Nov 14, 2018

Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee >>>>> Introduction to and Presentation of Detailed Recommendations on Literacy and Curriculum (Article #4 Concerning MPS Administrative, Board of Education, and Public Confusion)


After the section on Inclusion and Access (given in my immediately previous article) of the Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee comes the section on Literacy and Curriculum, with detailed committee recommendations, which I present below in full before providing my own comments:


 

Literacy and Curriculum

 

Early learning and reading at grade level by third grade is essential in student success and a key indicator of being on track for graduating college and career ready.  Minnesota’s Reading Well by Third Grade legislation (MN Statute 120B.12) mandates that districts identify students by the end of third grade who are not reading at grade level and provide interventions until they ae reading at grade level.

 

In ST18, the 2020 Advisory enlisted panels of elementary teachers (PreK-5), literacy specialists, and high school students from marginalized communities (including students with disabilities, students who rare highly mobile, students of color, and students of advanced learning) to share their personal accounts and expertise related to literacy efforts in MPS.  As a result our advisory learned the following:

1)  Teacher prep programs are not preparing our teachers effectively to teach foundational skills aligned to the literacy development needs of our students.

 

2)  Student representatives informed us that student-adult relationships, academic comprehension, and keeping students engaged at their individual proficiency level is extremely important;  and that student behaviors that create complex classroom management issues are how students communicate to teachers that schools are not meeting their needs.

 

3)  PreK students are entering schools with fewer words than years prior and lacking foundational reading skills, some with exposure to over 20,000 words than their peers.

 

Advisory 2020 Recommendations---  Literacy and Curriculum

 

>>>>>    MPS must continue to host regular and explicit professional development opportunities for teachers to ensure that they can successfully engage students in quality and effective instruction leading to improved literacy outcomes for ALL MPS students.

 

>>>>>    MPS must ensure that ALL curriculum is of high quality, culturally appropriate, and accelerates the learning of students in all areas.

 

>>>>>    Access to early education and High 5 is an effective intervention and programming should be increased to add locations, delivery models and availability, especially for our neediest learners.

 

>>>>>    Develop a metric with the City of Minneapolis and community partners to measure enrollment in high quality early childhood programs.

 

>>>>>    Provide support to the community utilizing outside and community-based programs to educate parents/guardians about the importance of early reading literacy and the availability of early education and High 5 programming. (The 2020 Advisory Committee is aware of the district’s efforts and acknowledge the Hybrid model referenced on page 8 in response to our 2017 letter.)

 

>>>>>    MPS should utilize our legislative lobbyist to express our concerns about teacher prep programs not educating our teachers how to teach foundational literacy skills.

 

My Comments

 

In much of this section there is the same sort of repetitiousness and poor written expression notable

at places throughout the document.

 

But there are also a couple of observations on the part of the committee that are among my own

most important emphases in describing the nature of the K-12 dilemma.

 

The committee notes that “the 2020 Advisory enlisted panels of elementary teachers (PreK-5), literacy specialists, and high school students from marginalized communities (including students with disabilities, students who are highly mobile, students of color, and students of advanced learning) to share their personal accounts and expertise related to literacy efforts in MPS,” and that as a result the committee learned the following:

Teacher prep programs are not preparing our teachers effectively

to teach foundational skills aligned to the literacy development

needs of our students.

 

That such a comment was admitted by teachers themselves is very notable, and for members of the 2020 Advisory Committee to get a sense of the inadequacy of teacher training programs is very important.  As I mentioned in a previous article in this series and have discussed in many places in the forums that I have created for expression of my views, the wretchedness of teacher preparation programs generally and for prospective K-5 teachers particularly goes to the core of the K-12 dilemma.  Not only does this matter pertain to the issue of teacher quality, but also to the intellectual impoverishment of the ideas spouted by education professors that K-12 teachers carry into the classroom.

 

The committee also conveys that

Student representatives informed us that student-adult

relationships, academic comprehension, and keeping

students engaged at their individual proficiency level is

extremely important;  and that student behaviors that

create complex classroom management issues are how

students communicate to teachers that schools are not

meeting their needs.

 

The first part of the letter is deficient in matters of grammar and written expression and emphasizes items that are much in the conversational ether pertinent to relationships, engagement, and individual student academic progress.  But the matter of students using perceptibly objectionable  behavioral infractions to protest the inadequacy of the education that they are receiving is very important.  I have written and spoken in many places and forums that when a teacher says, “Sit down and shut up” but then ain’t got nothin’ meaningful to say, we go to the source of most behavioral disruptions.

 

Otherwise, I direct readers’ attention to my view of an education of excellence, undergirded by knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and teachers retrained to impart such a curriculum.  The spotlight should certainly be trained on the multiple intellectual injuries inflicted by education professors on those teachers whom they send forth into the public schools;  in the meantime, decision-makers and program designers need to embrace the responsibility to completely retrain teachers at the level of the locally centralized school district.

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