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.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
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.
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