The role of the associate
superintendent is superfluous and those who have occupied this position have
been ineffective.
Remember from Part One, Facts, that
the official description of the associate superintendent position is as
follows:
The associate
superintendent is responsible for creating and
modeling a culture of
high expectations and providing ongoing
support and oversight
to school building leaders. The associate
superintendent works
with school communities to create the
necessary conditions
that result in dramatic and accelerated
student achievement,
closing the achievement gap and improving
overall school
performance.
With reference to that
description, everything that is asserted about the associate superintendent role
is false. The associate superintendents
do not create a culture of high expectations.
They provide very little oversight.
Any support provided is of a protectionist nature, shielding building
principals from examination of their failures as leaders. And clearly the associate superintendents do
not work with school communities to create the necessary conditions that result
in dramatic and accelerated student achievement: No achievement gap has been closed and few
schools have improved overall performance.
More than the claims for any other
position in the Minneapolis Public Schools, those asserted for the associate
superintendent position are starkly absurd.
They do nothing that they are supposed to do; furthermore, there is deep irony in the
existence of the position at all.
The fundamental role of the
associate superintendent is to supervise site principals. The existence of the associate superintendent
position is a frank admission that principals have not been properly
trained. If school principals had been
properly trained there would be no need for associate superintendents: Building leaders would be academicians highly
adept at getting the best performances out of the teachers in their schools. But the brutal reality is that neither
teaching staffs nor the principals who are to supervise teachers are subject
area specialists with any driving commitment to the delivery of knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete education. They have all
been damaged by education professors in weak teacher training programs.
The absurdity on top of absurdity in
the scenario is that training for the associate superintendents is just as weak. Of the current five associate
superintendents, Shawn Harris-Berry has a bachelor’s degree in business
education and graduate degrees in education.
LaShawn Ray has a bachelor’s degree in the social sciences (implying
lack of any specialty in economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, or the
like), and a graduate degree in education.
Carla Steinbach-Huther has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a master’s
in education, and a lightweight degree known as “education specialist.” The kindest comment concerning those who
pursue that degree is that they realized that getting a doctorate in education
is a waste of time and money, and thereby opted for a degree that can gain
access to the same remunerative positions as does the education doctorate. Ron Wagner has only education degrees, both
undergraduate and graduate, and the just mentioned lightweight education
specialist degree. Brian Zambreno tops
out at the education specialist degree, with a master’s degree in education and
a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts, recalling the lack of specific
training implicit in the social sciences degree of LaShawn Ray.
There
is not one scholar among the associate superintendents. Not a single associate superintendent has a
even an undergraduate degree in a core academic subject (mathematics, natural
science, history, government, or English).
All have imbibed the harmful doctrine of education professors. None of the associate superintendents are
committed to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education. Each receives
$150,896 in annual salary (up from $144,330 in academic year 2018-2019), for a
total for all the associate superintendents of $754,480.
When
my investigation into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools
began in 2014, there were eight associate superintendents, plus a chief of
schools who had supervisory responsibility for the associate superintendents. That ludicrous situation meant that the chief
of schools managed an incompetent group of eight associate superintendents, who
oversaw maladroit principals, who supervised weak teaching staffs.
Elimination
of the chief of schools position and reduction in the number of associate
superintendents can be construed as an improvement during the tenure of
Superintendent Ed Graff. But the number
of associate superintendents has risen from three in academic year 2018-2019 to
five in 2019-2020. And the appointment
of Shawn Harris-Berry comes in the aftermath of her serving a disastrous term
as principal at North High, where classes were frequently out of order, learning
in those and other classes was minimal, student academic proficiency rates were
low (see the pertinent section in Part One, Facts), teacher mastery of subject
area material was flimsy, and staff turnover was high.
Ironies
abound in the existence of the position of associate superintendent.
The
position should be eliminated.
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