Themes and Emphases in My Book, >Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect<, for the Discerning Reader and Forewarned Culpable Individuals

Discerning and diligent readers know that the they have already read most of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public School:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, the essential contents of which have already been entered voluminously on this blog.  Many of the articles that are being assembled in completed book format should serve as a warning to those individuals who will be hit hard by the damning evidence and incisive analysis that I present.

 

The identity of some of the individuals who should be running for cover or mounting their responses may come as something of a surprise to those thinking that my focus is entirely on the people and processes of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Since the intellectual and moral context in which the sordid tale of the condition of the Minneapolis Public Schools is vital for understanding the degree and quality of that degradation, those people who establish the parameters within which such a sad state of affairs flourishes must be prepared to face their culpability for the system that denies our precious young people a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.

 

Hence, discerning readers will examine articles that I have written for the content that will expose the roles played by such individuals as R. T. Rybak, Mark Dayton, Brenda Cassellius, and certain flunkies of the latter at the Minnesota Department Education.  Legislators who along with Dayton and Cassellius dance to the predetermined political rhythms of Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers will be held culpable, along with the heads of those teachers unions, Denise Specht and Michelle Wiese.   

 

Also exposed will be education professors in those programs that train our teachers so abysmally at the University of Minnesota, Augsburg University, University of St. Thomas, and Hamline University.  At those universities, held culpable will be administrative figures who look the other way while teacher training cash cows pour funds into university coffers from prospective and current teachers who are essentially purchasing formal qualifications and bumps in pay.

 

Journalistic parties and figures with a certain public presence will be held responsible for their own intellectual failings, moral corruption, or misguided promulgations with regard to K-12 public education.  These figures include Scott Gillespie, Doug Tice, David Banks, Steve Young, Mitch Pearlstein, Katherine Kersten, and Ted Kolderie.   All of these figures should be prepared for a scathing analysis of their roles in producing wretched systems at the level of the locally centralized school district such as the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Within the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway), certain figures will come in for particular praise;  these include Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop and Information Technology Chief Fadi Fadhil.  Human Resources Chief Maggie Sullivan will also be identified for her skill and perceptivity, with an exhortation to find a way to retrain the teaching contingent that she inherits from those wretched teacher training programs.  Special Education Executive Director Rochelle Cox will be similarly encouraged to become an active participant for change, maximally utilizing her considerable skill and perceptivity for the good of those students whom she clearly loves.  Karen Devet will be given her due as an able Chief of Operations. 


This will most certainly be the case with one of the most talented MPS staff members, Eric Moore, in his role as Chief of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability;  but Moore’s prospects for success in his new additional role as head of the academic division still await determination.  Moore and Deputy Chief of Academics Cecilia Saddler must embrace knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced curriculum and work with Sullivan to address the teacher quality issue ;  to achieve their aims they must dismiss current occupants of positions in the Department of Teaching and Learning and thoroughly overhaul that department;  and they must realize the shortcomings of Associate Superintendents Ron Wagner, Carla Steinbach, and Brian Zambreno in their current positions and evaluate whether these (longtime in the case of Wagner and Steinbach) MPS staff members have skills worth tapping for the benefit of students, the only reason anyone at the district has a job or a professional reason for being.

 

My current assessment of Superintendent Ed Graff is that he is skilled as an evaluator of the bureaucracy and has magnificently trimmed central office staff while making key astute judgments as to the chiefs who form his cabinet, but that he does not have the wherewithal to lead the academic program.  Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly is a sincere person who wants to make those changes needed to bring excellence of education to young people living at the urban core;  but the MPS Comprehensive District Design on which she has worked so diligently has certain fatal flaws, so that her ability to recognize those and internalize wise counsel for remedying those will be instrumental in my ultimate determination of her efficacy in her vital role at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

And in terms of people who must look deep into their souls and admit their deficiencies, the voting public must take notice.  The current MPS Board of Education consisting of KerryJo Felder, Don Samuels, Siad Ali, Jenny Arneson, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Bob Walser, Rebecca Gagnon, and Ira Jourdain is among the worst assemblages in the nation or the state, an observation all the more telling in that very few school boards feature members of high quality.  This current iteration at MPS ranges from the best, the hardworking but philosophically uninformed and politically vitiated Jenny Arneson;  to the silliest and most trivial school board member I have ever seen, Bob Walser.  That a citizenry could not look within to find candidates to run against the Arneson, Ali, and (especially) the political hack of a current chair, Nelson Inz, does not speak well for members of the public, who also ignorantly signed off on a referendum to pour more money into this wretched school district without any insistence on change and in the absence of any solid knowledge of the nature of change needed.

Candidate Sharon El-Amin’s inspiring message did penetrate the public consciousness, we could do worse than Kim Caprini, and the ouster of Gagnon was a favorable development in the recent 6 November election;  but in the aggregate the voting public presents abundant  evidence of gullibility and ignorance.

 

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I present Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect structurally in three parts:  Part I, Facts;  Part II, Analysis;  and Part III, Philosophy.

 

In the Part I , staff members at the Minneapolis Public Schools and those participants within the ether that envelops and sustains this wretched system hang themselves on the basis of objective facts.

 

In the Part II, I interpret those facts and explain why they are so damning.

 

In the Part III, I detail a program for the necessary overhaul, drawing upon my nonpareil knowledge of the history and philosophy of United States and international education.

 

Discerning readers will be scouring this blog for abundant evidenced of the contents of   Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

The many culpable individuals should be forewarned, taking cover or mounting their defenses.