The meeting had scant public
awareness:
This meeting has not loomed large on the
calendar of the MPS Board of Education.
Preparations for the meeting were, though, thorough enough that the
services of Paula Forbes were secured to lead the meeting. Forbes has been an associate at Rider Bennett Law Firm and
launched the office of the General Counsel at the Minneapolis Public Schools
during the 1990s; she now has her own
consulting firm that touts her expertise in education law and employee
relations.
Ms. Forbes
apparently learned little during her tenure with the Minneapolis Public Schools
that she was willing to share candidly with Graff and members of the
board. She began the 6 April meeting,
which ran from 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon, by having Graff and the board members
play with Play Doh.
I kid you not.
The members of the MPS Board of Education
and their $230,000 salaried leader were playing with Play Doh at approximately 8:30
AM on Saturday, 6 April.
Ms. Forbes had Graff, board members, and board
administrator Ryan Strack enthusiastically assembling Play Doh vehicles in
teams of three, with the mandate to create vehicular objects that once propelled
would travel at least 10 feet unaided.
But, oh, surprise, surprise, at the midpoint Forbes notified that an additional
requirement must be considered: The
various colors of the pieces used in construction came with different price
tags and the whole enterprise could not exceed $200 in cost. Oh, and then, my goodness, how astonishing, there
came another bulletin in the last few minutes of the exercise (are you getting
that this activity was purportedly demonstrating ability to respond to change,
inducing examination of feelings regarding same?) Forbes notified the group that participants must
completely switch goals, from vehicle construction to tower building: the group that constructed the highest tower
would now be considered the winner.
After Forbes did conduct a more serious
segment of the meeting, summarizing statute law in Minnesota pertinent to
education, she put the group through another silly activity in which Graff,
Strack, and board members were to stick notes on a wall that recalled changes
in federal, state, and local education policy.
Forbes tapped into a preferred activity of these board members: They love to stick notes on walls.
Most of this meeting was reminiscent of courses
that I had to endure to get a teaching license;
this was particularly true of the Play Doh spectacle, which recalled an
exercise that a great friend of mine in Texas and I still recall: One of those low-life campus presences known
as education professors in one class session prevailed upon us to get in touch
with our emotions by urging us to--- I
kid you not---
“Feel the air--- shape it into little balls.”
“Feel the air--- shape it into little balls.”
But then Superintendent Ed Graff is
entirely comfortable with such nonsense:
All of his professional training has come
with a focus on courses in education.
Graff’s highest degree is an online, insubstantial degree in education
administration that he received while working for the public schools in
Anchorage. Graff is an academic
lightweight, with whom these equally intellectually and morally deficient members
of the board are entirely comfortable.
………………………………………………………………………
Recall that the district of the Minneapolis
Public Schools features student mathematics and reading proficiency rates at
less than 45 percent, with only 17 percent of African American and Native
students demonstrating proficiency in mathematics. North High School students average a score of
15 on the ACT, while those at Henry score nearer the district average of 16 (still
just indicative of middle school skill level, which means that many students in
the public schools of Minneapolis [including a bevy of those who do graduate]
have elementary school skill levels).
Salient examples of the low level of MPS education abound:
Franklin Middle School students were given
a whole Friday off in the aftermath of cold-weather cancellations to watch
videos unrelated to courses; many
classes at North High School are so out of control that teachers have given up
teaching, even if they are among the few fully competent to render instruction
in their purported fields in the first place;
the preferred pedagogical technique of many teachers is to pass out “packets”
(the word gives me cold shivers) with questions for students to answer as the main means of
instruction, absent follow-up teacher comment and class instruction.
…………………………………………………………………….
How is attention to “Social and Emotional
Learning” going to address the horror of an academic program so devoid of rigor
and teacher competence?
How did we get to a point at which “Literacy”
becomes a key goal rather than a very basic aim of instruction in a preK-12
system of education?
When will “Multi-Tiered System of Support”
(MTSS) actually be implemented, two years and seven months into the Graff administration,
to respond to the social and academic challenges faced by so many students?
And wherein can the fourth point emphasized
in the Graff program, “Equity,” be honestly discussed in the absence of a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum imparted in careful grade by grade sequence to
students of all demographic descriptors?
Understand and ponder the fact that instead
of embracing genuine adulthood by discussing the vexing issues of the Minneapolis
Public Schools, Graff, Strack, and board members engaged in the described
vacuous activities.
Know then that Graff must hire a chief academic
officer for the permanent position now open who has the academic heft that he
does not.
And know that we must elect new members to
replace KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser, Kim Ellison, and Ira Jourdain--- all of whom will be up for reelection in November
2020.
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