>>>>>
A Note to My Readers as I Offer the First of
Many Views of the Advanced Draft of My New Book, >Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect<
Among the nearly 1,000 articles entered on
this blog, readers can find snippets and whole chapters of my new book, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect; indeed, one can find most of the book by
scaling down and reading sections pertinent to Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
departments and personnel at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West
Broadway), student proficiency rates (for mathematics, reading and science), profiles
of all MPS schools, World’s Best Work Force (WBWF) programs, Comprehensive
District Design, MPS Board of Education, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
(MFT), and many other information-heavy articles, including those pertaining to
Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) policies and programs (North Star
Accountability System; Regional Centers
of Excellence) that bear heavily on the environment in which MPS must function.
Now, in the course of these next several
weeks, I am going to be offering updates of these articles from my current
advanced draft for chapters of Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect, which will run 350-500 pages in manuscript form. Some of the articles will be offered exactly as
they will appear in the book, which proceeds in three parts (Facts, Analysis,
and Philosophy). Others will be entered
on the blog so as to combine fact and analysis, as is the case in this current article,
which gives factual information relevant to Superintendent Ed Graff’s
professional credentials and record, along with my analysis of the objective
data and information.
Readers should know that is a seminal work,
unlike any other found in the United States.
To overhaul programs and processes at the level of the locally
centralized school district wherein change must happen in a citizenry that clamors
for local control, we must understand the inner workings of one of those school
districts. Once understood, we must then
take those steps (discussed in the philosophy section of my book) necessary to
revolutionize one locally centralized school district (Minneapolis Public
Schools) for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to
our precious young people, of all demographic descriptors.
Consider now this rendering from Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future
Prospect combining fact and analysis with regard to the performance of MPS
Superintendent Ed Graff.
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………………………………………………………………..
Ed Graff has successfully trimmed staff at
the Davis Center and given brilliant Chief of Finance Ibrahima Diop the
latitude that he has needed to clean up budgetary and financial matters at the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
But as a leader of
academics, Graff is a failure. His contract
is now up for renewal; a new contract
should not be offered..
Ed Graff is not an academician. His training is of the weakest sort; he holds no degree in a key university
academic discipline:
Professional Credentials of Minneapolis
Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff
Degrees Earned Institution
at Which Degree Was Earned
M. A., Education Administration University of
Southern Mississippi
B. A., Elementary Education University
of Alaska, Anchorage
Thus, as an undergradtuate Graff trained in
the weakest field at any college or university campus: elementary education. One cannot fault him for pursuing a major
leading to certification necessary to become an elementary school teacher,
among those occupations with utmost power to transform the lives of young
people. But teaching training programs
are abysmal, leaving prospective teachers knowledge-deficient. Graff sought no additional undergraduate major
in a specific academic discipline and as a graduate student pursued another
degree for professional certification, not for acquisition of academic
knowledge. Nothing in Graff’s training,
public comments, or expressed concerns give any evidence of a person who is
alive in the world of subject area knowledge.
Graff has now served
as MPS superintendent for two years and seven months. He Inherited a Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 that was a mere exercise in
goal-setting with no chance of succeeding and was based on ill-conceived
philosophical principles: Most
especially, the plan identified the school as the unit of change; to the contrary, the unit of change must be
the district as a whole, with consistent overhaul transpiring in the central
office at the Davis Center (1250 West Broadway) and then throughout the schools
of the district.
Graff and staff are
working on a new strategic plan. In the
meantime, the Graff program has focused on four goals: social and emotional learning; multi-tiered system (MTSS) of support; literacy;
and equity.
Social and emotional
learning focuses on respect for oneself and others as necessary preparation for
receiving academic instruction; this
should be a given but in itself cannot be the basis for a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete academic program.
Multi-tiered system
of support putatively gives individual students the array of services,
including counseling and targeted academic intervention, that they need to be
successful; were MTSS to work the way
that the approach should, great benefit would accrue, but there have been major
problems in implementation.
Literacy should be a
given; but subject area focus should
drive improvement in reading, so that students acquire a broad vocabulary and
depth of reading comprehension across a range of academic disciplines.
Equity is a goal that
will only be reached by the provision of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
education to students of all demographic descriptors; this is not happening.
