Chapter Sixty-Seven >>>>> The Five-Point Program for Transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools into a Model for the Locally Centralized School District

The overhaul of K-12 education at the level of the locally centralized school district, represented by the Minneapolis Public Schools, will be achieved with a focus on four points pertinent to programming, and with attention to one point relevant to administration.

 

The four points for programmatic emphasis are as follows:

 

1) curriculum;

 

2) teacher training;

 

3)  academic remediation and enrichment;

 

4)  outreach to families and communities

 

The point for administrative attention (the fifth point of emphasis overall) is the following:

 

5)  staff reductions in the central office bureaucracy

 

1)  Curriculum

 

Developing and projecting a model of K-12 educational excellence for the locally centralized school district in the Minneapolis Public Schools begins with the establishment of a rich curriculum in the liberal, vocational, and technological arts.

Those seeking to establish such a curriculum should read as many works by Core Knowledge Foundation founder E. D. Hirsch as possible, including The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (1996) and the parent resource books, What Your [Preschooler, Kindergartener, First Grader, Second Grader, Third Grader, Fourth Grader, Fifth Grader, Sixth Grader] Needs to Know, for which Hirsch has served as chief editor for volumes that have appeared as initial and updated editions since the 1990s.   The K-12 curriculum summarized below features an adaptation of the Core Knowledge curriculum for grades K-5 and my own extension of the knowledge-intensive approach to grades 6-12.  A full presentation of this curriculum and a program for training teacher capable of imparting this curriculum is given in the appendix.

Curriculum for Grades K-5

 

At the K-5 level, students will focus on the key liberal arts areas of mathematics, natural science (geology, biology, chemistry, and physics), literature & English usage, history & economics, and fine arts (music & visual arts).  In mastering such a rich curriculum, students graduating from Grade 5 will acquire knowledge of mathematics through introductory algebra and geometry. They will have knowledge of the earth’s formation and defining qualities; the chronological emergence and defining characteristics of plant and animal forms;  fundamental facts concerning subatomic particles, the structure of the atom, molecular structures, and the array of elements found on earth;  and the basic laws of gravity and motion, especially as contrasted in the work of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.  Students will graduate from Grade 5 having read widely in classical literature, including Western classics, world literature, and literature specific to a multiplicity of ethnic groups. Students at K-5 will gain detailed overviews of United States and world history (necessarily including the history of many ethnic groups); and they will master the fundamental concepts of microeconomics and macroeconomics.  Students will graduate from Grade 5 having mastered a great wealth of information pertinent to the theory and forms of the visual and musical arts, and they will learn how to play at least one musical instrument.

 

Graduates from Grade 5 will have a mastery in these informational realms that exceeds the knowledge and skill level evidenced by many high school graduates today.  These knowledge and skill sets will continue development in middle school (grades 6-8) so as to solidify student academic foundations for very advanced study in high school.

Curriculum for Grades 6-8
               

Curriculum at the level of the middle school (grades 6-8) will follow logically from the knowledge and skill base established during grades K-5.

Students will emerge from Grade 8 with knowledge of mathematics through Algebra II and in functions, statistics, and trigonometry. They will gain advanced understanding of all major concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics.  Students at grades 6-8 will continue to read at ever rising level of sophistication the great works of classical literature, including Western classics, world literature, and literature specific to a multiplicity of ethnic groups, and they will write expositional and argumentative essays.  Grades 6-8 students will also build highly sophisticated knowledge bases in United States history, world history, political science (including United States political processes, United States Constitution, and world governmental systems), microeconomics and macroeconomics--- and gain foundational knowledge in psychology, sociology, and anthropology.  As they graduate from Grade 8, students will have an enormous knowledge base pertinent to the visual and musical arts, mastery of at least one musical instrument at each student's maximum possible level of skill, and opportunities to participate in choral, band, and ensemble musical groups.

During the grades 6-8 years, students will assiduously study at least one foreign language.  Students will take physical education at each grade level, 6-8.  They will be given opportunities to acquire skills in vocational trades (including the skills of the electrician, auto mechanic, and the carpenter).  And they will acquire strong foundational knowledge relevant to computers and other devices of contemporary technology.

 

Graduating from Grade 8 with mastery in these informational realms, students will possess knowledge and skill sets that exceed those evidenced by many high school graduates today.

Curriculum for Grades 9-12

At the high school (grades 9-12) level, then, students can proceed to acquire knowledge that we associate with mastery at the level of first and second year university students, and at two-year

colleges of both the liberal arts and technical type.  All students (except those facing genuine learning disabilities, who will be given the most challenging instruction possible) in grades 9-12 will take sequential courses in calculus as preparation for Advanced Placement.  They will take Advanced Placement courses in biology, chemistry, and physics;  in American and world history;  and in English. Students will pursue options for study in specific geographical and topical areas of world history (e.g., history of the Roman Empire, dynastic China, Africa, African America, Latin America, medieval era, early modern era, contemporary [recent] history).  They will take courses in classical English and world literature, and they will opt for specialized courses similar in geographical and topical focus to those given for history.  All students will take college preparatory courses in economics and psychology, and they will have elective course options in sociology and anthropology.  And all students will continue to develop skills in the visual and musical arts, with opportunities to participate in choral, band, and ensemble musical groups.

All students at grades 9-12 will study a world language through the second year college level.  Students will take two years of physical education and have various physical education options beyond two years.  High school students will select from various courses in the vocational and technological arts.  

 

Thus, all students will be well-prepared for study at either liberal arts or technical colleges, and at universities, upon high school graduation. No student will be tracked for either of these options; rather, each student will graduate with the confidence that she or he has the preparation for pursuing post-high school courses of study of either type.

2)  Teacher Training

 

Teachers are abominably trained.

After an initial discussion of the current state of teacher training I detail in this article my program for teacher training at the level of the locally centralized school district as represented by the Minneapolis Pubic Schools.

 

The most important features of that program include the following:

1) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades K-5 level will earn a Masters of Liberal Arts degree organized by officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools. This will involve a 34-week intensive course of study during one full academic year, followed by a summer of research, writing, and defense of a master’s thesis.

2) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn field-specific, non- education master’s degrees giving them expert knowledge relevant to the classes that they will teach.

3) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at all grades (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Thus, all teachers aspiring to teach in the Minneapolis Public Schools will earn a master’s degree in a rigorous academic program and then serve one full year of internship.

Before proceeding to further discussion of my program for teacher training, I give here a summary of prevailing teacher training programs:

The Currently Abysmal Training of Prospective Teachers for Grades K-5

Programs that train large contingents of prospective teachers include the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities, Augsburg College, and the Universities of Concordia, Hamline, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas.

 

At most of these institutions, prospective grades K-5 teachers major in elementary education. Hamline is unique among the metro area institutions offering teacher preparation programs in requiring its aspiring K-5 teachers to earn bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., mathematics, chemistry, history, economics, English, fine arts).  At most other institutions, teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5 get a degree in elementary education.  For such a degree, students take courses that include Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality.

The only meek nod to subject area specificity is in courses such as Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science Instruction in the Elementary Grades.  Education professors, not subject area experts, teach these courses.

Students at the University of Minnesota who aspire to teach, both at grades K-5 and grades 6-12, are strongly encouraged to get a master’s degree.  Students in the College of Education and Human Development typically do their coursework during the summer and fall terms;  they student teach in the spring, also taking two education courses online.

 

The route to the Masters of Education degree takes just three semesters.  Once the college or university certification program is complete, prospective teachers must take exams that include a basic skills exam, a content-focused pedagogic exam, and a mathematics exam.  Upon passing these exams, licensure is granted.  The license is permanent, given the teacher’s ongoing demonstration of professional development through certified participation in teacher-in-service days, workshops, conferences, and the like;  and with the option to pursue an advanced degree, typically a Masters of Education in teaching elementary education (remembering that a master’s degree is strongly encouraged by officials in the College of Education and Human Development for students who seek teacher certification via the schedule of courses at the University of Minnesota).

The Need to Retrain Teachers at the Level of the Locally Centralized School District

Teacher training programs are cash cows for colleges and universities:

Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education are academically insubstantial but huge revenue generators for institutions of putative higher learning.  The ruse pulled by officials the University of Minnesota in encouraging students to pursue both of these empty degrees for certification constitutes irresponsible philistinism of the worst sort.

 

Over the long haul, we need to dissolve our departments, colleges, and schools of education and come to a consensus on a new approach to training teachers:

The transformation nationally will require much time to confront entrenched interests of the many adults in the education establishment who benefit from the current system that is so deleterious to the interests of excellent teachers and students waiting to receive a substantive education.  The program designed for the Minneapolis Publics Schools could be implemented immediately, given full focus and dedication to the task, before that time when we can expect to dismantle departments, schools, and colleges of education.  The immediate task is to retrain teachers newly certified after participating in current, useless programs of teacher preparation.

As to veteran teachers, my abiding estimate is that no more than 10% of the teachers presently on staff in the Minneapolis Public Schools are truly excellent;  15% are so terrible that they never should have been allowed in a classroom;  and the remainder fall in the broad 75% that are intolerably mediocre.  The terrible teachers in that 15% category will most likely always be terrible and in almost all cases will have to be jettisoned.  Most teachers in the 75% category of mediocrity should be given the option to retrain and prove their mettle for retention.

In my program for retraining teachers of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, teachers aspiring to teach at the K-5 level will have to undergo an intensive full year of weekly, all-day training leading to a high-quality Masters of Liberal Arts degree;  followed by a full academic year internship.

The Masters of Liberal Arts Degree for Aspiring Minneapolis Public Schools Teachers at Grades K-5

Teachers at level K-5 should be broadly and deeply knowledgeable scholars, at home in the intellectual worlds of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts.  The key components of the academic program leading to this degree are described below.  It is expected that the courses taken for the Masters of Liberal Arts will be taken intensively, five days a week, during one full school year, from late August until early June.  Over the summer, the aspiring teacher studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will write her or his master’s thesis, then the remaining months of the master’s program will be spent as a classroom intern undergoing a full academic year of classroom observation and teaching under the guidance of a teacher identified as highly competent.  The latter teacher will be chosen for manifesting as much excellence as we dare hope, given current realities with regard to teacher quality.

 

Officials in the Minneapolis Public Schools should embrace these components and set about establishing a program in conjunction with one of the universities in the Twin Cities.  Those representing the Minneapolis Public Schools should articulate exactly what they want from the degree-granting institution.  From the degree-granting university, this will mean embracing the details of the program given below, providing the professorial expertise required, and following through on the administrative aspects leading to the granting of the Masters of Liberal Arts to the K-5 teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

The program and requirements for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree for prospective teachers at levels K-5 are given as follows:

Mathematics

During the full academic year of retraining of teachers at grades K-5, professors of mathematics should be brought in by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to give educators of the very young a thorough overview of mathematics up through calculus.  Teachers at grades K-5 need a fundamental readjustment of the way that they view themselves.  They must regard themselves as capable learners and practitioners in the full range of human knowledge.  We cannot abide the level of math phobia that often abides in the hearts of many current K-5 teachers.  The way for an aspiring teacher to overcome mathematical phobia and prepare to launch the young student on the K-12 mathematical experience is for everyone involved to know what is ahead on this exciting quest for numerical, algebraic, geometric, trigonometric, statistical knowledge, and calculus.

 

University of Minnesota Mathematics Professor Jonathon Rogness has commented to me, “It is always advisable that a teacher have knowledge far beyond the concepts that he or she immediately covers in class.”

 

If teachers themselves had a substantive education in either high school or as undergraduates at a college or university, then reviewing previously learned mathematical concepts will not be difficult:  Much of the information is either lying latent for reawakening or, even more happily, is actually operating nearer the surface to be pulled upward into the brightness of mental reflection, ready for application.  But for those teachers who have done what our K-12 schools and universities too often encourage, somehow muddling through math courses without really understanding for lack of teachers capable of giving them clarity, then the process will be more arduous.

And since we want them to be teachers who most certainly never themselves abet the muddling through approach to mathematical education, we want them to have confidence as capable mathematicians.

Over the course of ten (10) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for mathematics:

Week #1 >>>>> Fundamental Math
Week #2 >>>>> Algebra I
Week #3 >>>>> Geometry
Weeks #4 and #5 >>>>> Algebra II .
Weeks #6 and #7 >>>>> Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry (FST)
Weeks #8, #9, and #10  >>>>> Calculus (corresponding to a full year of college-level calculus)

Natural Science

Prospective teachers at K-5 should also be highly confident in themselves as students of natural science, one of the five key subject areas emphasized during the K-5 years. The three natural science fields that should dominate their own study in route to the Masters of Liberal Arts degree are biology, chemistry, and physics.  Professors in these fields should teach compact courses of about two weeks each, during which the prospective K-5 teachers review (ideally) or learn well for the first time (as too often will be the case) the most important concepts pertinent to these important fields of natural science.

Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for natural science:

Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>>  Biology
Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>>  Chemistry
Week #5 and Week #6 >>>>>  Physics

History

 

Teaching for all subjects in our current system of K-12 education is mediocre.  Knowledge of history is particularly unskillfully imparted to students. And what is true generally is especially true at the K-5 level. In our K-5 schools, history is subsumed under an amalgamation known as “social studies,” in an innervated curricular approach that is entirely consistent with the “constructivist” precepts under which teachers have been trained.  There is a great deal of focus on the lives of the students, in which they are asked to reflect about their own families and community, in the absence of any social scientific context in which to compare their own family mores and structures with others that prevail in the general society.  Nothing is learned of any substance in the way of sociology, psychology, economics, and government--- and certainly nothing very coherent in the way of history.

Under our new curriculum, history will be the subject identified for study at the K-5 level.  History as an appellation is used rather than “social studies,” because humankind’s experience over time has produced the life that we live today, and when we study history in depth, we also learn a great deal about sociology, psychology, economics, and government.  For that matter, great discoveries in mathematics and natural science are contextualized in a study of history, and knowledge of the essence of those discoveries is gained.

 

Hence, history is key to full understanding of all subjects germane to the liberal arts.

Over the course of eight (8) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for world and American history:

Week #1 >>>>>  Prehistory and Developments Through Earliest Civilizations (Beginnings to 700 B. C.)
Week #2 >>>>>  Classical Period (700 B. C to 500 A. D.)
Week #3 >>>>>  European Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Contemporaneous World        

Development (500 A. D. to 1500 A. D.)
Week #4  >>>>> The Rise of the Nation-State and the Importance of the European Enlightenment (1600 to 1800)
Week #5 >>>>>  Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution (1600 to 1900)
Week #6 >>>>>  Major Events of the 20th Century and Early 21st Century (1900 to 2016)
Week #7 >>>>>  American History through the 18th Century
Week #8 >>>>>  American History from 1800 through 2016

                                                     
Language Arts

 

Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for language arts:

Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>> 

 

Classical Greek and Roman Literature; Classics of World Literature;

Premodern and Renaissance Classics of Europe; Shakespearean

and Elizabethan Literature

 

Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>> 

Modern and Contemporary British and American Literature

 
Week #5 >>>>> 

African American Literature and the Literature of Other Major Ethnic Groups in the

United States

Week #6 >>>>> English Grammar, Syntax, and Written Composition

Fine Arts

Over the course of four (4) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for fine arts, which adopts a chronological approach for presenting the history of the visual arts, architecture, and music:

Week #1 >>>>> 

The Prehistoric World (Beginnings to 3,000 B. C);

The Ancient World (3,000 B C. to 700 B. C.)

Week #2 >>>>> 

The Classical World (700 B. C. to 500 A. D.);

The Medieval World (500 to 1500 A. D.)

Week #3 >>>>> 

The First-Stage Modern World (1450 to 1750); The Second-Stage Modern World (1750 to 1945);  The Contemporary World (1945-2016)

Week #4 >>>>> 

Survey of Musical Forms and Composition

Composers and Music in the Western Classical Style;   

Blues, Blues-Based, and Blues-Inspired Music

in the United States;  

Folk and Country Music;

Musical Instruments

Additional Requirements for Prospective Teachers at Grades K-5

Teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5 will, after completing the above-given course of study during a full academic year, research, write, and defend a master’s thesis in the course of the following summer.

Then, during the succeeding academic year, aspiring K-5 teachers will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Revolutionizing Training for Teachers of Students in Grades 6-8 (Middle School) And Grades 9-12 (High School)

Teachers of students at grades 6-8 and at grades 9-12 will, in the revolutionized curriculum in this program for achieving academic excellence, of necessity be first-rate scholars possessing broad and deep knowledge of the subject areas that they will teach.

As with teacher aspirants at the grades K-5 level, master’s degrees in education will not be recognized. Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn degrees in departments relevant to their teaching fields (e.g., mathematics, physics, economics, world literature, Spanish).

As in the case of K-5 teachers, teacher aspirants at the secondary level (grades 6-8 or 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before undergoing evaluation for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Thus, for both teacher aspirants at the K-5 level and those at grades 6-8 and 9-12, the entire program in the aftermath of earning a bachelor’s degree will typically take three years.

 

Such teachers will thereby gain professional status via academic training as rigorous as programs in law and medicine.  They should be paid accordingly, with median salaries rising to around $85,000 from the currently prevailing median of $71,000.

 

3)  Academic Remediation and Enrichment

 

Astonishingly, there is no comprehensive, consistently administered tutoring program at the

Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to ensure that students struggling below grade level in reading and math are given the help that they need to reach grade level performance.   Failure properly to serve struggling students has been manifested in both private and public efforts.

The Private Vendor Fiasco under No Child Left Behind

 

I have written in many places of the favorable features of the No Child Left Behind law passed as a bipartisan initiative in both houses of Congress in 2001, stressing objective testing that in Minnesota meant a state-designed grade 9 assessment for writing and Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) for students at grades 3-8 and 10 for reading, grades 3-8 and grade 11 for math; disaggregation of data according to student demographic characteristics;  objective identification of schools that continually failed students in certain demographic categories;  and gradations of punitive sanctions ultimately resulting in staff restructuring at schools that failed students for five successive years.

 

But No Child Left Behind regulation mandated private market interventions to help low-income, low-achieving students rise to grade level in reading, math, and writing.  What should have been a tutorial initiative organized and delivered by the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school districts to confront their own failures fell to private businesses, under the notion that competition to raise student performance would achieve what the public school system had not.

This was a disastrous failure.

During an approximately eight-year phase that began during the 2004-2005 academic year, numerous commercial vendors competed to provide tutoring services to struggling students as mandated by No Child Left Behind legislation.  The private market for tutorial services was fraught with corruption and achieved nothing substantial in behalf of low-achieving students.  Some vendors promised students and their families gifts of computers and other items if they signed up for their programs.  All but a very few commercial tutoring enterprises evidenced far more concern in enrolling students for tutorial sessions costing typically between $30 and $75 an hour, as opposed to interest in student achievement.

Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools in the Office of Funded Programs attempted to coordinate the private market effort by fifty or more vendors per year, but MPS staff rarely visited the academic sessions run by the private companies, so that any regulation pertained to invoice submissions and accounts payable.  Much of payment rendered by MPS for these private services was subsidized by the federal government via Title IX funding, but the school district itself bore costs that subsidies did not cover, and a great deal of staff time was invested in the monumentally unsuccessful private market tutoring effort.

 

When Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and other officials at the Minnesota Department of Education successfully gained a waiver from No Child Left Behind regulations in the autumn of 2012, private tutoring activity waned.  For two years beyond the approval of the waiver, administrators under Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson’s direction at MPS opted to maintain private tutoring activity, but thereafter this failed experiment came to an end.

And officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools have offered no viable, well-coordinated effort to address the problems that federal officials vainly hoped would be solved by the private market.

Failure to Design and Implement a Viable Tutoring Program at the Minneapolis Public Schools

Tutoring efforts at the Minneapolis Public Schools constitute an ineffective hodgepodge.

 

R. T. Rybak departed the reformist nonprofit agency Generation Next before that organization delivered on its promises to enroll a bevy of tutors to help struggling public school students in Minnesota.  This was after officials at Generation Next committed two years of staff time to arrive at the obvious conclusion that aggressive remedial instruction should be rendered to ensure that all students are reading and performing mathematical operations at level of school enrollment by grade three.
  

Students at K-5 and K-8 institutions in the Minneapolis Public Schools receive some help through the Beacons after school program.  But academic assistance in Beacons is not high quality or properly measured for effectiveness, and students spend as much after school time in recreational pursuits as they do in striving to achieve academic proficiency. 

 

Those wishing to sign up as volunteers for the Minneapolis Public Schools may sign up under categories that include Community Volunteers, Elementary Literacy Tutor Program, and Adult Education Volunteers.  Other programs included on the MPS website for prospective volunteers that have relevance to tutoring include Math Corps, Reading Corps, City of Lakes Americorps, and

VISTA.  Not all volunteers render academic instruction, and there has been no major effort to place a sufficient number of tutors working to advance the academic prospects of all students needing remedial instruction in all schools.

 

At schools formerly classified as High Priority, efforts were made to assist struggling students for designated periods of the regular school day, as well as after school;  but these initiatives were nascent in development, and overwhelmingly student performance has not reached the goal of grade level performance.

Summer school and specialized summer tutorial assistance programs at the Minneapolis Public Schools are inadequate and feature notable teacher ineffectiveness.  Further, leaders of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers have often voiced opposition to aggressive remedial efforts in summer and after school programs.

This combination of private enterprise and public school failure is stark, given that the problem is so clear and the program for action so logically apparent.

 

We must do better, according to a program with features given below:

Toward a Coordinated Effort at the Minneapolis Public Schools for Addressing the Needs of Students Struggling Below Grade Level in Reading and Mathematics

The Minnesota Department of Education still formally abides by Minnesota State Academic Standards legislated in 2004.  The standards establish the skill sets that students are to have at each grade level and applies to all students.  And indeed all students should be expected to learn knowledge and skill sets given in curriculum consistent with state standards.

But only 44% of MPS students meet state standards in math, while a similar 43% of students meet state standards for reading. This means that over 55% of students at MPS need remedial instruction that is not currently being rendered in any comprehensive way from school to school.

Staff in the Department of Teaching and Learning should be dismissed and the department dismantled.  Aimee Fearing’s employment should be terminated and she should be replaced at the head of the Academic Division by a college, university, or independent scholar with a Ph. D. in a key academic discipline (e.g., mathematics, physics, history, English literature, music) there needs.  The program given above for teacher training must be implemented, so that teachers have the requisite subject area knowledge.  Staff energy must then be marshaled in skill remediation for academically struggling students--- a majority of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  There should be a clearly identified tutorial point person for elementary school (grades K-5) students, a clearly designated person for middle school (grades 6-8) students, and another for high school (grades 9-12) with responsibility for implementing a district-wide tutorial program.

In math during the K-5 years, students need to progress through skill acquisition that includes pre-math positional terms (up, down, under, over, and the like), time telling (analog and digital), units of money, the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, data representation (graphs, charts, tables), and introductions to geometry and algebra.

In reading during the K-5 years, students need to progress through alphabet recognition, phonemic awareness, vocabulary of ascending syllables and degrees of abstraction, sentence construction and recognition, paragraph construction and comprehension (with use and understanding of topic sentences), and reading of a variety of fictional and nonfictional works of thematic variety and topical diversity, allowing for an expanding and ever-richer vocabulary.

One hour a day should be set aside for students to work on enrichment activities connected to the skill level that each student is manifesting:

For students who have mastered grade level skills, this will mean working on advanced material that challenges students to solve intriguing math problems or read for the enhancement of literary appreciation or knowledge acquisition.

For students who are lagging below grade level, this will mean working one on one with a well-trained tutor until the necessary math and reading skills are acquired.  Work with a tutor should be viewed as an opportunity to master important math skills and to read an array of interesting and high quality fictional and nonfictional material.  Students should receive positive feedback for progress made;  tutors should convey a sense of joy in learning and delight in the opportunity to spend time with the young person.

Over time, most struggling students will gain the basic skills that they need in the course of remediation during the K-5 years.  But enrichment classes should be available at the middle school (grades 6-8) and high school (grades 9-12 levels) also, so that students have both the chance to ascend to academic challenges either for mastery at grade level or advancement from already secured grade level position.

Enrichment sessions of both types should be available after school also, with priority given to students who are struggling below grade level;  but students evidencing grade level performance and

above should also be given after school opportunities for knowledge and skill ascendance in the form of human and material resources for research and specialized study of topics of driving interest, and for training of the type needed for success on ACT and SAT exams.

Both in-school and after-school programs for skill and knowledge enhancement should be administered in the spirit of challenging students to know all that they can know and to become all that they can be.

Once the program for academic enrichment (advanced and remedial) is well integrated into academic culture at the Minneapolis Public Schools, administrative staff and teachers at the building level can take responsibility for implementation and improvement, with successes and innovations shared across the district.  Involvement of central office personnel will be critical at the initial stages;  over time, though, well-trained teachers and tutors at the building level can implement enrichment activities as a primarily site-based responsibility, subject to oversight from central office personnel.

The program will also require a great increase in the number of tutors and very careful training of these tutors.

An aggressive program of volunteer solicitation should secure high quality talent among college students, workaday professionals, and academically astute and pedagogically adept parents and retirees.

But expansion of professional staff hired for the express purpose of tutoring will also be necessary.   

Academic enrichment (advanced and remedial) should be a budgetary priority of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

4)  Family and Community Outreach

Via

Resource Provision and Referral

 

For many years, community outreach at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) was handled mainly by the woefully understaffed Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement.

 

This was in 2016 led by Executive Director for External Partnerships Courtney Cushing Kiernat, then Family Partnerships Director Lynnea Atlas-Ingebretson;  soon after Ed Graff became MPS superintendent, the department was disbanded.  Up until that time, the department had been comprised of the following members:

 

Lynnea Atlas-Ingebretson, Director of Family Partnerships

Patti Peterson, Account Specialist
Ahmed Keynan, Family and Community Inclusion Specialist
Briana MacPhee, Cultural Liaison-Latino Community and Families
Damon Gunn, Community Partnerships Executive Office Coordinator
Desean Smedley, Parent Academic Facilitator
Deqa Sayid, MPS Family and School Advocate
Elisa Iha, Community Partnerships Manager
Jason Bucklin, Out4Good Coordinator
Kaylie Burns Gahagan, Volunteer MPS Coordinator
Mitchell Roldan, Parent Academic Facilitator

 

By contrast the Department of Teaching and Learning at that time had a bloated forty-two (42), down in 2019 to a still-bloated 30 staff members, earned a total of $2,820,703 in salaries; the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement had only the eleven (11) staff members earning a total $737,266. And whereas the Department of Teaching and Learning had three (3) staff members who received over $100,000 and twelve (12) who received over $80,000, in the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement no staff member received over $100,000;  Ms. Atlas-Ingebretson earned $91,463, one staff member earned $76,944, and all other staff members in the Office of Student, Family, and Community Engagement earned between $52,812 and $64,731.

 

The Department of Student, Family, and Community Engagement should be replaced by a Department of Resource Provision and Referral, staffed by people comfortable on the streets and in the neighborhoods and homes of students and their families.  In order to reach students from economically impoverished or dysfunctional families, we must shift staffing priorities at the Minneapolis Public Schools toward those people of multiple ethnicities who are comfortable in environments characterized by the challenges of people living at the urban core and who can connect with students and their families right where they live.

 

Comprehending the Problem in Historical Context

The life of people who live in poverty is fundamentally different from people who live in circumstances of the middle and upper economic classes.

