Understanding the Importance of Two Recent Series of Articles, One Focused on the Ineptitude of the MPS Board of Education and the Other on Failed Associate Superintendents >>>>> Not a Single Person with Responsibility for Academic Programming Knows What She or He Is Doing

The two most recent series of articles entered on this blog are of enormous importance. 

 

They go right to the core of the problems at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) in delivering a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to the students of the district.

 

Members of the MPS Board of Education are inept.

 

The four associate superintendents are academic  lightweights.

 

The associate superintendents have responsibility for promoting  academic progress at school sites, where principals are just as ill-trained as are the associate superintendents, members of the Department of Teaching and Learning, and the teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Read these observations regarding the ineptitude of the MPS Board of Education and the academically ill-suited contingents who are responsible for imparting an education of substance to the long-waiting students of the district, and you should know that you have just lit on the key problem abiding at the Minneapolis Public Schools:

 

Although those responsible for district finances, information technology, and operations are highly competent and in the former two cases sublimely talented professionals,

 

no one who has responsibility for the academic program knows what she or he is doing.

 

Read again  >>>>>

 

Not a single person who is responsible for the academic program that lies at the core of the mission of the locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools knows what she or he is doing.

 

As Malcolm X would say, staring right through the interviewer and into the camera as if he were going to break it with his searing intellect,

 

“As you can see, there’s a contradiction here.”

 

………………………………………………………………………………….

 

In the recent series focused on the school board, I detailed particularly stupid recent comments by Jenny Arneson, Kim Ellison, and that silliest of all board members, Bob Walser;  I explained why they and members KerryJo Felder, Kim Caprini, and Nelson Inz should resign immediately.  I gave some hope that Ira Jourdain, Josh Pauly, and Siad Ali might evolve into acceptable members of the MPS Board of Education---  but that hope is faint and time’s awastin’.

 

In the recent series on the associate superintendents, I provided the six-year abysmal academic proficiency rates at the schools for which Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Shawn Harris-Berry, and LaShawn Ray now have oversight repsonsibilities;  I detailed the abject failure of former associate superintendent Carla Steinbach and current position occupant Ron Wagner over many years;  the failure of Brian Zambreno to improve academic proficiency at the schools of his responsibility;  and the near certainty that Harris-Berry and Ray will be just as ineffective.

 

The reason why Ibrahima Diop as finance chief and (recently resigned) Fadi Fadhil at information technology chief have been so superlative; and Karen DeVet at operations chief has been so competent;  is that they have educations and experience promotive of progress in their divisions.

 

Members of the MPS Board of Education bring no philosophy of education, any knowledge of the history of education, or much academic accomplishment of their own to the task at hand.  Brief pondering of those stark realities yields the conclusion that the board is hopeless in evaluating preK-12 academic programming.            

 

Thus any progress in developing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education at the Minneapolis Public Schools falls to Superintendent Ed Graff;  Teaching and Learning executive director Aimee Fearing and her staff;  the associate superintendents and the principals whom they supervise;  and the teachers at school sites. 

 

All of these people are academic lightweights.  

 

Many do not even possess a bachelor’s degree in a key subject area, and rare tending toward zero is the academic decision-maker or teacher who has any advanced degree other than those paper objects purchased from departments, schools, and colleges of education.   

 

Thus the group of decision-makers of which the associate superintendents are a part are not positioned to make any competent decisions on matters of academic import.  The associate superintendents each receive over $150,000 in annual salary, bringing the total of the current foursome to over $600,000.  They symbolize saliently the wretched degradation as to academic programming that prevails at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

If you are reading carefully and comprehending fully these observations, you know that we

 

>>>>>    we must elect new members to the MPS Board of Education who seek advice from academicians before running for the board and assuming positions thereon;

 

and

 

>>>>>    we must jettison the position of associate superintendent and bring academicians outside the education bureaucracy to develop the knowledge-intensive,  skill replete curriculum that those now at the district are ill-prepared to provide.

 

No one at the Minneapolis Public Schools who has responsibility for academic programming knows what she or he is doing.  Members of the current MPS Board of Education are academic nonentities in no position to evaluate academic programming.

 

Thus, riffing on Malcolm X,

 

as you can see, there’s a contradiction here.

 

We must eradicate that contradiction.