Severe Analytical and Philosophical Confusion Manifested in the Annual Letter from the 2020 Advisory Committee >>>>> Introduction to and Presentation of Detailed Recommendations on Graduation/ College and Career Readiness (Article #5 Concerning MPS Administrative, Board of Education, and Public Confusion)

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

Graduation/ Career and College Readiness

Students should graduate from MPS college and career ready with the life skills to navigate a 21^st century global society.  To get there, students need to be engaged in and responsible for their own learning, offered experiences in the real world and guided to think about their future.  Minnesota Statutes, section 120B.125 requires all students beginning no later than 9^th grade to have a Personal Learning Plan around several key elements.  A student’s plan should be looked at as a life plan that includes academic scheduling, career exploration, career and employment-related skills, community partnerships, college access, all forms of postsecondary training, and experiential learning opportunities.

According to legislation, school districts must implement these requirements for all students starting no later than grade nine.

The 2020 Advisory concurs with the value and importance of this section of the World’s Best Work Force legislation and believes that MPS students should be engaged in coursework that prepares them for success after high school graduation, includes real-world experiences, and provides them with information and access to multiple post-high school options to further their education or enter directly into the world of work.

Advisory 2020 Recommendations---  Graduation/ College and Career Readiness

>>>>>    In our panel , high school students expressed conflict between academic requirements for graduation and the need to work to take care of multi-generational family needs.  Students expressed they were consistently encouraged to pursue traditional course-taking options by counselors and NOT to seek alternative pathways or opportunities to acquire the array of credits required by the state and MPS for graduation.

>>>>>    Students need to be prepared for what happens after high school and exposed to work that matters, so they can envision their future careers.  Toward that end, students need “real life” skills to prepare them for their adult lives (like financial basics, how to find housing, insurance, career exploration, etc.) and real-life experience outside the classroom.

>>>>>    Explicit and readily available career exploration and career/college counseling needs to be available to students, so that informed choices can be made during high school with regard to  course  choices, as well as development of learning plans and post-high school goal setting.

>>>>>    coursework needs to be catered to meet both student interest and career needs.  All students should have Career and Technical Education (CTE) and Ethnic Studies (ES) courses.  Both CTE and ES should be aligned whenever possible to MPS graduation requirements and state academic standards, thus allowing more creative design of the student high school experience and maximizing the hours of the school day.

>>>>>    Student voice should be more heavily involved in the learning plan, particularly as students approach graduation.  To honor diverse perspectives and modes of learning, schools should better utilize individualized learning plans, student voice, student-led education, art electives, and project-based learning.

>>>>>    Opportunities to participate in Career & Technical Education should be available to all students, not segregated by region based on a decades-old de-segregation distribution model.  Experiential learning partnerships with local industries and community organizations should be leveraged to provide MPS high school students career exploration and foundational skill preparation prior to graduation that includes access to courses related to future workforce needs of the Twin Cities Metro (i.e., healthcare, engineering, manufacturing,  business, information technology, human services, and agriculture).

>>>>>    Students should be educated on alternative paths to graduation, including PSEO, 3-year graduation path (21.5 credits), IB/ AP and CTE in order to meet their personal learning goals and pursue post-high school career and/or educational opportunities.

My Comments

The 2020 Advisory Committee most saliently in this section demonstrates its shallow understanding of an excellent education, offering many sound bites from the degraded conversational ether that surrounds K-12 education discussions while making many recommendations that are demonstrably harmful because they are already being inflicted upon students by the inept decision-makers of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Consider how I would have written this section, noting some points of intersection with the views expressed in the 2020 Advisory Committee letter on Graduation/ College and Career Readiness, but especially observing the many curricular, pedagogical, and philosophical differences in the committee’s stances and my own: 

The purpose of K-12 public education is to prepare students for
lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional
satisfaction.  An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers
imparting a logically sequenced, grade by grade, knowledge-intensive
curriculum in the liberal, fine, technological, and vocational arts 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.

Upon those principles of educational purpose and excellence, the

Minneapolis Public Schools will impart an education of excellence to
students of all demographic descriptors.  At K-5, teachers will impart
logically sequenced, grade by grade knowledge sets in mathematics,
natural science (biology, chemistry, and physics), history, government,
economics, world literature, English usage, and the fines arts (visual
and musical) to students of all demographic descriptors.  Curricular
emphasis on these academic disciplines will continue in middle school
(grades 6-8),  with expanding opportunities for students to learn
world languages. 


By the time students get to high school, all but those with severe
intellectual challenges will be prepared to take Advanced Placement (AP)
courses in calculus, biology, chemistry, physics, world history, United States
history, and English.  In addition to their core requirements, they will have
multiple options via course electives to pursue their driving personal
academic interests and those in fine, technological, and musical arts.


Until high school, teachers( retrained and well-trained by academicians
engaged by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to implement
a teacher- training program that goes far beyond traditional professional
development [PD]) will be responsible for educating students.  Their methods
will focus heavily on direct impartation of the knowledge-intensive curriculum
in whole-class, teacher-led  academic sessions, in which students are asked to
analyze critically and discuss as a class varying points of view concerning issues
that arise in the scholarly worlds of mathematics, natural science, history,
government, economics, world literature, and the fine arts--  with generous
application to current issues and the vision of student lives as adults.
In high school, teachers will maintain this manner of imparting

knowledge-intensive curriculum, accompanied by lively student discussion, both

in core classes and the generous array of course electives for the pursuit of driving
student interests.  From grade 9 forward, counselors will provide thorough
information to students concerning post-secondary education and the specific
training necessary for particular careers.  Students will have received by their high
school years in the Minneapolis Public Schools an education that prepares them for
further training in any educational experience orprofession that they opt to pursue.