History created the circumstances of poverty in the United States as a result of differential treatment of people according to race, nation of origin, and natal family economies:

During the 16th to 18th centuries, approximately 12,500,000 people of African descent were hauled across the Middle Passage to insular Caribbean or mainland American locales and forced into slave labor; about 500,000 of these slaves were sold in what became the United States.  Liberation from involuntary servitude came when the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1866.  But Reconstruction (1865-1877) failed and African Americans, who formally gained full citizenship and voting rights via the 14th and 15th Amendments, fell victim to Supreme Court justices who disregarded the Constitution;  and to a racist white society in the American South that imposed conditions of sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, and vigilante brutality.  Between the years 1877 and 1965, 4,600,000 people were lynched in the United States;  a third of these were white victims in the Wild West;  the remainder, over 3,000,000 people, were African Americans lynched mainly in the South.  Both of these lynching figures exceed the number of people who lost their lives in the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York City on September 9, 2001 (9/ 11).

Until the early 20th century, public school education ended for most students with the completion of grammar school in 6th grade; a very few students went to high schools, the rigor of which matched the name.  As more people sought schooling beyond grammar school, an intermediate institution known as junior high, also rigorous in academic content, came into being for grades 7 through 9.  For students in grades 10 and 11 (the last grade in most high schools well into the 20th century), great status accrued to those who graduated from these institutions during a time when college or university matriculation was not common.

At the same time that African Americans escaped from the violence and discrimination of the South from 1915 forward on a Northern Migration, great waves of immigrants came ashore, especially from eastern and southern Europe.  As these immigrants and others increasingly sought education at the levels of junior and senior high school, new demands were placed on systems of public education in the United States.  Eastern and southern Europeans frequently were more impoverished than were their counterparts from Scandinavia, Germany, and other nations of northern and western Europe. They presented greater challenges to public education systems and were stereotyped as less academically capable.  In the schools of the United States there developed a bifurcated approach to education whereby impoverished and stereotyped populations were tracked into vocational education that ended before high school graduation, while wealthier and systemically preferred students proceeded through college preparatory study toward high school graduation.

 

African American students were generally tracked along the lines of those immigrant populations that bore heavy discrimination, and they bore the additional burden of attending mostly segregated schools. Here and there in the American South, African American teachers actually disseminated considerable knowledge and skill sets to students under difficult circumstances, but on the whole African American students into the 1950s received low quality and truncated education. Desegregation as a result of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision advanced the ideal of equality but had little favorable academic impact.  African Americans were still stuck in lousy southern schools or tracked in the manner of 20th century immigrant populations.
 

Congressional passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and equal employment and fair housing legislation during the late 1960s opened a pathway for African Americans who had the wherewithal to pursue middle class educational and professional aspirations. But African American middle class flight coalesced with white flight from the urban core, leaving behind the poorest of the poor.

Riots along Plymouth Avenue in the summers of 1966 and1967 accelerated the movement of Jewish and other people of European origins out of North Minneapolis, coinciding with in-migration of additional African American populations from challenged urban areas in Southside Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Gary, Indiana.  In the Minneapolis Public Schools, within which there were less than 20 African American teachers and other personnel throughout the 1970s, teachers confronted unprecedented classroom challenges that they were ill-equipped to face.

Crack cocaine came to North Minneapolis and other inner city areas by the early 1980s and gang activity increased apace.  Drugs and gangs placed severe additional burdens on inner city communities and the schools that served them.  Many historical forces have operated centrifugally to propel males away from their nuclear familial units;  by the 1980s, this very much included the well-intended but operationally deleterious Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

From the time of those turbulent 1980s, so full of challenges for people living at the urban core, nine superintendents (Richard Green, Robert Ferrera, Peter Hutchinson, Carol Johnson, Thandiwe Peebles, Bill Green, Bernadeia Johnson, [Interim Superintendent] Michael Gore, and now Ed Graff) have headed the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Not one of those prior to Bernadeia Johnson effectively addressed the needs of the most challenged urban populations.  Bernadeia Johnson launched promising programs with Shift, High Priority Schools, and Focused Instruction but departed before rooting these deeply into the program of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Gore made little headway with any of these programs.

And thus does Superintendent Ed Graff and staff now face the challenge of imparting an excellence of education historically denied to most students in the United States and never offered to the overwhelming majority of the African American population---   nor to those Native American, Hispanic, Hmong, and African immigrant populations that have now also arrived at the challenged urban core.

 

We need staff members at the Minneapolis Public Schools who comprehend the historical dimensions of the problems of inner city youth and their families--- and who are at least as comfortable in the communities and homes of these students as they are roaming the sterile hallways of the Davis Center at 1250 West Broadway.

Staffing the Minneapolis Public Schools with People Comfortable at the Urban Core

People abused by history, overwhelmed by poverty, and situated in communities wherein violence and illicit drug sales are realities of existence are constantly on edge: 

Most impoverished African American extended families have to contend with the reality that some member or members, especially males, have been, are, or will be caught up in the maelstrom of the criminal justice system.  Many must depend on federal government food stamps, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children supplementary nutrition program), Medicaid, low-income Section 8 housing assistance, and welfare (with AFDC as of 1996 replaced by TANF [Temporary Aid to Needy Families]). The latter program requires adult heads of household to secure employment and sets a five-year limit with the worthy goal of curtailing welfare dependency but creating practical problems pertinent to child care.

Many families living at the urban core feature numerous adults who are not high school graduates and contain very few members who have successfully matriculated at a college or university.  Low levels of education and high levels of poverty typically result in households with few books or electronic sources of the written word.  Impoverished and ill-educated adults are not well-placed to manifest the habits of reading, well-informed discussion, or sophisticated vocabulary usage.  Many have had aversive experiences in school and regard teachers and school administrators as intimidating figures.  They may of necessity involve themselves when their children are involved in conflictual situations, but they are not well-prepared to advocate for their children’s academic interests.

We need community and family outreach personnel at the Minneapolis Public Schools who by experience and training understand these historical and contemporary forces that exert pressure and circumscribe the lives of families dwelling in challenged inner city communities.  We must have a large contingent of employees at MPS who are comfortable walking the streets and visiting the homes of children living in families facing the challenges of poverty, dysfunction, or both.

We need outreach workers who comprehend the insecurity that attends gunshots in the middle of the night, yards cordoned off for police investigation, high-speed chases involving multiple law enforcement vehicles, and the possibility that a cracked taillight or lapsed license plate sticker might result in a driver being thrown up against the hood of a car amidst unsavory name-calling.

 

These community outreach staff members also need to confer with social workers as necessary to provide resource referral when families are thrust into any of the many possible dilemmas of life at the urban core:  spousal abuse, child abuse, electrical power or running water curtailment, landlord issues, roof leaks, pest infestation, low food supplies, inadequate winter clothing, chronic unemployment---  for starters.  Well-trained community outreach workers need to assist families with any problems getting children to school, whether these are rooted in transportation issues, skewed familial schedules, sleep habits, or medical issues.

The overpowering message that we need to send to all of our families is that their children attend schools in which all people of all ethnicities and economic circumstances are valued equally; that the education of every child is considered vital;  and that staff members of the Minneapolis Public Schools are dedicated to the school attendance, familial connection, academic success, and the present and future of every single child.

We need to create a group psychology of love, hope, and trust in which all students and families anticipate joyful experiences every day, knowing that there are staff members in place who will remove any impediment to the expected joy.

We must in the Minneapolis Public Schools establish a model of the locally centralized school system for the delivery of an education of excellence to every child, thus leading the nation toward the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.

For that to happen, we must prioritize outreach to families for the resolution of any difficulty preventing the delivery of an excellent education.  In establishing priorities, we must construct budgets and create staff positions accordingly.

5)  Staff Reductions in the Central Office Bureaucracy

 

During the 2015-2016 academic year, I generated a highly detailed account of the central office bureaucracy of the Minneapolis Public Schools that yielded the following observations.  Readers should compare this account with the objective information pertinent to Davis Center staffing during the most recent two academic years (2018-2019 and 2019-2020) presented in Part One:  Facts.

 

In 2016, 553 staff members worked at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, located in the Davis Center at 1250 West Broadway in North Minneapolis.  Employees at the Davis Center received wages totaling $37,264,361 for a median wage of $67,508.  A bevy of employees at the Davis Center received well above the median for the staff of 552.  There were 58 employees (9.61% of the total 603) receiving $100,000 or above, 29 employees (4.80%) receiving between $90,000 and $100,000, 84 employees (13.93%) receiving between $80,000 and $90,000, and 82 employees (13.60%) receiving between $70,000 and $80,000.

In all, then, 41.94% of employees at the Davis Center received $70,000 and above;  32.33% received $70,000 or above;  28.34% earn $80,000 or above;  and 14.41% earn $90,000 or above.

 

For purposes of comparison, consider that in 2016 the minimum salary paid to a teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools was $41,292; the maximum was $95,808; and the median was $63,358. Note that the maximum paid to a teacher on the step and lane salary schedule was $90,679, so that the teacher making that top salary of $95,808 combined teaching duty with coaching, driver’s education instruction, or activity sponsorship.

To achieve budgetary priorities that emphasize those who actually interact with students and parents, we need to greatly reduce central office staff at the Davis Center.

The positions of employment at the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools given under the first bold underlined heading below should be eliminated immediately.  The existence of these positions clearly represents bureaucratic overkill, involving functions that can be easily subsumed under the job responsibilities of another employee at the Davis Center---  so as to eliminate the time that so many staff members at the Davis Center stare at computer screens or in other ways fritter away idle time and taxpayer dollars.

In 2016 I made the following recommendations:

Minneapolis Public Schools Central Office Staff Positions for Immediate Elimination

Position Title                                     Employee Name              Salary

Chief of Schools                               Michael Thomas              $151,000
Chief Academic Officer                 Susanne Griffin

Deputy Chief                                     Stephen Flisk                    $148,875
    of Schools
Chief of Staff                                     LeAnn Dow                         $120,000
Strategic Projects                            Lanise Block                       $100,958
    Administrator
Associate                                            Cecila Saddler                   $141,500
Superintendent (High Schools)
Associate                                            Jackie Hanson                  $141,500
Superintendent (Middle Schools)   
Associate                                             Paul Marietta                   $141,500
Superintendent  (K-8 East Schools)

Associate                                             Ron Wagner                  $141,500
Superintendent    (K-8 West Schools)
Associate                                             Laura Cavender              $141,500
Superintendent (High Priority Schools)
Associate                                              Lucilla Davila                  $141,500
Superintendent (Magnet Schools)

 

The next category of job positions for evaluation as to necessity and efficacy are located in the

Department of Teaching and Learning, which should be a logical focus for evaluation, given the mediocrity of teaching and low level of learning that prevail in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The Department of Teaching and Learning is one of those realms of the Davis Center whose staff performance was ultimately the responsibility of Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin (she also oversaw Community Education;  College and Career Readiness;  Early Childhood Education;  Education and Cultural Services;  Indian Education;  Professional Development;  and Research, Evaluation, and Assessment).

