A Key Challenge in Designing and Implementing a Viable Academic Plan at the Minneapolis Public Schools is the Lack of Scholars and Therefore Genuine Academicians

A key theme in my new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, concerns the superbly trained chiefs of finance, operations, information technology, human resources, and research;  and the lack of comparable training for those making decisions on those matters that are at the core of the mission of K-12 public education:  academics.

 

So corrupt is the system for training K-12 educators that both teachers and administrators receive meaningless degrees that render them woefully inadequate as academicians.

 

Consider:

 

Superintendent Ed Graff has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, which provides notoriously weak academic preparation, and what must pass for advanced training in Graff’s case has occurred entirely in an education program at the University of Southern Mississippi.

 

The associate superintendents earn just under $150,000 for providing mentoring to site principals

of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).  This means that non-academicians are mentoring non-academicians with the avowed purpose of improving the academic program. This is a metaphor for the catastrophe that is K-12 education in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, and throughout the United States.

 

Just a few moons ago, there were eight associate superintendents in the Minneapolis Public Schools, then there were six, then four, and now there are just three.  Their jobs are to try to make viable administrator-educators out of people who are among those ruined by education professors.  But the abiding irony in that situation is that the associate superintendents themselves have been corrupted by the vacuous ideology of education professors.

 

Of the three associate superintendents given below, Carla Steinbach has an undergraduate degree in sociology but all of her graduate and purportedly advanced professional training has been in education programs.  All of Ron Wagner’s degrees and certifications have been granted by education programs.  Brian Zambreno just came to MPS;  his background suggests similar nonacademic training.    

 

Cecilia Saddler (Deputy Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning;  administrative head of the

Department of Teaching and Learning) must spearhead development of a viable academic program if the district’s new Comprehensive Assessment is to produce more favorable educational prospects for MPS students;  she has only a bachelor’s degree in communications, with all of her putatively advanced work in  education programs.

 

Other key academic program implementers include the Elementary Team of Jessica Driscoll (K-5 Literacy DPF, Network), Julie Tangeman (K-5 Literacy, Science DPF, Davis Center), Marium Toure (K-5 Math DPF, Davis Center), Mary Lambrecht (K-5 Math DPF, Network), Natasha Parker (K-5 Math TOSA, Network), and Sara Naeglie, K-5 Literacy DPF, Network).  These staff members have overwhelmingly received their training in elementary education programs that are academically insubstantive and the weakest programs on any college or university campus.  

 

Then there is the Secondary Team of Chris Jones (6-12 Math TOSA, Network), Chris Wernimont (6-12 Math DPF), Hamdi Ahmed (6-12 Literacy), Hibaq Mohamed (6-12 Literacy DPF), Jennifer Rose (K-12 Science DPF), Katie Stephens (6-12 Literacy DPF, Network), and Lisa Purcell (K-12 Social Studies DPF).  Some of these people have bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines such as mathematics and literature, but their nominally advanced degrees are overwhelmingly in education programs.

 

And there are also these MPS Department of Teaching and Learning members: 

 

K-12 Programming: Ashley Kohn (K-12 Library Media Information DPF), Kimberly Heinscheid (SSPA Arts), Nora Schull (K-12 Arts DPF), Sara Loch (K-12 Health/Physical Education DPF), and Ted Hansen (Fine Arts TOSA); Talent Development and Advanced Academic: Christina Ramsey (K-8 Talent Development and Advanced Academics) and Kelley McQuillan, 9-12 Talent Development and Advanced Academics).  Among these staff members there are also no genuine scholars or academicians;  they have produced no scholarly work, as would typically be the case for those whose training has been preponderantly in programs of education.

 

To get a grip on the reasons why academic programming in K-12 education is so knowledge-poor, start by realizing the knowledge poverty of those making decisions pertinent to the academic program.

 

As we exert pressure on decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to design a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced grade by grade academic program, we must also insist on the overhaul of staff making these decisions.  Those currently on staff must discipline themselves to become academicians, to jettison the silly notions put in their heads by education professors, to embrace the exciting world of knowledge, and to oversee the design and delivery of knowledge-intensive education to the students of Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

This will be a daunting task for these ill-trained academic decision-makers.

 

If they are not up to the task, they must find their ways through the exit doors at the Davis Center and at the sites of the Minneapolis Public Schools.