There Comes a Time When Abused People Will Be Abused No More: Superintendent Ed Graff and Members of the MPS Board of Education Must Understand That Their Days of Failing the Young People of Minneapolis Are Over

There comes a time when abused people will be abused no more.

 

Superintendent Ed Graff and members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education must understand that their days of failing the young people who constitute their sacred trust are over.

 

They must face their day of reckoning and transform themselves into public servants or depart.  

 

Recall that the following tabular presentation is the record of academic proficiency for students of African American, American Indian, and Latino/Latina ethnicity, and for those students on free or reduced price lunch, for the last five consecutive academic years ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as measured by performance on Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments:

  

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018

 

African                  23%       19%         19%      16%       17%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       16%        17%

Indian

 

Latino/Latina      31%         32%          31%       29%        26%

 

Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%

Reduced

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018

 

African                 22%       21%         21%      21%       21%

American

 

American             21%        20%           21%       22%        23%

Indian

 

Latino/Latina      23%         25%          26%       26%        27%

 

Free/                     23%         23%          23%       25%        25%

Reduced

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018

 

African                 11%       15%         13%      11%       10%

American

 

American             14%        16%           13%       16%        13%

Indian

 

Latino/Latina      17%         18%          21%       19%        17%

 

Free/                     14%         15%          17%       16%        15%

Reduced

 

Note that academic performance has been essentially flat but in certain key categories has actually gotten worse during the years of Ed Graff’s tenure as superintendent, which began on 1 July 2016 and thus includes those years ending in 2017 and 2018.

 

Graff’s supercilious continuance as superintendent, at the behest of a board that voted 8-0 to retain him despite such a record, manifests woeful disregard for those students who have waited a long time for the excellence of education that is their birthright.

 

I have detailed in many places on this blog the vacuity of the Graff program emphasizing the programmatic areas of social and emotional learning, multi-tiered system of support, literacy, and equity, which are variously inadequate or unimplemented.

 

Rather than spouting these features in highly generalized terms as repeated mantras, Graff, staff, and board must implement the program that will actually bring excellence of education to students of all demographic descriptors:

 

1)  Curriculum must be overhauled for knowledge-intensity, imparted in coherent grade by grade sequence throughout the preK-12 years.

 

2)  Teachers must be retrained so as to be those bearers of knowledge capable of imparting such a curriculum.

 

3)  Daily enrichment opportunities must be offered to all students at the K-5 level, so that those languishing below grade level proficiency may acquire requisite skills;  and others may explore subjects of driving interest.  

 

4)  A Department of Resource Provision and Referral must be created and filled with staff comfortable on the streets and in homes engaging struggling families right where they live.

 

5)  Reduction of the central office (Davis Center, 1250 West Broadway) bureaucracy must continue and resources directed to the four areas given immediately above.

 

Curriculum at the Minneapolis Public Schools must deliver knowledge and skill sets that enable students of all demographic descriptors to go forth to lead lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.  This means the delivery of a common curriculum that conveys information about, and demonstrates sincere respect for, the cultures of all students of the district.  Teachers should be made to believe as innermost conviction that students of all demographic descriptors are exceedingly capable.  We must create those departments within the district that reach out to struggling families of all economic levels and skill in English, staffed by those who are capable of communicating with people with empathy and linguistic skill.  

 

There comes a time when abused people will be abused no more: 

 

Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff and members of the MPS Board of Education must understand that their days of failing the young people of Minneapolis are over.

 

They must internalize the above message in the off-chance that they have such ability.

 

Or they must descend from their currently held positions, admitting their stark failures, understanding that their day of reckoning has come and that those communities who have been brutalized by history and current circumstance have organized and are poised to sweep away those who have done the brutalizing and replace them with those who understand the responsibility of public service.