Sep 5, 2020

Article #15 >>>>> Concluding Comments to a Fifteen-Article Series Focused on Those Culpable for the Wretched Quality of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools, How We Got in This Mess, and How We Shall Get Out


The following fourteen articles go to the core of the K-12 dilemma, at the Minneapolis Public Schools, and---  by extension---  the locally centralized systems of public education in the United States.


 

This is among the most important series of articles that you will ever read, calling out as the articles do the most culpable parties responsible for the wretched level of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools, explaining how we got in this mess, and indicating the overhaul of  curriculum and teacher quality that will bring to our precious young people the education that they must have to be culturally enriched, civically prepared, and professionally satisfied citizens.

 

As you read these articles, be especially attentive to the list of parties most culpable for the abomination that is the education at the Minneapolis Public Schools >>>>>

 

>>>>> 

 

In the MPS central offices at the Davis Center (1250 West Broadway), the culprits are

 

Superintendent Ed Graff

Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing

Associate Superintnedent Shawn Harris-Berry

Associate Superintendent LaShawn Ray

Associate Superintendent Ron Wagner

Associate Superintendent Brian Zambreno

The 22 staff members of the Department of Teaching and Learning:

 

Aimee Fearing   

Aneesa Parks

Ashley Krohn

Christopher Jones

Christen Lish

Christina Ramsey            

Christopher Wernimont

Hibaq Mohamed            

Jennifer Rose   

Julie Tangeman               

Katharine Stephens                       

Kelly McQuillan                              

Lisa Purcell

Marium Toure’

Mary Lambrecht              

Natasha Parker

Nora Schull        

Paula Kilian       

Sara Naegeli                     

Sarah Wehrenberg        

Sarah Loch

Tommie Casey                 

 

Office of Black Male Student Director Michael Walker and his staff members

 

Department of Indian Education Director Jennifer Simon and her staff members

 

On the MPS Board of Education, in order of offensiveness there are

 

District 4 Member Bob Walser

District 5 Member Nelson Inz

District 2 Member KerryJo Felder

At-Large Member Kim Ellison

District 1 Member Jenny Arneson

At-Large Member Kim Caprini

District 4 Member ira Jourdain

District 3 Member Siad Ali

At-Large Member Josh Pauly

 

At the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) there are

 

MFT President Michelle Wiess

 

Rank and file members

 

At the Minnesota Department of Education there have been and are those responsible for such corrupt pretensions as the North Star Accountability System and World’s Best Workforce, including

 

Former Commissioner Brenda Cassellius

Current Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker

All MDE staff members who have colluded with these intellectually corrupt officials, including prominently Michael Dietrich

 

Decision makers and implementers dwell at institutions such as the University of Minnesota (UM), Hamline, Augsburg, St. Thomas, and UM Mankato, including

 

University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel

 

The presidents and administrative decision-makers the other given institutions

Staff Members and Education professors in the UM College of Education and Human Development

(CEHD)

 

Key Members of the Private and Public Sectors in Minneapolis, including

 

Sandy Vargas, erstwhile head of the Minneapolis Foundation, she who was going to RESET education 

 

R. T. Rybak, who was going to atone for 12 yers 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, who showed great promise in driving to the core of the vexations at the Minneapolis Public Schools---  but are now nowhere to be seen

 

Carla Bates

Josh Reimnitz

Tracine Asberry             

 

Former members of the MPS Board of Education who issues bombastic proclamations but has no program and no sustained commitment in any positon he assumes:

 

Don Samuels

 

Members of the public and press who neglect the responsibilities of citizenship or give evidence of intellectual and moral corruption, including

 

Star Tribune Editorial Board Scott Gillespie

 

Star Tribune Commentary Pages Editor Doug Tice

 

That segment of the general public that got all worked up about the Comprensive District Design (CDD) but has now disappeared into the woodwork

 

Ineffective putative activists and incompetent heads of key organizations

 

Minneapolis Urban League President/CEO Steve Belton

 

Erstwhile law professor, NAACP President, and ineffective gadfly Nekima Levy-Armstrong

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Understand the depth of the dilemma  >>>>>

 

>>>>> 

 

Fully grasp the ineptitude revealed in student proficiency rates for academic years ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019    >>>>>

 

MPS Student Academic Proficiency Rates as Measured by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) Results for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 

>>>>> 

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  23%       19%         19%      16%          17%          18%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       16%        17%         18%

Indian

 

Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%

 

Asian                     48%         50%          50%       44%        46%        47%

 

White                   77%         78%          78%       77%        77%         75%

 

Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%        20%

Reduced

 

All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

African                  22%       21%         21%      21%       21%           23%

American

 

American             21%        20%         21%      22%        23%               25%

Indian

 

Hispanic               23%         25%          26%       26%        27%      29%

 

Asian                     41%         40%          45%       38%        44%      50% 

 

White                   78%         77%          77%       78%        80%       78%

 

Free/                     23%         23%          23%       25%        25%      25%

Reduced

 

All                          42%         42%           43%     43%        45%       47%

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

African                 11%       15%         13%      11%       10%                  11%

American

 

