I have an increasingly better understanding now of how Woodward and Bernstein and such follow one lead after another to an increasingly widening story of corruption.
My investigation of the Minneapolis Public Schools has led me to explore more deeply the corruption at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE, with its ludicrous North Star Accountability System); the University of Minnesota and other financial beneficiary institutions of putative higher learning that look through or away from abominable teacher training programs; and Star Tribune editorial staff, with their sycophantic treatment of administrators and teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools. I also have discovered widespread neglect in many places and have called people out for having failed to be persistent in their interest in public schools, once their own personal investment or moment in the public eye waned.
Those inside and outside the hallways of the buildings of MPS that I have called out are the following:
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 Superintendent 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
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 at 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 member 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
Right now I am training the harshest light on the editorial staff at the Star Tribune. Whereas they once could not get enough of my articles, as I got ever closer to the deepest Truth concerning the sources and extent of MPS academic decision-making ineptitude, and as I cited their greenhorn reporting staff for their fluff pieces sourced by wagging tails close to Superintendent Ed Graff, their enthusiasm for my revelations dimmed.
I recently decided to send editorial and opinion page staff seven opinion pieces pertinent to the looming 3 November election for three open seats on the MPS Board of Education. I am going to bundle these up for presentation in the October edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and continue to expose Star Tribune staff for toadyism in relationship with establishments of many types.
Thus is the scope of the Revolution widening, with my lenses to be trained most immediately on the Minnesota Department of Education, the University of Minnesota, and the Star Tribune.--- for comprising major segments of the environment in which the ineptitude at the Minneapolis Public Schools flourishes. In time, few major players in the public eye will emerge unscathed. This will mean that I will have to find media figures of unusual integrity, with a heavy nod to the alternative press and such media; and rely heavily on my own publications.
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My latest letter to Scott Gillespie, David Banks, and Doug Tice at the Star Tribune went as follows:
October 22, 2020
Doug, David, and Star Tribune Opinion Pages staff---
Attached to this email are seven opinion pieces pertinent to the slimly-publicized 3 November contest for seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. Publishing one of these pieces would provide your readers with an informed opinion relevant to a vital race that has gotten little coverage and thus far engendered no editorial comment on your pages. These articles also go to the core of the dilemmas most vexing the Minneapolis Public Schools, matters that go undetected and necessarily unconveyed by your writers.
With best regards---
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
(Cell) 507-301-9902
7 Attachments
The noted seventh article went as follows:
Chronically Ineffective Minneapolis Public Schools Needs the Energy That New Board Members Sharon El-Amin, Adrian Cerrillo, and Michael Dueñes Would Bring With 3 November Victories
The locally centralized school district of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) has been a chronically ineffective School District since the mid-1970s--- over forty years. Up through the mid-1960s, MPS North High School was academically the best high school in the state, with a student body of comprised of upwardly aspiring African American students and their Jewish neighbors. Riots along Plymouth Avenue in 1967, combined with Fair Housing legislation of the late 1960s, hastened Jewish and middle class African American flight from North Minneapolis. In the course of the 1970s, an increasing number of in-migrants from troubled urban centers in Chicago, Gary, and Detroit took the place of these solidly middle class contingents.
At the time the Minneapolis Public Schools had no more than five African American teachers; the mostly white middle class MPS teaching and administrative staff was overwhelmed, possessing little understanding of the needs of young people from families facing grave challenges of finances and functionality.
To this day, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools have never articulated or implemented a program designed to meet the needs of these students. The jargon of the administration of Superintendent Ed Graff indicates that the lack of understanding abides. The meager Graff program emphasizes bromides connected to Social/Emotional Learning, Equity, Literacy (SEL), and something dubbed Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). The new MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) offers such shibboleths, along with an array of jargon from the education professor’s catalogue. What is missing is anything remotely resembling academic substance.
Graff continues to make staffing changes at the Davis Center that are peripheral to the academic program at the district, with slim prospects for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education or improvement of student achievement:
His cabinet of leaders continues to feature a number of capable officials, but the most talented have nothing to do with mainline academic decision-making. Aimee Fearing remains mystifyingly in her role as a mere Interim Senior Academic Officer; she is an academic lightweight who should have long since been removed from the position and replaced by a scholar with a Ph. D. in a key subject area discipline. Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner and Brian Zambreno similarly have no advanced training in a key academic area; their $150,000 positions, which involve mentoring principals, should be terminated as principals are properly trained to rise above the current level of mediocrity.
