Article #8 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> District #3 Member Siad Ali >>>>> Hail Fellow, Well Met Needs to Develop Diligence and Philosophy While Stiffening His Spine

Siad Ali represents Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education District #3.  Ali is originally from Somalia, studied in India (where he obtained a master’s degree in business), and speaks Hindi, as well as Somali and English, at a high level of fluency.  Ali gained election to the board in 2014 and was reelected without opposition in 2018.  In his successful run, Ali replaced fellow Somali Mohamud Noor, who had gained controversial appointment when the previous District #3 representative died in office.  District #3 is centered on the Cedar-Riverside area wherein a large Somali population resides.  The district will for the foreseeable future most likely be represented by a member of the Somali community, with much discussion therein as to who will run for the position.

 

As is the case with all members of the current iteration of the MPS Board of Education, Ali has firm ties to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/Democrat-Farmer-Labor cohort that determines most elections to school boards in Minnesota.   Ali is in fact employed by the DFL and has worked for Amy Klobuchar.  He gives no evidence as yet of finding fault with either group in the cohort.  Like so many, he appreciates the greater propensity of DFL politicians to provide generous funding for education, by comparison with Republicans, and to assume that more funding in the absence of  meaningful change is a good thing.  He does not understand or does not want to think about the deleterious effect that DFL administrations (e. g., Mark Dayton with his Minnesota Department of Education [MDE] Commissioner Brenda Cassellius;  Tim Walz with his MDE Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker) have on enforcement of state academic standards and objective measurement via the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).

 

Thus, Siad Ali bears the same taint of political corruption that is true of all members of this board.  And he gives no indication of having any more knowledge of the history and philosophy of education in the United States than do the others.  But he is an amicable, proverbial “Hail Fellow, Well Met” who professes love for everybody and seems to mean it.  He does not do his homework very well to apprise himself of policy details, but neither does he make clearly lamentable judgements.  In support of the work of Ed Graff  and especially Chief of Finance Ibrahima Diop, Ali voted with the minority to uphold the budget as presented in spring 2018, losing in the 5-4 vote to the contingent led by Rebecca Gagnon to restore $6.4 million that upon budget trimming had engendered opposition by affluent parents whose students’ high schools had been affected.

 

Although he has as yet to take meaningful action, Ali listens more empathetically than do most other board members to Public Commentators  such as the Hispanic parents who have appealed for “priority enrollment” giving their children the option of attending schools perceived as “higher performing.”  He also listens to my Public Comments and is the only member of the MPS Board of Education who still approaches me personally (and only one of three whose approach I would welcome).  But in private conversation, Ali is a terrible listener who, despite understanding the main thrust of my advocacy for a knowledge-intensive curriculum and the paramount importance of academics, cannot get far enough beyond the MFT/DFL party line to digest cognitively my comments.

 

Like Ira Jourdain, Siad Ali has faint potential to become a better board member.

 

But Ali must do more homework, read tracts on the history and philosophy of education in the United States, stiffen his spine, and lend a more careful ear in assessing words of dissent and advocacy.  Should he do these things, Ali has a slight chance for becoming a more thoughtful and independent voice on the MPS Board of Education;  that slight chance is more than can be assigned to Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Jenny Arneson, Kim Caprini,  and KerryJo Felder.

 

Article #7 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> District #6 Member Ira Jourdain >>>>> Error-Prone, Philosophically Bereft, Politically Tainted, But Seemingly Well-Meaning

Article #7 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>>  District #6 Member Ira Jourdain  >>>>>  Error-Prone, Philosophically Bereft, Politically Tainted, But Seemingly Well-Meaning

 

Ira Jourdain was suspect from the beginning of his tenure on the Minneapolis Public Schools(MPS)  Board of Education for running against Tracine Asberry in November 2016.  Asberry was the best participant that I have witnessed on this or any other school board.  She did not have a clearly expressed dedication to the knowledge-intensive preK-12 education that I advocate, but she did manifestly care about fundamental skills in mathematics and reading.  Whenever Chief of Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore would deliver the latest round of bad news regarding  MPS student academic performance, Asberry would ask detailed questions pertinent  to plans for improvement.  When Moore or others would offer double talk or pleasing promises, Asberry would ask why we inevitably get the same vows for future progress that we’ve gotten before but little of substance to warrant confidence.

