Article #3 in a Series >>>>> However Bad You May Think Things Are at the Minneapolis Public Schools, They Are Much Worse--- And Thus I Am in the Process of Taking the Offending Systems and Staff Apart Piece by Piece

The Corrupt Context in Which the Superintendent Ed Graff;  Interim Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing; Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno; the 22 Staff Members of the Department of Teaching and Learning; Michael Walker and the Office of Black Student Achievement, and Jennifer Simon and the Department of Academically Abuse MPS Students

 

Ed Graff, Aimee Fearing, Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, the 22 staff members of the Department of Teaching and Learning, Office of Black Male Student Director Michael Walker, and Department of Indian Education Director Jennifer Simon abuse the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) every day their feet hit the ground. 

 

I have detailed the specific culpability of this intellectually corrupt group in my 595-page book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, now in circulation physically and available to readers of my blog who scroll back to blog entries for winter-spring 2019-2020.

 

In Article #1 of the current series I explained the corrupt national and state context in which officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools dwell.  The demise of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ineffective bromides of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the cynical ruse that is the Minnesota State Department of Education’s North Star Accountability System indicate that change in pre-kindergarten and K-12 education will never in the United States, with citizen mantras of local control, emanate from government at the national and state levels.  Change at the local level then becomes the paramount goal for proponents of change, making imperative that we jettison inept staff members now embodied by Graff, Fearing, Harris-Berry, Ray, Wagner, Zambreno, Walker, Simon, and staff members at MPS Department of Teaching and Learning,

 

In article #2 of this series I conveyed the corrupt context in which errant decision makers and implementers dwell at institutions such as the University of Minnesota (UM), Hamline, Augsburg, St. Thomas, and UM Mankato.  Teacher training mills at these institutions are cash cows that generously fill the coffers of the ever-financially needy institutions of post-secondary education in the United States.  Actors at these institutions are variously corrupt, clueless, or in denial, producing an abysmally educated citizenry and ongoing suffering for families living at the urban core.

 

Given the inefficacy of national and state officials, the intellectually corrupt ideology and vacuous pedagogy inflicted upon prospective public school teachers and administrators by education professors becomes the chief culprit in the system that denies a knowledge-intensive education to our students and the citizens they become.   University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel, her predecessors, and all decision-makers at UM either look the other way or are ignorant of the abuse heaped on those who train under education professors in the College of Education and Human  Development (CEHD).  And since this is the case, post-secondary administrators and the education professors that they tolerate become the core culprits responsible for the abysmal level of education inflicted on our students by the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school districts. 

 

The corrupt national, state, and post-secondary institutional context in which locally centralized school systems dwell make imperative that we end the tenures of staff such as Ed Graff, Aimee Fearing, Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, Michael Walker, and Jennifer Simon.

 

We must be strategic in working to oust such inept officials.

 

The strategy must come through persistent activism catalyzed by the wealth of detail on the corruption at the Minneapolis Public Schools detailed in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect and attention to the necessity of electing on 3 November 2020 Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes as new board members willing to challenge the system that for many decades has abused the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

This, though, will require the persistent attention of a public that tends toward ephemeral commitments and errant judgment as to the nature of the dilemma in public education.  Limited attention spans have been notable even in the cases of those who have flashed on the scene and then withdrawn into their private worlds or other endeavors.  Sandy Vargas, erstwhile head of the Minneapolis Foundation, was going to RESET education;  R. T. Rybak was going to atone for 12 years of neglect of public education as mayor by leading Generation Next toward solutions for the public education quandary but departed for a better paying job at the Minneapolis Foundation.  Former members of the MPS Board of Education Carla Bates, Josh Reimnitz, and---  especially--- Tracine Asberry showed great promise in driving to the core of the vexations at the Minneapolis Public Schools---  but are now nowhere to be seen.

 

So it is that commitment to change in the most important non-familial institution in the United States has nothing of the staying power that Martin Luther King and John Lewis had to the Civil Rights Movement.     

 

But this is where MPS officials must take note:

 

I have such a commitment and I am dedicated to the laborious effort to bring the gravity of the condition of K-12 education to those in the media and the larger community who need a firm grasp of the steps needed to address the chronic ills of public education.

 

As my Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect circulates;  as I continue to issue incisive articles on my blog and in my academic journal, Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota;  as I resume recording new episodes of my television show (Minneapolis Telecommunications Network ([MTN Channel 17], 6:00 PM, Wednesdays),;  and as I make the rounds in many community speaking platforms, the pressure on officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools will be relentless.

 

New energetic leadership on the MPS Board of Education with the election of El-Amin, Cerrillos, and Dueñes will abet the process of taking the decision-making staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools apart piece by piece;  instituting intellectually and academically inclined staff for the creation of knowledge- intensive, skill-replete curriculum;  training teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum;  and making the school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools a model for other such locally centralized systems throughout the nation.