Introductory
Comments
MPS Comprehensive
Design:
A Plan with No
Hope for Academic Success
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 are given in the
articles that follow in this edition of Journal
of the K-12 Revolutiion: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
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 for 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 status 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 candidacies capable of
defeating the four abhorrent MPS Board of Education members up for reelection
this coming November.
…………………………………………………………………………..
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.
………………………………………………………………………………..
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 entered on my New Salem Education blog very
recently, in February 2020.
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