 

Asberry made a nuisance of herself by not walking the party line of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) calling failure as she did by that name and implying that better instruction was needed.   As detailed in previous articles, board members Kim Ellison,  Rebecca Gagnon, and Nelson Inz acted at the behest of the MFT/DFL cohort to recruit opponents to run against Asberry and Josh Reimnitz.  Inz endorsed Bob Walser against Reimnitz;  Gagnon endorsed ira Jourdain against Asberry.  Both endorsees won narrowly.

 

Thus Jourdain is politically tainted. 

 

He also is philosophically bereft, giving no evidence of any knowledge of the history of education or any coherent views of his own. 

 

As a matter of particularly great irritation to me, Jourdain has stated that he signed waiver forms for his children (he has two, one in elementary and one in middle school, enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools) to opt out of taking the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs);  moreover, when he did this at a regular meeting of the MPS Board of Education, Jourdain looked out at the audience and advocated letting other parents know that they had the right to allow their children to opt out.

 

The MCAs are linked to the Minnesota State Academic Standards and are the most objective way of assessing student mastery of the standards.  When students opt out in significant numbers, as they have done at Henry, South, and Southwest high schools, this vitiates the pool of students assessed and skews the accuracy of the results.  Allowing and encouraging students to opt out is irresponsible.

 

Jourdain bears the political taint of MFT/DFL backing, he is philosophically bereft, and he is error-prone.  Urging students to opt of the MCAs went beyond error to indication of political taint (the MFT rails against standardized testing) and philosophical waywardness.  Less clear was his voting with a

5-4 majority led by Rebecca Gagnon to restore $6.4 million dollars in funding that had been cut in a well-crafted budget emanating from Chief Ibrahima Diop’s Finance Division in spring 2018.  Gagnon was putting herself in the service of her affluent constituency in Southwest Minneapolis (she occupied an At-Large position but counted voters in that area as key supporters);  Jourdain voted with the slim majority roused by his campaign endorser and mentor Gagnon.

 

Jourdain, who respects Ibrahima Diop and eventually realized the error of his ways, later showed remorse for his vote.  Also, Jourdain has expressed skepticism about the academic promises proffered in the MPS Comprehensive District Design, now under review pending further public vetting and due for a vote in spring semester 2020.  On a recent evening, he sounded some very Asberry-like comments of the “Haven’t we heard this before?” type.

 

The vibe of one who cares emanates from Jourdain’s vocal tone and facial expression.  He has the unfortunate connection to the MFT, he lacks philosophical coherence, and he has been prone to errors.  But Jourdain gives some evidence of improvement.  If he can distance himself from the MFT/DFL cohort, develop a consistent philosophical approach to academics, and avoid major miscues of the type that characterized his votes especially in the first two years of his tenure, Jourdain gives some hope for improvement.

 

I have learned to hope faintly with regard to members of the MPS Board of Education.

 

But with the likes of Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, Jenny Arneson, Kim Caprini, and KerryJo Felder still abiding on the board, one seizes hope even if borne on waves emanating indistinctly from chambers much less than fully known.   

Article #6 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> District #2 Member KerryJo Felder >>>>> Fraudulent Claimant to North Minneapolis Leadership

Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education member KerryJo Felder represents District #2, encompassing North Minneapolis.   She was endorsed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) for her winning candidacy in November 2016.  She also has firm ties to the Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party that looms behind the MFT front to powerfully influence the outcomes of school board elections.

 

Thus, Felder is a political hack doing the bidding fo the MFT/DFL cohort, as is the case for all nine members on this unfortunate current assemblage of the MPS Board of Education.

