Apr 6, 2020

Article #5 in a Series Focused on Issues Pertinent to the MPS Comprehensive Design >>>>> Proposal Symbolizes the Failure of Superintendent Ed Graff as Academic Leader of the Minneapolis Public Schools


The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design sums up the failure of the administration of the Minneapolis Public Schools under the tenure of Ed Graff:

 

Graff has been a stark failure as an academic leader.

 

The superintendent has done an admirable job of slimming he Davis Center bureaucracy and giving scope to brilliant Chief of Finance Ibrahima Diop to get district finances in order.  The admirable features of the MPS Comprehensive District Design are of like nature:  matters of bureaucratic and financial rationalization. 

 

Many of the initiatives included in the design are rational and long overdue:

 

Magnet programs have been reevaluated for programming offered and are centralized for equitable access. In evaluating programming at  magnet schools and reducing the number of those schools from 14 to 11, officials have terminated magnet programming at Dowling (urban environmental emphasis), Marcy (open), and Windom (Spanish dual immersion) while among other changes locating magnet schools at Bethune Elementary and Franklin Middle School.  With the latter two designations, district officials have made a symbolic gesture that gives long overdue attention to North Minneapolis schools;  this can also be seen in the designation of North High School, along with Edison (Northeast Minneapolis) and Roosevelt (South Minneapolis), as high schools with Career and Technology Education (CTE) programs.

 

With the reduction of transportation provided to schools beyond a given student’s attendance boundary, more students will be induced to attend their community schools.  Reduction of transportation costs from the current $42 million to $35 million potentially can shift revenue to academic programming and capital improvements.

 

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But nothing in the MPS Comprehensive District Design gives any reason to expect improvements in quality of academic programming. 

 

The prime mission of any locally centralized school district is to provide a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education of excellence;  failure to address the most vexing issues of weak curriculum and mediocrity of teaching means that in crafting the Design, Graff and administration risk dooming the district as an academic entity.  The MPS Comprehensive Design maintained those features that are driving students out of the district as they and their families seek enrollment in other school systems that lamentably offer little if any more hope for quality education than do the schools of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

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In community meetings during January and February 2020, Graff and other MPS administrators presented the five models that I have given in other articles of this series:

 

Model #1 would have retained the current system, with all of its programmatic, transportation, and financial irrationalities. 

 

Models #2 and #3 made the switch in magnet programming components and location that are common features in all models except Model #1 and were identical except in that Model #3 provides for an additional Dual Immersion school (Green K-5).  Both of these models eliminated K-8 schools. 

 

The final model is very similar to Models #4 and #5 in retaining two K-8 schools (but Jefferson rather than Seward, as in those community meeting models) and identifies Green K-5  as a Dual Immersion school along with Sheridan K-5, Emerson K-5, and Andersen K-5 (but the latter replacing Jefferson, per the community meeting models).

 

Hence, Graff and key administrative staff in the finalized model are advancing the key features of the community meeting models, with a few additional adjustments of immersion and K-8 location, and with the latter opting to reduce but not eliminate K-8 options.

 

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Discussion of  a new MPS Comprehensive District Design began two years ago, in spring 2018.  By October 2018, the guiding principles of the Design were identified. 

 

Many months of work on Design details and community discussion have now transpired.

 

Admirable features of the design all pertain to matters that have nothing to do with the vexing dilemmas of knowledge-deficient curriculum and mediocre teacher quality.

 

Thus, the academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools has not improved and will not improve under the MPS Comprehensive District Design as proposed.

 

This means that Superintendent Ed Graff is a failure as an academic leader.

 

He should with all due haste hire a university or independent scholar to design and advance a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and very intentional training of teachers as bearers and transmitters of knowledge  ---

 

or Ed Graff should resign as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

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