Sharon El-Amin’s strong
showing in the 6 November 2018 election as a candidate for one of the two
At-Large seats contested for the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of
Education, in an electoral spectacle that also featured three uncontested seats,
cuts in two opposing directions that commonly point to the importance of her
candidacy.
The
first direction moves our attention for focus on the potential for deep intellectual
and political corruption that come with the victories by
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) endorsees Kimberly Caprini and Josh
Pauly. The board that will be seated as
of January 2019 will now include those two, along with seven other former MFT endorsees: KerryJo Felder, Siad Ali, Jenny Arneson,
Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Bob Walser, and Ira Jourdain. With the addition of Caprini and Pauly, the
MPS Board of Education represents an electoral grand slam for the MFT: The board now as of January will be comprised
of nine endorsees who will be under considerable pressure to support ideas such
as those presented in the MFT59 10-Point Platform, sloganized as “Common Sense
Bargaining for the Common Good,” that the teachers union took into the most
recent negotiations, still ongoing for a contract yet to be formalized.
………………………………………………………………
Those
ten platform Items include the following, succeeded by my comments at the end
of the platform presentation:
1) Beyond Academics: Educating the Whole Child
All
students deserve books in the library;
instruments in the band room;
supplies in the art room;
equipment in the gym; vision,
hearing, and dental screenings every year.
Students deserve nurses, social workers, counselors, psychologists, and
library media specialists in their schools---
all day, every day.
2) Smaller Class Sizes
All
students deserve to have individual relationships with their teachers, as
strong relationships create strong classrooms.
Small class sizes allow time for teachers to plan quality lessons, talk
to families, talk to each student every day, and give students the attention
they need to learn and grow.
3) Students are More Than a Test Score
All
students deserve a broad, rich curriculum including academics, arts, music,
language, and trade, emphasizing engagement and authentic learning, instead of
preparation for high-stakes tests.
Students deserve teachers and administrators focused on development of
quality curriculum in an educational environment that acknowledges and respects
backgrounds, perspectives, and learning styles of our diverse communities.
4) Support, Don’t Punish: Restorative Practices
All
students deserve compassion, empathy, and a safe place to learn. Students deserve educators well-trained in
restorative practices. Schools must move
toward practices that build relationships and resolve conflict. MPS must work to dismantle the
school-to-prison pipeline.
5) Clean and Healthy Buildings
All
students deserve fully staffed schools that ensure a clean, healthy, and safe
environment with soap in the bathroom, safe drinking water, sanitary classrooms,
and working air conditioning in every school.
6) Full-Service Community Schools
All
students and their families deserve community-based services. Increasing the number of full-service
community schools throughout the city would provide school-based community
access to critical services such as healthcare, childcare, dental clinics,
adult education courses, and enrichment and recreational opportunities for
children from preschool to high school.
7) Quality Education for All: Inclusion and Equity
All
students deserve high quality education regardless of their special education
needs, primary language, race, ethnicity, religion, documentation status,
family income, family composition, sexual orientation, gender identity, or zip
code. Students deserve educators
committed to disrupting racism and other systems of oppression in our
classrooms and schools. Our schools need
to be welcoming to all our students and their families.
8) Invest in Public Schools
All
students deserve a school district committed to fully funded public schools
governed by a democratically elected school board accountable to the
public. Students deserve schools that
will not close at a moment’s notice, schools that educate all children
regardless of their needs, and schools that are staffed by highly qualified,
licensed educators.
9) $15 an Hour for All MPS Employees
All
students deserve a school district committed to investing in all employees by
paying a living wage. MPS employees
include bus drivers, educators, food servers, secretaries, and engineers who
are also mentors to students; they are
also our neighbors and parents to our students.
10) Recess
All
students deserve at least 30 minutes of play and movement on a daily
basis. Recess promotes social and
emotional learning such as working together as a team, making friends, and
deciding which game to play next.
My
Analysis
Now know this about the
ten-point program given above, taken in point-by point order in the following
exposition:
“Educating the whole
child” is a phrase typically used by education professors and other members of
the education establishment to avoid emphasis on academics. Like so much from the strange world of of
education departments, colleges, and schools, the phrase has a certain facile
appeal, capable of moving anyone who claims to love children and to want to
develop them as well-rounded human beings.