 

Felder has children in Northside schools and was active at MPS sites and at board meetings many years before she ran for a seat.  She had an unsettled childhood and adolescence, mostly growing up in South Minneapolis.  Her personal accounts allude incoherently to an academician father who held a doctorate---  and to a life of poverty as a youth.  Also in her shadowing background is a young adulthood spent for many desultory years in a lifestyle lacking firm vocational articulation in California.    

 

Those South Minneapolis and California sojourns do not denote a firmly rooted Northsider. 

 

Felder has little connection to the North Minneapolis of the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, W.  Gertrude Brown, Harry Davis, Bertha Smith, Marion McElroy, Larry Brown, the Edmund Cohen Community Center, old Sixth Avenue, North High School in its academic heyday of Jewish and African American composition and friendship, or even to the more recent influence of the Way and Opportunities Unlimited (where Syl Davis, Gwen Davis, and Spike Moss held sway) and the City,  Inc., as a successor to the Way.

 

And yet Felder projects an image of herself as a Northsider out to claim resources for MPS schools that have been previously denied investment for buildings, athletic fields, and academic programs by comparison to sites and programs in other areas of the city.

 

But Felder is a fraud, as a claimant to firm Northsider status, and as an advocate for the schools of North Minneapolis. 

 

She is a corrupt politico with very little knowledge of the history and philosophy of education. 

 

But Felder is a particularly objectionable member of the MPS Board of Education for pretending that she is an advocate for academic quality in what she abidingly refers to as “my schools” for “my Northsiders.”

 

When confronted with student reading, mathematics, and science proficiency rates at North High School that are less than seven percent (7%) and ACT scores averaging 15.7, Felder has no comment.  When she is told that there are classes at North that are so out of order that teachers have quit teaching, she utters not a word.  When Felder is told that an English teacher pretending to teach The Autobiography of Malcom X has absolutely no knowledge of that towering personage,  she sits silently and never thenceforth addresses the problem.  When told by Hispanic parents that the pre-K-5 and preK-8 schools of North Minneapolis are failing, she gives appearance of the denial that is her wont.

 

KerryJo Felder is a fraud as pretender to firm Northsider status.

 

She is a corrupt political hack typical for a group that to an member is beholden to the MFT/DFL cohort.

 

Felder has no grasp of the history or philosophy of pre-K-12 public education.

 

And she is in immoral, neglectful denial of the rampant deficiencies of curriculum and teacher quality in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Felder projects the image of a fighter.

 

She should fight her way among Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Caprini, Kim Ellison, and Jenny Arneson off the MPS Board of Education and out the door of the Davis Center.             

 

 

Article #5 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> At-Large Member Kim Caprini >>>>> The Case of a Corrupt and ignorant Board Member in Deep Denial

Joining the contingent of most objectionable members of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education---  thus far conveyed as Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Jenny Arneson---  are Kim Caprini and KerryJo Felder.

 

Caprini ran against Felder for the District 2 (North Minneapolis) seat in 2014, losing narrowly;  she then ran successfully for an At-Large seat, with heavy Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) backing, in 2016.

 

Caprini grew up in north Minneapolis but mostly attended non-MPS schools, graduating from high school at Benilde/St. Margaret’s.  She has taken scattered post-secondary courses but does not hold a college degree;  she has a background in culinary arts but now works in social service.  Caprini has two daughters who have attended Henry High School.

 

Caprini has proved herself to be a corrupt politico that most typically describes members on this iteration of the MPS Board of Education, and she frequently betrays a woeful knowledge base, generally and particularly pertaining to the history and philosophy of education.  But her most frequent mode gives appearance of a person in deep denial.

 

She has proclaimed that her daughters got a “first-rate education” at Henry, by factual counterpoint demonstrating that she has no understanding of the constituents of an excellent education.

 

At recent board meetings, a contingent of Hispanic parents have cited woeful conditions at what they describe as “low-performing” schools attended by their children, calling for “priority enrollment” that would give their children better educations at “higher performing” schools.   Public commentators have voiced other complaints, such as the turmoil frequently witnessed at and outside Harrison school attended by students with severe emotional disorders.

 

Board members by protocol do not respond in the moment to Public Comments but have ample opportunity to do so in the course of regular and Committee of the Whole meetings.  Caprini’s response is impulsively reactive:  She reflexively defends schools where wretched academic quality is most obvious, and she is in seemingly deep denial over conditions at Harrison.  Concerning Harrison, Caprini correctly countered criticism with citations of good programs, such as those pertaining to culinary arts and music;  but Caprini never concerns herself with the palpable and chronic turmoil at Harrison, and she has never addressed the abundant deficiencies in curriculum and teacher quality that describe not only “low-performing” schools but the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools as a whole.    

 

At-Large member Kim Caprini is a political hack and gravely ignorant as to the history and philosophy of preK-12 education.

 

Her most prevalent and manifest mode is that of the MFT sycophant in deep denial.

 

She should be shown the Davis Center door, following closely behind Bob Walser, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Jenny Arneson.

Article #4 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> District #5 Member Nelson Inz >>>>> The Specter of the Political Hack as Board Chair

Nelson Inz was elected to the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in November 2014 and reelected without opposition in November 2018.   Lack of opposition to call Inz on his corrupt ineptitude demonstrates public disinterest in, and misunderstanding of, the chronic deficiencies of preK-12 education.

 

Inz is a former bartender turned teacher who has located professionally in several different school systems during his five years on the MPS Board of Education.   After Rebecca Gagnon quickly offended enough of her fellow offenders to turn the majority on the board against her as chair, Inz began his stint as chair in January 2017.

 

By that time, Inz had joined Kim Ellison and Rebecca Gagnon in recruiting Ira Jourdain and Bob Walser to run against Tracine Asberry and Josh Reimnitz for the District 6 and District 4 seats respectively.  Asberry was a particularly effective advocate for academic progress  who would closely question Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Chief Eric Moore when he would deliver the latest bad news on student academic achievement;  Reimnitz, a former Teach for America participant, was also an independent voice.  Jourdain and Walser were recruited to do the bidding of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).  Gagnon specifically endorsed Jourdain;  inz endorsed Walser.

 

Endorsement of Walser, the silliest, most offensive school board member I have ever witnessed on this or any other board, conveys much about Inz’s personal judgment.  He is a political hack who harbors the same ambitions as do Ellison and Gagnon, neither of whom have been able to realize goals for exalted political futures.  Inz describes his endorsement of Walser over Reimnitz as the action of a “team player.”  There were many of those in the regimes of Hitler and Stalin;  they abide in the administration of Donald Trump today.

 

Before the Public Comments phase of every meeting of the MPS Board of Education, Inz reads the following protocol:

 

>>>>> 

 

The MPS Board of Education values public comment

and input at board meetings to inform our decision

making and provide information and insight into

what is happening throughout the district.

If you did not sign-up ahead of time, there are sign

up sheets on the table where you entered, near the

meeting agendas. We will close sign-ups 15 minutes

after public comment begins. Each person wishing to

address the board will be given 3 minutes and the

clerk will let you know when your time has expired.

Individuals will be called up in the order in which they

signed up to speak. Please approach the podium, if

able, and state your name, area of the city you live in,

and connection to Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

To ensure we are modeling constructive public

engagement for our students, we ask that if you wish

to address the board, you observe the following:

 

• Address your comments to the Board Chair
  and not to individual Board directors, staff,
  or the audience.
• Refrain from personal attacks, swearing,
  abusive or threatening language, or other
  disruptive behavior.
• Respect those around you and do not hold
  up signs that block the view of others—
  please do not bring signage to the podium.
• Do not discuss employee or employment
  related issues, as public comment is not the
  appropriate venue to raise such issues.
• Refrain from referring to a person by name
  or position.
• Making accusations and derogatory
  statements about employees is not
  appropriate.
   

This is a time for the Board to listen so we will not be

responding to comments or questions posed. If you

have a question that requires a response, please

submit it to the Board’s Executive Assistant in the

back of the room. Thank you.

 

<<<<< 

 

This protocol is appropriately read by the political hack whom Inz is but was not of his authorship.  The protocol was written by Ed Graff and Rebecca Gagnon (when the latter was briefly chair),  because I was regularly citing specific Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) staff members who were not doing their jobs and also taking to task particular board members.  The protocol is written as a shield from criticism of central office bureaucrats and MPS Board of Education members and makes mockery of the opening claim to value public comment.  Board members now know that I have so many venues (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, television show, academic journal, public appearances, wide circulation in the community, this blog) for issuing my views that the Graff-Gagnon ploy was an exercise in futility;  but the protocol does have an inhibiting effect on some speakers.

 

The current iteration of the MPS Board of Education is composed of politicos heavily indebted to the MFT for electoral backing.

 

These corrupt board members are cowards who hide behind metaphorical embankments that they have devised to shield them from criticism.

 

That they have opted for Nelson Inz as Hack in Chief is telling.

 

The public must become better informed and in doing so show inz out the Davis Center door with the others.

 

If he should search within himself and find a soul, Nelson Inz should resign immediately from the MPS Board of Education.  

Article #3 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> District #4 Member Bob Walser >>>>> The Silliest and Most Offensive of a Motley Crew

Bob Walser is the silliest, most offensive member on this and any school board that I have witnessed during my half-century of observation.  This iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education is by far the worst that I have witnessed during my particularly close five-year scrutiny of this motley assemblage. 

 

Walser is a disaster.

 

Walser was among the group recruited by Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison, and Rebecca Gagnon to run for the MPS Board of Education in 2016.  Gagnon eventually  got caught in her political manipulations and was ousted in 2018.  Inz remains as District #5 (South Minneapolis, east of I-35) representative and board chair;  Ellison as one of three At-Large members.  Inz, Ellison, and Gagnon recruited candidates friendly to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) to run against the independent voices of Josh Reimnitz and Tracine Asberry (the most assertive actor for better academic results);  and for the At-Large seat vacated by Carla Bates.

 

Walser, who represents the toney areas of Bryn Mawr, Lowry Hill, and Linden Hills, is a salient example of that creature who assigns to himself the appellation of “progressive” on matters pertinent to preK-12 educatioen.  I have detailed in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, on my blog, and in my academic journal the sordid history traceable to Teachers College at Columbia University of those who appropriated the term “progressive’ for a knowledge-impoverished approach to education that has had most unprogressive consequences.  Consistent with the various strands of this ideology, Walser rails against objective assessment of student performance and spouts the jargon of putatively child-centered education.

 

The most stupid verbal fodder spills from Walser’s mouth:

 

Two recent whoppers demonstrate the facile, grating nature of this lamentable school board creature:

 

>>>>>      At one meeting that involved the fate of middle schools versus preK-8 schools in the district, Walser wondered why we have middle schools and asserted that we have only had this type of student grouping since the 1950s.  In making this comment, Walser demonstrated the typically shallow nature of his reading and research.   He had apparently come across a reference to the advent of the middle school (grades 6-8), which did from the 1950s mostly replace junior high (grades 7-9).  But Walser’s reference maintained that grouping at the level of the middle grades did not begin until the 1950s.  In fact, the first junior bighs appeared in 1909.    

 

 >>>>>    At the September meeting of the MPS Board of Education, Walser mentioned during the final, tortuous comments that members make on the cusp of each meeting’s adjournment that he had attended a number of community meetings lately and found the comment of one African American mother especially enlightening.  Walser said that she identified the problems of the Minneapolis Public Schools as grounded in the northern European approach to education taken by the district.

 

I have been deeply embedded in the African American community for forty-eight years:

 

African Americans do in public forums occasionally have recourse to the same jargon of “cultural relevance” and “cultural competence” with assertions of Western bias as do hippy-dippy white liberals of the sort that my radical leftist inclinations find me abhorring.  But face to face, I never hear such jargon.  When African American parents, the largest familial contingent in the New Salem Educational Initiative, come to me in behalf of their children, their plea is in essence, “Please impart to my baby the mathematical and reading skills that the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools fails to render, along with strong college preparatory knowledge sets that MPS does not deliver.”  They trust and know that I have a strong grasp of European-based culture and history and also the traditions of Asia, Africa, African America, and a bevy of other ethnicities.  What they want for their children is the best education that can be had, so that those precious young people can be the vanguard that leads the family forth from cyclical poverty and centuries of abusive history.

 

Armchair white liberals of the Walser type are offensive to most African Americans.  They sense that the rhetoric of those who shout adoring phrases from afar are frauds, full of condescension and paternalism.  Bob Walser has offended most African Americans of positions of leadership at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  They know a fake and a patronizer when they encounter one.

 

………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

In any case, the approach taken by the Minneapolis Public Schools is not northern European, except inasmuch as it is through British conveyance that a curriculum consisting of knowledge gathered from the entire globe was delivered to American colonists and thence to the fledgling United States of America.  The knowledge thus conveyed came prominently from southern (not northern) Europe, China, India, and from the Muslim empires of the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman dynasties.  The best contemporary masters of modern curricula are students of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.  Note the absence in any of those references from the last two sentences of anything identifiable as northern European.

 

………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Bob Walser is the silliest, most intellectual trivial board member I have witnessed on the MPS or any other board of education.

 

Walser needs to excuse himself for forging ahead of Jenny Arneson and Kim Ellison as he leads them with all appropriate haste out the Davis Center door.          

Article #2 on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> Kim Ellison’s ’s Tragi-Comically Silly Comment Regarding Alternative Schools as a Model for the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>> Time for Resignation of Another Member Who Should Have Departed a Long time Ago

At the same Tuesday, 22 October 2019, Committee of the Whole meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education at which District #1 member Jenny Arneson made her astonishingly stupid comment regarding the sequence of United States history courses in the district, At-Large member Kim Ellison chimed in with a remark of her own that, when taken together with her nearly decade of ineffective participation on the board, should induce her resignation and departure with Arneson out the Davis Center door.     

 

After hearing Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Aimee Fearing and Chief of Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore engage in double talk and jargon-infested presentation of an academic plan that has no hope of success, Ellison felt impelled to make a comment pertinent to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).  Social and Emotional Learning  is part of a four-point emphasis in that academic plan that has no hope of succeeding, for reasons I have detailed in many places on this blog and in my Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect;  the other components of that hopeless plan are Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Literacy, and Equity.

 

Ellison commented that Graff’s emphasis on Social and Emotional Learning resonated with her immediately because of her experience as a teacher at an alternative school.  She did not mention the name of the school, but the school of reference was known as Plymouth Christian Youth Center (PCYC) for a number of years, now rendered as Plymouth Youth Center (PYC) Arts and Technology High School.  Ellison said that at her school there was a strong emphasis on teacher and staff relationships with students, with the implication that this produced student success.

 

Ellison is half-right but the half-wrong part reveals the abominable level of academic substance delivered at such schools.  The City, Inc., and the Street Academy/ Minneapolis Urban League High School were schools at which relationship building was touted;  those schools are now defunct.  The Minneapolis Public Schools contracts with seven privately run alternative schools to provide academic and other services to students whom MPS failed to engage.  Those contract alternative schools are 800 West Broadway, Loring Nicollet, Menlo Park, Merc, PYC Arts and Technology (Ellison’s school of reference), Tatanka Academy, and Volunteers of America (VOA) High School.  Academic performance for many years at these schools has stagnated at levels witnessed in the following aggregate results for academic year 2018-2019:

 

Percentage of Students Proficient at MPS Contract Alternative Schools  

(Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment [MCA])

 

Mathematics                        2%

(52 tested) 

Reading                              

(32 tested)                          22%

Science

(30 tested)                          13%

 

Many more than 52 students are enrolled at these alternative schools, so that even the number (52) representing students taking the mathematics MCA fails to capture the number of students enrolled.  But absences are high;  on any given day, a small percentage of enrolled students actually are in attendance.  There was also some formal opting out, as well as spontaneous refusal to take the tests.

 

Staff members at alternative schools do tend to build amicable relationships with students and to reach out to families with a persistence and compassion not prevailing in mainline MPS schools.  In that sense, the overwrought term, Social and Emotional Learning, could resonate with Kim Ellison’s experience at PYC High School.  That she would only mention this facet of the school, though, is telling:

 

I return to my abiding questions.  Are the members of this constituent composition of the MPS Board of Education

 

1) ignorant;

 

2) in denial;

 

or

 

3)  corrupt.

 

Accumulated evidence over five years of observation strongly suggests to me that the members of this board manifest all three qualities:

 

1)   They are ignorant as to the history and philosophy of education in the United States and have little understanding of the components of an excellent education.  

 

2)   Given their fascination with their ability to attain membership by winning elections with the strong support of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), they are in denial on matters of curriculum and teacher quality;

 

and

 

3)   They are corrupt political hacks who care more about maintaining their positions, in some cases for potential to spring from the school board to a legislative seat or other political position---  than they do about the academic sustenance of the precious students whose lives they disregard.

                                                                          

Kim Ellison is ignorant, in denial, and corrupt in making such comments as attend her advocacy of alternative schools as models for the Minneapolis Public Schools.  She has made such comments and failed to identify the problems pertinent to curriculum and teacher quality for her near-decade of membership on the MPS Board of Education.

 

Ellison needs to catch sight of Jenny Arneson’s exit out the Davis Center door and follow with due haste. 

Article #1 of a Ten-Article Series on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> Jenny Arneson’s Second Astoundingly Stupid Statement Obligates Her to Resign from the MPS Board of Education

District 1 (Northeast and Southeast Minneapolis) Jenny Arneson is an enigma:

 

Arneson is the hardest working of the members on the current Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education.

 

She is a courageous person who appears to be triumphing over a very serious case of lymphatic cancer.

 

Arneson is a masterful accumulator of factual detail on many aspects of the inner workings of the district, notably information pertinent to her Northeast Minneapolis stomping grounds and items relevant to current district finances.  She also was an adept chair during her term of service in that position , a knowledgeable manager of meetings per Robert’s Rules of Order, a skill that stands her in good stead in her current role as chair of the finance committee.

 

But three moments impel me to call for Arneson’s resignation:

 

………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

In the spring of 2016 a forum sponsored by the League of Women’s Voters unfolded at Bryn Mawr K-5 school.  This forum offered one of the very few chances for audience members to ask open-ended oral questions;  that is to say, there was none of the usual scripted nonsense, such as questions having to be written down on slips of paper and then vetted for posing to members of the board.  The MPS Board of Education then consisted of Arneson, Siad Ali, Tracine Asberry, Carla Banks, Kim Ellison, Rebecca Gagnon, Nelson Inz, Josh Reimnitz, and Don Samuels.  Ali, Banks, and Reimnitz were not in attendance;  Asberry arrived only very late.  Hence, the members fully available for questioning were Arneson, Ellison, Gagnon,  Inz, and Samuels.

 

Most of the questions from the audience were nondescript and had little to do with academics.

 

I by contrast posed a question that made reference to the opposing philosophies of education represented by the knowledge-intensive views of E. D. Hirsch and the student-driven curriculum advocated by Alfie Kohn;  each of these views have roots in a discussion that began in the 1920s with William C. Bagley and William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College at Columbia University.

 

My question to the members of the MPS Board of Education in spring 2016 was:

 

“Given the description that I just gave you of the views expressed in Hirsch’s 1996 The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them  and Alfie Kohn’s 1999 The Schools Our Children Deserve, do you favor Hirsch’s knowledge-intensive established curriculum or Kohn’s open-ended, student and teacher driven curriculum?”

 

Board members were tongue-tied and tried to have it both ways, articulating their views no better when I maintained that for clarity they had to favor one of these views over the other, because Hirsch and Kohn would agree that these approaches result in very different curriculum and pedagogy. 

