Values in K-12 Education >>>>> As the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Dithers, MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and I Have Our Own Clear Answers, Many of Which Intersect on a Metaphorical Venn Diagram

Yesterday (Thursday, 27 September) at the scheduled 5:00-6:15 PM (with an actual 6:05 PM wrap) meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Finance Committee, a discussion ensued that broached the matter of values.  For many moons now, the question of just what the school board itself identifies as the driving goals of the district has hovered as an insistent dark cloud that will not be dispersed until those buzzing with activity below take recognition.   

 

This has been a head-scratcher for me for the 37 years that I have been in Minnesota and been privy to the failures of this school district;  my head scratching has been particularly vigorous during the four-plus years beginning in June 2014 in which I have been conducting my investigation into the inner workings of MPS, soon to produce in final form my essentially complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

How can people making decisions for a provider of K-12 education proceed without asking the central question:

 

What is an excellent education?

 

An epiphany for me as to the cluelessness of school board members on this matter came at a community gathering at Bryn Mawr K-5, next to Anwatin Middle School, located in that fascinating well-to-do neighborhood just a bridge away from the different economic universe of the Glenwood Avenue area.  The meeting was in spring 2015 and as in the case of other gatherings (witness most recently my description of the 24 September meeting at the Minnesota Department of Education featuring staff ineptitude in touting the doomed North Star Accountability System), all was proceeding smoothly for the education establishment until I asked an intellectually disruptive question.

 

The MPS Board of Education members present at the time were Jenny Arneson, Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, Nelson Inz, and Don Samuels.  Tracine Asberry arrived late and never got the chance to answer my question.  This was prior to the November 2016 election that brought KerryJo Felder, Ira Jourdain, and (particularly lamentably) Bob Walser onto the board.  The absentee school board members pertinent to this meeting were Carla Bates, Josh Reimnitz, and Mohamud Noor.       

 

In posing my question, I referred to the books, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (E. D. Hirsch, 1996) and The Schools Our Children Deserve (Alfie Kohn, 1999), as representing contrasting philosophies of education on which board members should take a stand.  I asked the board members present if they agreed with Hirsch that at the core of an excellent education is academic subject matter:  knowledge and skill sets imparted by knowledgeable teachers and specified for grade by grade acquisition;  or if they agreed with Kohn that excellent education is a matter of facilitating the acquisition of information sought by students according to their own driving interests, with key goals being the development of critical thinking and lifelong learning.  I challenged the board to make a firm decision, since the inevitable cop-out answer is to claim that we need both approaches.

 

The answers from the board members were murky in the extreme. 

 

I asserted my own definition of an excellent education as a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum in logical grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors;  I took as always a clear and definitive stand in favor of the Hirsch Core Knowledge approach, commenting that any critical analysis must be conducted on a solid knowledge base and that any love of learning ensues upon the respect for knowledge embedded in an approach to education at which disciplined acquisition of academic subject matter is at the core.

 

Four years on, the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education are no closer to a declared philosophy of education.  Whatever can be gleaned leans toward the Kohn approach: 
Rarely do members of this board ask clear questions about academic programming or make any statements as to the specific knowledge and skills that students should be acquiring.

 

At an MPS Board of Education meeting on 8 September 2018 to consider the MPS Comprehensive Assessment Design, Superintendent Ed Graff sought definitive comments from board members on the driving programmatic features of his own approach:  Social and Emotional Learning, literacy, equity, and Multi-Tiered System of Support---  and how these goals should be pursued with regard to racial integration and central office versus site decision-making.  The board has been privy to these key Graff emphases since a retreat in August 2017.  But the members of this iteration of the MPS Board of Education is even worse than the previous composition prior to November 2016 in taking a stand on matters of educational philosophy and programming.

 

Superintendent Graff has been clear as to his values, discerned in his clearly stated emphases.

 

I have been clear as to an actual philosophy of education that takes a firm stand for knowledge imparted by teachers of broad and deep information bases.

 

Were new Chief of Academics and Research & Accountability Eric Moore to state clearly that my program for delivery of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education would provide the substantive curriculum and excellent teaching staff as foundation for the realization of Graff’s four goals of Social and Emotional Learning, literacy, equity, and Multi-Tiered System of Support---  then the locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools would be on course for development as a national model.

 

Graff, who has been clear as to his programmatic objectives, should take this powerful combination of his ideas and mine to the members of the MPS Public Schools Board of Education and say,

 

“My values are clear.  I am developing a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete approach to education that will provide the substantive program for infusing my values throughout the system:

 

“Please be as clear in embracing these values and this approach with its undergirding philosophy as your own.”  

 

Superintendent Graff and I have both been clear as to our values, our driving emphases.

 

Members of the MPS Board of Education should embrace our ideas, which intersect on a metaphorical Venn diagram, and then state clearly that these ideas are in accord with their own values.