American             14%        16%        13%      16%       13%           17%

Indian

 

Hispanic               17%         18%        21%      19%       17%          16%

 

Asian                     31%         35%       42%       31%       34%          40%

 

White                   71%         75%        71%       70%       71%               70%

 

Free/                     14%         15%        17%       16%      15%          14%

Reduced

 

All                          33%        36%        35%        34%      34%                 36%

 

Also hold firm to the incompetence demonstrated by graduation rates:

>>>>> 

Percentage of Students Graduating

 

                                2013     2014       2015      2016       2017       2018

 

Student

Category

 

African                             44.8%     47.8%    52.8%    59.5%     56.9%      61.7%  

American

4

American         38.1%     25.6%    36.3%    37.4%     29.8%      37.8.%  

Indian

 

Asian                  69.7%    78.8%    83.3%    85.6%      82.5%     87.1%  

 

Hispanic            42.8%    44.5%    57.6%    50.6%      56.7%     57.1%  

 

White                75.8%    77.4%    82.5%     85.1%     86.0%     86.7%  

 

Free/                  47.4%    49.7%    56.8%     56.9%     56.7%     61.4%  

Reduced

Lunch

                                                                                               

Homeless          26.1%    26.1%    37.3%     35.7%     40.1%     37.8%  

Highly

Mobile

 

Advanced           85.6%   86.7%    90.4%     89.3%     83.3%     90.8%  

Learner

 

Female                60.3%   62.1%    69.0%     71.7%     69.3%     71.8%  

 

Male                    51.9%   55.6%    61.3%     63.0%     63.1%     66.6%  

 

All                          56.1%  58.8%    65.1%     67.3%     66.0%     69.2%  

Students

                                                                                                                                                     

And focus relentlessly on curriculum and teaching.

Students at grades preK-5 (elementary schools) learn a modicum of reading and arithmetic but little else.  Substantive and comprehensive instruction in natural science, the social sciences, quality literature, and English usage is absent.  Knowledge imparted as to multiple genres and world traditions in music and visual art is slight.  Students graduate from grade 5 having little grasp of economics, government, American history, world history, biology, or quality literature across ethnicity and world traditions.  They have gained little introduction to the natural sciences of biology, chemistry, or physics---  with no sense of the origin of the universe, the evolution of plant and animal life on earth, human origin and dispersal, the formation and diversity of ecosystems, the defining qualities and importance of natural elements, and the fundamentals of velocity, mass, energy, Newtonian laws of motion, and Einsteinian theories of the physics of the cosmos.

Substantive education is little better at the middle school (grades 6-8) level.  Students progress a bit in mathematics, gaining some knowledge of algebra and geometry, but if they ever gained fundamental arithmetic skills, these atrophy;  lack of knowledge of multiplication tables is the rule, not the exception.  Students advance little in other academic subjects.  They may dabble in a foreign language and gain some vocational skills, but they move on to high school almost as ignorant of biology, chemistry, physics, government, American history, world history, economics, quality world and ethnic literature, and the fine arts as when they entered middle school.

Instruction at high schools is mediocre at the median, rarely excellent, and frequently abominable.  Substantive education is lacking, except in Advanced Placement courses, and only a few teachers possess the knowledge base necessary to render quality college preparatory instruction, so that students scoring the 4 or 5 demanded by most colleges and universities are very few.  Administrators at the Minneapolis Public Schools and the other schools of Minnesota make a big show of administering the ACT to all students, but they do not prepare them for the test.  Across the high schools of the district, the typical ACT median is 16, which barely indicates middle school much less college readiness.  Ask a young person from an impoverished and challenged familial situation what she or he scored on the ACT, and the reply is typically “13”---  or worse.  Administrators and teachers at the Minneapolis Public Schools deliver an acceptable education to no student, of any demographic descriptor;  the education rendered to students experiencing multiple life challenges of historical and current societal abuse is morally negligent and vulnerable to litigious action.

One-third of the less than seventy percent of students managing to graduate and go forth to college matriculation require remedial courses.  No student is truly well-prepared by the schools of the district.  Any acceptable level of college preparation occurs due to the human rarity of herculean personal interest and self-education through extracurricular reading and study;  or, as in the case of many students from affluent families, through private tutorial instruction.

Teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools have slim knowledge bases.  Elementary school teachers have little subject area knowledge;  many are math-phobic and do little substantive reading on their own time.  Middle and high school teachers tend to have majors in a specific academic discipline, but few have master’s degrees in the key academic fields of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, political science, history, economics, or literature:  They are not scholars and their academic interest is typically limited in the extreme.  In class they show too many videos, give too many “free days,” assign too many frivolous and inefficient projects, and relegate too much student activity to group rather than individual academic endeavor.

You are not likely to have known education at the Minneapolis Public Schools is this bad until you read the above account;  even now, you may have a hard time grasping that education at MPS schools is this abominable---  but ponder the facts of the matter until you internalize the extremity of the dilemma, because the situation is just this abysmal.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Then read carefully the explanations as to how we got in this mess and---  most importantly---  how we will get out.

Read thoughtfully, ponder incisively, then act with determination and commitment.

There are lives in the balance.   

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