Proceedings at the 13 August 2019 Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Board of Education meeting demonstrated the moral and intellectual corruption
of board members and featured comments from members of the public that were
wildly errant in their aims.
As to public comments, the time allotted for these ensues at 5:30,
with the silliness that passes for the main meeting for consideration of agenda
items by this inept membership following at 6:00 PM.
The meeting of 13 August was not typical.
I did lead first with public comments as usual, delivering the
essence of the message conveyed in the “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” article that
appears next as you scroll on down this blog.
I never know whether my comments will be received with deafening silence
(the case when the room is dominated by flunkies of the Minneapolis Federation
of Teachers [MFT] or others employed by the district) or fair-to-thundering applause (the case when
others are present to register complaints).
On this evening the affirmative “uh-huhs” and applause were in the
moderate to upper range: Others were
present who were poised to make their own stringently negative comments.
……………………………………………………………………………….
Public comments on 13 August,
other than my own, ensued after a nearly hour delay to wait for language
interpreters to arrive and were of three main types.
First, there was a bevy of Latina
and Somali women who stepped forward to complain about the quality of education
that their children are getting. Adeptly
organized by Adriana Cerrillo in response to a campaign for “priority
enrollment,” the remedy sought is to transfer children from low performing to
high performing schools.
My response to the comments made by the women and the remedy
sought is two-fold:
1) The successive and
numerous accounts of the racism and insensitivity experienced by their children
resonated deeply with me, underscoring my own observations over many years that
teaching and administrative staff in preK-12 education generally and at the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) specifically is not up the task academically,
pedagogically, or attitudinally.
2)
The remedy sought is understandable but wrong:
Parents understandably seek enrollment
for their poorly served students in schools that seem to offer better learning
environments.
But the premise that there are
high-performing schools to be found within MPS is errant:
There are schools with affluent
student populations who score acceptably on ACT exams of college readiness and
on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) when in the latter case they
are not irresponsibly opting out. But
any graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools walks across the stage to claim
a piece of paper that is a diploma in name only, so ill-educated are they in
literature, history, political science, economics, world languages and, by the standards
of the best education systems in the world (Taiwan, Singapore, Finland),
mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.
Furthermore, the putatively “high-performing” schools of Southwest
Minneapolis and the suburban schools of Twin Cities Metro do little better than
“low-performing” schools in educating historically abused students and those on
free and reduced price lunch.
Hence, the approach that should
logically and morally be followed by all activists is to exert maximum pressure
on staff at all MPS schools to provide knowledge-intensive education to
students of all demographic descriptors.
There is much psychologically, socially, and culturally to recommend
neighborhood and proximate schools; we should
first define and comprehend excellent education and then insist on
implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum in every school.
The second category of public commentators
was comprised of those seeking the reinstatement of a beloved lacrosse
coach. This coach does seem to have been
first-rate in his athletic instruction and in his mentorship of young men. But these commentators share much in common
with those who come to school board meetings only when some particularistic
interest arises (cops in the schools, racist elements to reading curriculum),
only to fade away and never to be heard from again. By definition, this means that such
commentators care little about the pressing needs of all students in the
Minneapolis Public Schools, with grave inattention to the academic program that
constitutes the reason that public schools exist.
The final category was comprised of
commentators seeking to install a trades program at North High School or
somewhere on the Northside. The problem
with the comments of these speakers was the way in which their pleas were
couched:
“Not all students want to or are
capable of going to college [by implication, meaning a four-year college].”
“My child has always been a hands-on
learner; she does not do well sitting at
a desk for hours.”
“I went into the trades and I earn
more than many people now heavily in debt after attendance at a [four-year]
college.”
My response to this line of reasoning
is to refer to the preK-12 curriculum design that I first published in my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota. This curriculum overhauls
current curricula, beginning with the preK-5 elementary level then progressing
from that level logically through middle school (grades 6-8) and high school
(grades 9-12). This curriculum is
included in my book, Understanding the
Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect. My
observation is that in the course of thirteen (K-12) or fourteen (preK-12)
years of schooling, students should possess mastery of the liberal and technological
arts across a multiplicity of subject areas, with abundant opportunity
especially in high school to take electives that suit their driving interests,
whether in the conventional academic liberal arts, high technology, or the
trades. But all students should receive
the broad education needed to live lives as culturally enriched, civically
engaged, professionally satisfied citizens.
People who become employed in business and the professions should have
manual skills. Those earning their
living in the trades should have abundant knowledge of history, economics,
government, mathematics, and the natural sciences.
……………………………………………………………………..
Public comments at the 12 August meeting
were delayed for nearly an hour as attendees waited for language interpreters
to enter the chamber.
Then those comments were met with
typical cluelessness by a reduced board composition (Bob Walser, Siad Ali, Ira
Jourdain never appeared; Josh Pauly came
very late; absences were due to familial
matters, attendance at funerals, and travel).
Rather than address the concerns expressed by commentators, after regular
agenda items were handled, board members acted in usual sycophantic fashion in
commending the splendid teachers and administrators who have so ill-served MPS
students; and then, particularly in the
cases of Kim Caprini and Kerryjo Felder, gave treacly testimonies to how much
down time and reflective moments they needed and took over the summer, given
the pressures that had mounted in their personal lives.
I kid you not.
I almost departed at this point.
But I typically endure all of these
sad affairs so as to be privy to all occurrences.
The occurrences at the meeting of 13
August 2019 are going to cause even greater disturbances in the skies
threatening the irresponsible actors at the Minneapolis Public Schools:
An even harder rain’s gonna fall.
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