Concluding Thoughts in a Series Focused on Issues Pertinent to the MPS Comprehensive Design >>>>> Administrative Efficiency the Lone Positive Amidst School Board Corruption, Community Self-Centeredness, Academic Failure, and Moral Degradation

In the spring of 2018, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff and staff, particularly Accountability, Research, and Equity (ARE) Chief Eric Moore began working very closely with consultant Dennis Cheesebrow to assess the overall condition of the district.  Cheesebrow provided specifics as to trends and circumstances already known.  Various demographic factors in combination with the concern of especially African American parents for the safety and academic fates of their children promised continued exit from MPS in the absence of concerted action.

 

By October 2018, Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly and others had been at work generating the fundamental principles that would undergird the MPS Comprehensive District Design;  these were revealed at a Saturday morning meeting.in that autumn of 2018.  The wording of the document admitted failure in serving the needs of students qualifying for Free/Reduced Price Lunch and most non-white students;  inasmuch, though, as the public schools of Minneapolis provide a knowledge-intensive, high quality education for no one, district officials falsely claimed to be serving the needs of most white and prosperous students very well.

 

In the document generated for presentation to community members present on that Saturday morning, district officials embraced the call for a well-rounded education as defined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and gave a sequenced programmatic account stretching from academic year 2018-2019 through 2021-2022, by which time a maturing program would be bringing high quality education to all MPS students.

 

In this very recent winter 2019-2020, numerous community meetings were held that offered five models for consideration as possible versions of the MPS Comprehensive District Design that might be provided to the MPS Board of Education for a vote in spring 2020.  These are the models that I have given and analyzed in this series:

 

Model #1 would retain the current organization of schools, with no changes in magnet designations or transportation.  Models #2 and #3 called for strict organization of schools according to preK-5, grades 6-8 (middle school), and grade 9-12 (high schools) and were different only in that Model #3 provided for four dual Spanish immersion schools, rather than the three in Model #2.  Models #4 and #5 were programmatically similar to the latter two models in eliminating magnet schools at the outer edges of the district, locating magnets at the center of the district, identifying a change in two language immersion locations, and designing transportation routes so as to induce attendance at community schools;  but Models #4 and #5 provided for two K-8 schools, with Model #4 following the language immersion school identification of Model #2 and Model #5 following that of Model #3.   

 

The finalized model announced on Friday, 27 March was very close to Model #5, except for one change each in language immersion school and K-8 school identification.  Details may be examined in the articles of this series following immediately as readers scroll on down the blog.

 

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In presenting the final model, district officials have dithered a long time to present a plan consistent with the principles given that morning of October 2018 and thus offering no hope for academic advance. 

 

We are now almost four years into the Ed Graff administration with no academic progress whatsoever and none possible under the plan as given. 

 

Ed Graff has mystifyingly counted on Social and Emotional Learning, a murky Multi-tiered System of support (MTSS), Literacy, and Equity to bring improvement to the public schools of Minneapolis.  The section of the MPS Comprehensive District Design pertinent to academics claims to follow ESSA specifications but is a jargon-infested overview that offers no prospects for knowledge-intensive curriculum or training of teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum.    

 

Thus, in accordance with that October 2018 vision, the finalized model of the MPS Comprehensive District Design has admirable features restructuring the district in the ways that I have detailed in the articles below but offers no hope of the provision of excellent education. 

 

Students will continue to leave the public schools of Minneapolis in droves as the following realities abide:

 

>>>>>  Teachers will continue to be classroom presences possessed of woefully inadequate knowledge and in all likelihood continue to hand out packets, show videos of questionable relevance, and provide for “free days” on Friday as their prime pedagogy.

 

>>>>>  Those students who manage to graduate from the Minneapolis Public Schools will typically continue to have little knowledge of mathematics, natural science, history, government, economic, high-quality multiethnic and world literature, or the fine arts. 

 

>>>>>  One-third of graduating students will continue to need remedial instruction once matriculating on college campuses.

 

>>>>>  A corrupt school board will continue to protect teachers and the staus quo at the expense of students and manifest those qualities of intellectual inadequacy that would undermine any more positive efforts even if not so baldly corrupt.

 

>>>>>  Community members who turned out at community meetings for mostly egotistical and racist reasons will discontinue attendance at school board meetings and events, fail to project candidadicies capable of defeating the four abhorrent MPS Board of Education members up four reelection this coming November.  

 

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This situation imputes irresponsibility and ignorance to all major parties responsible for the MPS Comprehensive District Design:  Superintendent Ed Graff and his staff, the wretched assemblage of MPS Board of Education members, and a woefully ignorant public mostly occupied gazing at their navels.

 

The saving grace for the MPS Comprehensive District Design would be for Graff to take advantage of the plan’s administrative and financial efficiencies by hiring university or independent scholars (from departments of genuine academic disciplines rather than education) to articulate a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and provide for the training of teachers capable of imparting such a grade by grade, logically sequenced curriculum.

 

But Graff and staff will not likely discern the opportunity for saving grace.

 

The needed change pertinent to knowledge-intensive academic programming and teacher quality will almost certainly come through local agitation that will require a much better informed and motivated citizenry in Minneapolis.

 

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Details on the current structure and ideology of academic decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools in the context of the history of public education in the United States, along with a detailed program for curricular and teacher overhaul, may be found my 595-page book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, now in initial circulation in hard copy and found by scrolling down through articles found as entered on this blog very recently, in February 2020.