Article #5
Concluding Comments
The Necessity for Establishing True Scholars
Among Academic Decision-Makers at the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
to Provide Input on the Details of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive
Design
Despite the likelihood that the Minneapolis
Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive Design has fatal flaws, a mitigating
circumstance could be the establishing of true scholars among academic
decision-makers to work out details of the design for implementation on the
ground, at the sites.
A key theme in my new book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, concerns the
superbly trained chiefs of finance, operations, information technology, human
resources, and research; and the lack of comparable training for those
making decisions on those matters that are at the core of the mission of K-12
public education: academics.
So corrupt is the system for training K-12 educators that
both teachers and administrators receive meaningless degrees that render them
woefully inadequate as academicians.
Consider:
Superintendent Ed Graff has a bachelor’s degree in
elementary education, which provides notoriously weak academic preparation, and
what must pass for advanced training in Graff’s case has occurred entirely in
an education program at the University of Southern Mississippi.
The associate superintendents earn just under $150,000
for providing mentoring to site principals
of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). This means
that non-academicians are mentoring non-academicians with the avowed purpose of
improving the academic program. This is a metaphor for the catastrophe that is
K-12 education in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, and throughout the United States.
Just a few moons ago, there were eight associate
superintendents in the Minneapolis Public Schools, then there were six, then
four, and now there are just three. Their jobs are to try to make viable
administrator-educators out of people who are among those ruined by education
professors. But the abiding irony in that situation is that the associate
superintendents themselves have been corrupted by the vacuous ideology of
education professors.
Of the three associate superintendents given below, Carla
Steinbach has an undergraduate degree in sociology but all of her graduate and
purportedly advanced professional training has been in education
programs. All of Ron Wagner’s degrees and certifications have been
granted by education programs. Brian Zambreno just came to MPS; his
background suggests similar nonacademic training.
Cecilia Saddler (Deputy Chief of Academics, Leadership,
and Learning; administrative head of the
Department of Teaching and Learning) must spearhead
development of a viable academic program if the district’s new Comprehensive
Assessment is to produce more favorable educational prospects for MPS
students; she has only a bachelor’s degree in communications, with all of
her putatively advanced work in education programs.
Other key academic program implementers include the Elementary
Team of Jessica Driscoll (K-5 Literacy DPF, Network), Julie Tangeman (K-5
Literacy, Science DPF, Davis Center), Marium Toure (K-5 Math DPF, Davis
Center), Mary Lambrecht (K-5 Math DPF, Network), Natasha Parker (K-5 Math TOSA,
Network), and Sara Naeglie, K-5 Literacy DPF, Network). These staff
members have overwhelmingly received their training in elementary education
programs that are academically insubstantive and the weakest programs on any
college or university campus.
Then there is the Secondary Team of Chris Jones
(6-12 Math TOSA, Network), Chris Wernimont (6-12 Math DPF), Hamdi
Ahmed (6-12 Literacy), Hibaq Mohamed (6-12 Literacy DPF), Jennifer
Rose (K-12 Science DPF), Katie Stephens (6-12 Literacy DPF, Network), and Lisa
Purcell (K-12 Social Studies DPF). Some of these people have
bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines such as mathematics and
literature, but their nominally advanced degrees are overwhelmingly in
education programs.
And there are also these MPS Department of Teaching and
Learning members:
K-12 Programming: Ashley Kohn
(K-12 Library Media Information DPF), Kimberly Heinscheid (SSPA Arts), Nora
Schull (K-12 Arts DPF), Sara Loch (K-12 Health/Physical Education DPF), and Ted
Hansen (Fine Arts TOSA); Talent Development and Advanced Academic:
Christina Ramsey (K-8 Talent Development and Advanced Academics) and Kelley
McQuillan, 9-12 Talent Development and Advanced Academics). Among
these staff members there are also no genuine scholars or academicians;
they have produced no scholarly work, as would typically be the case for those
whose training has been preponderantly in programs of education.
To get a grip on the reasons why academic programming in
K-12 education is so knowledge-poor, start by realizing the knowledge poverty
of those making decisions pertinent to the academic program.
As we exert pressure on decision-makers at the
Minneapolis Public Schools to design a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete,
logically sequenced grade by grade academic program, we must also insist on the
overhaul of staff making these decisions. Those currently on staff must
discipline themselves to become academicians, to jettison the silly notions put
in their heads by education professors, to embrace the exciting world of
knowledge, and to oversee the design and delivery of knowledge-intensive
education to the students of Minneapolis Public Schools.
This will be a daunting task for these ill-trained
academic decision-makers.
If
they are not up to the task, they must find their ways through the exit doors
at the Davis Center and at the sites of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The replacement of current staff at the MPS
Department of Teaching and Learning with true academicians could make a major
difference in the final form of the MPS Comprehensive Design, the details for
implementation on the ground, and prospects for the design to produce
programmatic changes that result in the overhaul of curriculum for knowledge
intensity and the training of teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum. Curriculum and teaching are the core of any
excellent education system; they are
critical to prospects for the MPS Comprehensive Design to provide a
knowledge-intensive, skill replete education of genuine excellence to the
students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment