Consider the Prospect of Lisa Purcell Overseeing the Development of Ethnic Studies Courses--- and Other Education Establishment Fantasies

Remember first that there Is nothing in the new Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design that articulates a viable academic program for the district: 

There are errant education professor nods to individualized instruction and culturally responsive curriculum but these references constitute mere jargon that leaves MPS academic academically insubstantial. 

In fact, teachers must be sensitive to the individual life situations of students, with detailed knowledge of cyclical poverty and conditions of life at the urban core, and they must be retrained for the development of knowledge bases that give them understanding of the many cultures from which MPS students come.  But students of all demographic descriptors must be provided the same knowledge- intensive, skill-replete curriculum, with ample opportunity to read challenging quality material and to discuss their readings with classmates and teachers in a whole-class format.

Other than the harmful verbal blather of the MPS Comprehensive District Design, Superintendent Ed Graff continues to rest his hopes on Social and Emotional Learning, Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Equity, and Literacy.  The needed curricular overhaul can never be accomplished on the strength of Social and Emotional Learning.  The MTSS program is vague and academically insubstantial.  Literacy should be developed in the context of rigorous reading across all subject areas, and only by offering such curricular opportunity can equity be achieved.  Thus, the emphases of Graff, Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, and the inept staff at MPS Department of Teaching and Learning only underscore the lightweight academic credentials and the fact that not a single decision-maker on matters of academic import knows what she or he is doing.

One of the fantasies of Graff and staff is that ethnic studies can be a major contributor to equity.  Instruction in ethnic studies---  better defined  as courses in history, literature, and the fines arts than as “studies” courses---  at the high school level can only be academically substantial in the context of of strong knowledge sets in United States history, world history, world and ethnic literature, and fine arts of many cultures, developed over the preK-8 years.  Ethnic studies pursued in isolation and without proper context cannot be a bearer of equity.

Then there is the matter of who oversees ethnic studies.  At present, oversight falls to Lisa Purcell, a member of the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning whose academic training is as slight as that of other members of that department’s incompetent staff.

Perpend.:     

Lisa Purcell                        

Degrees Conferred                         Institution at Which Degree Was Conferred

M.A., Education                                               University of Utah

M.A., Education                                               Harvard University

B.S., Social Sciences                                       Hope College

                and History

                                        

Licensures:

 

Social Studies

Discerning, veteran readers of this blog will observe in the above comments and the ethnic studies fantasy under Purcell’s direction the stark incompetence with which the academic decision-making contingent in the Minneapolis Public Schools is rife.