 

Jenny Arneson was as inept as the others in articulating any philosophy of education.  She does not to this day reveal any coherent philosophy of education, a telling observation regarding a board member who is now in the midst of her ninth year on the MPS Board of Education.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Arneson should resign for having not developed an internally consistent philosophy of education in nearly a decade of board membership.

 

Two recent statements further obligate her to resign:

 

>>>>>    Eight months ago Jenny Arneson noted, as part of her final report at a meeting of the MPS Board of Education (of the sort with which board members conclude each of their meetings) that her son had been accepted by his first choice for college attendance, Grinnell College in Iowa.  She then opined that “This proves that every student at MPS is College and Career Ready.”

 

That statement was astonishingly stupid, given that fewer than thirty percent (30%) of students on Free and Reduced Price Lunch and those of several ethnicities who tend to fall in the Free/Reduced category are not proficient in mathematics, reading, or science;  and that one-third (33%) of MPS students who matriculate on college and university campuses need remedial courses.

 

>>>>>    At the Committee of the Whole meeting of Tuesday, 22 October, Arneson  conveyed the essence of a conversation that she had had with a student who liked the idea of ethnic studies courses offered as alternatives to a United States history course, because the high school course is just a repetition of what students learned in a course focused on the same subject in grade seven.  Arneson accepted the student’s view uncritically, thereby revealing appalling ignorance for a graduate of St. Olaf College, albeit in the academically undemanding field of social work.

 

The pertinent truth is two-fold  >>>>>

 

1)  The grade 7 course is typically taught via videos and through packets that students fill out in the absence of teacher-imparted information or comment and without class discussion.  And unless students take Advanced Placement (AP) United States history in high school, the mode of teacher disinterested, unengaging instruction evident at grade 7 abides also in the high school course---  and lamentably even in some AP courses, taught as they often are by knowledge-deficient teachers.  

 

2)  Limiting the number of United States history or any other courses in core subject areas should be determined only as a practical matter, since the number of such courses would be multiple if the amount of information to be conveyed were the determinant.

 

Perpend:

 

>>>>>    Various American Indian groups, tending toward one hundred (100) in number, upon arrival of Columbus and subsequent Europeans---

 

>>>>>    Impact of American Indians and Europeans on each other---

 

>>>>>    the different ruling styles of Spaniard, Portuguese, French, and British imperialists---

 

>>>>>    pre-slavery organization of agricultural labor---

 

>>>>>    reasons for the economic appeal of slave as opposed to indentured labor---

 

>>>>>    exact functioning of the slave trade, from the sale by Ashanti and Dahomey kingdoms of African human commodities to the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and eventually mainly the British shippers and traders---

 

>>>>>    everyday slave resistance and occasional rebellions---

 

>>>>>    Loyalists versus Rebels in the run-up to the American Revolution;  the tough, extremely constrained options for African Americans in assessing potential for manumission via participation---

 

Now consider that I have not even arrived at the precipitating events and fighting of the American Revolution, the American Constitutional Convention, the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution,  or the first decade (1790s) of the new republic---  nor to the little matter of the two complete centuries (19^th and 20^th) that by definition reveal the bulk of events in the history of the United States.

 

Thus, Arneson’s comments regarding the repetition involved in two courses of United States history is appallingly stupid because

 

 >>>>>   the problem is not repetition but rather that students learn nothing of great substance in either course because of the approach to curriculum and pedagogy;

 

and

 

>>>>>    on the basis of amount of information important for conveyance, even multiple courses could not impart all that there is to learn concerning American and United States history---  so that the decision as to how many courses to offer is a matter of temporal practicality:  Repetition except as a matter of review as foundation for new learning is a matter of teacher inadequacy, not intrinsic to the abundant knowledge sets for mastery of American and United States history.

 

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For reasons that I will detail in looming articles, all of the current membership of the MPS Board of Education should resign.

 

For lack of a coherent philosophy of education after nine years on the board, and for the two starkly stupid comments tendered by her as given above, Jenny Arneson should lead the others out the door.

 

>>>>>    Jenny Arneson should resign immediately from the MPS Board of Education.