First,
perpend:
In
response to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the Minnesota Department of
Education devised the North Star Accountability System (NSAS), which
establishes six Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE) at various locations
outside the Twin Cities Metro, with a total of approximately 45 staff members,
who have no hope of guiding lagging Minnesota schools toward excellence. Tragicomically, two additional centers (for a
total of eight) are represented by the wretched public school districts of St.
Paul and Minneapolis, which are absurdly assigned to be their own Regional Centers
of Excellence.
At
the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Strategic
Plan Acceleration 2020 only accelerated bad education and failed to raise
academic proficiency rates, motivating Superintendent Ed Graff and staff to
generate five possible models (the existing system, plus four) for an MPS
Comprehensive District Design. The four
new models would rationalize the district transportations system and
induce attendance at community schools
but have no possibility of bringing improved education to the long-waiting
students of the district.
Neither
the North Star Accountability System nor the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD)
can bring educational excellence to students, failing as they do to overhaul
curriculum and train teachers.
Education
professors make such overhaul and training necessary because of the ideology
that they inculcate in prospective teachers and the knowledge-deficient
teachers that they inflict on the public schools of Minnesota. This sets in motion a ridiculous
concatenation of bureaucratic bandaids to wounds that cannot be healed in
absence of the necessary overhaul and training:
>>>>> Teachers are ill-trained, so
decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools perceive the need for a
Department of Teaching and Learning.
>>>>>
But the Department of Teaching
and Learning is full of former teachers who are themselves academic
lightweights who have no advanced and little undergraduate training in major
academic disciplines, a description that also pertains to current Interim Senior
Academic Officer Aimee Fearing and to Superintendent Ed Graff.
>>>>> Principals are mostly ex-teachers who have
pursued meaningless administrative certification and
have no hope of guiding teachers toward delivery of knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete education.
>>>>> Thus, another layer of bureaucracy accrues
in the form of four associate superintendents, at $150,000 a pop for a total of
$600,000, who are trained in the same way as principals and teachers but are
give responsibility for improving the professionalism of principals and
teachers. Associate superintendents are
a collective wasteful bureaucratic burden.
(Note: MPS Special Education head Rochelle Cox is
now also classified as an Associate Superintendent but she is first-rate. The ne’er-do-wells are the mainstream
overseers Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Shawn Harris-Berry, and LaShawn Ray.)
>>>>> Hence,
>>>>> Systems such as ESSA, NSAS, and CDD cannot
work.
>>>>> The MPS Department of Teaching and Learning
is incapable of designing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum or
training teachers.
>>>>> Teachers and principals deliver terrible
quality of education.
>>>>> Associate superintendents cannot mentor
principals and the latter cannot improve teaching quality.
>>>>> So,
In 2014, the Bernadeia
Johnson administration created the Office of Black Male Student Achievement
(OBMSA) and legally had to maintain a legislatively mandated Department of
Indian Education. Michael Walker heads
OBMSA and has seen his salary rise from $114,000 to $136,000. Current head of the Department of Indian
Education Jennifer Simon also earns well over $100,000.
For these bureaucratic bandaids
to lagging academic proficiency rates, we have gotten these unimproved academic
results:
MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015,
2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019
Math
2014
2015 2016
2017 2018
2019
African 23%
19%
19% 16% 17%
18%
American
American
23%
19%
19% 16%
17%
18%
Indian
Reading
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
African 22%
21%
21% 21% 21% 23%
American
American
21% 20%
21% 22%
23% 25%
Indian
Science 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
African 11%
15%
13% 11% 10%
11%
American
American
14% 16%
13% 16%
13% 17%
Indian
Understandably, Hispanic parents and community
members are not happy with similar results that find fewer than 30% of Hispanic
students academically proficient in mathematics, reading, or science:
MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015,
2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019
Hispanic
31% 32%
31% 29%
26%
25%
Reading
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
Hispanic
23% 25% 26%
26% 27% 29%
Science 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
Hispanic
17% 18%
21% 19% 17% 16%
Clearly, though, another bureaucratic
response, this in the form of an Office of Hispanic Student Achievement, cannot
address the academic struggles of Hispanic students.
Rather than demand another bureaucratic
sinecure for overpaid officials and an office that will cost several million
dollars (with a probable seven staff members earning $350,000 total in salaries
alone), disgruntled Hispanic parents and community should call for overhaul of
curriculum for knowledge intensity, training of teachers capable of imparting
that curriculum, aggressive skill remediation for students lagging below grade
level, and the hiring of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of
students and families facing particular life struggles.
Only these specific responses to the reasons
for the wretched quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools can
address the problem.
These responses should be mounted and the
notion of an Office of Hispanic Student Achievement should be nixed.
No comments:
Post a Comment