A New Phase of the K-12 Revolution Began with Community Responses to the Intellectual and Moral Corruption Exhibited by Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Last Evening (Tuesday, 12 March)

As expected, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education voted last evening (Tuesday, 12 March) to extend a new contract to Superintendent Ed Graff.  This incompetent group of board members voted 8-0 in favor of a new contract.  District #2 Member KerryJo Felder, who has had a contentious relationship with Graff and possibly might have voted not to offer him a new contract, was not in attendance:  She was dealing with the after-effects of a fire in her home.  

 

But new At-large Members Josh Pauly and Kim Caprini conveyed during electoral campaign November 2018 that they would vote to retain Graff.  At the meeting, Caprini made her case for Graff, saying (while seeming tacitly to admit that MPS faces many unmet challenges) that the Graff administration has the district in the best position for moving forward that she has seen during her years as a parent and site committee member.  Pauly, in the taciturn fashion that has described his comments thus far, essentially reiterated what Caprini and others speaking in this vein had said by the time he spoke.

 

District #1 Member Jenny Arneson said that Graff had identified his four goals (social and emotional learning, multi-tiered system of support, literacy, and equity) and worked suitably toward meeting them.

 

District #3 Member Siad Ali noted that he had cast one of the votes for Graff’s opponent (Brenda Cassellius) at the end of the second-phase superintendent search but had been happy with his work.

 

District # 5 Member Nelson Inz conveyed that in his view the district is in much better shape, financially and in general, than was the case upon Graff’s arrival.

 

District #6 Member Ira Jourdain maintained that Graff’s focus on social and emotional learning rather than standardized tests is the most favorable feature of this superintendent moving him to vote for a new contract (see my comment on this Jourdain utterance at the end of this article).

 

Neither District #4 Member Bob Walser nor At-Large Member Kim Ellison commented.

 

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Be reminded that these irresponsible votes constitute tawdry Act II following Act !, which brought Graff to the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The superintendent search that ran from spring 2015 to spring 2016 was an abysmally botched process.  During the first phase, the board failed to recognize the best candidate, Houston Independent School District turn-around specialist Charles Faust;  then acted in ways that shut down that phase altogether.  During the second phase, the board only considered two finalists and opted for Graff.

 

Remember also that during Graff’s two years and seven months at the Minneapolis Public Schools, 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.

 

And remember that Graff was a failure in Anchorage, Alaska, where as the end of his three-year tenure in that district approached the school board opted not to renew his contract.  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.

 

Remember, too, that the Graff program lauded by the members of the MPS Board of Education in voting to offer Graff a new contract has no hope of improving academic results in the Minneapolis Public Schools:

 

The Graff program has focused on four goals cited by Arneson and either explicitly or tacitly mentioned by others:  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.

 

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I and three others spoke against giving Graff a new contract during Public Comments at last evening’s meeting.  At least ten people were in attendance to support those speaking against extending that contract to Graff.  The rhythm of the meeting was favorably disrupted;  without these opponents, the meeting most likely would have turned into an exercise in false adoration and celebration.

 

MPS Board of Education Chair Nelson Inz and Vice-Chair Kim Caprini interrupted the comments of those arguing against contract extension, asserting that matters pertaining to MPS employees were off-limits for Public Comment.  The interruptions were absurd, typically since I and other commenters were citing facts that are in the public record.  The notion that factual reasons in the Graff record for denying him a contract were pronounced off-limits demonstrates the deep moral corruption of a controlling board that seeks to maintain a woeful status quo, to the political benefit of members who to a person are bought and paid for by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party.

 

I and most of the others went forward with our comments anyway, to the clear chagrin of Inz and Caprini.

 

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The meeting of 12 March signaled a new phase of the K-12 Revolution, for two main reasons: 

 

First, opponents of the Graff contract who gathered on that evening did so intentionally and will do so again, with much heftier numbers, as community organizing becomes a much larger component of the K-12 Revolution.

 

One of many facets of community organization will be mobilization for the November 2020 elections when the seats of KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser, Ira Jourdain, and Kim Ellison will be up for voter decisions.  I intend to organize vigorously for the defeat of all of these current members. 

 

Jourdain has emerged as a particularly objectionable board member for his opposition to standardized testing, which goes so far as to urge parents and students to be aware of the opt-out possibility with regard to the looming (spring 2019) Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) that grade 3-8 students take to determine mathematics and reading proficiency;  grade 10 students take to determine reading proficiency;  and grade 11 students take to determine mathematics proficiency.  Promotion of opting out of these important assessments is irresponsibility of high magnitude.   

 

Second, I am already entering on my blog large portions of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect and will very soon this spring move the book to publication.  Concurrently, I continue to work toward completion of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, which in fifteen chapters provides the knowledge-intensive education that is lacking in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

I will be using these enormous, fact-filled tomes to exert maximum pressure on MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and the school board that voted with such intellectual and moral corruption to renew the contract of an administrator who has now failed miserably in two school districts.