Article #1
Introduction
An Assessment of Academic Year 2017-2018
In the Minneapolis Public Schools
Academic year 2017-2018 was the second in the
tenure of Superintendent Ed Graff, whose employment with the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) began on 1 July 2016. During
two years as superintendent, Graff has done a superlative job in reducing the
tremendous bureaucratic burden that previous administrations had inflicted upon
Minneapolis students, teachers, and community members. When Graff assumed office, there had been a
faux reduction of the bureaucracy at the Davis Center (MPS central offices,
1250 West Broadway) under Interim Superintendent Michael Goar; under budgetary exigencies, Goar had wielded
an unsophisticated budgetary hatchet in paring Davis Center staff from well
over 600 Davis Center staff members to five hundred fifty-five (551).
In the first months of the Graff tenure,
figures that I accumulated indicated that the bureaucratic bloat had
recurred: The number of Davis Center
staff members grew back like insidious weeds in a garden, to six hundred
fifty-five (655). But from that point
on, Graff began a persistent regimen of eliminating extraneous positions and
unproductive staff members, so that at the present time, on the cusp of
academic year 2018-2019, staff composition at the Davis Center is just four
hundred twenty-seven (427), a remarkable 34% reduction.
This is an extraordinary accomplishment.
When I commented to an MPS equipment and
building maintenance employee that I was impressed at the time of the Goar
reductions, his reply was that yeah, but others have tried and ultimately
failed: Special interests reassert
themselves and the bloat always resumes.
And, indeed, for a while that seemed to be the case in the early Graff
tenure; but when he got serious about
Davis Center staff reductions, his commitment was genuine and fervid. Many people know of this accomplishment and
have expressed their admiration, so that Graff has received a bevy of positively
reinforcing comments for this major
achievement, especially in a budget that had produced a $33 million deficit, in
an administration that is going to voters with dual referenda issues in
November 2018.
But student achievement levels have been
essentially flat. For key demographic
groups, particularly African American and American Indian males, academic
performance has declined.
Thus, Ed Graff; Teaching and Learning Department head Cecilia
Saddler; Associate Superintendents Ron
Wagner, Brian Zambreno, and Carla Steinbach;
and elementary and secondary school leaders at the Davis Center and
school sites must now show how they are going to articulate a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum, delivered in logical grade by
grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors. They must detail how they are going to
retrain teachers capable of delivering such as curriculum. They will have to explain how they are going
to design and implement a program of skill remediation (tutoring) for
struggling learners. They have the
responsibility to present a comprehensive plan for reaching out to the families
of students struggling with challenges of poverty and functionality. And Graff must continue to pare and
rationalize the central staff bureaucracy so as to capture some of the
resources necessary to implement the other four programmatic features for the
overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
In the articles that follow you, my readers of
Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota, will read and examine sequentially the information and data
pertinent to the lamentable MPS student academic achievement record; the wretched performance of the Office of
Black Male Achievement and Department of Indian Education; the paring of positions at the Department of
Teaching and Learning, and thus the implied pressure that staff members in that
Department should be feeling to design a viable academic program; and the terrible achievement levels of
students at schools for which the associate superintendents have
responsibility.
In the August and September 2018 editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota, readers will be able to read a full review of my five-point program
for overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools, so that MPS becomes a model for
other locally centralized school districts;
and an examination of prospects for moving toward that model in academic
year 2018-2019.
In anticipation of those editions of this
academic journal, please read with great care the record for academic year
2017-2018, determine your own evaluation of the Ed Graff tenure, develop your
own sense of what has been achieved, and ponder the many matters that must be
addressed so as to impart an excellent education to students of all demographic
descriptors.
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