Article #2
Analysis of the MPS
Comprehensive District Design
On Saturday,
8 September 2018, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education met
at what was by the time of the meeting labeled a retreat, and indeed the
meeting occurred at approximately the time of the year at which such retreats
are typically held. This is a time at which the board tries to come to
grips with the performance of MPS students and consider various issues
pertinent to the functioning of the district.
The
exclusive topic of focus for this meeting was the Minneapolis Public Schools
Comprehensive Assessment, the latter of which is in the process of generation
by Dennis Cheesebrow of Teamworks International, in consultation with
Superintendent Ed Graff, Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly, and Chief of Research
and Accountability Eric Moore. The draft of the MPS Comprehensive
Assessment tendered thus far for board and public consideration and comment
proposes division of the district into four zones for maximum cost
effectiveness in matters of transportation and programming. Much emphasis
is given to improving academic outcomes for underperforming students. The
draft implies minimization of busing and a focus on neighborhood
schools.
Chief
Moore gave an hour-long overview of student performance, along with the driving
question as to whether integration and diversity are enhancers of student
achievement. Board members were asked to express their views on the
importance of integration and to identify their chief values. At two
junctures, board members were asked to pair off, confer, then report back to
the assemblage (including about seventy members of the public).
In
the aggregate, the board expressed concern for diversity and equity of student
achievement. But three board members expressed views that clearly
specified certain concerns:
Siad
Ali stressed the importance of academic achievement, saying that his driving
concern was that any reorganization of the Minneapolis Public Schools into four
zones brought programmatic initiatives capable of raising student
performance.
KerryJo
Felder emphasized the equitable distribution of resources so as to strengthen
neighborhood schools in North Minneapolis; she cautioned against busing
as the main tool of integration, saying that diversity is best served by
ensuring that schools are staffed with equitably effective teachers and
programming.
Bob
Walser urged the board to consider what is meant by student achievement and
stated that his own view of achievement is grounded in democratic principles,
wherein students, teachers, and parents at each school pursue academic achievement
as they define it.
Walser
is correct that the board needs to define student achievement.
But
he is abysmally errant in his definition of student achievement.
……………………………………………………………..
Bob
Walser is a total tool of the MFT/ DFL. He often spouts the jargon that I
detailed in my series of articles last spring, “How Not to Talk Like an
Education Professor.” He is the silliest board member that I have ever
witnessed, a hippy-dippy white liberal type who is clueless as to the academic
aspirations of students and especially the needs of students from families
facing dilemmas of poverty and functionality. He frequently references
Deborah Meyer, who along with such folk as Alfie Kohn, Ted Sizer, and Jonathon
Kozol appropriates the name “progressive” and mumbles the education professor
speak dating to John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and Harold Rugg in the
1920s. This is the doctrine that has inflicted such knowledge-poor
education on our students for at least forty years.
The best school systems in the world are centrally
organized and demand continuity of excellence throughout the nation.
Students in the United States lag seriously behind nations such as Singapore,
Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Finland, Poland, and Canada on the Program of
International Student Assessment (PISA). Students in these nations would
with regard to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) laugh and say,
“How easy,” but apologists of the education establishment such as Walser
maintain that standardized tests autocratically impose standards of
measurement, thereby undermining school and classroom autonomy, in opposition
to democracy.
In fact, the key proponent of democracy who exalted the
importance of an informed citizenry was Thomas Jefferson, who extolled the
benefits of common knowledge for the exercise of citizenship. In the
nineteenth century, Horace Mann maintained that the achievement of Jeffersonian
democracy would come with geographically dispersed “common schools” for the
delivery of an equitable education to people regardless of station in
life. Ranged against the facile ideas of William Heard Kilpatrick and
Harold Rugg, William Bagley in the 1920s and 1930s eloquently called for the delivery
of common knowledge and skill sets for the achievement of Jeffersonian
democracy. From the 1990s forward, E. D. Hirsch emerged as the
chief advocate for such an education, and he founded the most important
organization, the Core Knowledge Foundation, for the advancement of logically
sequenced, grade by grade, knowledge-intensive education; the Foundation
generates a great wealth of materials that are utilized in Core Knowledge
schools throughout the United States.
…………………………………………………………………………….
The members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of
Education must develop a guiding philosophy. They must define an
excellent education, the excellent teacher, and they must embrace or frankly
reject objective testing to determine if students are academically achieving at
grade level.
I have defined an excellent education, the excellent
teacher, and the purposes of public education in many places on this blog as
the following:
An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers
imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education in the liberal,
vocational, and fine arts in logical grade by grade sequence to students of all
demographic descriptors.
An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad
knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to students of
all demographic descriptors.
The three great purposes of public education are cultural
enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.
To understand the subtext of the utterings from the mouth
of Bob Walser, readers should read works by those mentioned above, beginning
with
E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t
Have Them (1996); and
Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999).
These works express the key opposing views that have
historically prevailed concerning education in the United States: the
Jeffersonian common knowledge for citizenship view; and the view expressed by
those influenced by the education professors, saliently in the Teachers College
of Columbia University, stressing child-centered education.
………………………………………………………………………
Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of
Education should at the very least read the two works referenced above.
Then they should sponsor a debate between Bob Walser and
myself to clarify the issues and to understand what is at stake for young
people, particularly those mired in conditions of cyclical familial poverty.
And
an understanding of these issues is vital for anyone who wants to comprehend
the subtext running beneath the surface of the banter at such assemblages as
the board retreat on Saturday, 8 September.
…………………………………………………………...
There
are numerous problems in the MPS Comprehensive District Design with regard to
questionable claims and errant ideas, of which the reader should especially
take note:
Perpend:
MPS does not provide academic excellence to any student
in the school district; this is true of most K-12 providers of education
in the United States. Those who wrote this text are making a false claim,
or they are clueless.
The phrase, “individualized approach to instruction” is
problematic; every teacher, admistrator, and staff member should be
sensitive to the individual life circumstances of each child and young person
enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools; but curriculum and pedagogy
utilized should be consistent from student to student, including an abundance
of whole-class instruction.
The notion of “articulated pathways” is misguided.
Teachers should be teaching from a common curriculum that includes an abundance
of cross-cultural knowledge that would incorporate American Indian, Hmong,
Somali language and culture; visual and performing arts; and
foreign language learning opportunities. Certain ideas of Maria
Montessori are useful in understanding and teaching the young child, but the
Montessori approach results in gaps in knowledge and skill sets and should not
be the prime means of curricular delivery; impartation of knowledge and
skill sets should be in logical, grade-by-grade sequence to all students.
A knowledge-intensive curriculum should be delivered not via
an International Baccalaureate program; rather, students should acquire
those knowledge and skill sets that will lead to enrollment in Advanced Placement
courses in high school.
And with regard to the shibboleth of culturally relevant
programming, curriculum should be consistent and multicultural at all
sites. Families of all demographic descriptors respond to a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, ultimately college preparatory
curriculum. They will seek out the Minneapolis Public Schools if they are
presented such a curriculum, and the knowledgeable teachers required to impart
such a curriculum.
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