Governor Walz’s Vow to Address Educational Inequities Should Be Understood as a Sham

An article by Patrick Condon, “Walz plan aims for equity in the schools” (Star Tribune, January 26, 2021) parrots the claim by Minnesota Governor Time Walz that a key priority of his administration will be to address educational inequity.  This raises three questions pertinent also to numerous other actors on the K-12 scene: 

1)  Is the governor ignorant?

2)  Is he in denial?

3)  Or is he outright corrupt?

The reality is that the current program for addressing issues at low-performing schools is a sham, and those who devised the program---  key officials such as former Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and Minnesota Department of Education staff member Michael Diedrich---  know that the program has no hope of success.

The North Star Accountability System (NSAS) is the successor to the MDE’s Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS), retaining many of the latter’s features with some augmentation.  The MMRS moved away from singular reliance on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) for objectively determining student academic performance to include a host of other factors, including graduation rates, attendance, annual academic progress for English Learners, and improved annual academic progress for all students at the school.  The NSAS retains this multiple measurement approach in determining which schools need particular assistance due to lack of progress.  To assist schools assessed as needing outside help in addressing inequities by race and income, the NSAS offers eight Regional Centers of Excellence (RCEs)

Among the many indicators that the RCEs are a sham is the fact that the Minneapolis Public Schools and the St. Paul Public Schools are charged with the responsibility of becoming their own Regional Centerws of Excellence.  That is, districts that year after year reveal low overall rates of student mathematics, reading, and science proficiency---  with particularly disastrous results for African American, Native American, Latino/Latina and low-income students---  are now supposed to become, in some unspecified way, centers of excellence for improving academic performance.

Then there is the nature of the six other Regional Centers of Excellence, located in Rochester, Marshal, Sartell, Thief River Falls, Mountain Iron, and Fergus Falls.

There are a total of 45 staff members at these RCEs, for an average of approximately seven staff members per Center.  Of the approximately 2,000 schools in the state of Minnesota, 485 of them have failed to make satisfactory progress across the multiple measures.  This means that the MDE dwells in some fantasy world in which 45 people, all of whom have been trained in the same way as have the educators who have gotten us into this mess, are supposed to assist 485 schools (with each RCE staff therefor having responsibility for over 10 schools) get onto a promising academic track.

The current Minnesota Education Commissioner is Mary Cathryn Ricker, former head of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers;  she can always be counted on to oppose objective measures of student performance and is endeavoring to eliminate the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and the current state academic standards.  If one examines item samplers offering similar questions to those included on the MCAs, one finds skills tested that should be in the mathematics, reading, and science competency set for any student regardless of ethnicity;  but there abides in the conversational ether of the education establishment the unfounded assertion that such objective measures are culturally biased.

Thus do we have the Walz administration proposal that includes wording indicating that new academic standards will be tailored to be “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.”  The proposal also establishes an MDE Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center (EDIC) and anti-bias training for all public schools employees.  The Walz program also aims to expand early childhood education and out-of-school learning opportunities.

This program is a sham:

The establishment of the new EDIC is the typical bureaucratic response in pretending to address a problem by creating a new office or department:  Witness the ineffective Office for Black Student Achievement and the Department of Indian Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Anti-bias training in the absence of very aggressive recruiting of African American, Native American, and Latino/Latina staff is unlikely in the extreme to improve cultural sensitivity markedly.  Teachers unions always object to establishing programs for skill remediation, so that after-school or out-of-school programs will inevitably fail to address deficiencies in student mathematics, reading, and science performance.  And while early childhood education for all students is a worthy goal, dependence on such an initiative, even if containing school-readiness content, will not address the problems of curriculum and teacher quality for grades two through twelve.

Thus, Governor Walz, a former teacher, is knowingly or unwittingly foisting a another terrible ruse on the long-suffering students of Minnesota.

As with so many other actors in the education establishment, we must ask Walz,

1)  Are you ignorant? 

2)  Are you in denial?

3)  Or are you outright corrupt?

Lisa Purcell Should Be Dismissed, Her Social Studies DPF Position Terminated, and the Entire Department of Teaching and Learning Disbanded

Lisa Purcell should be dismissed from her position as Social Studies DPF (District Program Facilitator), the position eliminated, and the entire Department of Teaching and Learning disbanded.

 

This department consists of staff members possessing lightweight education degrees who have very little in-depth knowledge of any field within the major subject areas of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, economics, or English literature.  Their advanced degrees, and even many of their undergraduate degrees, are in education, not legitimate disciplines.

