Nov 14, 2018

Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee (Article #2 Concerning MPS Administrative, Board of Education, and Public Confusion)


The Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee mentioned in Article #1 of this series, begins as follows:

 

2020 Advisory Committee

 

October 11, 2018

 

Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee

 

Minneapolis Public Schools

1250 West Broadway

Minneapolis  MN  55411

 

Dear Superintendent Graff, Minneapolis Public School Board, and District Chiefs:

 

This letter is written on behalf of the World’s Best Workforce Advisory Committee to Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), under Minnesota Statutes, section 120B.11, school districts are to develop a World’s Best Workforce (WBWF) Annual Report and report summary for each school year.  In addition, the legislation requires that there be a district advisory committee that provides recommendations regarding rigorous academic standards, student achievement goals and measures, district assessments, and program evaluations.  In MPS, these recommendations come in the form of an annual letter, and the following is the letter from the 2017-2018 school year.

 

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There is given then a table of contents that lists the topics of the various sections:

Action Steps Requested from the Committee, with Introduction;  Inclusion and Access, with Advisory 2020 Recommendations;  Literacy and Curriculum, with Advisory 2020 Recommendations;  Graduation/ Career and College Readiness, with Advisory 2020 Recommendations;  Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning, with Advisory 2020 Recommendations;  Relationships and Social and Emotional Learning, with Advisory 2020 Recommendations.

 

A major problem with the letter and the topics of coverage is that the categories of the action steps are derived from Superintendent Graff’s own program, informed also by the now functionally defunct Acceleration 2020 with its ambitious academic goals (devoid of an plan for attaining those goals) of 1) Improved Student Outcomes;  2) Equity;  3)  Family and Community Partnership;  4) Effective Teachers, School Leaders, and Staff;  5) Stewardship;  and 6) Resources for Students and Schools.

 

If the program of note were of high quality, with the capability of improving student acquisition of key knowledge and skill sets, as would be the case if proposed by a professional staff of academicians, then the fact that Graff’s program drives the letter would be appropriate.  This would be the case, for example, if a medical team or a law firm were to ask for community responses to services offered.

 

But almost all decision-makers in the public schools have been produced by the wretched teacher training programs of departments, schools, and colleges of education, which is to say they are academic lightweights with little respect for the knowledge and skills that are the reason for any legitimate system of K-12 education.

 

Thus, public school central office types go hunting for approval behind a façade of asking for input, at the same time driving the discussion with their errantly identified priorities.

 

Consider the first main section of the body of the letter, interspersed with my comments:

 

Action Steps Requested from the Committee

 

1.  Inclusion and Access

 

a.  The district structures their communications, school pathway opportunities, curriculum choices, staff hiring practices, and marketing to maximize the message to the greater community the value-added impact of a diverse community of learners can have on the social, emotional, and academic learning for all of our students and their families.

 

My Comments

 

Wow, that’s quite a sentence.  Everybody got all of that?

 

And, if you do, do you agree?

 

Do we really want to structure all that is done at the Minneapolis Public Schools with focus on what we are selling in the way of inclusion, access, and diversity?

 

Or should we actually be devising the best possible academic program with knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that is necessarily inclusive of the great international streams of knowledge productive of the human cultural inheritance?

 

This sentence (a) should in fact be rendered as follows:

 

At the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, we insist on the best possible academic program with knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that is necessarily inclusive of the great international streams of knowledge productive of the human cultural inheritance.

 

Next in the letter comes the following:

 

b.  The school board decisions and school district policies be reviewed and structured to ensure that our learning communities from schools to classrooms to after school clubs be inclusive and accessible to all;  and that the board’s decision-making be consistent and aligned to existing district-wide MPS mission, vison, and values, as successfully shifting the behaviors or initiatives of such a large district can take years.  There needs to be inclusion for students with both seen and unseen disabilities.

 

My Comments

 

This sentence (b) should just be a substantive extension of my (a) above, so that it reads as follows:

 

All decisions of the MPS Board of Education and Davis Center staff should be determined  so as to further the aims of the knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, culturally inclusive curriculum that informs all of our programming during and after the regular school day.

 

Next in the letter comes the following:

 

c.  Report back as to how the comprehensive plan aligns with legislative goals of WBWF.

 

d.  Review programs not only in terms of budget and academics, but for how well they advance the district goals of equity and inclusion for all.

