Fallacy and immorality are the defining
characteristics in the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
Comprehensive District Design.
Eric Moore is a highly astute statistician
who reliably brings the brutal facts about student academic performance in the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
Moore now bears the title of Chief of
Accountability, Research, and Equity (ARE).
The department that he leads has undergone numerous name changes during
the 2016-2020 tenure of Superintendent Ed Graff: Previous names include Department of Research,
Assessment, and Evaluation; and
Department of Research, Assessment, Evaluation, and Accountability.
Graff’s nixing of the “Assessment” and
“Evaluation” components of the title is symbolically and materially
significant; the former refers to assessment
of student performance; and the latter
constitutes a remnant of the emphasis on evaluation of teachers during the
tenure (2010-2016) of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson.
But articulating precise measures for
rigorous assessment of student academic
performance has not been a part of the Ed Graff approach; he is more given to mumbling lamentable sound-good,
facile jargon from the education professor’s lexicon, using phrases such as
“teaching the whole child” and “social and emotional learning,” muddling the
key academic mission of any locally centralized school district rather than
committing himself to development of a program of educational excellence.
And evaluation of teachers has gone by the
wayside during the Graff tenure; the
superintendent has no effective program for lifting teacher quality above its prevailing
mediocrity.
Thus, the current appellation of the
department that Eric Moore leads shifts to public accountability; research that is often errant in focus
(including time-wasting survey material to establish data for what we already
know), and equity (which should be a stated value pursued through the provision
of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education, not a titular component of a department
that should focus relentlessly on data pertinent to the knowledge and skill
base of students.
…………………………………………………………………………..
Eric Moore is as amiable and likeable as he
is intellectually gifted.
Moore has a fascinating family history that
for many decades in the 20th century was rooted in Langston, one of Oklahoma’s historically
all-African American towns in a state to which African American’s were shuffled
to “Indian Territory” while one African American leader aspired to make the
state not only replete with over one hundred all-black towns but to counter
white racism by making all of Oklahoma black.
The town has one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in Langston
University, where his grandfather Ivory Moore matriculated before becoming a trailblazing
African American educational administrator in southern Oklahoma and northern
Texas--- and the first black mayor of
Commerce, Texas--- and where both his
mother and father were on staff.
I became so interested in Moore’s family
history and the African American town phenomenon that I spent two days in Langston
in summer 2017.
Moore seemed full of promise during the
waning days (autumn 2014) of the Bernadeia Johnson administration, which
featured certain promising programmatic initiatives despite a fanciful
strategic plan. These were not great but
better days for the MPS Board of Education, a time when board member Tracine
Asberry would pose pungent questions that sought answers for the lamentable student
academic performance that Moore’s data described. The exchanges between a candid Moore and an
unrelenting Asberry were some of the best moments at the school board during my
five and half years investigating the inner workings of the Minneapolis
Public Schools.
But Moore has never fulfilled his
promise.
As the political and programmatic winds
shifted in the Graff administration, Moore bent accordingly.
Graff has seemed as unsure as to how best
to tap Moore’s considerable talents as he is in grasping the essence of
excellent education. Graff had a
troubled relationship with former Chief of Schools Michael Thomas, now departed
for a stint as superintendent in a district of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Along with Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly,
Moore became one of the two most important academic administrators at MPS upon
Thomas’s departure.
In October 2019, Moore was tapped by Graff
to become Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning.
Moore would later claim that this was
always to be an interim position, but in fact opposition from the woeful staff
of MPS Teaching and Learning relegated Moore’s position to interim status by January
2019, after just two months in the official position. Cecilia Saddler had languished as Deputy
Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning in the wake of Thomas’s Departure
and was induced to depart after a tortuous professional experience. As if in the still of the night, Aimee
Fearing appeared on the scene as the interim chief of academics, which she
proclaimed as “Senior Academic Officer” without mentioning her own interim
status during the corrupt community gatherings of January, February, and March
2020.
Thus, Moore has no official status as academic
leader but he has been intimately involved in the evolution of the MPs Comprehensive
District Design for which Kelly initially served as key architect.
Given Moore’s eloquence and gift for gab,
the assignment to present the Design’s key features went to him during those
lamentable meetings of January-March.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
At those meetings, Moore played the role of
the Graff sycophant no less than did Celina Martina.
In presenting the five models, Moore
correctly induced the audience to understand that the status quo represented by
Model #1 would represent a wasted opportunity to evaluate magnet programming
and to rationalize transportation routes.
He ably presented Models #2, #3, and #4, and #5, including the favorable
similar features in those designs.
But Moore deceitfully presented those plans
as likely to lead to improved student academic performance, and he made
extravagant claims for the efficacy of integration as an agent of improved
academics.
Inter-racial and cross-ethnic interaction
will be a welcome phenomenon for society in Minnesota when such diversity of
friendship and neighborhood bring this social advance. But the existence of numerous charter schools
focused on particular ethnicities and the prevalence of schools such as Cristo
Rey (Hispanic student emphasis) and Harvest Preparatory Academy (African
American emphasis and a program that at times has been cited as an academic model); and the numerous abiding HBCUs across the United
States (including Moore’s own Langston);
and 65 years of experience post-Brown
v. Board of Education; strongly suggest
that integration is not a successful agent of academic excellence.
Only by making each one of our community
schools excellent via the provision of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
education; imparted by knowledgeable teachers;
will students of all demographic
descriptors receive an excellent education.
Eric Moore’s presentations as the community
meetings of early 2020 were smooth, articulate, and---
deceitful.
Moore knows that the teachers of the
Minneapolis Public Schools are not capable of providing an excellent education,
even if the district constructed an academically substantive curriculum for
which evidence is achingly absent in the MPS Comprehensive Design.
But, like Celina Martina, Moore performed
his role as Graff toady and made false claims for an MPS Comprehensive Design that
has no chance to fulfill the central academic mission of the Minneapolis Public
Schools or any other locally centralized school district.
Moore’s loss as a researcher and provider
of data for the Minneapolis Public Schools would be serious and lamentable.
His loss as an academic decision-maker
would be no loss at all.
Moore needs to recede into the singular role
as researcher and abandon his role as decision-maker on matters of academic
programming, for which he reveals abject ignorance as to history and philosophy---
and no willingness to learn.
As the grandson of the distinguished Ivory
Moore, Eric Moore should look deep into his soul, do the study that he needs to
do to become an effective designer of academic programming---
or
quit degrading himself by attempting to do
that which he cannot and lying in behalf of an academically failed
superintendent who himself has no ability to comprehend, much less provide,
knowledge-intensive education.
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