Department of Teaching and Learning Staff Positions for Careful Evaluation and Possible Elimination

Position Title                     Employee Name              Salary

Chief Academic                Susanne Griffin                $151,000
Officer

(Department of Teaching and Learning is among the programs under Ms. Griffin’s purview)

Teaching                              Macarre Traynham          $117,000
and Learning Executive Director
Focused Instruction        Christina (Tina) Platt       $73,237
Project Manager
Director, Elementary      Amy B. Jones                      $96,093
Education
Elementary Education    Janna M. Toche               $78,070
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education                   Julie A. Tangeman           $81,223
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education                   Barry J. Wadsworth       $78,070
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education    Sara Naegli                        $66,511
District Program Facilitator

Elementary Education    Michael J. Wallus           $68,612
District Program Facilitator
Elementary Education    Katherine Dunbar           $58,557
School Success Program Assistant

Secondary Education      Christopher Wernimont  $77,019
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education      Jennifer W. Rose              $81,223
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education     Katharine B. Stephens      $65,461
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education    Kleber Ortiz-Sinchi                             $52,850
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education     Nora A. Schull                       $62,308
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education      Sarah J. Loch                          $42,145
District Program Facilitator
Secondary Education       Ashley A. Krohn                  $51,800
District Program Facilitator
AVID                                        Tommie J. Casey               $77,019
High School Coordinator  
AVID                                         Paula J. Kilian                    $80,171
Middle School Coordinator 
AVID Counselor                   Wendy J. Wolff                  $75,969

AVID                                         Christen M. Lish                 $73,866
Elementary Coordinator   
AVID Project Manager     Maria L. Roberts                 $100,958
Advanced Academics       Melanie K. Crawford         $106,069
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Kelly A. McQuillan          $54,952
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Margaret S. Smith           $74,917
District Program Facilitator
Advanced Academics      Theresa J. Campbell       $80,171
District Program Facilitator

Office Specialist                  Jeanne M. Lacy               $52,416
Associate Educator            Samantha A. Weiman   $71,078

I also recommended termination of employment for the following:

Office of the Chief of Schools--- Positions for Evaluation and Likely Elimination

Position Title                     Employee Name              Salary

Turnaround Specialist                   Kandace Logan                  $93,750
District Program               Christina Ramsey             $83,250
Facilitator  
District Program              Maria Arago                        $77,868
Facilitator  
District Program              Jacqueline Ray                   $83,253

Facilitator  

District Program               Andrew Skendi                 $82,176

Facilitator  

District Program               Renae Nesburg Busse    $78,945

Facilitator  

District Program               Debra Anderson               $91,869

Facilitator  

Principal                              Carla Steinbach               $139,518

on Special Assignment                  -Huther

Occupants of all positions linked to a salary of $100,000 should be reviewed, with particular attention attention to job performance and the necessity of position occupied.

As the I compiled the above data and made recommendations, I did not list those positions that have genuine competitiveness with the private market beyond the locally centralized school district bureaucracy.  The positions not listed, therefore, include those pertinent to the fields of law, finance, psychology, and computer technology.

With the exception of parenthetical notations for Michael Walker (Director, Office of Black Male Achievement) and Terry Henry (Executive Director, College and Career Readiness), only position and salary are given in the next bold and underlined category.

 

All of the following positions, presently earning for their occupants annual salaries of $100,000 or more, should be given careful consideration for elimination or consolidation:

 
Positions from Various Departments with $100,000 and Above in Salary

Position Title                                    Salary

Director,                                          $106,069
Special Education Programs     
Director,                                              $117,080
Special Education Programs     

Director,                                          $111,430
Special Education Programs     
Director,                                           $120,007
Special Education Programs     
Executive Director,                         $119,976
Community Education

Executive Director,                         $117,000
Special Education & Health    

Executive Director,                         $117,500
Early Childhood Education    

Director, Indian Education            $106,069
Coordinator,                                     $100,958
Area Learning Centers     
Executive Director,                         $100,000          (Terry Henry)
College and Career Readiness     
Director,                                            $119,224       (Michael Walker)
Office of Black Male Achievement

Manager, Social Work                    $100,958

I recommended that the following positions that received for their occupants upper-tier salaries of at least $89,000 should be reviewed for their necessity and as to the effectiveness of the current occupants. These positions involved administering the law that in its current federal legislative incarnation has been changed to Every Student Succeeds (from the appellation No Child Left Behind, which prevailed from 2001 through 2015).

Other Positions for Review of Need and Effectiveness of Current Occupant

Position Title                                   Salary

Coordinator,                                  $93,749
Elementary &

Secondary Education Act
Coordinator,                                   $91,463
Elementary & Secondary Education Act
Coordinator,                                   $89,232
Elementary & Secondary Education Act

……………………………………………………………………………..

 

Many Davis staff members given above are no longer employed at the Davis Center;  a few have been assigned to positions at school sites, but many are no longer with the district in any capacity.

 

Superintendent Ed Graff won the approval of the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education (by a 6-3 vote) after a 17-month, two-phase search that cost over $200,000. He officially occupied his new position this summer, on 1 July 2016.

Graff has trimmed the bureaucracy considerably, from a peak of approximately 650 staff members during my five years of intensive investigation to the current approximately 450 staff members at the Davis Center.

 

But a sharp lens should have also been trained on the four programmatic features of the five-point program for transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools from a standard public education mediocrity, into a model to which other locally centralized school districts can refer in striving for K-12 education of excellence.

To achieve academic excellence, the following program should be implemented, with continuing bureaucratic trimming and rationalization attending very acute focus on the first four, programmatic, features:

 

1) Knowledge-intensive curriculum
2) Well-trained, professionalized teachers
3) Aggressive tutoring assistance and academic enrichment
4) Greatly expanded outreach to students and families right where they live
5) Great reduction of central office staff positions

With great confidence must we abet the academic success of students of all demographic descriptors.

There is no room for superfluity in the bureaucracy.

Full and focused attention must be given and energetic efforts must be expended with a clear goal of student academic success.

There are lives in the balance.

A democracy long in gestation awaits birth.

The time is now.