Apr 15, 2020

Concluding Comments for the Five Article Series >>>>> Fallacy and Immorality Define the Saga of the MPS Comprehensive District Design >>>>> The Moral Culpability of Ed Graff, Celina Martina, Eric Moore, Aimee Fearing--- and a Racist and Irresponsible Minneapolis Community


Fallacy and immorality are the defining characteristics in the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design.


 

The fallacy and the immorality are both founded in the stark reality that no one among academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools has any understanding of the  constituent elements of an excellent education;  the members of the MPS Board of Education comprise a politically corrupt, intellectually lazy, and ignorant group;  and the general public is roused at occasions in which personal interest is threatened but gives no understanding of being of higher intellectual caliber or morally grounded than Graff or the board.

 

MPS Superintendent Ed Graff came to the Minneapolis Public Schools as a failed superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska;  he has an undistinguished academic background and cannot possibly serve as the chief academic decision-maker in the design of a highly sequenced grade-by-grade knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum, with thoroughly retrained teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum.

 

The cowardly format followed in the community discussions of January, February, and early March 2020 is typical of the administration of MPS Superintendent Ed Graff.

 

Graff has corrupted numerous otherwise capable administrators working at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway)

 

Celina Martina, emcee of the community meetings of January-March 2020 for public promulgation of the five models under consideration for the MPS Comprehensive Design, oversaw a corrupt format whereby Graff and other panelists (Chief of Accountability, Research, and Equity Eric Moore;  Chief of Operations Karen Devet;  Associate Superintendent for Special Programming Rochelle Cox, and Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing) had prepared for certain questions from the community and were at pains to answer only these that they anticipated.  Martina and her staff did Graff’s bidding by selecting from questions written on notecards only those for which Graff and the panel had prepared, avoiding those questions that hit at the core of MPS dilemma: 

 

>>>>>    knowledge-deficient curriculum and teacher mediocrity.

 

Chief of Accountability, Research, and Equity (ARE) also played the Graff toady at these community meetings, drawing facile conclusions about the efficacy of racial integration as a promoter of academic progress and acting excited about the academic prospects of the MPS Comprehensive Design when he knows that the plan is deficient and that teacher incompetence is rampant in the district.   

 

MPS Interim Senior Academic officer Aimee Fearing demonstrated in the January-March meetings just how in over her head she is, with her lean academic credentials and intellectual corruption for time spent in education programs rather than departments focused on key academic disciplines.  She defended the jargon-infested, detail-deficient portion of the Design, doing a deceitful intellectual shuffle just as morally degrading as the verbal dance performed by Moore. 

 

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Graff, Moore, and Fearing provided irresponsible cases of intellectual moral corruption as demonstrated in their performances in the community meetings of January-March 2020. 

 

Two panelists, though, spoke with integrity and conviction.

 

Karen Devet had the enviable role of presenting the most logical and compelling features of the Design, those that focus on rationalization of transportation routes via centralization of magnets and focus on community schools.  She did much of the work yielding such rationalization, and she explained the pertinent part of the Design with clarity and conviction

 

And the radiant jewel of the Davis Center, Rochelle Cox, demonstrated her deep caring for the special education students trusted unto her, and her ability to design a program that maximizes the opportunity for special education students to participate in the life of the broader student population and challenges them to reach the height of their ability.   

 

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Karen Devet and Rochelle Cox, though, were exceptional examples of integrity  amidst the fallacy and immorality that define the saga of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design and the community meetings of January-March 2020.

 

In the absence of hiring university or independent academic scholars to design a knowledge-intensive curriculum and retrain teachers, the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive District Design will admirably induce attendance at community schools, centralize reevaluated magnet programs of reworked subject area focus, and abetted by those two programmatic features capture savings of $7 million dollars in transportation costs due to reduced mileage for bus routes--- 

 

but for all that the Design will

 

>>>>>   do nothing to improve the quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

In  the absence of an activist community awakening that yields four new school board members in the elections of November 2020 and agitation for the overhaul of curriculum and teacher quality by scholars of  academic accomplishment and interest,

 

we will

 

>>>>>   in one, two, three years, and into the future witness the same abysmal level of education to which Minneapolis students have been and will be subjected.

 

And for that, beyond the moral depravity of Ed Graff, Celina Martina, Eric Moore, and Aimee Fearing,

 

>>>>>    a racist and irresponsible community will bear the greater responsibility.

 

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