Fascinating were the dual messages
delivered at the Tuesday, 13 November 2018, meeting of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) Board of Education, at the outset consisting of indications of a
mass movement for change; and at the end
featuring the inept members of the MPS Board of Education at their aimless bickering
worst.
The Public Comments phase that began the
meeting featured a continuation of what very
possibly is a mass movement for change that began on 30 October 2018 at the Parent-Led
School Board Candidate Forum, held at the University of Minnesota Urban
Research and Outreach Engagement Center in North Minneapolis (2100 Plymouth
Avenue, across from the Minneapolis Urban League). Members of many of the groups that organized
or sponsored that event were out in force during the Public Comment phase of
this school board meeting. The groups
organizing or sponsoring the 30 October event included KWST Behavioral
Development Group, Little Earth of United Tribes, STANDUP, Centro Tyrone
Guzman, Latino Youth Development Collaborative, UPLIFT-MN, the Northside
Achievement Zone (NAZ), and Voices for Effective Change.
At Tuesday’s (13 November) MPS Board of
Education meeting, representatives of the Latino Youth Development
Collaborative and STANDUP seemed especially present and outspoken; and a number of members of the Somali
community also were out in force.
I led off Public Comments, as I have for four
years now.
My message this evening was that change can
come quickly if a program for overhaul of existing processes is implemented
with clear thinking, proper accumulation of information, logical programmatic
formulation, and decisive implementation.
I contrasted the inadequate responses (self-strengthening,
constitutional reform) of change leaders in China during the waning days of the
Qing Dynasty that brought a messy revolution in 1911 but no real change until
1949; with the astonishing success of
Yamagato Aritomo and Ito Hirobumi in leading a Meiji era program for change,
incorporating the best approaches utilizded in Great Britain, Germany, France,
and the United States to send Japan on a course toward industrial modernization
within five years of the 1868 Meiji Restoration.
“Rapid change is possible,” I said, “if the
leaders are talented and intent on bringing swift transformation.”
At this point I got the clicking of fingers
indicative of support for my message from members of those groups mentioned
above. I then transitioned to my other
main message: that Superintendent Ed
Graff, an academic lightweight lacking philosophical clarity, cannot be the
leader of an overhauled academic program.
I ended with reference to my 16 hour a day commitment to change, for
which the time is now, not later.
As I was making these latter remarks the fingers again clicked vigorously and my
comments, which often are met with dead silence in a crowd more often dominated
by either Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) staff or
members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), drew an enthusiastic
round of applause.
Then, as if we were speaking upon a common
theme, members of the mentioned groups advocating for change took the
microphone and expressed deep dissatisfaction with the academic program,
inhospitable school staff attitudes, and specific experiences endured in
striving for a better education for students in the African American, Latino,
Somali, and Native communities. I
clapped vigorously for the speakers and their leaders sought me out for
enthusiastic hugs.
Clearly there is a potential movement for
educational change now building, in evidence on both 30 October and 13
November. Were this movement to continue
and expand, it could be the catalyst for dramatic change long resisted by the
education establishment types produced in wretched programs of teacher and
administrator training who dominate at the Davis Center, the MFT, and the
school sites.
……………………………………………………………………….
Having told the board, “Now when I walk out of
here, you tell yourselves that there goes the guy that we will never fool,
because when I head over to New Salem I will be administering to the children
that you academically abuse during the daytime”--- I took my leave to go run the new Salem
Tuesday Tutoring program.
When I returned at 8:35 PM, MPS lobbyist Josh Downham was giving a presentation on the MPS legislative agenda,
which predictably focused on funding rather than any legislation that would
contribute to the needed structural changes in K-12 education. Downham, clearly unaware of the irony of
emphasizing universal administration of the ACT college readiness exam to students
who cannot even indicate grade level proficiency on the MCAs, noted that emphasis
on taking the ACT was the trend; such
policy is what I call the Great Leap Forward approach, riffing on the Maoist 1958-1961
program in China that endeavored to exceed Great Britain in industrial production
within 15 years and ended after sending tens of thousands of people to their
deaths instead.
But matters got much worse during
the last phase of this meeting:
……………………………………………………………….
For many months, this wretched assemblage
of board members has been avoiding discussing their joint values while declaring
that they really should agree on some commonly held values regarding the
program of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Three or so weeks ago, Board Chair Nelson Inz and Vice-Chair Siad Ali
put together a list of joint values that they thought they had discerned from
comments made at certain junctures by board members, but his method of
presentation drew the particular ire of KerryJo Felder (District 2 member), who
views such an act as domineering on the part of Inz.
Inz opened the final phase of this
meeting with calls for a determination of values discussion, which grew so acrimonious
and scattered that Superintendent Ed Graff soon gave the signal to attending Davis
Center staff that they could leave.
Topics emerged erratically and
included a suggestion from Felder that social promotion be ended; a request from Bob Felder that financial
reporting provide more nuanced detail on all funding that goes to school sites,
so that funding that seems to go to Davis Center staff or services but
contributes to school programs be included (an issue also of concern to
outgoing At-Large member Rebecca Gagnon);
and eventually another descent into bickering between Felder and Inz as
to the proper time and forum for the discussion, inasmuch as the time was drifting
toward 10:00 PM.
The meeting at this point took on
the aura of a bad dream:
No actual values were being
discussed, nothing that would define a philosophy of education or specify
efforts to improve student academic performance. The board has had opportunities to have such
a discussion, saliently at board retreats.
But they have never seized such an opportunity, despite attempts by
Walser to induce such discussion, so that he can promote his terrible ideas in
opposition to common curriculum and testing for student progress: Other board members, at a loss as to what
they would reply in the absence of any coherent educational philosophy on their
own parts, never embrace Walser’s plea for discussion, echoed rather erratically
in the moment by Felder.
Inz is reluctant to designate time
and space for a meeting on values, most likely for those reasons for retiscence
indicated above. Felder and Gagnon
resent Inz’s stance; Walser most likely
does, too, but since Inz endorsed his candidacy in the 2016 election that brought
him to the board with a narrow win over Josh Reimnitz, he demures in direct
criticism of Inz.
And so the stage in a theater of
the absurd spins wildly in a school district wherein fewer than 50% of students
are proficient in reading and mathematics, and from which even those who manage
to graduate are so lacking in fundamental knowledge and skill sets that
one-third need remediation once matriculating on college and university
campuses.
The eerie atmosphere of this stage
of the meeting was intensified by the fact that the only remaining people in
the room were the general counsel, the school board administrator, the security
guard, and myself. I usually stay until
the wretched end of these assemblages, but as the discussion spun wildly out of
control, I rose and said with vocal force:
“if you want to know why students
are leaving this district, look at yourselves on the video of this
meeting--- and look for my review on my
blog. You fools!”
I caught the eye of the security
guard and we exchanged restrained, knowing looks.
………………………………………………
Thus it was that a community
aroused signaled the possible advent of a mass movement for change.
And the membership of the MPS
Board of Education demonstrated that level of ineptitude at which the movement
will aim, eventually enveloping and sweeping away such human detritus on a wave
of transformation for the provision of an education of excellence to young
people who have been waiting for a very long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment