Article #5
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.
…………………………………………………………………………
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.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
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.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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