The actual causes of educational inequity at the Minneapolis Public Schools pertain to curriculum and teacher quality.
The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have neither knowledge-intensive curriculum nor excellent teachers at the median.
Some of the best teaching at MPS actually occurs in preK-grade one classrooms. Students arrive in grade 2 having very basic reading and mathematical skills. The key problems accrue not at the early grade levels but from grade 2 forward.
Students from grade 2 forward lack knowledge that they should possess in mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, literature, English usage, and the fine arts. They have poor vocabulary development and slim grasp of fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, and probability necessary to succeed in algebra, geometry, pre-calculus, and calculus courses. Because of the knowledge-deficient, skill-deplete approach to curriculum and the mediocre teaching in the Minneapolis Public Schools, MPS students do not gain the necessary knowledge and skill base to achieve at a high level on the ACT college readiness exam; in particular, students from families facing dilemmas of finance and functionality tend to record a score in the 9-14 range, not even reflecting middle school capability.
MPS students do not read broadly and deeply across a full liberal arts curriculum. Students move forward from grade 5 having little knowledge of any subject area. Curriculum and teaching is not much better in middle school and high school; only students who take Advanced Placement (AP) courses learn anything of substance, and then only in the off-chance of getting a teacher qualified to impart college preparatory curriculum.
There abides in the conversational ether the fallacious notion that early childhood education can be the prime agent of educational equity. Such a fantasy jibes well with a major contention of Education Minnesota (the state teachers union) and affiliates such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), because the assertion deflects blame from the entire preK-12 sequence of knowledge-deficient curriculum and mediocre teaching at the median.
But the actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are those given above as pertaining to curriculum and teacher quality. The inadequacies of curriculum and teacher quality go unaddressed because of academic decision-makers who are as ill-trained as are teachers and building principals: Academic decision-makers at the Davis Center (MPS central offices) have all acquired degrees conferred by departments, schools, and colleges of education, where they imbibe the anti-knowledge ideology of education professors and gain little in the way of pedagogical methods or cultural sensitivity for imparting knowledge and skill sets to students of all demographic descriptors.
The absence of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum falls hardest on students from families facing challenges of finances and functionality, those who tend to be mired in cyclical poverty and limited educational attainment. The lack of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students facing the dilemmas of life at the urban core exacerbates inequity, as does the lack of a remedial instruction program for students languishing many grades below that of school enrollment.
Until current academic decision-makers at the Davis Center are replaced by scholars capable of designing knowledge-intensive curriculum and training teachers capable of imparting such curriculum, ethically abhorrent inequities will abide.
Do not be distracted from the actual causes of inequity at the Minneapolis Public Schools by the fixes circulating in the conversational ether:
Such distraction is what the educational establishment counts upon to draw your attention from the actual problems grounded in curriculum and teacher quality.
No comments:
Post a Comment