Apr 29, 2020

Most Acute and Chronic Dilemmas of the Minneapolis Public Schools Are Not and Cannot Be Addressed by the MPS Comprehensive District Design


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.

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