Jargon is an insidious feature of all
documents at the Minneapolis Public Schools pertaining to academics and
equitable education.
Equity is one of four programmatic emphases
of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff, along with Social
and Emotional Learning (SEL), Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), and Literacy.
Each year MPS officials must file an Equity
and Diversity Impact Statement to demonstrate how district policies will affect
and promote equitable education for MPS students. Since 2015, there has been officially in
force an Educational Equity Framework
for achieving equity.
The main features of the framework were first
presented to the MPS Board of Education by Kimberly Matier and Lanise Block on
11 August 2015.
To understand just how wretched was the
presentation of the document, Acceleration
2020/ Educational Equity: Developing a Framework for Student
Achievement for All by Kim Matier and Lanise Block at the Tuesday, 11
August 2015, meeting of the Minneapolis Board of Education, remember these
requisite features of educational equity:
Educational
equity results from three sources:
1) excellent education;
2) excellent teachers;
3) warm relationships with students and their
families.
Hence, with this understanding, we have again
the definitions for excellent education and excellent teachers, with a comment
also on building relationships with students and their families
1)
An
excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal
arts curriculum in math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and
the fine arts in grade-by-grade sequence to all students throughout the K-12
years.
2)
An
excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the
pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.
When educational excellence (by definition
including excellent teachers who, in turn by definition, have the ability to
impart knowledge to all students) prevails, educational equity is
attained. Therefore, we must set about
specifying curriculum for each grade throughout the K-12 years, and we must at
the central school district level retrain teachers capable of delivering the
challenging, deep, and broad liberal arts curriculum to all students by the
time they walk across the stage at high school graduation.
3)
An excellent teacher, building principal, and
any central school district personnel responsible for imparting an education of
excellence to all of our precious children, should have a high level of comfort
in connecting with families of students, necessarily entailing comfort with
numerous ethnicities and economic levels.
When families understand the steps that are being taken to ensure
excellent education for their children, they will respond with gratitude. So we must make sure that all school district
personnel are highly adept and sensitive as they establish connections and
relationships with the families of the students for whom they have the sacred
duty to provide an excellent education.
……………………………………………………………………………
Rather than focus on the delivery of excellent
education in the context of excellent relationships with students and their
families, Lanise Block and Kimberly (Kim) Matier delivered a jargon-infested
travesty of banal generality as apparently the best that the Office of Academic
Affairs at the Minneapolis Public Schools can promote as a program for
achieving equity.
In their presentations, Matier and Block stuck
closely to a power point document that stated goals for the presentation to be
the provision of the rationale and history for achieving educational
equity; explanation of this new effort’s
relationship to an existing Equity and Diversity and Impact Assessment
(EDIA); and designation of the timeline
for steps toward finalizing the framework of the equity program, with reference
to ongoing efforts synchronous with this new initiative. The need for an equity framework was stated
to be the elimination of racial predictability, development of racial and
cultural skill, and the acceleration of student outcomes.
This verbiage was then tied to a stated Equity Policy 1304, which reads: “embracing our diversity through inclusion
creates an environment that leverages diversity and creates schools where
students, families, community members, and employees feel welcomed, valued, and
supported; and where students and staff
can perform to their personal bests.”
Clustered around the goal of equity, a graphic presented the following
priorities: culturally linguistically
responsive practices, inclusive and innovative systems, positive school-wide
engagement, and effectively assessed quality core instruction and 21st
century skills.
Matier and Block stated that they started by
convening a group of “internal equity practitioners,” reviewing research and
existing equity frameworks in the interest of developing a common
understanding. They vow that they
“committed to key elements of the framework” and then requested initial
feedback from key community partners.
The “Draft
for Educational Equity” was presented in triangular visualization with “Collective Accountability” at the center, with
“instructional transformation,” “personal transformation,” and “structural
transformation” each located pictorially at one of the three angles. Then outside the triangle, on each of the
three sides were given the values, “evidence-based research”; “families
and communities”; and “integrated systems”; with “pedagogy of equity” topping the visual
at the triangle’s apex.
