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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