
school graduates who went to college in Minnesota (two- or four-year) ended up
taking high school (remedial) classes in college. We lied to them. We gave them a diploma that was a fraud.
Now, over 10 years later
we read in the Star Tribune that high
school graduation is at an all-time high, according to a new report from the
Minnesota Department of Education (“Graduation rate at high mark, Feb.
28”). The data seem to point in that
direction--- the percentage of students
graduating from high school is up significantly (from 75 percent in 2006 to
over 82 percent in 2016), while the percentage of those going to college
requiring remedial education is down( from 28 percdent in 2016 to 21 percent in
2015).
………………………………………………………..
My
Comment
Peter Hutchinson notes that his reading of the Star Tribune’s
article, “Graduation rate at high mark, Feb. 28,” the first of those posted in
this series, came over ten (10) years after he ran for governor, a point at
which he found that at that juncture “28 percent of high school graduates who
went to college in Minnesota (two- or four-year) ended up taking high school
(remedial) classes in college. We lied
to them. We gave them a diploma that was
a fraud.”
I note here that Peterson’s run for governor came just over ten
(10) years after he his 1993-1997 term as Superintendent of the Minneapolis
Public Schools came to an end. What he
does not hasten to convey to you, though is that during his own tenure as
superintendent student achievement rates were just as abysmal as they are now
and students went off to college needing remediation in mathematics and reading
at similar rates to those that he cites, because the diplomas that he passed
out to students were just as much of a fraud.
Note also that Peterson represents one of many cases of what I
label the “Corey Booker Phenomenon.”
Booker forged a substantially deserved reputation as a mayor who
made significant progress in making the very challenged city of Newark, New
Jersey, into a more cohesive urban community with greater hope for the
future; but Booker departed before he
had gotten anywhere close to completing his avowed goal of making Newark a
peaceful and thriving urban center. He
now serves in the United States Senate, with designs on the presidency; from neither of those political perches can
Booker or anyone do as much to address the problems of people living at the
urban core as effectively as can a city official position to make policy at the
local level. This is especially true
given that in the United States we have a mania for local control in education,
and education is central to solving the problems of people living at the urban
core. A mayor could do much to create a
social and economic environment abetting the efforts of a visionary and
philosophically astute superintendent to advance a program of educational excellence. Hutchinson also departed a local post, in
this case that very role of superintendent, before his work was done; the gubernatorial position that he sought in
2006 has limited impact on academic programming at the level of the locally
centralized school district, despite campaign claims and public perception.
If Hutchinson had been serious about improving public education,
he would have continued to work for change at the level of the locally
centralized school district.
I have never seen him at a meeting of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education.
…………………………………………………………….
Hutchinson’s opinion
piece continues >>>>>
All true and on the face
of it pretty fantastic. The
message: In Minnesota we have done what
few other places have done: We have
gotten more of our students to learn---
and to learn at ever-hbigher levels.
It’s unbelievable!
Indeed, it is not
believable. These two measures--- graduation and remedial course-taking--- tell us about events in the experience of
students but not what they learned.
We have three pieces of
very reliable data on student learning that got left out.
First, in elementary and
middle school, the National Assessment of Educational Progress measures the
proficiency of our students in both reading and math. In the last 10 years, there has been no
significant improvement in student learning---
with only 40 to 50 percent of our students being rated as proficient or
better. These are the students enrolling
in our high schools.
Second, the ACT measures
the degree to which our high school graduates are ready for college. Over the last 10 years, the average score has
remained virtually unchanged--- with
only 30 percent of students meeting all of the ACT’s benchmarks for college
readiness. Nevertheless we graduate over
80 percent of students from high school, and the vast majority of them (75
percent) go on to college--- and
especially to our two-year colleges, where about one-third of the enroll.
So then what
happens? The Department of Education
argues that the reduction in remedial course-taking means that our students are
better prepared. The data on student
achievement in elementary, middle, and high school say otherwise. And so do the outcomes for college
students.
Over 80 percent of all
remedial course-taking is done by students enrolled in our two-year
colleges. For them, it is accurate to
say that remedial course-taking has dropped.
But that is largely because our two-year colleges have redefined and
redesigned how to support underprepared students, steering them away from
old-style remedial classes.
What’s more important is
that the percentage of students successfully graduating from our two-year
institutions has dropped--- only 49
percent now get a degree and transfer to another college.
Yes, we are graduating
more students from high school, and enrolling more in college, and then we are
letting them flounder and leave without getting a degree. That is a scandal.
We should put a warning
label on our high school diplomas saying:
“This is not a certification that you are ready for college.” Our system is failing students by lying to
them. Reports and stories like these
only perpetuate the lie and keep the rest of us in the dark.
And in the dark, things
look a lot better than they really are.
………………………………………………………..
My
Concluding Comment
Hutchinson did his own generous amount of lying to students when
he was Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. He served that three to five (3 to 5) years
typical of the superintendent of the locally centralized school district. He did not advance policies pertinent to
curriculum or teacher training central to the attainment of educational
excellence. Ironically, he did nothing
to advance a program of academic enrichment that would have included tutoring
for students languishing below grade level in mathematics and reading,
maximizing prospects that colleges and universities would have to provide
remediation, whether in remedial courses as such, or in some other way. Hutchinson did not create a professional
force of staff comfortable on the streets or in the homes of students living in
families facing challenges of finances or functionality; he did not emphasize resource provision or
referral of the kind needed to ensure that students of all demographic
descriptors arrive at school in emotional and physical states conducive to
learning.
