Article #3 in a Series >>>>> Dismissals and Overhaul That Must Ensue in the Central Offices (Davis Center) of the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>> The Positions of Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno Must Be Terminated As Building Principals are Trained by Independent and University Scholars

The ineptitude and intellectual corruption of education professors and the programs that these campus embarrassments oversee for the training of teachers and administrators generate the classic bureaucratic circumstance of fostering problems that should not exist, then attempting to solve these problems by further deepening the bureaucratic mire.

 

Educational administrators are ruined in the same way as are teachers by the knowledge-deficient, pedagogically vacuous stances of professors of education.  Administrators typically begin as teachers and follow the lamentable route to better pay by taking additional courses of low worth, gaining degrees in educational administration, writing trivial dissertations to attain the insubstantial education doctorate (Ed. D., never to be confused with the scholarly Ph. D.), or avoiding the latter by pursuing the “education specialist” degree that is knowledge-deplete but gains some careerist advantage for the degree recipient while allowing her or him to avoid writing a dissertation.

 

After opting to leave the classroom as teachers in pursuit of better pay and what passes for higher status in the strange world of the education establishment, administrators frequently travel a route to building principal and---  as opportunity arises, ambition grows, and meaningless degrees and certifications accumulate---  move on to positions in the central office bureaucracy, such as that at the Davis Center (Minneapolis Public Schools [MPS] central offices, 1250 West Broadway).

 

Because building principals are so ill-trained, the perception arises that a bureaucratic position must be created for the mentorship of these school site leaders.  At the Minneapolis Public Schools the position so created is that of the associate superintendent.  A decade ago there were eight of these inept bureaucrats;  mercifully, there are now only four (not including the like title now given to the head of special education, a person of enormous ability, vision, and compassion, who should not be grouped with the four of reference who oversee principals at the conventional preK-12 schools).    

 

The associate superintendents of reference are Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno.

 

None of these bureaucrats are academicians.  They started as teachers and are as poorly trained as classroom instructors and as the principals for whom they have administrative responsibility.  They each command an annual salary of $150, 896--- for a total of $603,584 that produces no annual improvement in the wretched education imparted to students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

The insubstantial training of MPS associate superintendents is witnessed by reviewing the following:

Associate Superintendent Shawn Harris-Berry has a bachelor’s degree in business education, a master’s degree in secondary school administration, and a doctoral degree in educational leadership;  hence, her degrees are all in education and none entail knowledge from a key subject area.  Harris-Berry was a failed building principal at North High School who was given the typical bureaucratic boost according to Superintendent Ed Graff’s invocation of the Peter Principle.  Having recorded a wretched performance at North, Harris-Berry now has oversight responsibility for all seven of the conventional high schools.

 

Associate Superintendent LaShawn Ray has a bachelor’s degree in the social sciences (granted in an education program and entailing no mastery of economics, political science, psychology, sociology, or anthropology) and otherwise has a master’s degree in education and a superintendent’s license;  Ray, as in the case of Harris-Berry, is not a scholar or a master of a subject area specialty.  Ray was a principal of a school in the far southeastern Lake Nokomis area of the city and now oversees principals at the middle schools.

 

Associate Superintendent RonWagner has both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education and also has attained the education specialist degree;  his subject area training is slim in the extreme.  He oversees principals at half of the preK-5 and preK-8 schools.

 

Associate Superintendent Brian Zambreno holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts (received from an education program), a master’s degree in education, an education specialist degree, and a doctorate in education.  His scholarly credentials are therefore as meager as those of the other three associate superintendents of reference.

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The independent and university scholars who must be hired to create knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum logically sequenced throughout the preK-12 years, and to train teachers capable of imparting that curriculum, must also be given scope to train building principals.

Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno should be dismissed and the position of associate superintendent abolished. 

 

Well-trained building principals at conventional preK-12 schools will not need oversight, except of the general nature provided by the superintendent.

And they certainly should never again be subjected to the ineptitude inflicted upon them by Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno and their similarly incompetent predecessors in the associate superintendent  sinecure.