Volume V, Number 3, September 2018 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, First in a Multi-Article Series

Article #1

 

Introductory Comments

Goals for the K-12 Revolution at the

Opening of Academic Year 2018-2019

 

The final draft of my nearly complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, will most likely be presented in November, after I have had time to thoroughly digest the new data provided by Chief of Research and Accountability Eric Moore and his staff, pertinent to results from the spring 2018 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and the New North Star Accountability System;  and after results are reported for the election of two at-large seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.

 

We already know the fundamental results of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments for the Minneapolis Public Schools:  The proportion of students proficient in reading rose by two percentage points from academic year 2016-2017 to academic year 2017-2018, from 43% to 45%;  the comparable figures for math proficiency were flat, holding at 42% in the two academic years.  Hence, fewer than half of MPS students were proficient reading and math.  Chief Moore will in September 2018 give a full report, with data fully disaggregated by ethnicity and gender.

 

This is familiar repetition of a dismal tale of failure on the part of decision-makers and teachers at the Minneapolis Public Schools responsible for the academic program.  Student academic achievement at the district over the course of academic years ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 has been essentially flat or declining;  for certain demographic categories, the results are even more troubling:  Notably, fewer than 20% of African American and American Indian males have for each of those academic years been proficient in reading and math.

 

In the succeeding articles for this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I detail the new Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) North Star Accountability System, provide the historical and political context in which that system was devised, and explain why no meaningful change can ever come at the level of the state or according to state guidelines.  All structural and programmatic change in K-12 education must in Minnesota and all other states in the United States come at the level of the locally centralized school district.  For that structural and programmatic change to transpire in Minneapolis, we must overhaul curriculum for knowledge intensity, retrain teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum, implement aggressive skill remediation, provide direct assistance and referrals to families struggling with dilemmas of poverty and functionality, and continue slimming the central bureaucracy. 

 

All staff members in the Office of Black Male Achievement, the Department of Indian Education, the Department of Teaching and Learning, and the Department of College and Career

Readiness must take responsibility for delivering an academic program that puts students of all demographic descriptors on track to grade level proficiency or above.  Failure to do so must mean termination of employment for current staff in those departments and the recruitment and training of new staff members who grasp the importance of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.  The current associate superintendents, who are responsible for mentoring site principals, must also know that the time has come to raise student achievement levels or depart the Minneapolis Public Schools.      

 

We must overhaul the current composition of the MPS Board of Education.  The ousting of Rebecca Gagnon is paramount.  In article #5, I explain the exigency of this goal of the K-12 Revolution for academic year 2018-2019, and the importance of the election in November 2018.

 

Academic year 2018-2019 must be the juncture at which we declare that an education of excellence must be provided to students of all demographic descriptors.  Those responsible for any failure to provide such an excellent education must go.  In the following articles, I give the context in which change will occur, the nature of the change that must come, and consequences for those who do not respond to the exigency for structural and programmatic overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools.