Education provided by the public schools of
the United States has never been good.
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.”
………………………………………………………………………………..
As readers scroll on down this blog, you
will quickly come to articles describing the nature of curricular overhaul and
teacher training that must occur for MPS schools to impart an excellent
education to students of all demographic descriptors.
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 included
>>>>> 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.
That will be the matter of focus in the
next article.
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