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 chances that
Graff or the current board could have in role to play in the development and
impartation of the necessary program for achieving academic excellence became
nil:
There are no prospects for achieving academic
excellence under the academic leadership of this superintendent and even less
with this composition of the MPS Board of Education.
The program that will be developed and
implemented within the next twelve months at the Minneapolis Public Schools is
the following:
1 >>>>>
Curriculum will be overhauled, along the lines that I have presented in
many articles on this blog. At the K-5 level, knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum will be developed with reference to the Core Knowledge
program of E. D. Hirsch, my own innovations upon that curriculum, Common
Core, and the Minnesota state standards for mathematics, reading, and all major
subject areas. At grades 6-8, students will be presented with
knowledge-intensive curriculum, across the major subject areas, that in rigor
exceeds current course offerings in MPS high schools. At grades 9-12, all
but a few students who face unusual learning challenges will take a full slate
of required Advanced Placement (AP) courses; specialized elective courses
across the liberal, technological, and vocational arts; and courses that
match driving student interest and plans for the future in post-secondary
institutions and careers.
2 >>>>>
Teachers will be retrained to be possessors of knowledge-intensive
information sets across the liberal, technological, and
vocational arts. Teachers at the K-5 level will emerge with rigorous
Masters of Fine Arts degrees; those at grades 6-8 and 9-12 will be given
financial support to pursue pertinent master’s degrees in legitimate academic
disciplines. No degrees received from departments, schools, or colleges
of education will be recognized.
3 >>>>>
Academic remediation and enrichment will be provided with great
intentionality to meet student needs in developing grade level competency and
preparing to meet the challenges of a curriculum of enhanced
knowledge-intensive rigor.
4 >>>>>
Firm connections to struggling families will be provided by creating a
large MPS Department of Resource Provision and Referral comprised of
people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students and families
living at the urban core.
5 >>>>>
Reduction and rationalization of the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250
West Broadway) bureaucracy will continue, so as to maximize emphasis on
serving students and training teachers.
Current MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and the
abiding iteration of the MPS Board of Education are respectively tangential and
irrelevant to the delivery of the above program. Graff does not have the
academic training and wherewithal to design and implement the program, so that
any chance that he has of continuing as superintendent will result from his
hiring of a Chief Academic Officer with understanding of and ability to
implement Core Knowledge, Common Core, and knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
curriculum. Graff will have to hire such an academic officer and the
current board will have to accede to the hiring; or both Graff and the
board must be jettisoned.
Such jettisoning will be achieved via the K-12
Revolution that will sweep through the halls of the Davis Center and throughout
MPS schools. I will present my Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect by 15 April
2019. I will then embark on a media campaign that will bring wide
awareness of the debased condition of the Minneapolis Public Schools. MPS
personnel will be shaken to the core and many Davis Center staff members will
depart their current positions. Enormous pressure will be brought to bear
on Graff and current board members Jenny Arneson (District 1, Northeast
Minneapolis), KerryJo Felder (District 2, North Minneapolis), Siad Ali
(District 3, Cedar-Riverside and an environs), Bob Felser (District 4, Bryn
Mawr, Lowry Hill, southern Linden Hills), Nelson Inz (District 5, South
Minneapolis east of I-35), Ira Jourdain (District 6, South Minneapolis west of
I-35), Kim Ellison (At-Large), Kim Caprini (At-Large), and Josh Pauly
(At-Large). They will either embrace the five-point program or be induced
to depart.
In addition to the presentation of my book and
my personal efforts in numerous venues, a community-wide movement rooted in
North Minneapolis and including areas throughout the city will exert much of
the needed pressure. Already, at the 12 March meeting of the MPS Board of
Education, Radical Consulting Solutions Director Adriana Cerrillo and I mounted
an offensive that brought a new contingent of community activists to the
fore. The day is looming at which first 15, then 25, then 50 and more
activists will attend the second-Tuesday meetings of the MPS Board of
Education.
There are two chief ways to wage revolution in
moving from a United Front to a more radical stage: The palace is pierced
and current occupants of the monarch’s court are persuaded to join the
revolution; or the palace is swept clean and entirely new occupants
replace the Old Guard with highly qualified members of the revolutionary force.
Current
Davis staff members and occupants of seats on the MPS Board of Education should
take note, make the rational decision, or prepare to fall as looming events
unfold.
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