Article #3
Moral Degradation of
Minnesota Department of Education
Staff in Presenting the
North Star Accountability System
At 6:00 PM on Monday, 24 September, in Conference Center B at the
Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), Brenda Cassellius’s aide Michael
Diedrich went for the nearest security guard after I raised tough questions and
the meeting veered out of control of MDE staff attempting to defend the
indefensible.
I waited through two prior
question and answer sessions as the presenters went through three phases in an
effort to explain the new North Star Accountability System (described in full
as you scroll down through previous recent entries on this blog). This is
the system of purported accountability now being foisted on the public in the
latest failed proclamation hailing a program that nevertheless has no chance of
raising academic performance of Minnesota students.
Of the approximately 2,000
schools in Minnesota, 485 of them have failed to demonstrate acceptable
performance according to at least one of several indicators: graduation
rates, attendance, academic progress for English learners, general academic
progress, and proficiency as demonstrated on the Minnesota Comprehensive
Assessments (MCAs). Note that the latter indicator, which is the only
measure that reveals the actual proficiency levels of students in a given
academic year, now is a mere inclusion in an array of indicators. Much
mention was made of schools now having multiple ways of demonstrating that they
are making progress; the matter of academic performance is not clearly in
focus, as was the case during 2002-2016 before Congressional jettisoning of No
Child Left Behind and the passage of the new Every Student Succeeds Act.
The Every Student Succeeds Act and the North Star Accountability System
designed by staff at the Minnesota Department of Education allow for
considerable more wiggle room for failing schools to claim some level of
success:
Perpend, on the latter
matter:
One MDE presenter gave his
approval to a case in which a school has done a particularly good job of
cleaning up around and plugging bullet holes; this was offered
illustratively as a case of what MDE staff is touting as “Quick Wins,” complete
with categorical capitals. I (Gary Marvin Davison) kid you not. And
some members in the audience comprised heavily of people from MDE staff and
Minnesota public school systems gave verbal expressions of approval. I
kid you not on that, as well.
After the meeting had
transpired through three presentations and the clock indicated that we had
rolled past the one-hour point in the meeting, with less than thirty minutes to
go (even though the meeting was announced as providing two hours for presentations
and discussion), I raised the following question, with introductory comments as
follows:
“There are to be six
Regional Centers of Excellence, staffed with a total of 45 members, so that
each center will have seven or eight people providing assistance.”
“That’s about right,” the
presenter responded.
I continued: “Back
in the late 1990s and very early 2000s in the time of the Minnesota Basic
Skills Test, the school systems of Minnesota demonstrated that they could not
even educate an acceptable percentage of students at a grade 8 level.
Then we had No Child Left Behind and more embarrassing academic results, at
that time with the MCAS; No Child Left Behind was attacked by the
left (Education Minnesota, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, DFL) and right
(when the right figured out, ‘Oh, yeah, these are central government
mandates’), so that we then had the murky Multiple Measurement Rating System,
the Every Student Succeeds Act and with it the even murkier current North Star
Accountability System.
“My question to you, then,
is: Do you at the Minnesota Department of Education live in a fantasy
world, or are you knowingly perpetrating this hoax on the students of
Minnesota?”
The presenter stammered
that answering that question would take a lot of unpacking.
I said, “Sure would.
Go ahead and unpack it.”
“Not now,” he said.
And I then responded,
“Well then, would you meet me in a public debate?"
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said.
“Of course, you wouldn’t,”
I asserted, “because you don’t have the ability.”
Members of the audience,
all of those retorting representing either Minnesota school districts or the
MDE, then began to issue rejoinders to me. That was great. I wanted
to rouse this audience of automatons and dissemblers to life. Voices got
loud, including my own. I challenged two more MDE members and one school
district representative to a refereed public debate, with of course no takers
from people of this ilk, caught in the act of attempting to defend the
indefensible.
As voices rose, one of the
previous presenters came to the fore and threatened to call a security guard.
“And on what basis would
you do that?” I asked.
“Disturbing our meeting,”
came the reply.
As Michael Diedrich
hastened out of the room to summon the nearest security guard, I just laughed.
As the last presenter made
one more lame presentation, Diedrich returned with the security guard as both
remained at the back of the room (I was sitting right up front, contently
silent). The presenter concluded, called for questions, there were no
takers, and the meeting was over.
I rose slowly but was the
first to stride up the aisle. I expected a few people to meet me in the
eye, casting mostly mean eyes given the dominant composition of the crowd
representing the state department and the school districts culpable for the
academic results that have no more than sixty percent (60%) of our students
reading and performing mathematical tasks with grade level proficiency.
But not a single person
met my eyes.
Cowards all.
I continued my trip up the
aisle, staring a hole in Michael Diedrich’s prevaricating back-of-the-room
countenance.
But I turned amiably to
the security guard and said, “Hey, good to see you, man.”
“Yup,” he mumbled as he
shook my proffered hand.
I strode out the door
smiling at the stupidity that I had witnessed on the part MDE staff and
audience members at this charade of a meeting.
But I had three attending
thoughts as I strode to my Toyota Matrix and drove home.
With regard to public and
official attitudes about K-12 education, people variously
>>>>> are
dimwitted on the issues;
>>>>> are
dissembling officials or their sycophants; or
>>>>>
just don’t care.
Closing message to Brenda
Cassellius, Michael Diedrich, and anyone else willing to expose your lack of
knowledge on the history and current circumstance of public education in
Minnesota and the United States:
Meet me in that formal
refereed debate under formal rules of disputation.
Or admit you fall short on matters
pertinent to the most important endeavor imaginable and cheat our precious
young people every day your feet hit the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment