Clarity as to the Impossibility of Achieving Academic Excellence with Current MPS Board of Education Members and the Program of Superintendent Ed Graff

When members of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education voted 8-0 (KerryJo Felder was not in attendance) on Tuesday, 12 March, to extend a new contract to Superintendent Ed Graff and expressed their reasons for trusting his academic leadership, the current condition of the school district reached clarity:

 

There are no prospects for achieving academic excellence under this superintendent and even less with this composition of the MPS Board of Education. 

 

There is not enough substance to the four-point program focused on social and emotional learning, multi-tiered system of support, literacy, and equity;  or the MPS Comprehensive Design;  to promote hopes that a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education can be imparted to students under this superintendent or this board.

 

The board is even worse than the superintendent as to matters of academic import.  There is no agreed upon driving philosophy expressed by the board, and what can be gleaned from member comments is dauntingly negative.  There is an anti-assessment slant to the views of the board;  Bob Walser has been silent of late but for many weeks was the chief opponent of assessments, among which at the Minneapolis Public Schools are the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and the National Assessment of Academic Progress;  now Ira Jourdain has suddenly surged to the fore with anti-assessment comments.  But no one on the board seems interested in academic assessments or the close questions of highly adept research and evaluation chief Eric Moore, as was Tracine Asberry during her tenure on the MPS Board of Education.  Nor does this board seem very interested when I cite the many examples of wretched teaching and classroom situations:  an English teacher at North High School who assigned the Autobiography of Malcom X but seemed to know nothing about the life of the great leader herself;  a geometry class at the same school that was so out of control that students were learning nothing about the subject;  a free day for watching movies given to all students on Friday, 8 March, at Franklin Middle School, wherein a social studies teacher had in a major erroneous comment placed Mayan civilization near the Amazon River.

 

If there is any hope at all that the Minneapolis Public Schools can achieve academic excellence during the tenure of superintendent Ed Graff, this would come with the hiring of a permanent chief of academics.  Graff himself is an academic lightweight, devoid of training in a major academic field and lacking any clearly expressed educational philosophy.  The forte of Eric Moore is research and evaluation, not leadership of the academic program.  Graff is now stating that Moore’s status as academic chief is temporary, but this is dissembling:  Back in August 2018, Moore’s salary was $149,900 as research and evaluation chief;  when he was elevated to what was then stated as chief of academics (without any reference to the position being for an interim), his salary went to $162,690, a $12,790 increase.

 

In the anti-assessment atmosphere that currently pervades the MPS Board of Education, Moore is likely to seek a positon in another district in the course of the next weeks or months.  The slim hope of retaining Moore would be for Graff to hire a permanent academic chief who can convey to members of the MPS Board of Education the importance of assessing student academic achievement, especially in reading and mathematics, and then prevail upon Jourdain and others the need to support student assessment.  There would then be the matter of that $12,790 increase, but in fact Moore is worth that salary if the splendid work that he and his staff in the Department of Research, Evaluation, and Assessment (REA) is beneficially utilized by the district.

 

Beyond assessment for basic skills, though, a new chief of academics would need to promote knowledge-intensive education, such as that promoted by the Core Knowledge Foundation for students at K-8, and that I extend to high school and college students via my Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  This would require another major successful philosophical conveyance to the MPS Board of Education.

 

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Ed Graff is not likely to seek or hire an academic chief who promotes knowledge-intensive education.

 

The members of this MPS Board of Education is not likely to be receptive to the substantive education promoted by E. D. Hirsch at the Core Knowledge Foundation, and that I provide to my students via Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.

 

In these cases we need a new superintendent and a new school board.

 

And if these be the cases, I’ll be building the mass movement necessary to oust Graff and elect new school board members in November 2020, moving from that vantage point to the complete overhaul of the board and academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools.