Article #1 in a Series >>>>> Dismissals and Overhaul That Must Ensue in the Central Offices (Davis Center) of the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>> Aimee Fearing Must Be Dismissed and the Position of Chief Academic Officer Must Be Reconceptualized

Given the academic inadequacy of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design, numerous decisions must now be made to bring knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education of excellence to the students of the district.  The Design contains many admirable features (rationalized transportation, reevaluated and relocated magnet schools, and induced attendance at community schools, but the academic portion is a vast intellectual wasteland. 

 

If the most generous view is taken of the academic section of the Design, one might say that although there is no hope as expressed on the terrain of academic planning, the plan in the academic portion of the Design is so intellectually vacuous that it “first does no harm.”

 

But the harm not done resides in leaving so much programmatically unspecified that there is much room for interpretation;  the sin of the Design is in omission rather than in commission.  But sins of omission are just as grave if commitment to positive action is not made. 

 

MPS Superintendent Ed Graff must have an epiphany as to the nature of excellent education and come to a realization that his own academic training is insufficient, what training that he has had at the behest of education professors is errant, and that he must act upon his epiphany by accessing the external academic talent that neither he nor anyone in the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) possesses.

 

No one at the Davis Center is a scholar in a major academic discipline.  This situation is revealed in greatest absurdity in the staff of the Department of Teaching and Learning, now apparently led by Jennifer Rose, who reports to Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing.  Rose is more academically serious in her dedication to the natural sciences than most in the Department of Teaching and Learning are committed to the fields that they purport to represent, but her advanced degree, like the generally inept staff members of the department she leads, is in education rather than a legitimate academic discipline.

 

Rose should be dismissed as executive director of the Department of Teaching and Learning, that position should be eliminated, the department as a whole gutted, and a first-rate scientist with a masters or doctorate in biology, chemistry, or physics should be hired for the position formally held by Rose as a designer and implementer of science programming for the Minneapolis Public Schools.

  

………………………………………………………………………………

 

More critical yet is the replacement of Aimee Fearing with a genuine academician. 

 

Sometimes on the name-plaque identifying her at the community meetings convened to consider models for the MPS Comprehensive District Design, Fearing would laughably be given the appellation, “Dr.”  

 

To those who do not know any better, which is to say almost everyone at these gatherings, the “Dr.” title might be impressive.   But while a Ph.D. (as opposed to an Ed. D.) does confer the status demanded of today’s professors in the key academic disciplines and is generally expected of college and university presidents, no one who has obtained an Ed. D., as did Fearing, would be considered for president at reputable colleges and universities.  The degree is typically borne by education professors, who are as much a campus joke as are the flimsy doctorates conferred upon them.

 

Fearing’s credentials are as follows.

 

Academic Credentials for Aimee Fearing

Minneapolis Public Schools

 

Executive Director, Teaching and Learning

 

Degrees Earned          Field in Which                Institution at Which             

                                          Degree Was Earned      Degree Was Earned

 

Bachelors Degree       ESL Education                University of Northwestern

 

13 May 2000

 

Masters Degree          Education                       Hamline University

 

23 May 2003

 

Doctorate Degree       Education                       Hamline University

 

30 April 2015

 

Other Credentials

 

Professional Licensures

 

K-12 Principal Licensure

 

Expiration, 30 June 2023

 

K-12 ESL Licensure

 

Expiration, 30 June 2023

 

5-12 Communication Arts Licensure

 

Expiration, 30 June 2023

 

Thus, Fearing has the typical profile for an academic decision-maker at the Minneapolis Public Schools: 

 

Her training is entirely in education rather than in an academic discipline (mathematics, natural science, history, social science, literature, fine arts) that should be at the core of the curriculum of a locally centralized school district. 

 

Fearing is not a scholar. 

 

She is not a subject area specialist. 

 

Her dissertation focused on insubstantial drivel that pertains typically to the Ed. D. that never signals academic seriousness;  in this case she interviewed and analyzed recipients of education doctorates as to what use they made of their training once in public school administrative positions.  Fearing’s subject of dissertation focus is from one vantage point laughable given its academic irrelevance and embedded satiric cluelessness, but from another deadly serious, given the harm that the administrators of the type she interviewed inflict on students in Minnesota and across the United States.

 

Aimee Fearing should not be making decisions pertinent to academics. 

 

She should be dismissed from her interim position and returned to work in her undergraduate field of English language learning, rather than to a position of building principal,  a post at which (at the Wellstone Academy) she also did not provide acceptable academic leadership.

 

Acting upon an epiphany, Superintendent Graff should bring to the position of chief academic officer a scholar with training in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, economics, world and ethnic literature, music, or the visual arts;  who vows to assess staffing also for the design of programming in the technological and vocational arts (for which there is better current talent in the Davis Center than for the liberal arts).

 

The first move for indicating seriousness to overhaul curriculum for student acquisition of logically sequenced knowledge sets across the preK-12 years must come in the hiring of a scholar, not an education professor acolyte, to head the academic division of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

              

Most Acute and Chronic Dilemmas of the Minneapolis Public Schools Are Not and Cannot Be Addressed by the MPS Comprehensive District Design

The most acute and chronic dilemmas vexing the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) are weak curriculum and mediocre teacher quality;  these have many subsidiary components;  given current Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) academic leadership, neither the most vexing dilemmas nor their subsidiary components are or can be addressed by the MPS Comprehensive District Design.  

 

There is no one at the Davis Center who understands the defining characteristics of an excellent education or possesses scholarly mastery of key subject areas:  Degrees in education programs dominate among the leadership and staff of the Department of Teaching and Learning and MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and Interim Senior Academic Officer are both academic lightweights.

 

The proposed MPS Comprehensive District Design offers verbiage vowing to adopt the definition of a well-rounded education found in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and includes an abundance of jargon:  “academically rigorous curriculum,” “culturally relevant curriculum,” “differentiated instruction,” “personalized curriculum,” lifelong learning,” and “critical thinking,” merely seductive shibboleths with no capacity of bringing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to the schools of Minneapolis.

 

There is not now nor will there be under Graff, Fearing, or the Department of Teaching and Learning a curriculum specified for knowledge and skill sets to be imparted in logical grade by grade sequence from prekindergarten through grade 12. 

 

Graff, Fearing, and the sad-sack crew of 30 poorly trained staff members in the Department of Teaching and Learning have little academic expertise themselves.  Rather than design a curriculum that offers students an excellent education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts, these irresponsible occupants of Davis Center sinecures hide behind putative goals to build critical thinkers, when they themselves have no ability at critical analysis and recoil from challenges that expose their incompetence;  and lifelong learning, when they themselves are so devoid of any drive to gain such learning. 

 

Graff, Fearing, and members of the Department of Teaching and Learning are pretenders. 

 

They are morally and intellectually corrupt.

 

They cheat the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools every day their feet hit the ground.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Nothing in the MPS comprehensive District Design has the capacity to address the most vexing acute and chronic problems of knowledge-deficient curriculum and mediocre teaching quality.

 

Current Davis Center staff has no capacity or goal of addressing these dilemmas.

 

The current membership on the MPS Board of Education is comprised of political hacks who would resist any initiative to improve curriculum and teacher quality, even if the Davis Center staff suddenly morphed into responsible academic decision-makers alive in the world of knowledge, widely read and dedicated to the prospect of imparting to students abundant knowledge sets in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.

 

Even if fantasy became reality and these Davis Center administrators had the necessary epiphanies, suddenly acquiring the necessary knowledge and dedication to the acquisition of knowledge required of academicians, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) would resist the needed change and send the message to board members that they have purchased with big campaign donations and organizational power that such support will not be forthcoming if resistance to the needed initiatives is not mounted.  Sent such a message, KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser, Siad Ali, Kim Caprini, Josh Pauly, Kim Ellison, Nelson Inz, Jenny Arneson, and Ira Jourdain---  with one ironic exception, no academicians themselves---   would all bow to teacher union pressure and resist administrators who had somehow located their souls and discovered personal intellectual resources not heretofore evidential.

 

Any hope of addressing the vexing problems of knowledge-deficient, illogically sequenced curriculum and generally mediocre and frequently abominable teacher quality lies in hiring independent or university scholars to design curriculum and train teachers;  and even then would only be successful if the looming November 2020 elections propel four new members onto the school board and somehow inspire one member---  most likely , Josh Pauly---  to join them in support of the program designed by recently hired scholars.

 

The MPS Comprehensive District Design does not and cannot address the most acute and chronic dilemmas that vex the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Only the design of new curriculum

 

and

 

the retraining of teachers

 

by new, academically inclined staff--- 

 

and the overhaul of membership on the MPS Board of Education

 

can bring excellence of education to the long-waiting students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

MPS Comprehensive Design Has Admirable Features But Offers No Hope As To What Matters: Academic Success Cannot Be Attained Via the Design, with Superintendent Ed Graff and Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing As Chief Decision-Makers, and with the Current Staff of Academic Lightweights in the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning

In the spring of 2018, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff and staff, particularly Accountability, Research, and Equity (ARE) Chief Eric Moore began working very closely with consultant Dennis Cheesebrow to assess the overall condition of the district.  Cheesebrow provided specifics as to trends and circumstances already known.  Various demographic factors in combination with the concern of especially African American parents for the safety and academic fates of their children promised continued exit from MPS in the absence of concerted action.

 

By October 2018, Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly and others had been at work generating the fundamental principles that would undergird the MPS Comprehensive District Design;  these were revealed at a Saturday morning meeting.in that autumn of 2018.  The wording of the document admitted failure in serving the needs of students qualifying for Free/Reduced Price Lunch and most non-white students.

 

From the beginning, the MPS Comprehensive District Design contained admirable features demonstrating that decision-makers at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) recognized that the district was not providing an education to students in a number of demographic categories that even resulted in basic skills matery.  But from that same beginning, officials revealed no understanding of how to rectify the situation, and they remained clueless as to the contstituent elements of an excellence education.  Certain statements were particularly offensive, including the claim that the district, dspite the admitted inequities,  was providing excellent education to many students (implicitly middle class and affluent white students), when the reality is that

 

>>>>>    the locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools provides a knowledge-intensive, high quality education for no one;  students of all demographic descriptors are deficient in key knowledge and skill sets that sends no one on to college and university campuses well-prepared, and for many this is dramatically the case, one-third of MPS graduates need remedial coursework once matriculating on a college or university campus.

 

In the document generated for presentation to community members present on that Saturday morning, district officials embraced the call for a well-rounded education as defined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). and gave a sequenced programmatic account stretching from academic year 2018-2019 through 2021-2022, by which time a maturing program would be bringing high quality education to all MPS students.  The vow to render a well-rounded education is another clueless and projection that has no basis in reality, given that

 

>>>>>    there is no one at the Davis Center who understands the defining characteristics of an excellent education:  Degrees in education programs dominate among the leadership and staff of the Department of Teaching and Learning;  MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and Interim Senior Academic Officer are both academic lightweights.

 

In this very recent winter 2019-2020, numerous community meetings were held that offered five models for consideration as possible versions of the MPS Comprehensive District Design that might be provided to the MPS Board of Education for a vote in spring 2020. 

 

The finalized model announced on Friday, 27 March was very close to Model #5, except for one change each in language immersion school and one of the two K-8 schools is different from that identified in Model #5.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………….

 

In presenting the final model, district officials have dithered a long time to present a plan consistent with the principles given that morning of October 2018 and thus offering no hope for academic advance.  We are now almost four years into the Ed Graff administration with no academic progress whatsoever and none possible under the plan as given. 

 

Ed Graff has mystifyingly counted on Social and Emotional Learning, a murky Multi-tiered System of support (MTSS), Literacy, and Equity to bring improvement to the public schools of Minneapolis.  The section of the MPS Comprehensive District Design pertinent to academics claims to follow ESSA specifications but is a jargon-infested overview that offers no prospects for knowledge-intensive curriculum or training of teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum.    

 

Thus, in accordance with that October 2018 vision, the finalized model of the MPS Comprehensive District Design has admirable features in restructuring the district so as to rationalize and reduce transportation routes, induce attendance at community schools, and centralizing reevaluated and programmatically overhauled magnet programs in the ways.

 

 But studentsudents will continue to leave the public schools of Minneapolis in droves as the following realities abide:

 

>>>>>  Teachers will continue to be classroom presences possessed of woefully inadequate knowledge and in all likelihood continue to hand out packets, show videos of questionable relevance, and provide for “free days” on Friday as their prime pedagogy.

 

>>>>>  Those students who manage to graduate from the Minneapolis Public Schools will typically continue to have little knowledge of mathematics, natural science, history, government, economic, high-quality multiethnic and world literature, or the fine arts. 

 

>>>>>  One-third of graduating students will continue to need remedial instruction once matriculating on college campuses.

 

>>>>>  A corrupt school board will continue to protect teachers and the status quo at the expense of students and manifest those qualities of intellectual inadequacy that would undermine any more positive efforts even if not so baldly corrupt.

 

2

 

>>>>>  Community members who turned out at community meetings for mostly egotistical and racist reasons will discontinue attendance at school board meetings and events, fail to project candidacies capable of defeating the four abhorrent MPS Board of Education members up for reelection this coming November.  

 

…………………………………………………………………………..

 

This situation imputes irresponsibility and ignorance to all major parties responsible for the MPS Comprehensive District Design:  Superintendent Ed Graff and his staff, the wretched assemblage of MPS Board of Education members, and a woefully ignorant public mostly occupied gazing at their navels.

 

The saving grace for the MPS Comprehensive District Design would be for Graff to take advantage of the plan’s administrative and financial efficiencies by hiring university or independent scholars (from departments of genuine academic disciplines rather than education) to articulate a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and provide for the training of teachers capable of imparting such a grade by grade, logically sequenced curriculum.

 

But Graff and staff will not likely discern the opportunity for saving grace.

 

The needed change pertinent to knowledge-intensive academic programming and teacher quality will almost certainly come through local agitation that will require a much better informed and motivated citizenry in Minneapolis.

 

………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Details on the current structure and ideology of academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools in the context of the history of public education in the United States, along with a detailed program for curricular and teacher overhaul, may be found my 595-page book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, now in initial circulation in hard copy and entered on my New Salem Education blog very recently, in February 2020.     

 

Importance of >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< for Ongoing Advancement of Knowledge-Intensive, Skill-Replete Excellence in Education and with Regard to the Most Recent Eighteen Articles Focused on the MPS Comprehensive District Design

Since July 2014 I have written and assembled monthly editions of an academic journal, of the type seen in reference sections of university libraries, for the purpose of advancing excellence in education.  Eighty-Two (82) editions have now gone out to donors to the New Salem Educational Initiative and other interested and influential individuals and entities.  Readers may also find many editions of the Journal entered on this blog.  Each of these editions bears considerable ideational weight, advancing seminal ideas and fully detailing initiatives for overhauling preK-12 education.  

 

In the second edition (August 2014) of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota I detailed in approximately one hundred pages a grade by grade, logically sequenced, knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that by high school has most students taking Advanced Placement courses and selecting from multiple course options pertinent to their driving interests in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts while continuing to advance their broad knowledge and skill base.

 

In the third edition (September 2014), I detailed in another one hundred pages or so a full-scale program for training teachers capable of imparting knowledge-intense subject matter while eliminating degrees in departments, schools, and colleges of education as acceptable credentials for teachers at any level in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).

 

Subsequent editions have presented in exhaustive detail analyses of departments and divisions at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway);  information on key officials at the Davis Center, including those who are superfluous or positively harmful in the performance of the roles attending their sinecures;  factually replete information of student academic performance, disaggregated by ethnicity, gender, and qualification for free/reduced price lunch;  facts pertinent to the state and national context for the wretched quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools (the inadequate and erratic nature of national and state policies and programs relevant to preK-12 education);  and a bevy of information on the history and philosophy of education.

 

Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota is the best

source of information on the history, philosophy, and current state of education in the United States and provides an abundance of information as to how public education in the United States compares to system of education throughout the world.  In this journal, the now 1400 articles on this blog, in my two books (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect and Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education) of recent production, my television show, and public appearances, one finds a full-time, incessant effort to transform public education in Minneapolis and by extension in the nation and in the world.

 

..........................................................................................

 

As readers scroll on down to the immediately succeeding twenty-one (21) blog entries, she and he will find an exhaustive examination of the MPS Comprehensive District Design, detailed in the February, March, and April editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  In the February edition I examine the stark inadequacy of the academic portion of the design. In the March edition I give MPS Chief of Operations Karen Devet and Associate Superintendent for Special Programming Rochelle Cox credit for their lucid commentary at the January-March community meetings presenting five models of the design for public consideration, while examining the corrupt behavior of participants Celina Martina (MPS Executive Director for External Relations), Eric Moore (MPS Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota Chief of Accountability, Research,  and Equity), and Aimee Fearing (Interim MPS Senior Academic Officer) in acting at those meetings the part of sycophants for Superintendent Ed Graff.  And in the April edition I present the five models advanced for public consideration during those meetings, compared to the final form of the MPS Comprehensive Districgt Design upon which members of the MPS Board of Education will vote in May.

 

You will read accounts such as these nowhere else.

 

Those twenty-one articles avail readers of the high quality and quantity of research that goes into all of my books, articles, television programs, and public appearances in examining the MPS Comprehensive District Design from the perspective of one who possesses unprecedented broad and deep knowledge of the departments, divisions, and key decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

Read those eighteen articles to gain thorough understanding of the MPS Comprehensive District Design.

 

Then  be attentive to forthcoming editions of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota for the provision of scholarly articles on the dilemma and the promise of K-12 education in the United States, via the transformation of which we send forth the quality of citizens and human beings we need to create the future that is ours if only we dare to make the changes necessary for witnessing the emergence of knowledgeable citizens and people living happily on this one earthly sojourn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Front Matter and Contents, >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VI, Number 10, April 2020 >>>>> MPS Comprehensive District Design: A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success

Volume VI, No. 10                                                      

April 2020

                              

Journal of the K-12 Revolution

Essays and Research from

Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

MPS Comprehensive Design:

A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success

 

A Five-Article Series        

 

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative        

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor

                               

MPS Comprehensive Design:

A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success 

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

 

New Salem Educational Initiative

Minneapolis, Minnesota

               

MPS Comprehensive Design:

A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success 

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Copyright © 2020 by Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Contents

 

Introductory Comments                                                                                                              

MPS Comprehensive Design:

A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success

 

Article #1        

Proposed MPS Comprehensive Design                                                     

Gives No Hope of Academic Improvement

 

Article #2        

Similarity in Likely Outcome of the November                       

2020 Presidential and School Board Elections  

 

Article #3         

Five Models for the Minneapolis Public                                                

Schools Comprehensive District Design

Presented in Community Meetings,

January and February 2020  

                 

Article #4         

Finalized Model of the Minneapolis Public                        

Schools Comprehensive District Design 

 

Article #5          

Proposal Symbolizes the Failure of                                        

Superintendent Ed Graff as Academic Leader

of the Minneapolis Public Schools

 

Introductory Comments, >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VI, Number 10, April 2020 >>>>> MPS Comprehensive District Design: A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success >>>>> MPS Comprehensive District Design: A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success

Introductory Comments

MPS Comprehensive Design:

A Plan with No Hope for Academic Success

 

In the spring of 2018, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff and staff, particularly Accountability, Research, and Equity (ARE) Chief Eric Moore began working very closely with consultant Dennis Cheesebrow to assess the overall condition of the district.  Cheesebrow provided specifics as to trends and circumstances already known.  Various demographic factors in combination with the concern of especially African American parents for the safety and academic fates of their children promised continued exit from MPS in the absence of concerted action.

 

By October 2018, Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly and others had been at work generating the fundamental principles that would undergird the MPS Comprehensive District Design;  these were revealed at a Saturday morning meeting.in that autumn of 2018.  The wording of the document admitted failure in serving the needs of students qualifying for Free/Reduced Price Lunch and most non-white students;  inasmuch, though, as the public schools of Minneapolis provide a knowledge-intensive, high quality education for no one, district officials falsely claimed to be serving the needs of most white and prosperous students very well.

 

In the document generated for presentation to community members present on that Saturday morning, district officials embraced the call for a well-rounded education as defined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and gave a sequenced programmatic account stretching from academic year 2018-2019 through 2021-2022, by which time a maturing program would be bringing high quality education to all MPS students.

 

In this very recent winter 2019-2020, numerous community meetings were held that offered five models for consideration as possible versions of the MPS Comprehensive District Design that might be provided to the MPS Board of Education for a vote in spring 2020.  These are the models that I have given and analyzed in this series:

 

Model #1 would retain the current organization of schools, with no changes in magnet designations or transportation.  Models #2 and #3 called for strict organization of schools according to preK-5, grades 6-8 (middle school), and grade 9-12 (high schools) and were different only in that Model #3 provided for four dual Spanish immersion schools, rather than the three in Model #2.  Models #4 and #5 were programmatically similar to the latter two models in eliminating magnet schools at the outer edges of the district, locating magnets at the center of the district, identifying a change in two language immersion locations, and designing transportation routes so as to induce attendance at community schools;  but Models #4 and #5 provided for two K-8 schools, with Model #4 following the language immersion school identification of Model #2 and Model #5 following that of Model #3.   

 

The finalized model announced on Friday, 27 March was very close to Model #5, except for one change each in language immersion school and K-8 school identification.  Details are given in the articles that follow in this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolutiion:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………….

 

In presenting the final model, district officials have dithered a long time to present a plan consistent with the principles given that morning of October 2018 and thus offering no hope for academic advance. 

 

We are now almost four years into the Ed Graff administration with no academic progress whatsoever and none possible under the plan as given. 

 

Ed Graff has mystifyingly counted on Social and Emotional Learning, a murky Multi-tiered System of support (MTSS), Literacy, and Equity to bring improvement to the public schools of Minneapolis.  The section of the MPS Comprehensive District Design pertinent to academics claims to follow ESSA specifications but is a jargon-infested overview that offers no prospects for knowledge-intensive curriculum or training of teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum.    

 

Thus, in accordance with that October 2018 vision, the finalized model of the MPS Comprehensive District Design has admirable features restructuring the district in the ways that I have detailed in the articles below but offers no hope for provision of excellent education. 

 

Students will continue to leave the public schools of Minneapolis in droves as the following realities abide:

 

>>>>>  Teachers will continue to be classroom presences possessed of woefully inadequate knowledge and in all likelihood continue to hand out packets, show videos of questionable relevance, and provide for “free days” on Friday as their prime pedagogy.

 

>>>>>  Those students who manage to graduate from the Minneapolis Public Schools will typically continue to have little knowledge of mathematics, natural science, history, government, economic, high-quality multiethnic and world literature, or the fine arts. 

 

>>>>>  One-third of graduating students will continue to need remedial instruction once matriculating on college campuses.

 

>>>>>  A corrupt school board will continue to protect teachers and the status quo at the expense of students and manifest those qualities of intellectual inadequacy that would undermine any more positive efforts even if not so baldly corrupt.

 

>>>>>  Community members who turned out at community meetings for mostly egotistical and racist reasons will discontinue attendance at school board meetings and events, fail to project candidacies capable of defeating the four abhorrent MPS Board of Education members up for reelection this coming November.  

 

…………………………………………………………………………..

 

This situation imputes irresponsibility and ignorance to all major parties responsible for the MPS Comprehensive District Design:  Superintendent Ed Graff and his staff, the wretched assemblage of MPS Board of Education members, and a woefully ignorant public mostly occupied gazing at their navels.

 

The saving grace for the MPS Comprehensive District Design would be for Graff to take advantage of the plan’s administrative and financial efficiencies by hiring university or independent scholars (from departments of genuine academic disciplines rather than education) to articulate a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and provide for the training of teachers capable of imparting such a grade by grade, logically sequenced curriculum.

 

But Graff and staff will not likely discern the opportunity for saving grace.

 

The needed change pertinent to knowledge-intensive academic programming and teacher quality will almost certainly come through local agitation that will require a much better informed and motivated citizenry in Minneapolis.

 

………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Details on the current structure and ideology of academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools in the context of the history of public education in the United States, along with a detailed program for curricular and teacher overhaul, may be found my 595-page book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, now in initial circulation in hard copy and entered on my New Salem Education blog very recently, in February 2020.