Hence, Peter Hutchison is correct to question the significance
of improved graduation rates in view of the wretched K-12 education that yields
pieces of paper that are diplomas in name only.
But Hutchinson is himself deeply culpable for his own part in
sustaining the system that he correctly derides during his tenure as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and for failing to commit his post-tenure
energies to addressing the problems that he left behind.
The failure of people who have professed to care about K-12
education to demonstrate staying power is among the many reasons why we have
made no progress toward a system of excellence in public education in the
United States.
The overhaul of K-12 education in the Minnesota and across the
United States will take sustained activism.
It must take sustained activism.
This is the activism of which you read in this journal.
It is the activism that I challenge you, my readers, to embrace.
Article #4
Assessment #3
From Star Tribune, Editorial Pages,
Staff Editorial, 5 March
2018
“Grad
Rates Can Be Deceiving ”
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, Alejandro 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 ”
Heading
and text of Star Tribune article, >>>>> “Graduation Rate at High
Mark: State Record Clouded by Persistent
Achievement Gap” (Page A1, February 28), by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and
Faiza Mahamud >>>>>
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 and 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 American 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 had 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 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 similar politically purchased by Education Minnesota and local
teachers unions such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.
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; 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.
Article #5
Concluding Comments
External Reasons
for the Abominable Quality
Of Education at
the Minneapolis Public Schools
The Role of the Star Tribune and the Importance
of Reading with Analytical
Discernment.
I detailed the internal
reasons for the abhorrent quality of education in the Minneapolis Public
Schools in the first article (Introductory Comments) of this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota. The external reasons for
the wretched education imparted to MPS students, are as follows:
1) Personnel at colleges and universities do not
care about K-12 education; they are
content to make money off the lives of young people while sustaining the
careers of themselves and their fellow staff members. Education professors are the least regarded
of the professorial presences at any college or university; post-secondary administrators and professors
have at least a remote understanding of the philosophical corruption of those
who train K-12 bureaucrats and teachers, yet they accept and sustain their
presence on campus. Furthermore, since
teacher training programs are cash cows that generate huge revenue for colleges
and universities, administrators in those settings reap material benefit. As for professors in legitimate academic
departments, they like to complain with an air of superiority about the
wretched knowledge and skill sets of students sent forth to them from K-12
systems, but they are content to perch in their sinecures without taking any
action. And pressed, very few professors
have any cogent philosophy of education, content as they are to retreat to the
comfort of “my field.”
2) Most putative reformers have grave flaws. They tend to emphasize matters such as
alternative licensure, school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and
legislative initiatives. None of these
emphases accomplish any change at the level of the locally centralized school
district. Teachers unions (e. g.,
Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers [MFT]) wield
enormous power; they purchase the
support of Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) politicians and give Republican
legislators a well-deserved cold shoulder.
Teachers unions always go into motion to defeat or sabotage any reform
initiative; they must be taken on
courageously at the local level, because given the penchant for control in the
United States any substantive and enduring change will occur in K-12 education
at the level of the locally centralized school district.
3) The public is variously clueless or
indifferent about K-12 education.
Citizens mostly do not embrace the responsibility for citizenship; they are ill-informed and frequently
misguided. With regard to matters
pertinent to K-12 education, the public apparently trusts that there is
something called the education professional who understands how to superintend
school district and K-12 education; but
there is no such entity as the education professional, in the sense that there
are professional physicians and attorneys.
Administrators and teachers at the K-12 level have all been
trained in
abysmal departments, colleges, and schools of education; they are not academicians or scholars, and
they do not believe in knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education. In this context, the harm inflicted by public
ignorance and apathy about those who oversee wretched systems such as the
Minneapolis Public Schools is magnified.
4) Reporting on K-12 education at newspapers
such as the Star Tribune ranges from
mediocre to abysmal. Steve Brandt,
Alejandro Matos, Beena Raghavendran, and Anthony Lonetree have all written
articles that are at best serviceable;
at times, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete. Writers Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza
Mahamud have recently written articles of like mediocrity and ingenuousness.
This April 2018
edition of Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from
Minneapolis, Minnesota has given readers an opportunity to consider my
dissection of three articles that expose the inadequate journalistic quality
exhibited by Star Tribune staff in
coverage of K-12 issues. Such low-grade
journalistic coverage is among the external reasons for the maintenance of
wretched systems of public education such as the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The next edition
of this journal focuses on the similar lack of grasp of the defining qualities
of K-12 education that prevails among most of those who submit and get their
opinion pieces published in the Star
Tribune. In that context of
undiscerning articles appearing in the Star
Tribune, my readers must be prepared to analyze critically all that they
read pertinent to K-12 education, learning to look for subtext, flaws in
reasoning, and the absence of many matters of importance that should gain
coverage but do not.
Based on
information gained and habits of analysis trained in reading this journal,
citizens may then go forth to promote the overhaul of K-12 education in the
Minneapolis Public Schools as a model for the locally centralized school
district, so that we arrive at that point wherein our schools are excellent and
our society the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.
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