Article #3
Mass Movement Will Ensue as Awareness Builds
that the
Current MPS School Board of Education Must Be
Ousted
and an Authoritative Chief Academic Officer
Hired
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.
……………………………………………………………………….
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.
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