Since at least 1980
educational quality in locally centralized school districts such as the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) has been wretched.
In Minneapolis, white
and black middle class flight left behind the poorest of the poor living in
areas such as North Minneapolis running many blocks north and south of West
Broadway and South Minneapolis for many blocks running north and south of East
Lake Street. Crack cocaine hit the
streets in 1980, gang activity proliferated, and violence increased
greatly.
Under these
circumstances, the mediocrity of an overwhelmingly white teaching staff was
exposed and in the years since the incompetence of MPS administrators and
teachers to provide a minimally acceptable education became painfully
evident. Slogans such as “Expect Good
Things!” and “Every Student College and Career Ready” became cruel jokes, a
cruelty now perpetuated with Superintendent Ed Graff’s proclamation of “MPS
Strong.”
Once efforts proceed
to put those features of the PreK-12 revolution at the Minneapolis Public
Schools into motion, attention should turn to the careful assemblage of a
Department of Resource Provision and Referral.
As we generally
continue to scale back the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West
Broadway) bureaucracy, jettisoning the
Department of Teaching and Learning and the Office of Black Male Achievement,
redesigning the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education and
replacing current staff with serious academicians, we should with great
intentionality bring this new department into existence.
The purpose of the
new Department of Resource Provision and Referral will be to connect broadly
and deeply with families struggling with poverty and dysfunction. Resources will shift so as to staff this
department generously with people who are comfortable on the streets and in the
homes of the poorest and most functionally challenged families living in the
toughest neighborhoods of Minneapolis.
Staff gaining positions in the Department of Resource Provision and
Referral will be able to solve a great many problems just by lending an attentive
ear to many people needing to talk to someone who understands their
struggles. Such listening, counseling,
and empathetic responses will be among those services, along with those
provided by trained social workers and psychologists, that the Department of
Resource Provision and Referral can render directly. Others can be provided upon referral to
services provided by the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County
Administrators and
teachers at the Minneapolis Public Schools operate from a middle class
perspective that does not even serve middle class students well, much less
going to the core of problems encountered by those students qualifying for free
and reduced price lunch. Teacher’s aides
and Educational Support Professionals (ESPs) are not consistently dependable
for their academic acumen, but they do often have those qualities pertinent to
life experience and empathy needed among those people who will serve in the
Department of Resource Provision and Referral.
We need many more such people in the new department and throughout the district.
The preK-12
Revolution at the Minneapolis Public School must include
>>>>> curriculum
overhauled for knowledge intensity;
>>>>> teachers
newly professionalized as pedagogically adept, academically serious scholars;
and
>>>>> staff
in a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral who can communicate with
and serve the needs of families struggling with poverty and functionality.
The preK-12
Revolution must also include astutely targeted academic assistance to students
languishing below grade level in
proficiency in mathematics and reading.
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