The most acute and chronic dilemmas vexing the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) are weak curriculum and mediocre teacher
quality; these have many subsidiary
components; given current Davis Center
(MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) academic leadership, neither the most
vexing dilemmas nor their subsidiary components are or can be addressed by the
MPS Comprehensive District Design.
There is no one at the Davis Center who
understands the defining characteristics of an excellent education or possesses
scholarly mastery of key subject areas:
Degrees in education programs dominate among the leadership and staff of
the Department of Teaching and Learning and MPS Superintendent Ed Graff and
Interim Senior Academic Officer are both academic lightweights.
The proposed MPS Comprehensive District
Design offers verbiage vowing to adopt the definition of a well-rounded
education found in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and includes an
abundance of jargon: “academically
rigorous curriculum,” “culturally relevant curriculum,” “differentiated
instruction,” “personalized curriculum,” lifelong learning,” and “critical
thinking,” merely seductive shibboleths with no capacity of bringing knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete education to the schools of Minneapolis.
There is not now nor will there be under Graff,
Fearing, or the Department of Teaching and Learning a curriculum specified for
knowledge and skill sets to be imparted in logical grade by grade sequence from
prekindergarten through grade 12.
Graff, Fearing, and the sad-sack crew of 30
poorly trained staff members in the Department of Teaching and Learning have
little academic expertise themselves.
Rather than design a curriculum that offers students an excellent
education in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts, these irresponsible
occupants of Davis Center sinecures hide behind putative goals to build
critical thinkers, when they themselves have no ability at critical analysis
and recoil from challenges that expose their incompetence; and lifelong learning, when they themselves
are so devoid of any drive to gain such learning.
Graff, Fearing, and members of the
Department of Teaching and Learning are pretenders.
They are morally and intellectually corrupt.
They cheat the students of the Minneapolis
Public Schools every day their feet hit the ground.
…………………………………………………………………………………..
Nothing in the MPS comprehensive District
Design has the capacity to address the most vexing acute and chronic problems
of knowledge-deficient curriculum and mediocre teaching quality.
Current Davis Center staff has no capacity
or goal of addressing these dilemmas.
The current membership on the MPS Board of
Education is comprised of political hacks who would resist any initiative to
improve curriculum and teacher quality, even if the Davis Center staff suddenly
morphed into responsible academic decision-makers alive in the world of
knowledge, widely read and dedicated to the prospect of imparting to students
abundant knowledge sets in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.
Even if fantasy became reality and these
Davis Center administrators had the necessary epiphanies, suddenly acquiring the
necessary knowledge and dedication to the acquisition of knowledge required of
academicians, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) would resist the
needed change and send the message to board members that they have purchased with
big campaign donations and organizational power that such support will not be
forthcoming if resistance to the needed initiatives is not mounted. Sent such a message, KerryJo Felder, Bob Walser,
Siad Ali, Kim Caprini, Josh Pauly, Kim Ellison, Nelson Inz, Jenny Arneson, and
Ira Jourdain--- with one ironic exception,
no academicians themselves--- would all
bow to teacher union pressure and resist administrators who had somehow located
their souls and discovered personal intellectual resources not heretofore
evidential.
Any hope of addressing the vexing problems
of knowledge-deficient, illogically sequenced curriculum and generally mediocre
and frequently abominable teacher quality lies in hiring independent or
university scholars to design curriculum and train teachers; and even then would only be successful if the
looming November 2020 elections propel four new members onto the school board
and somehow inspire one member--- most
likely , Josh Pauly--- to join them in support
of the program designed by recently hired scholars.
The MPS Comprehensive District Design does
not and cannot address the most acute and chronic dilemmas that vex the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
Only the design of new curriculum
and
the retraining of teachers
by new, academically inclined staff---
and the overhaul of membership on the MPS
Board of Education
can bring excellence of education to the
long-waiting students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment