The
Ed Graff administration submitted as its response to Minnesota Department of
Education (MDE) World’s Best Workforce (WBWF) regulations the following programs
for academic year 2017-2018, with number of students served given in
parentheses:
WBWF
Program
(to
prepare children to enter school, third graders to read, students of all
ethnicities and at all economic levels to meet grade level standards, all
students for career and college, and all students to graduate from high school)
Number of participating Students
AVID
(Advancement Via Individual
Determination) 1,921
Check
and Connect 616
Ethnic
Studies & Social Justice Fellows 544
Fast
Track Scholars 189
GEMS
& GiSE 4,221
(Girls
in Engineering, Mathematics,
and
Science;
Guys
in Science and Engineering)
Grow
Your Own Teacher Residency 3,394
Jobs
for America’s Graduates 167
MTSS/
Multicultural Materials 6,984
LearningWorks
at Blake 91
Office
of Black Male Achievement 348
Project
SUCCESS 15,229
RIS
(Racially Identifiable Schools) 10,537
Direct
Support
Spring
and Winter Academy 5,220
Urban
Debate League 394
……………………………………………….
Total
Number of Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools: 36,961
……………………………………………….
These
programs come with significant outlays in the MPS budget but are also heavily
subsidized by the provider organizations, making the programs appealing. But despite the appealing appellations, most
of these programs serve only a scant fraction of students enrolled in the
Minneapolis Public Schools and not one of them is capable of raising achievement
levels across the K-12 years. Most of
these programs have been around for many years;
fewer than 25% of African American, American Indian (Native American),
Hispanic, Hmong, and Somali students are meeting grade level standards in
reading and math.
Thus,
these seductively labeled and heavily subsidized programs offer an attractive
screen for presentation to the MDE for working to promote academic achievement,
but there is nothing behind that screen that offers hope for raising
achievement rates.
Beyond
these programs, the Ed Graff administration offers Social and Emotional
Learning and a new PK-5 reading curriculum, the former of which can never be
more than an adjunct to explicitly academic initiatives, the latter of which is
limited to reading. That new Benchmark
Literacy Program
is
sound in approach but prospects for success will be constricted by the
mediocrity of K-5 teachers and the weakness of literature and English language
usage programming in grades 6-12.
Programs funded by external sources
and bearing appealing names are conveniently offered to meet MDE requirements,
but for officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools to advance a program of
academic excellence, highly intentional curriculum overhaul, teacher
retraining, resource provision and referral, and time set aside for skill
mastery and extension must occur for the impartation of excellent education to
the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
World Best Workforce Programs are a sham and should be
understood as such.
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