The incompetence of the current members of
the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education and Superintendent Ed
Graff were on full display at a Saturday, 6 April 2019, meeting led by
correspondingly inept consultant Paula Forbes.
The meeting had scant public
awareness:
This meeting had not loomed large on the calendar
of the MPS Board of Education.
Preparations for the meeting were, though, thorough enough that the
services of Paula Forbes were secured to lead the meeting. Forbes has been an associate at Rider Bennett Law Firm and
launched the office of the General Counsel at the Minneapolis Public Schools
during the 1990s; she now has her own
consulting firm that touts her expertise in education law and employee
relations.
Ms. Forbes
apparently learned little during her tenure with the Minneapolis Public Schools
that she was willing to share candidly with Graff and members of the
board. She began the 6 April meeting,
which ran from 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon, by having Graff and the board members
play with Legos.
I kid you not.
The members of the MPS Board of Education
and their $230,000 salaried leader were playing with
Legos at approximately 8:30 AM on Saturday,
6 April.
Ms. Forbes had Graff, board members, and
board administrator Ryan Strack enthusiastically assembling Play Doh vehicles
in teams of three, with the mandate to create vehicular objects that once
propelled would travel at least 10 feet unaided. But, oh, surprise, surprise, at the midpoint
Forbes notified that an additional requirement must be considered: The various colors of the pieces used in
construction came with different price tags and the whole enterprise could not
exceed $200 in cost. Oh, and then, my
goodness, how astonishing, there came another bulletin in the last few minutes
of the exercise (are you getting that this activity was purportedly
demonstrating ability to respond to change, inducing examination of feelings
regarding same?) Forbes notified the
group that participants must completely switch goals, from vehicle construction
to tower building: the group that
constructed the highest tower would now be considered the winner.
After Forbes did conduct a more serious
segment of the meeting, summarizing statute law in Minnesota pertinent to
education, she put the group through another silly activity in which Graff,
Strack, and board members were to stick notes on a wall that recalled changes
in federal, state, and local education policy.
Forbes tapped into a preferred activity of these board members: They love to stick notes on walls.
Most of this meeting was reminiscent of courses
that I had to endure to get a teaching license;
this was particularly true of the Leggos spectacle, which recalled an
exercise that a great friend of mine in Texas and I still recall: One of those low-life campus presences known
as education professors in one class session prevailed upon us to get in touch
with our emotions by urging us to--- I
kid you not--- “Feel the air--- shape it into little balls.”
But then Superintendent Ed Graff is
entirely comfortable with such nonsense:
All of his professional training has come
with a focus on courses in education.
Graff’s highest degree is an online, insubstantial degree in education
administration that he received while working for the public schools in
Anchorage. Graff is an academic
lightweight, with whom these equally intellectually and morally deficient
members of the board are entirely comfortable.
………………………………………………………………………
Recall that the district of the Minneapolis
Public Schools features student mathematics and reading proficiency rates at
less than 45 percent, with only 17 percent of African American and Native
students demonstrating proficiency in mathematics. North High School students average a score of
15 on the ACT, while those at Henry score nearer the district average of 16
(still just indicative of middle school skill level, which means that many
students in the public schools of Minneapolis [including a bevy of those who do
graduate] have elementary school skill levels).
Salient examples of the low level of MPS education abound:
Franklin Middle School students were given
a whole Friday off in the aftermath of cold-weather cancellations to watch
videos unrelated to courses; many
classes at North High School are so out of control that teachers have given up
teaching, even if they are among the few fully competent to render instruction
in their purported fields in the first place;
the preferred pedagogical technique of many teachers is to pass out
“packets” (the word gives me cold shivers) for students to answer as the main
means of instruction, absent follow-up teacher comment and class instruction.
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