We must transform locally centralized
school districts such as the Minneapolis Public Schools so as to impart to our
young people a knowledge-intensive curriculum, delivered by teachers who are
themselves bearers of knowledge.
To do that, citizens, including those who
claim an interest in the public schools, must become much more discerning in
their understanding of the system that fails so many of our precious young
people.
Yesterday (Monday, 29 April) I offered to
my readers an exercise in critical analysis, providing as I did the credentials
of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff as found on his DHR
International resume submitted when he was under consideration for the position
in spring 2016.
The information that I provided was, as has
been the case in many other such exercises, strictly objective, in this case given
exactly as appearing on the DHR International resume that Graff presented when
he was a candidate for the superintendent position during spring 2016.. I then promised to be back with my own
analysis of these credentials for determining the likelihood that Graff can be
a successful superintendent during a second term that will begin on 1 July
2019. His assumption of another
three-year term (should he defy the odds and actually stay the full three-year
[academic years 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022] term of his contract,
totaling six years for a tenure that began with his first contract on 1 July
2016) comes at the behest of the members of the MPS Board of Education, who
voted 8-0 (KerryJo Felder was absent) on 14 March 2019 to offer the second
contract.
Here are the points of my focus for
understanding why Graff is a salient example of the academically mediocre
superintendent inflicted on our young people by departments, schools, and
colleges of education; and an example of
the mediocrity witnessed generally among academic decision-makers and teachers
in our locally centralized school systems.
Notice first that Graff’s
university-based degrees are as follows:
Education
University of Southern
Mississippi
Master of Education, 1997
University of Alaska (Anchorage)
Bachelor of Education in
Elementary Education, 1990
My Analysis
Graff’s undergraduate degree was
earned after completion of the weakest course of study on any college or
university campus: elementary
education. His master’s degree was an
online degree in educational administration, obtained with minimal physical
presence on the campus of a low-tier institution, the University of Southern
Mississippi. Notice that Graff opted for
this lightweight degree, from an institution of meager quality, while serving
as an administrator in the Anchorage School District. Readers should have discerned that this would
not be the move of an academically astute person seeking a degree of genuine
merit; they should have noticed that
this instead was an option exercised by the typical occupant of a position in
our locally centralized school district, who seeks not knowledge but rather
enhanced professional remuneration in ascending the bureaucratic ladder.
………………………………………………………………………
As readers examine Graff’s
resume, they will notice that he spent ten years as a teacher in the Anchorage
School District (ASD) and then sixteen years as an administrator. As an administrator, these positions included
the following:
Professional Background
Anchorage School District,
2000-2016
Superintendent, 2013-2016
Chief Academic Officer,
2009-2013
Executive Director, Elementary
Education, 2008-2009
My Analysis
Readers should notice that Graff spent five
years in positions that very directly gave him the opportunity to implement an
effective academic program; and another
three years (for a total of eight) as superintendent, whose driving goal should
be to design an organization that delivers knowledge-intensive curriculum,
imparted by knowledgeable teachers.
But now recall that after all of those
years, by the academic year ending in 2015, the achievement of students in the
Anchorage School District may be observed as follows:
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
Now recall that this is the record of
student proficiency at the Minneapolis Public Schools during the last five
academic years, which include the two years ending in 2017 and 2018, for which
Graff is responsible:
MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, & 2018
Math 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 23%
19% 19% 16%
17%
American
American 23% 19% 19% 16% 17%
Indian
Hispanic 31% 32% 31% 29% 26%
Asian
48% 50% 50% 44% 46%
White
77% 78% 78% 77% 77%
Free/
26% 26% 25% 24% 22%
Reduced
All
44% 44% 44%
42% 42%
Reading 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 22%
21% 21% 21%
21%
American
American 21% 20% 21% 22% 23%
Indian
Hispanic 23% 25% 26% 26% 27%
Asian
41% 40% 45% 38% 44%
White
78% 77% 77% 78% 80%
Free/
23% 23% 23% 25% 25%
Reduced
All
42% 42% 43%
43% 45%
Science 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 11%
15% 13% 11%
10%
American
American 14% 16% 13% 16% 13%
Indian
Hispanic 17% 18% 21% 19% 17%
Asian
31% 35% 42% 31% 34%
White
71% 75% 71% 70% 71%
Free/
14% 15% 17% 16% 15%
Reduced
All
33% 36% 35%
34% 34%
Thus, Graff has delivered results very
similar to the abominable student proficiency levels that reflect his record in
Anchorage, at the end of which the school board in that district did not renew
his contract.
………………………………………………………….
Now readers should observe these items
provided as achievements and programmatic features by Graff for his tenure as
an administrator in Anchorage:
* Expansion and integration of Social and
Emotional Learning
* Expansion of Multi-Tiered System of
Support/Response to Instruction
with differentiated student
support
* Implementation of elementary school reading
intervention curriculum (language) with
notable results
* Coalition for Educational Equity, Executive Board
Member
We have here, then,
experience in developing a program based on Social and Emotional Learning
(SEL), Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Literacy, and Equity that Graff
emphasized in Anchorage. But the claim
to have produced “notable results” is vague and in fact false, given the
wretched levels of student academic proficiency pertinent to the Graff tenure
in Anchorage.
And thus we have gotten
the abominable academic results that we should have expected in the Minneapolis
Public Schools under the leadership of Ed Graff.
…………………………………………………………………………
Concluding Comments Concerning the Likelihood That Ed Graff Can Be
an Academcially Successful Superintnendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools
Elsewhere on Graff’s
resume one finds evidence of success in bureaucratic streamlining and fiscal
management. Those are the areas in which
Graff has acted most adroitly as MPS superintendent. He has reduced staff by 44%, from
approximately 650 to 450, at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West
Broadway); and he has given brilliant
Chief Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop the scope he needed to produce a
structurally balanced budget.
But all of this will go
for naught if student academic proficiency levels continue to languish.
Graff has become an
effective manager of the school district bureaucracy as to finances, including
the elimination of the most unnecessary staff positions. He has, though, been a failure as leader of
the academic program, which is that all that ultimately matters, that which all
other administrative maneuvers must serve.
On the basis of his
record as academic leader, Ed Graff should never have been hired; once hired and given his first three-year
contract, he should not have been given another contract. But the members of the MPS Board of Education
did hire Graff and then offered him another contract.
The current situation
strongly suggests two matters of great importance for citizen attention and
activity:
1) In selecting a permanent Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning
(best slimmed to the appellation, “Chief Academic Officer”), Graff and staff
must opt for someone with scholarly credentials who can envision and implement
curricular overhaul for knowledge intensity and training of teachers able to
impart a knowledge-intensive curriculum.
2) We must organize an alternative political
power to counter the clout of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
(MFT)-Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort to elect members of the Minneapolis
Board of Education who can understand academic excellence and vote accordingly.
Look for much more on
these important matters in my book, Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools, a great bevy of information concerning
which you can already find on this blog, with more forthcoming in the days
ahead.
