Article #3
Incompetence of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff, MPS Board of Education Members, and Consultant Paula Forbes on Full Display at Saturday, 6 April 2019 Meeting
The incompetence of the current members of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education and Superintendent Ed Graff were on full display at a Saturday, 6 April 2019, meeting led by correspondingly inept consultant Paula Forbes.
The meeting had scant public awareness.
This meeting had not loomed large on the calendar of the MPS Board of Education. Preparations for the meeting were, though, thorough enough that the services of Paula Forbes were secured to lead the meeting. Forbes has been an associate at Rider Bennett Law Firm and launched the office of the General Counsel at the Minneapolis Public Schools during the 1990s; she now has her own consulting firm that touts her expertise in education law and employee relations.
Ms. Forbes apparently learned little during her tenure with the Minneapolis Public Schools that she was willing to share candidly with Graff and members of the board. She began the 6 April meeting, which ran from 8:00 AM to 12:00 noon, by having Graff and the board members play with Leggos.
I kid you not.
The members of the MPS Board of Education and their $230,000 salaried leader were playing with Leggos at approximately 8:30 AM on Saturday, 6 April.
Ms. Forbes had Graff, board members, and board administrator Ryan Strack enthusiastically assembling Play Doh vehicles in teams of three, with the mandate to create vehicular objects that once propelled would travel at least 10 feet unaided. But, oh, surprise, surprise, at the midpoint Forbes notified that an additional requirement must be considered: The various colors of the pieces used in construction came with different price tags and the whole enterprise could not exceed $200 in cost. Oh, and then, my goodness, how astonishing, there came another bulletin in the last few minutes of the exercise (are you getting that this activity was purportedly demonstrating ability to respond to change, inducing examination of feelings regarding same?) Forbes notified the group that participants must completely switch goals, from vehicle construction to tower building: the group that constructed the highest tower would now be considered the winner.
After Forbes did conduct a more serious segment of the meeting, summarizing statute law in Minnesota pertinent to education, she put the group through another silly activity in which Graff, Strack, and board members were to stick notes on a wall that recalled changes in federal, state, and local education policy. Forbes tapped into a preferred activity of these board members: They love to stick notes on walls.
Most of this meeting was reminiscent of courses that I had to endure to get a teaching license; this was particularly true of the Legos spectacle, which recalled an exercise that a great friend of mine in Texas and I still recall: One of those low-life campus presences known as education professors in one class session prevailed upon us to get in touch with our emotions by urging us to--- I kid you not--- “Feel the air--- shape it into little balls.”
But then Superintendent Ed Graff is entirely comfortable with such nonsense:
All of his professional training has come with a focus on courses in education. Graff’s highest degree is an online, insubstantial degree in education administration that he received while working for the public schools in Anchorage. Graff is an academic lightweight, with whom these equally intellectually and morally deficient members of the board are entirely comfortable.
………………………………………………………………………
Recall that the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools features student mathematics and reading proficiency rates at less than 45 percent, with only 17 percent of African American and Native students demonstrating proficiency in mathematics. North High School students average a score of 15 on the ACT, while those at Henry score nearer the district average of 16 (still just indicative of middle school skill level, which means that many students in the public schools of Minneapolis [including a bevy of those who do graduate] have elementary school skill levels). Salient examples of the low level of MPS education abound:
Franklin Middle School students were given a whole Friday off in the aftermath of cold-weather cancellations to watch videos unrelated to courses; many classes at North High School are so out of control that teachers have given up teaching, even if they are among the few fully competent to render instruction in their purported fields in the first place; the preferred pedagogical technique of many teachers is to pass out “packets” (the word gives me cold shivers) for students to answer as the main means of instruction, absent follow-up teacher comment and class instruction.
But as these grave problems went unaddressed, the members of the MPS Board of Education played with Legos at an official meeting on a Saturday morning in April 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment