Feb 19, 2020

Establishing an MPS Office of Hispanic Student Achievement Would Be a Typically Terrible Bureaucratic Response to a Problem That Only Curricular Overhaul and Teacher Training Can Solve


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.  

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