This evening’s meeting of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) Board of Education will be the second of New Year 2019, the annum
in which my Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition,
Future Prospect will rock this school district to its foundations and
topple many current occupants of perches in the Davis Center (MPS central
offices, 1250 West Broadway).
Witnesses at this evening’s meeting should
be aware that, particularly if they are infrequent spectators at such
congregations, they would in the absence of reading this article be only dimly
aware of what is transpiring.
Such meetings are exercises in pretension
and prevarication. The only question is
whether the key participants are clueless or deceitful. Mostly likely, their psychic framework is
composed of a mix of ignorance, denial, and dishonesty.
Here is the reality behind the façade of
what attendees will be viewing:
The Ed Graff Administration and Current
Dilemmas Vexing the Minneapolis Public Schools
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent
Ed Graff sits in the middle of those assembled in view of the attendees,
surrounded by an MPS Board of Education that is even more inept than the
superintendent.
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. And 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 receivers 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.
Ed Graff’s contract is now up for
renewal; that contract should not be
renewed.
………………………………………………………………..
My investigation into the inner workings of
the Minneapolis Public Schools reveals superior performance in the Department
of Finance, headed by Chief Ibrahima Diop;
and in the Department of Information Technology led by Fadi Fadhil. The Operations Division is also ably run by
Karen Devet; and Maggie Sullivan is a
bright young woman who is struggling mightily to bring higher teacher quality
to the schools of the district.
But the academic program that should be the
core concern of any localized school district is languishing unacceptably. A few months back, brilliant research
division leader Eric Moore was given lead responsibility for the academic
program, with Cecilia Saddler as second in authority for the academic program
as Deputy for Academics, Leadership, and Learning. Working under the constraints of the inadequate
Graff program, neither of these able people has articulated a vision or
overseen initiatives capable of improving the academic program. Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly took the lead in
developing the Comprehensive District Design;
that program is too tentative and does not place proper emphasis on
knowledge intensity and skill development.
Associate Superintendents Ron Wagner, Carla Steinbach-Huther, and Brian
Zambreno erroneously and irresponsibly act so as to protect building principals
and teachers from scrutiny, rather than endeavoring to improve academic
performance; my analysis indicates that
these three do not have the philosophical grasp or the professional training to
implement a viable academic program, even if they embraced the responsibility.
Michael Walker is in his fifth year as head
of the Office of Black Male Achievement;
with 7,000 African males in the district, the office serves fewer than
500 students in what is still a pilot program.
Walker’s salary has risen from $114,000 to $128,000 during his tenure.
Anna Ross is a woefully inadequate leader
for the Department of Indian Education;
she reveals little understanding of the data that show wretched academic
performance for American Indian students and little vision as to how to improve
acquisition of key knowledge and skill sets by American Indian students.
Thus, the academic program of the
Minneapolis Public Schools is the Counter-Gestalt: rather than being more than the sum of their
parts, those collectively involved in the academic program are individually
less than they could be. Even those with
talent and promise are less effective than they could be: A system of knowledge-poor curriculum,
inadequate teachers, and misguided approach drags everyone to a lower level.
An MPS Board of Education That is Even
Worse Than the Administraton
The seven returning members of the MPS
Board of Education are District 2 Member KerryJo Felder, District 3 Member Siad
Ali, District 1 Member Jenny Arneson, District 5 Member Nelson Inz, At-Large
Member Kim Ellison, District 4 Member Bob
Walser, and District 6 Member Ira Jourdain.
Joining them as of January 2019 are At-Large
Members Kim Caprini and Josh Pauly, both elected in November 2018.
Among the immediately preceding members of
the board, only Don Samuels had never had the backing of the MFT-DFL
cohort. Now, all nine members of the MPS
Board of Education will be affiliated with the MFT-DFL lobby. This means that board members are likely to
follow the dictates of the cohort and never ask the hard questions, those that
Tracine Asberry was wont to ask, with any capacity to improve curriculum,
teacher quality, or student performance.
In addition, then, to knowing that the
current members of the board are bought and paid for by the MFT-DFL cohort,
attendees at this evening’s spectacle should understand the following:
>>>>> KerryJo Felder poses as an advocate for her
North Minneapolis constituency but is erratic in her statements, very
frequently factually errant, and philosophically vacant.
>>>>> Siad Ali poses as an amiable lover of all
people but is constrained by his MFT-DFL affiliation, is frequently
ill-prepared, and has done nothing to improve the quality of education at the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
>>>>> Jenny Arneson has mastered the details of
the functioning of the district in Gagnon-like fashion but to no better
effect; she recently made the stunning
statement that because her son gained acceptance to his first-preferred Grinnell
College this proves that MPS students are “career and college ready.”
>>>>> Nelson Inz is an MFT-DFL flunky whose reelection
as board chair conveys much about the moral integrity of the MPS Board of
Education.
>>>>> Kim Ellison is similarly an MFT-DFL party
hack; her comments are mercifully few.
>>>>> Bob Walser is another MF‑DFL sycophant and
the stoutest defender of an education professor creed dating to William
Kilpatrick’s 1918 The Project Method and
Harold Rugg’s 1926 The Child-Centered
School.
>>>>> Ira Jourdain replaced Tracine Asberry at the
behest of MFT-DFL toadies Inz, Ellison, and (especially) Gagnon; the only Native American on the board and an
amiable guy by personality, Jourdain is nevertheless deeply corrupted by his
ties to the MFT-DFL cohort and his membership on the board will always be
lamentable, given that he sits in the seat formerly occupied by the
courageously incisive Tracine Asberry.
>>>>> Josh Pauly gives appearance as a nice young
man. He taught for a few years at
Sanford Middle School and is now vocationally involved with community
service. He would never have garnered
more votes than long-time community activist Sharon El-Amin without MFT-DFL
backing and will thus likely do the latter’s bidding, along with at least seven
other members of the board.
>>>>> Kim Caprini is the lone hope on the present
board. She, too, was backed by the
MFT-DFL, but her longtime activism as a parent and community member may give
her an independence that other members of the board do not have. She is a slim reed upon which to hang hopes,
but slim reeds must instill a modicum of hope when hope elsewhere is absent.
………………………………………………………………………….
Hence, attendees at this evening’s meeting
of the MPS Board of Education should strive to understand these comments in
attempting to peer behind the façade and gain insight into the reality of what
they are witnessing. MPS Superintendent
Ed Graff has administrative and fiscal acuity but is an academic mediocrity who
cannot design a program of academic excellence for the students of the
district. The associate superintendents
will be sitting in the audience; they
are even more inept than Graff. Other
chiefs of the major departments and divisions of the district, who sit lining
the wall on either side of the assembly room, are individually talented in
their functions in finance, technology, operations, human resources, research,
and operations, but they earn salaries in excess of $150,000 and as members of
Graff’s cabinet are not likely to speak to the superintendent from an
oppositional stance.
If the Minneapolis Public Schools as a
district is to become the conduit for the delivery of a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete education of excellence, pressure must be exerted by committed
members of the community, who must be able to understand the reality behind the
façade. The program for excellence will
only follow upon advocacy by well-educated and systemically knowledgeable
members of the community.
Neither the Ed Graff administration nor the
even worse MPS Board of Education has the wherewithal to envision and implement
an academic program of excellence. An academic
program of excellence will only be designed and implemented by community
members who take the time to understand the reality behind the façade and then
act, with knowledge and a vision for excellence that current MPS decision-makers
do not have.
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