During the Graff
administration, student academic achievement levels have been mostly flat but
in certain areas for particular demographic groups have actually fallen. The number of African American students
proficient in mathematics has fallen from 19% to 17%; the American Indian student mathematics
proficiency rate also has fallen from 19% to 17%, the mathematics proficiency
rate for students on free or reduced price lunch has dropped from 25% to 22%,
and overall mathematics proficiency has declined from 44% of to 42% during the
Graff years.
Reading proficiency
has risen from an overall rate of 43% to 45% during the Graff years, a slight
improvement similarly witnessed for most demographic groups. But for African American students, reading
proficiency was flat at 21% and is still under 30% for American Indian and
Hispanic students, and for students on free or reduced price lunch.
Proficiency in
science also remains abysmal, just 34% overall with declines from 13% to 10%,
21% to 17%, 42% to 34%, and 17% to 15% respectively for African American
students, Hispanic students, Asian students, and recipients of free or reduced
priced lunch.
These figures are
very similar to those describing student performance when Ed Graff was
superintendent of schools in Anchorage, Alaska;
very tellingly, Graff received an award from the Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) during the years encompassing
that tenure of wretched student academic attainment.
Consider these
results from 2014-2015, the middle of three academic years when Graff was
superintendent of the schools in Anchorage, Alaska:
Results for Academic Year 2014-2015 for
Students in the Anchorage, Alaska, Schools
All Grade Levels
Language Arts
Does Not
Partially Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets
Standard
Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 35.1% 42.1% 20.5% 2.3%
American
White/ 13.3% 33.7% 44.3% 8.5%
Caucasian
Hispanic 28.3%
42.3% 26.9%
2.5%
Alaska 42.4% 37.5% 18.1% 1.9%
Native
American/
American
Indian
All Grade Levels
Mathematics
Does Not
Partially Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets
Standard
Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 29.5% 51.3.% 16.9% 2.3%
American
White/ 12.9% 39.7% 36.5%
10.9%
Caucasian
Hispanic 23.4%
50.9% 21.8% 3.9%
Alaska 29.0%
50.3% 18.2%
2.5%
Native
American/
American
Indian
All High School Mathematics Students
Does Not
Partially Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets
Standard
Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 48.6% 36.7% 13.5% 1.2%
American
White/
26.5% 35.4% 31.3% 6.8%
Caucasian
Hispanic 47.8% 35.4% 15.2% 1.6%
Alaska
46.0% 35.4% 17.5% 1.0%
Native
American/
American
Indian
Grade 10 Mathematics Students
Does Not Partially
Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets
Standard
Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 69.5% 24.7% --------- ---------
American
White/
36.9% 30.6% 25.6% 6.9%
Caucasian
Hispanic 61.3% 23.2% 14.4% 1.1%
Alaska 69.4%
24.5% --------- ---------
Native
American/
American
Indian
All
48.7% 27.9% 19.4% 3.9%
Students
Grade 10 Engllish/ Language Arts
Does Not
Partially Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets
Standard
Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 35.9% 53.3% --------- ---------
American
White/
12.5% 44.7% 39.7% 3.1%
Caucasian
Hispanic 28.6% 50.5%
--------- ---------
Alaska 47.3%
40.5% ---------
---------
Native
American/
American
Indian
All 23.9%
46.6% 27.7%
1.8%
Students
Composite Achievement Gaps (All Grade
Levels)
English/
Mathematics
Language
Arts
Student
Categories
African 30.0% 28.2%
American
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Alaska 32.8% 26.7%
Native
American/
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Asian 22.4% 12.5%
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Native 40.2% 32.5%
Hawaiian/
Other Pacific Island
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Hispanic 23.4%
21.7%
American
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Two or More 15.9%
13.7%
Ethnicities
vs.
White/ Caucasian
Ed Graff is not an academician or a
scholar.
The current superintendent has little in
the way of a philosophy of education;
what little he expresses as to philosophy has a track record of failure
in application.
Many staff members at the Davis Center have
lost faith in Superintendent Graff.
Ed Graff should be thanked for his service
in paring the central bureaucracy and creating an environment wherein the
disarray in MPS budget and finance was addressed and a structurally balanced
budget can gain attainment.
But Graff is deficient as a leader of the
academic program at the core of any locally school district’s reason for
being. He should not be rehired as
superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
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