 

e.  sites should be held accountable for ensuring that the rich diversity of the students is also reflected in the school, classroom, curriculum,  and staff.

 

f.  Access to early education and High 5 should be increased to add locations, delivery models, and availability.

 

My Comments

 

The last sentence in the section under (1) Inclusion and Access should incorporate all of this verbiage, to read as follows

 

The MPS district-wide assessment and all hiring practices should fulfill the diversity, inclusion, and equity goals of WBWF laws and monitored for alignment with those goals. Equitable access to early childhood education and High 5 should prevail, with necessary attention to locations, delivery models, and availability.

 

The next category under Action Steps Requested from the Committee is as follows, with my comments:

 

2.  Literacy and Curriculum

 

a.  Improve reading for students.  Strategies to do this include:  Increase teachers’ ability to teach reading to students;  provide a comprehensive pedagogical professional development reading strategy for all Pre-K through 3 teachers;  use a curriculum with reading foundations that include phonics;  increase focus on early childhood reading skills.

 

b.  Work more closely with community partners to promote math and literacy connections in their programs to better align out of school time and in school time for students.   

 

c.  We are requesting the data report broken down by school, race, ELL, Special Ed, and HHM regarding the students who are identical as not meeting criteria under the Reading Well by Third Grade Law and the interventions that are provided.

 

d.  Audit curriculum to ensure we are providing high quality, effective, and culturally relevant curriculum to students.

 

My Comments

 

The section should be condensed by combining all of its separate categories as follows:


Improve reading for students by thoroughly training teachers to implement a curriculum that explicitly teaches phonics and phonemic awareness and provides high quality subject area literature for the development of vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. We request that you train educational support staff and volunteers to assist teachers in rendering reading instruction; that you disaggregate the data by school, race/ethnicity, special education, and homeless/ highly mobile status;  and that you audit curriculum for consistency with the Reading Well by Third Grade Law and appropriate aggressive remedial instruction as necessary.

 

The next category under Action Steps Requested from the Committee is as follows, with my comments:

 

3.  Graduation/ Career and College Readiness

 

a.  Add ethnic studies as a requirement for all students, starting in high school and then continuing to expand down into lower grade levels.

 

b.  Add Career and Technical Education (CTE) or Career Readiness requirements for graduation.

 

c.  Develop comprehensive post-graduation programs and clarify to students what their options are for graduation.

 

d.  The district should offer courses that provide students with life skills to prepare them for their adult lives and life experiences outside the classroom.

 

My Comments

 

Ideas expressed under this category need serious rethinking.  The committee seems to accept the “let’s do it all in high school" approach of the system as it is.  My presentation under this category would be as follows:

 

We request that district decision-makers overhaul curriculum for knowledge intensity, for delivery in grade by grade sequence throughout the PreK-12 years.  Curriculum for the Pre K-5 years should focus on mathematics, literature and reading, history, government, economics, natural science (biology, chemistry, physics), and the fine arts (visual and musical);  should continue this focus in middle school (grades 6-8), with expanding opportunities for studying world languages;  and by high school (grades 9-12) should prepare all students (with the exception of those students with significantly unusual intellectual challenges) to take Advanced Placement (AP) courses in calculus, biology, chemistry, physics, world history, United States history, and English;  and during those high school years afford students ample courses for the pursuit of driving personal academic interests and interests in the fine, technological, and vocational arts.  

 

The next category under Action Steps Requested from the Committee is as follows, with my comments:

 

4.  Relationships and Social Emotional Learning

 

a.  Increase efforts around Social and Emotional Learning

 

b.  Increase educators’ voice in program decisions.

 

c.  The school board honor the Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment (EDIA) process when making district-wide resource decisions and especially when the decision is related to significant resource allocations and/or impact on MPS services to students across the district.

 

d.  Improve the environmental quality of the student learning space.

 

My Comments

 

I would word the recommendations under this category as follows:

 

Acknowledging the values expressed in the Equity and Diversity Impact Assessment (EDIA) process and in Superintendent Ed Graff’s focus on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), we are of the conviction that these values should be assumed as vital to the delivery of knowledge-intensive education by knowledgeable, pedagogically skilled, and culturally sensitive teachers.  Recruitment, training, and retention processes should result in teachers and other staff who demonstrate in their actions the values of equity and emotional responsiveness by imparting a knowledge-intensive education of excellence to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

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My next article in this series will focus on the introduction to the greater part of the

Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee and the detailed recommendations under each of the main categories.

 

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