Apr 22, 2020

Concluding Thoughts for the Five-Article Series >>>>> Curricular Shibboleth and Erroneous Pedagogy Pervade the MPS Comprehensive Design >>>>> The Hopelessness of the Jargon-Infested Academic Portion of the Design


With this article concludes the five-article series on the curricular shibboleth and erroneous pedagogy that pervade the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design, with adverse implications for the Design’s academic portion.


 

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.

 

In Article #5, I reviewed the inadequacy of MPS Superintendent Ed Graff’s Four Core Priorities of Social and Emotional Learning, Multi-Tiered System of Support, Literacy, and Equity.

 

Readers should be fully focused on the grim reality presented by the academic program under Ed Graff and asked themselves why this has been the record compiled during his now nearly four-year tenure:

 

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%  

 

 

……………………………………………………………………………..

 

Why, given this abysmal record, would anyone have any faith that the academic portion of the MPS Comprehensive Design holds any promise for the construction and implementation for a knowledge-intensive, skill replete education? 

 

No one who has had any part in creating the Design or explaining its academic implications to the public is herself or himself a scholar in a key academic subject area.  Both Superintendent Ed Graff and Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing are academic lightweights who hold absolutely no expertise in a major academic discipline, nor does a single person in the Department of Teaching and Learning.   

 

One searches in vain for any discussion in the academic portion of the design that details curricular revamping to provide grade by grade sequenced knowledge sets that meet the legal requirements of the Minnesota State Academic Standards and then go beyond those to impart a knowledge-intensive education in mathematics, natural science, history, the socials sciences, literature, and the fine arts.

 

An excellent education begins in prekindergarten and kindergarten with preparatory knowledge sets in those areas from the liberal arts and with increasing emphasis through middle school and into high school also provides abundant opportunities in the technological and vocational arts.  Both In the final model for the MPS Comprehensive District Design presented to school board members on 27 March pertinent to centralized magnets and bus routes and in the academic portion of the Design the astute  reader gains much more confidence in the probable efficacy of instruction in the technological and vocational arts than one does in the academic portion at the core of curriculum, necessary for the inculcation of broad and deep knowledge sets, and for pragmatic purposes necessary for greatly improved results indicated by objective measures found in such instruments as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and the ACT college readiness exam.  

 

The MPS Comprehensive District Design is a curious document that with logical synchronicity induces community school attendance by rationalizing transportation routes, the latter abetted also by centralization of magnet schools.  But the academic portion of the Design, at the core of the mission of any locally centralized school district, is heavy on jargon and vacuous claims for “academically rigorous curriculum,” “culturally relevant curriculum,” “differentiated instruction,” “personalized curriculum,” lifelong learning,” “critical thinking,” “social and emotional learning,” “multi-tiered system of support,” “literacy,’ and “equity” that are variously misguided, unrealizable under the ideology of current leadership, and insubstantial for the delivery of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.

 

……………………………………………………………………………

 

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 necessary for an excellent education in substance rather than shibboleth.

 

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