Apr 10, 2020

Article #3 in a Series >>>>> Fallacy and Immorality Define the Saga of the MPS Comprehensive District Design >>>>> Highly Intelligent, Articulate, and Talented Eric Moore Must Cease His Prevarication and Immerse Himself in Study of the History and Philosophy of Education >>>>> His Role in the Community Meetings of January-March 2020 was Deceitful and Beneath His Distinguished Lineage


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.

 

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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.

 

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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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