To his cabinet Graff has added Ryan Strack in his role as Administrator for the Board of Education and Government Relations and Celina Martina as Executive Director of Engagement and External Relations. Strack is a capable official who has coordinated successful efforts pertinent to referenda issues; he is, though, not a scholar and has nothing to do with academic decision-making. Martina is also capable, but she bears the stain of moderating most of the community engagement sessions as the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) was under consideration; she ran a highly controlled event that dodged tough questions having to do with any academic improvement likely to occur upon CDD implementation; Martina, who is also not a scholar or involved in academic decision-making, came across as a Graff sycophant in those CDD engagement sessions.
Other changes at the Davis Center also have little prospects for improving academic performance at the district. There now exists an Equity and Integration Department, for which Candace Logan serves as executive director. Jason Bucklin serves as Out4Good (advocating for LGBTQ students) director in the department; Christina Benz, Roi Kawai, and Betsy Ohrn serve as equity coordinators. Julie Young-Burns acts as bullying prevention coordinator and also takes the lead on the implementation of Social/Emotional Learning (SEL). Ann Viveros and Jewel Reichenberger serve as SEL facilitators. In the Positive School-Wide Engagement program, Faiza Holmes, Vince Jackson, and Matthew Myvold serve as District Program Facilitators.
All of these positions and programs represent the typical bureaucratic response to a very real problem, with little prospect for addressing the issue; the perceived need for such a response necessarily calls into question the capability of school site staff on the relevant issues. None of these newly assigned staff members is likely to have an impact on student academic performance or the imperative to impart knowledge-intensive, skill replete education that is at the core of the mission of any public school system. Just as for six years of its existence the Office of Black Male Student Achievement (now dubbed Office of Black Student Achievement) and for much longer a Department of Indian Education have had no impact on abysmal student achievement rates, these bureaucratic initiatives will likely end up being boondoggles for those occupying the newly created sinecures.
Rather than creating a bureaucratic position to pretend that an issue is being addressed, or to provide cover for site staff who should be but are not culturally and socially sensitive to student needs, teachers, principals, and other on-site staff should be thoroughly trained (far beyond the level of typical professional development, “PD” in education establishment jargon) and great care should be taken with new hires.
In the case of teachers and principals, the training should not be just in matters pertinent to cultural and social sensitivity. Given the woeful nature of teacher and administrator training at colleges and universities, teachers and principals need to undergo rigorous academic training by scholars of academic disciplines assembled to provide subject area knowledge and skill sets from a new curriculum of scholarly design.
There is no evidence, four years now into his tenure, that the academically lightweight Graff has any idea as to how to proceed with regard to curriculum design and teacher training. He is a capable administrator who supports talented staff members such as Ibrahima Diop (Senior Financial Officer), Karen Devet (Senior Operations Officer), Justin Hennes (Senior Information Technology Officer), and Rochelle Cox (head of Special Education). But none of these officials is key to the design of the main academic program of the district.
Graff places a great deal of emphasis on “alignment” of staff according to functions important to the district. But when there is no one on staff of scholarly merit, no “alignment” can address the woeful academic record of the Minneapolis Public Schools. To meet the needs of the district relevant to curriculum and teacher quality, staff with scholarly credentials will need to be brought in. With the academic upgrade, the district also needs to create a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral, full of staff members who are not bureaucrats but rather on-the-ground activists comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students facing severe life challenges right where they live.
If Graff does not do this, then he should depart the Minneapolis Public Schools and a new MPS Board of Education (that includes prospective 3 November victors Sharon El-Amin, Adriana Cerrillo, and Michael Duenes) should hire a scholar in his stead.
Electing new leadership is imperative for recognition of the changes needed at the Minneapolis Public Schools, so as to address issues that have not been faced since 1975.
Gary Marvin Davison is director of the New Salem Educational Initiative in North Minneapolis. He blogs at http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com.
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Viva la revolucion.
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