Article #6 in A Series of Highlights from My Book, >Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect<, Concerning Staff Overhaul at the Davis Center That Will Occur Due to My Revelations >>>>> MPS Associate Superintendent Record of Ineffectiveness

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.  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.    Carla Steinbach-Huther, who exited the Minneapolis Public Schools during autumn 2019 has a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a master’s in education, and a lightweight degree known as “education specialist.”

 

There is not one scholar among the associate superintendents.  Not a single associate superintendent has 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;  further, to add more absurdity to this bureaucratic overload, there was actually an assistant chief of schools knocking down over $100,000 per year.   This  ludicrous situation meant that the chief of schools and his assistant 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 four 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.