I am a patient person.
I committed over six years, from July 2014 through October 2020, to my investigation of the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools before sending the advanced draft of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect into initial hard copy circulation. I will update data all the way up to commercial publication and thereafter produce new editions of the book, continually updating information and foreshadowing new editions via my blog and in my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
As a revolutionary activist and scholar, I take my time at each stage of the Revolution, taking great care to be fair and accurate in my data collection and in my assessment of the effectiveness of staff members at the Minneapolis Public Schools:
So when I give Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop, Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet, and special education head Rochelle Cox credit for the jobs they do in behalf of the district and the students served, those assessments are made after exhaustive data collection and analysis of all relevant factors.
And when I render scathing reviews of the performance of Superintendent Ed Graff, Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, the twenty-two member staff of the the Department of Teaching and Learning, and Associatte Superintendents Shawn Harris- Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, Brian Zambreno, the same approach is used.
I consider the data.
I run a fair and objective analysis.
And I deliver the Truth.
Whether I regard a person warmly or even as a friend, or whether I do not like them very much from a personal standpoint, does not matter in my analysis. I wish everyone well in their personal lives, hope that their children and family members thrive; but when the education of my babies is at stake, the only Friend I have is the Truth.
Thus, Langston makes $158,496 annually and has risen to a high position in the estimation of Ed Graff; he can do great things for the students of Minneapolis if he has the courage but may not have such and may not even yet, having been given multiple opportunities, grasp the importance of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.
Carnegie (also earning $158,496) is in a position to move in such a way as to address the grave teacher quality issues of the Minneapolis Public Schools--- but has not yet done the necessary reading or made the necessary moves.
And Eagan earns the second highest salary in the district ($190,038) and has a strong sense of the steps that must be taken to overhaul curriculum and train teachers capable of imparting the necessary knowledge and skill sets to students of all demographic descriptors; but has not been effective in facilitating development of the necessary program.
Langston, Carnegie, and Eagan give appearance of caring more about their well-remunerated sinecures than serving the students of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
They must now know that my patience is nearing exhaustion.
They must do what they need to do, or those well-remunerated sinecures will be vulnerable under the relentless exposure of their disservice to MPS students.
They must remember, riffing on a great rhythm ‘n blues lyric, that in messing with my babies,
“When something is wrong with my babies, something is wrong with me.”
And when something is wrong with me--- as I observe the data, consider the evidence, and at last lose patience,
that is trouble for Langston, Carnegie, and Eagan.
When it comes to the present and future lives of my babies, the only Friend I have is the Truth.
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