Superintendent Ed Graff is an academic
mediocrity and in that regard he is typical of his profession.
Graff has a degree in elementary
education from the University of Alaska, Anchorage; and an online master’s degree in educational
administration from the University of Southern Mississippi. Elementary education, while constituting the
requisite training for one of the nation’s most important jobs, features the
weakest academic training on any college or university campus. The online degree from a lower-tier university
is suspect and in any case whatever of value is learned in the pertinent courses
is not focused on any subject area (mathematics, natural science, history,
government, or English) that should be at the core of any preK-12 curriculum.
Graff is not capable of fulfilling the
role of academic Leadership at the Minneapolis Public Schools.
This is true of current Interim Senior
Academic officer Aimee Fearing.
Fearing’s credentials are as
follows.
Academic
Credentials for Aimee Fearing
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Executive
Director, Teaching and Learning
Degrees
Earned Field in
Which
Institution at
Which
Degree Was Earned
Degree Was Earned
Bachelors
Degree ESL Education
University of Northwestern
13 May 2000
Masters
Degree Education
Hamline University
23 May 2003
Doctorate
Degree Education
Hamline University
30 April 2015
Other Credentials
Professional
Licensures
K-12 Principal
Licensure
Expiration, 30
June 2023
K-12 ESL
Licensure
Expiration, 30
June 2023
5-12
Communication Arts Licensure
Expiration, 30 June 2023
Thus, Fearing has the typical
profile for an academic decision-maker at the Minneapolis Public Schools: Her training is entirely in education rather
than in an academic discipline (mathematics, natural science, history,
government, English) that should be at the core of the curriculum of a locally
centralized school district. Fearing is
not a scholar. She is not a subject area
specialist. She should not be making
decisions pertinent to academics. And
yet she leads a department that has the official responsibility for the
academic program of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
No one currently in the Academic
Division at the Minneapolis Public Schools is capable of exerting the
leadership necessary to design knowledge-intensive curriculum. The Department of Teaching and Learning is a
disaster. Graff should return Fearing to
her field of expertise teaching English Language Learners and hire the scholar that
he is not to design a carefully sequenced curriculum that imparts to students
of all demographic descriptors the full academic program that they should have
in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts.
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