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.
……………………………………………………………………….
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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