Article #1 in a Series >>>>> Fallacy and Immorality Define the Saga of the MPS Comprehensive District Design >>>>> The Stark Academic Incompetence of Superintendent Ed Graff

Fallacy and immorality are the defining characteristics in the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design.

 

The fallacy and the immorality are both founded in the stark reality that no one among academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools has any understanding of the  constituent elements of an excellent education;  the members of the MPS Board of Education comprise a politically corrupt, intellectually lazy, and ignorant group;  and the general public is roused at occasions in which personal interest is threatened but gives no understanding of being of higher intellectual caliber or morally grounded that Graff or the board.

 

Consider that Graff came to the Minneapolis Public Schools as a failed superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska. 

 

He spent a quarter of a decade at the district as elementary school teacher, principal, and occupant of central administration positions including chief academic officer and ultimately superintendent (three academic years in the latter role, those ending in 2014, 2015, and 2016).  Graff holds a degree in elementary education from the University of Alaska and a master’s in education administration from the University of Southern Mississippi.

 

Attentive and discerning readers would ask questions about that record and Graff’s educational preparation, as did I:

 

>>>>>     1)  Why while holding positions in the Anchorage district did Graff seek a degree from a low-tier university in another part of the country?

 

>>>>>     2)  What knowledge of any academic discipline has Graff brought to any of his roles?

 

Answers to those questions are as follows  >>>>>

 

>>>>>    1)  Graff determined that the money and status lamentably granted to administrators over teachers made a career as an administrator attractive;  he sought an easy online degree from an low-quality institution that gave him the same gossamer qualifications as the other  academic lightweights who dominate among chief academic officers and superintendents in the nation’s locally centralized school districts.

 

>>>>>    2)  Graff has slim knowledge of any legitimate academic discipline;  his undergraduate degree qualified him for the most important profession in the USA but unfortunately also abides as the weakest degree on any college or university campus, and his one foray into graduate study conferred upon him a certificate from a program that advanced his knowledge of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, ethnic and world literature, music, and visual art not one whit.

 

The school board of Anchorage declined to renew Graff’s contract after his three-year tenure as superintendent.  The MPS Board of Education voted 6-3 to bring this failed superintendent to lead the public schools of Minneapolis after the board had botched the search process not once but twice.

 

Graff took his position as MPS superintendent on 1 July 2016.  He soon identified Social and Emotional Learning, Multi-Tiered System of Support, Literacy, and Equity as his programmatic goals and by the end of his second year launched the process that has given us the MPS Comprehensive Design.  The Design has numerous favorable qualities in reevaluating and centralizing magnet programming, inducing attendance at community schools, and rationalizing transportation so as to reduce costs from $42 million to $35 million.

 

But the Design is as hopeless as a plan for academic improvement as is Graff as an academic leader, as one would expect.

 

Academic improvement at the Minneapolis Public Schools would involve first giving attention to the Minnesota State Academic Standards which have been broadly neglected at all levels, most especially at grades K-5;  then go beyond those standards to construct a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum for impartation in logical grade by grade sequence with an early emphasis in grades K-5 on mathematics, natural science, history and social science, high-quality multiethnic and world literature, and the fine arts---  continuing that emphasis in grades 6-8 and 9-12 while creating abundant opportunities in the technological and vocational arts.

 

Having articulated a logically sequenced, knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum, district officials must then endeavor to lift teachers above their current mediocrity;  decision-makers and planners must articulate and implement a program that goes far beyond standard Professional Development (PD) so as to provide training in key subject areas and to instill an understanding of students living at the urban core.

 

The MPS Comprehensive District Design was doomed in its fundamental academic responsibility from the start by the insubstantial intellectual quality and inadequate academic training of Superintendent Ed Graff.

 

A district plan that offers no hope for student academic improvement constitutes a failure of intellect and morality. 

 

We are moving up toward four years in the tenure of Superintendent Ed Graff.

 

He should bring in a university or independent scholar to design the needed academic program that could salvage an MPS Comprehensive Design that took two years to lead the district into a deeper academic quagmire---


or Graff should resign immediately.