Importance of the January, February, and March Editions of >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> The Burgeoning Mass Movement That will Topple the Current School Board and Induce the Hiring of a Scholar as Leader of Academics at the Minneapolis Public Schools

After Michelle Rhee concluded her stormy, well-publicized four-year (2007-2010) tenure as chancellor of the Washington, D. C., Public Schools, she launched a nation-wide effort to build an organization, StudentsFirst, that would counter the power of teachers unions.  The initiative was accompanied by many public appearances and media events, and a book that she penned, Radical:  Fighting to Put Students First.  The fundamental idea of creating an organization equally as politically powerful as the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT);  and state teachers unions (such as Minnesota’s own Education Minnesota);  was very sound.  But Rhee, whose own teaching (three years) and administrative (four years) experience was slim, made the mistake of focusing her efforts at the national and (especially) state level of governance. 

 

In the United States, any transformation in K-12 education will come not at the national or state levels, but rather at the level of the locally centralized school district.  This is a nation of citizens with a fixation on local control, so local control it must be:  When one locally centralized school system becomes a model for the impartation of knowledge-intensive education, understanding of the power of such an education will spread:  The multiple similarities that now describe our urban school systems for the worse would then become descriptive multiple similarities for the better.

 

Thus we must adapt Rhee’s idea of an organization to counter the political influence of teachers unions for application at the local level.  In Minneapolis, this will mean countering the force of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), beginning in the races for the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education of November 2020, at which time Kim Ellison (At-Large), KerryJo Felder (District 2), Ira Jourdain (District 6), and Bob Walser (District 4) will be up for reelection.

 

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The 18 blog entries immediately succeeding this one are drawn from the January, February, and March editions of the academic journal that I write and distribute to supporters of the New Salem Educational Initiative.  This is the fifth year in the life of the journal, which I began at the same time that I launched my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, 6:00 PM, Wednesdays, Minneapolis Telecommunications Network [MTN] Channel 17) and ramped up my investigation of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The investigation will by 1 May in this very year of 2019 produce Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  One can see much evidence of material that will be included in this weighty tome in the articles immediately appearing below and in many places on this blog. 

 

 

The noted three editions of the journal put a harsh spotlight on Associate Superintendents Carla Steinbach-Huther, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno;  and on MPS Superintendent Ed Graff.  Most importantly, in these editions I take the school board to task for voting 8-0 (KerryJo Felder was not in attendance, so that just the eight votes were cast) on 12 March 2019 to extend a new contract to Graff, possessed as he is of those deficiencies that I detail in the articles appearing in the February and March editions.  Graff has made admirable decisions and put his trust in the right people as to finances, operations, and paring of the central office bureaucracy;  he has not, however, articulated and implemented a program to improve student academic proficiency rates.  Those rates have been generally flat and for some demographic categories have actually declined.  Graff is an academic lightweight whose lack of a compelling educational philosophy eliminates him as a decision-maker on matters of academics.

 

Now that this morally and intellectually corrupt, incompetent school board has voted to retain such an academic nonentity as superintendent, the hiring of a chief academic officer capable of overhauling curriculum for knowledge intensity in grade by grade sequence is imperative.

 

Community backing for such a hire must be exerted in support of those at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) who know that hiring such a chief academic officer is necessary and that the time is now.

 

That is why the mass movement now in cultivation via the efforts of Adriana Cerrillo (Radical Consulting Solutions) and me will become decisive.

 

Please now proceed to the articles of the January, February, and March editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota for an understanding of how the failures of the associate superintendents and the board’s irresponsible vote on 12 March to retain an academically failed superintendent have catalyzed an exciting community movement for the provision of knowledge-intensive education to our precious young people of all demographic descriptors.