But members of the education establishment are better at launching
pleasant sounding slogans into the ether than they are at providing the truly
well-round education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts that is
the primary responsibility of K-12
teachers and administrators. In this
case, the ten-point MFT program conveys the message that decision-makers at the
Minneapolis Public Schools should make sure that students are provided with an
array of support services and adequate stocks of library books, art supplies,
and gym equipment. These items and
services are indeed important, and I have argued persistently for greatly
expanded outreach to families via the direct provision of certain services and
resource referral for others. But
material necessities and support services will go to waste in the absence of a
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
East Asian societies (e.
g., South Korea, Taiwan, Shanghai [China], Singapore) conduct highly effective
classrooms with large class sizes, ranging to 50 students and beyond. Students in these nations; along with those
in such nations as Finland, Poland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; regularly outperform students of the United
States on the Program of International Students Assessment (PISA) designed by
Andrea Schleicher to assess ability to analyze problems and to apply knowledge
and skills creatively. Small class sizes
have intuitive appeal, and have many advantages if resources are available to
keep classes small. But class size is
much less important than curriculum and teacher quality.
“Authentic learning” is
another education establishment shibboleth.
This is code for the project and portfolio approach to education
formerly taken in the defunct Profiles of
Learning of the Minnesota Department of Education in the 1990s, now
replaced by academic standards that I helped to design in the early years of
the new millennium. Standardized tests
are the most objective assessments of student knowledge and skills, the sort of
instruments represented by the college readiness measures of the ACT and SAT
and the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) for grades 3-8 math and reading, grade 10 reading,
and grade 11 math. Because students
(especially those facing challenges of familial poverty and functionality) in
Minnesota record such a lackluster performance on such tests, the teachers
unions (Education Minnesota, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers) seek escape
into the project and portfolio approach that obscures information on student
ability to perform a wide range of math skills and to read a wide swath of
fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Students should receive
a knowledge-intensive education in “academics, arts, music, language, and
trade”; but teachers have neither the
knowledge nor the approach to curriculum that can provide such an
education. And as a group, teachers are
lamentably short of the training and life experience that would truly allow
them to provide knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education in the liberal,
technological, and vocational arts.
Students should be
provided clean and healthy buildings, restorative justice, and equity. But, given adequate buildings, if students
were engaged with a knowledge-intensive, skill replete curriculum delivered at
the behest of genuinely excellent teachers, the behavior problems that give
rise to the need for restorative justice would diminish drastically and equity
would be implicit. Recess, health, and
physical education are necessary parts of a fully developed curriculum--- but at present these are not generally
provided in such a way as to encourage
the good eating habits and aerobic exercise that promote quality life on this
one earthly sojourn. Varsity sports get
much more attention, again contrasting the educational programs of the United
States with those of the best school systems across the world, all of which
relegate sports activities to community programs rather than the schools.
Our schools should be
properly funded, but the most vexing dilemma is not lack of funds but rather
proper application of funds for the provision of high-quality curriculum,
teachers, academic enrichment (set-aside time for tutoring and additional
academic challenges), and outreach to families, all delivered by a greatly
trimmed central office (Davis Center) bureaucracy. All employees should receive at least $15,
after proper training and a probationary period in which all staff members
throughout the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools demonstrate an
understanding of the central mission of the locally centralized school district
to impart a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
Excellent education is
the provision of a knowledge intensive, skill-replete curriculum in the
liberal, technological, and vocational arts by excellent teachers , delivered
in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years. As a group, members of MFT59 do not believe
in such a knowledge-focused education, and the nature of their training does
not prepare them to deliver such an education.
Such a circumstance
reduces the MFT 10 Point Platform to
a substantively gossamer document, lacking in either common or intellectual
sense, and certainly not capable of ensuring the common good through the
impartation of an equitably excellent education to students of all demographic
descriptors
………………………………………………………………………………………
The board that will be seated as of January
2019 will be potentially corrupted, politically for pressure to do the bidding
of the MFT organization that worked so powerfully for their election; and intellectually for the philosophical,
pedagogical, and programmatic corruption that suffuses the historically failed notions
(saliently represented in the platform given above) passed on to teacher-aspirants
by education professors.
But then we are moved to consider two
countervailing possibilities:
1) Inz,
Walser, Ellison, and Felder are probably compromised beyond redemption; but for reasons I have detailed in past
articles, there is reason to maintain some hope for Ali, Arneson, Jourdain, and
the 6 November victors Caprini and Pauly to consider the case for
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that are at the core of the K-12
Revolution that I am waging; and for the
transparency, accountability, and community engagement emphasized by Sharon El-Amin in her candidacy.
2) The enormous community support for El-Amin unleashed
at the Parent-Led 30 October candidate forum at the 2100 Plymouth Avenue, University
of Minnesota-owned venue in North Minneapolis; and her potential as a candidate
with the public presence and a 26-year record of commitment that could serve to
unseat Felder in 2020; provide aspiration
for and anticipation of a mass movement that would both in itself counter MFT
influence and ideology and power a future candidacy by El-Amin.
The current domination
by MFT endorsees signals a danger of which we should be aware; but the countervailing forces energized by Sharon
El-Amin’s strong showing on 6 November signal in turn that MFT power and
influence will never be the same again.
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