These values then gained a bit of additional
comment on another page with the heading, “Desired
Outcomes for Systemic Change.“
Additional comment highlighted the following:
>>>>> “evidence-based
policy, program, and practice,” so as to “integrate racial/ cultural
competency in the development and implementation of systems to rapidly improve
outcomes “;
>>>>> “pedagogy
of equity,“ so as to “ensure targeted groups access learning with the
cultural and linguistic assets of students in mind “;
>>>>> “integrated
systems,” so as to “build and manage interdependent relationships that
create and sustain adaptive systems to meet diverse needs” ;
>>>>> “families
and communities as education partners,” so as to “normalize the inclusion
of the perspectives of our families of
color and American Indian communities to interrupt marginalization.”
The steps in the process were given according
to the following timetable:
Phase
One >>>>> April
2015-October 2015
>>>>> Identify Desired Outcomes
>>>>> Develop
Draft Framework and Recommend Changes to EDIA
Phase
Two >>>>> November
2015-June 2016
>>>>> Stakeholder Groups formed
>>>>> Action
Plans Developed for Desired Outcomes
>>>>> EDIA
Piloted, Feedback Collected, and Final Adjustments Made
Phase
Three >>>>> January
2016-June 2016
>>>>> Board Update on Equity Framework and EDIA
(January and June)
>>>>> Board
Training
>>>>> Equity
Audit
The document and presentation ended with a
citation of work that will continue, according to certain existing offices and
programs: Racial Equity Institute/
Professional Development, Coaching for Equity, B.L.A.C.K. (not listed in the
power-point, Block explained helpfully that his acronym stands for “Black Lives
Acquiring Cultural Knowledge”), Ethnic Studies Courses, Social Justice Fellows,
Vendor Diversity work, and EDIA.
………………………………………………………………………………….
That’s a lot of verbiage, which I decode as follows:
Since
we’ve got a raging achievement gap, we’re going to pretend one more time that
we’re addressing a problem by creating a program. We created the Office of Black Male
Achievement to no noticeable effect, but no matter. You, school board members; and you, the public; can be distracted as always by the problems
at hand as we assure you that we are going to move forward with processes
designed to make teachers, administrators, and people throughout the Minneapolis
Public Schools more culturally sensitive.
Even though we already have offices and highly paid personnel in place
who should be reaching out to all parents and creating a climate that embraces
ethnic diversity---- we’re really,
really, really going to do it this time.
Really.
Really, really.
Really.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
But school board members squirmed almost as
much as I did during this presentation.
Each in her or his own way, board members at the time Don Samuels, Carla
Bates, Tracine Asberry, Siad Ali, and even Rebecca Gagnon, Nelson Inz, Kim Ellison
and Jenny Arneson asked, “But haven’t we heard this before? How will this program be measured more
effectively, and don’t we already have the Equity and Diversity Impact
Assessment (EDIA) for doing this? Do we
really have the luxury of time?”
To the latter question, District Member
Reimnitz noted, in essence, that the board had not itself been vigilant enough
as to previous equity issues and needs now to give this new process time to work. Bates, having been among the most forceful in
objecting to the innocuous generality of the presentation by Matier and Block,
agreed with Reimnitz that at this point the board did need to be patient, but
with a heightened sense of vigilance.
To all questions, Matier and Block offered
more banal bromides and empty rhetoric, with Interim Superintendent Goar
chiming in to the prevailing atonality with his usual choral double-talk.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
So again be reminded that
Educational
equity results from three sources:
1) excellent education;
2) excellent teachers;
3) warm relationships with students and their
families.
These sources of educational equity should be
observable right now, and could be if we had the abiding components of an
excellent education in place.
But since these components of an excellent
education are not in place, and decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public
Schools have not the vision to recognize educational excellence, the understanding
of the teacher training necessary, or the empathic ability to reach out to
students and families right where they live---
we are forever creating distractions that divert us from the pathway to
educational excellence.
Thus it is that I have decided that the time
is now for saying that the time is now.
We cannot afford to wait. Babies
are dying. Young people, especially
young African American males, are headed disproportionately to prison. Young African American female bodies are
being sold. Human beings of great
potential are missing their chance in this one earthly sojourn for lives of
cultural enrichment, civic preparedness,, and professional satisfaction because
we do not care enough.
We
have had enough exercises in goal setting and documents generated to fulfill
legal mandates.
We
need equity via the provision of excellent education by excellent teachers.
Generous
details on these matters are offered in Part Three, Philosophy.
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