The core mission of the locally
centralized school district is the impartation of an
excellent education, equitably provided to students of all demographic descriptors.
Be reminded that the purpose of K-12 education
is to give students the opportunity to go forth at graduation to experience
lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional
satisfaction.
Know that an excellent education is defined
as follows:
An excellent K-12 education is a
matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the
liberal, technological, and vocational arts to all students in grade by grade
sequence throughout the K-12 years.
And understand that the definition of an
excellent teacher is the following:
An excellent teacher is a
professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical skill to impart
that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.
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Equality is a matter of providing the same
opportunity to every person.
Equity is a matter of ensuring that
everyone is positioned to take advantage of equal opportunities.
Hence, in K-12 education, equality is
necessary but not sufficient to attain equity.
Equity encompasses equality and ensures that students of all demographic
descriptors have the support that they need to receive an excellent education
and to graduate with the opportunity to fulfill the great purposes of
educational excellence.
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To provide an equitably excellent education
to all students, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
establish the following five-point program:
1)
Overhaul curriculum, so as to provide a knowledge-intensive education in
grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 experience of every student.
The core of the curriculum should consist
of the subject areas of mathematics, natural science, history, economics,
literature, and the fine arts. These
most important constituent subject areas of a liberal arts curriculum should
feature very specific content to be delivered in all schools at all grade
levels during the K-5 years. Curriculum
at the middle school level should continue the logical grade by grade sequence
in the above subject areas, with additional foci on foreign languages and on
the technological and vocational arts.
Curriculum at the high school level should
continue the logical sequence and, given that students in the overhauled
approach to curriculum will already have a strong liberal arts foundation, course
offerings beyond middle school will be ever specialized in the liberal arts and
abundant in the realms of the technological and vocational arts. Implied in the presence of an advanced
curriculum and universally well-prepared students will be the preparation of
almost all students to take Advanced Placement courses in mathematics, English,
world history, biology, chemistry, and physics;
only those students with special intellectual and learning challenges
would not be prepared to take AP courses.
2) Train
teachers capable of delivering such an overhauled curriculum.
Prospective teachers of K-5 students
receive insubstantial subject area training in departments, schools, and
colleges of education. They will have to
be trained at the level of the locally centralized school district before they
can deliver the advanced curriculum summarized above.
I detailed in my August and September 2014
editions of Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from
Minneapolis, Minnesota the full
curriculum and the details for teaching training that will be necessary. Prospective teachers at K-5 will engage in a full,
intensive year of study and thesis writing to attain a Masters of Liberal Arts
degree; they will then spend a full
academic year of internship under the guidance of the best veteran teachers
available before gaining a judgment as to fitness to teach in the Minneapolis
Public Schools.
Prospective middle school and high school
teachers must earn both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fields other than
education (e.g., mathematics, English, literature, history, chemistry, fine
arts) at the four-year college or university level, then serve an internship
similar to that given for prospective teachers at K-5.
3) Design
a coherent, district-wide tutoring and academic enrichment program for all
students.
Currently any tutoring provided in the
buildings of the Minneapolis Public Schools is rendered by a variety of mostly
external organizations, with variance from site to site.
Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public
Schools must rectify this situation, so as to provide highly intentional,
cohesive tutoring to those students who are currently struggling below grade
level in mathematics and reading.
Tutoring should be provided at designated times of the school day in the
context of a delivery system that gives each student the most beneficial
academic supplement; for students
functioning fully at grade level, the time set aside should be used for
enrichment activities that provide opportunities for academic advancement and
exploration of subjects of driving personal interest. Tutoring and enrichment, in addition to
provision at the designated class time, should also be rendered after school.
4)
Develop programs of outreach to students and their families, right where
they live.
Economically and functionally struggling
families should receive services directly delivered by well-trained MPS staff
of appropriate personal disposition and street-level comfort; and services rendered by external agencies,
to which students are referred by MPS personnel.
There is considerable buzz now around
full-service community schools, and the buzz-buzz phrase making the buzz-buzz
rounds is “wrap-around services.”
But what is really needed is the hiring and
development of staff members operating out of each school site who have a real
feel for the challenges faced by young people and families living at the urban
core. There should be a coordinator
based in the Davis Center (1250 West Broadway) who will oversee and ensure
implementation. Northpoint is accessible
for health care to the poorest of poor students in the Minneapolis Public
Schools. Hennepin County also provides
an array of social services. From
Minneapolis Public Schools staff, students and their families need
understanding of specific problems of the moment from people with whom they
have deep, personal, and caring relationships, people who will provide direct
counseling and then referral for those health and social services provided by
Northpoint, Hennepin County, and service-specific agencies.
5)
Greatly pare the MPS central school district bureaucracy at the Davis Center.
Superintendent Ed Graff has done admirable
work in this area.
With well-trained teachers, principals, and
counselors (and a numerical expansion of the latter), costly departments such
as the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning and the MPS Department of Career
and College Readiness could be reduced further.
Continued vigilance in decreasing the
central office burden must ensue, so as to increase salaries for the newly
professionalized teacher corps and to provide the needed resources for the
items given in points 1-4 above.
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The ideal of an equal education delivered to
all students will be achieved with the realization of points one (1) and two
(2) above.
Equity will be achieved with the
realization of points three (3) and four (4), so that all students are prepared
to receive the benefits of an excellent academic program and superbly trained
teachers.
The realization of point five (5) will
ensure that resources are available for the programmatic features of points one
through four (1-4).
This is the five-point program for
achieving equity in the Minneapolis Public Schools, according to which the
great purposes of an excellent education, rendered by excellent teachers, are
delivered to those most precious beings imaginable: our children, our responsibility, our future.
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