Apr 23, 2020

Article #5, >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Research and Essays from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VI, No. 8, February 2020, >>>>> The Stark Inadequacy of the Superintendent Ed Graff’s Four Priorities, Embedded in the Academic Portion of the MPS Comprehensive Design


Curricular shibboleth and erroneous pedagogy pervade the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design.
 
Previous articles in this series have emphasized the jargon-infested nature of the MPS Comprehensive District Design, identifying terms and claims for “academically rigorous curriculum,” “culturally relevant curriculum,” “differentiated instruction,” “personalized curriculum,” lifelong learning,” and “critical thinking” as mere shibboleths spouted by the academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools who have inserted their corrupt ideology into the academic portion of the MPS Comprehensive District Design;  such terms have  no utility as guides to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
 
Now observe these lines from the academic portion of the MPS Comprehensive Design: 
 
MPS Instructional Model
 
All students will be able to demonstrate and articulate to parents their
 
>>>>>    Multi-Tier Systems of Support
>>>>>    The integration of Social and Emotional Learning
and career/life skills in the instructional design   
 
Improved Academic Achievement Planning Recommendations
 
Academic Strategies
 
The Design will support academic strategies that specifically promote
 
Four Core Priorities
 
>>>>>    Equity
>>>>>    Multi-Tiered System of Support 
>>>>>    Social Emotional Learning
>>>>>    Literacy
 
Academic Strategies
 
Deeper Investment and Expansion of Effective programming (K-12)
 
>>>>>    Continue focus on four core priorities:  Literacy, MTSS, SEL, and Equity
 
Thus, in addition to emphasizing the jargon-infested programmatic features indicated above and discussed in the first four articles in this series, the MPS Comprehensive District Design retains the four core priorities that MPS Superintendent has stressed for the  now nearly four years of his tenure, with these academic results that are generally worse than when he officially assumed his duties on 1 July 2020:
 
MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019
 
Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    
 
African                  22%       23%          21%        18%       18%          18%
American
 
American             23%        19%           19%       17%        17%         18%
Indian
 
Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%
 
Asian                     48%         50%          50%       47%        50%        47%
 
White                   77%         78%          78%       77%        77%         75%
 
Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%        20%
Reduced
 
All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%
 
Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019
 
African                  22%       21%         21%      21%       21%           23%
American
 
American             21%        20%         21%      23%        24%               25%
Indian
 
Hispanic               23%         25%          26%       26%        27%      29%
 
Asian                     41%         40%          45%       41%        48%      50%
 
White                   78%         77%          77%       78%        80%       78%
 
Free/                     23%         23%          23%       25%        25%      25%
Reduced
 
All                          42%         42%           43%     43%        45%       47%
 
Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019
 
African                 11%       15%         13%        12%       11%                14%
American
 
American             14%        16%        13%      17%       14%           17%
Indian
 
Hispanic               17%         18%        21%      19%       17%          16%
 
Asian                     31%         35%       42%       38%       37%          40%
 
White                   71%         75%        71%       70%       71%               70%
 
Free/                     14%         15%        17%       16%      15%          14%
Reduced
 
All                          33%        36%        35%        34%      34%                 36%  
 
The program of Ed Graff that has produced such abysmal results focuses on four areas:  1)  Social and Emotional Learning;  2)  Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS);  3)  literacy;  and 4) equity.
 
Of these four key programmatic areas under Graff, literacy is a very basic skill that under previous administrations nevertheless was not addressed in any coherent fashion.  Graff and staff tout the Benchmark curriculum as addressing this fundamental skill, but objective results have not been forthcoming.  And equity can only be achieved if teachers impart a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to students of all demographic descriptors.
In advancing Multi-Tiered System of Support, the Graff administration seeks to address the needs of students by identifying academic, psychological, and social needs of students and addressing those needs with the appropriate professional assistance.  This would be a promising initiative if adroitly conceived and then implemented district-wide.  Such conception and implementation have not occurred.
This leaves Social and Emotional Learning as defined by the organization CASEL, with which Graff was affiliated as a failed administrator in Anchorage.
CASEL (Cooperative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), based in Chicago, was founded in 1994.  Both CASEL and the term “social and emotional learning” were created at a meeting in 1994 hosted by the Fetzer Institute.   The meeting was meant to address a perceived need for greater coherence in an array of programs pertinent to drugs, violence, sex education, and civic and moral responsibility.  Social and Emotional Learning is meant to bring coherence.
In 1997 CASEL and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) brought together writers and researchers to produce Promoting Social and Emotional Learning:  Guidelines for Educators.  The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning claims to have made great advances in serving the multiple needs of youth over the course of the last twenty and more years, but the abiding ill-addressed academic, psychological, and social need of students in urban school districts across the nation (including that of Anchorage and of the Minneapolis Public Schools during the Ed Graff tenure) belies those claims. 
Social and Emotional Learning focuses on five designated competencies:  1)  self-awareness;  2)  self- management;  3)  responsible decision-making;  4)  social awareness;  and 5)  relationship building skills. 
 
This is the kind of facile thinking frequently witnessed in the utterances of education professors and pop psychologists, the kind of goals that should be assumed but not touted for any transformative power.
 
………………………………………………………………………………………
 
As utilized in the MPS Comprehensive District Design, the four core priorities join the empty slogans examined in the four previous articles for their insubstantial, vague, and misguided qualities;  and for their incapability of serving as guides to the knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that must be the goal for all locally centralized school districts
 
No one who now occupies a sinecure at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) has any idea how to construct and articulate such a curriculum.
 
Only university or independent scholars in key academic disciplines will be able to construct the logically sequenced knowledge-intensive curriculum that would necessarily be “academically rigorous” and “culturally relevant” in substance rather than shibboleth.
 
Once this morally corrupt and intellectually debased MPS Board of Education votes to adopt the MPS Comprehensive District Design devised by the academic lightweights who dominate at the Davis Center, Superintendent Graff must utilize the talents of university or independent academicians to devise a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and a program to train teachers capable of imparting the array of knowledge sets that must be logically sequenced across the preK-12 years---
 
or Ed Graff should resign as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
 
 

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