 

Social studies is in the first place a lamentable classification advanced by Teachers College of Columbia University during the decades before the 1950s to replace the rigorous disciplines of history, government, geography, and economics.  As the ideological approach signified by the invention of social studies brought a host of other unfortunate initiatives from the late 1960s forward, our systems of public schools began to inflict knowledge-poor curriculum, especially at the elementary school level, that encouraged students to express their own feelings about their families and communities rather than learn solid subject area information that would make true anthropological investigations meaningful.  Curriculum at the middle school and high school level also is weak;  only if students opt for Advanced Placement courses---  and luck into having a teacher actually qualified to teach advanced courses in United States history, world history, or economics---  do they stand a chance of gaining much substantive knowledge from the woefully labeled and ill-conceived social studies category.

 

……………………………………………………………………………

 

Thus I seethe but am not surprised when I ask questions such as the following and get the expected student responses:

 

>>>>>  Did you discuss the Wednesday, January 6^th, insurrection at the United States Capitol in your social studies class (I ask this question to students at all grade levels and specify the social studies, history, or ethnic studies courses that I know the student is taking)?

 

>>>>>  What did your school do to recognize Martin Luther King Day;  what have you learned about Martin Luther King in your social studies class?

 

>>>>>  Did you follow the Wednesday, January 20^th Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

 

>>>>>  Did your teacher discuss the death of Hank Aaron and the significance of his life?

 

Typically, students got little or no coverage of these events from teachers in social studies classes.

If students did get some coverage, it came in the form of a video, followed by little or no class discussion.

 

Very tellingly, students have gained little over time or recently in the way of critical background knowledge for analyzing these events.  They understand nothing, until I teach them, about the Electoral College;  constitutional provisions for impeaching officials for high crimes and misdemeanors or anything else about the United States Constitution;  Martin Luther King’s childhood in Georgia, precocious early graduation from high school, matriculation at Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, pastorate at Ebenezer Baptist Church, surge to leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, role in inducing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, or the Poor People’s March that King was organizing when he made his fateful trip to Memphis in April 1968;  or anything about the Negro Leagues or Henry Aaron’s journey through those to a life of athletic triumph amidst racial slurs.

 

The reason that students do not discuss current events of great magnitude or gain critical information  pertinent to history, government, geography, and economics is that teachers train under no-nothing education professors who demean the acquisition of knowledge;  teachers do not believe in the conveyance of knowledge, nor do they have much of it.  

 

Teachers should be trained at the local school district by college and university or independent scholars brought in by the district to give classroom instructors what they did not get in their undergraduate or graduate training.

 

The insubstantial training of Minneapolis Pubic Schools social studies DPF Lisa Purcell is an illustrative case in point.  Be attentive to the fact that most of her training comes in education, not field-specific programs  >>>>>

 

Lisa Purcell, K-12 Social Studies DPF                      

M.A., Education  (University of Utah)

M.A., Education  (Harvard University)

B.S., Social Sciences  (Hope College)

                and History

                                        

Licensures:

 

Social Studies

English as a Second Language

Principal K-12

Clearly, social studies teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools are failing their students.  Social studies should be replaced by courses specified as government, history, economics, geography, and psychology.  Teachers should either get the training they need or resign.  Lisa Purcell must retrain and return to the classroom or depart the district altogether.  Her current position should be jettisoned, along with the Department of Teaching and Learning.  Knowledgeable teachers will need no putative guidance from such academic lightweights.  Imagine these characters being inflicted upon college and university professors.

 

We must be specific about the failures of particular staff members at the Minneapolis Public Schools who receive substantial salaries for absolutely nothing of substance in return.

 

I am and will be over the course of the next months exerting enormous pressure for casting off bureaucratic weight exemplified by Lisa Purcell.

 

Our students are suffering.

 

That suffering must end.

 

There are lives in the balance.

To Face Brutal Reality, Readers Must Look Below the Surface of Star Tribune Articles

The actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are knowledge-deficient curriculum, low teacher quality, lack of an aggressive program of skill remediation, absence of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of families of students facing the challenges of life at the urban core, non-scholars making and implementing academic decisions, and the superfluity of many central office staff members and whole departments. 

 

But to gain anything worthwhile from articles by education beat writers at the Star Tribune, one must already be aware of these problems to glean anything of value, because those such as Mara Klecker and Anthony Lonetree merely report the news emanating from those most culpable for the dilemmas in the Minneapolis Public Schools and St. Paul Public schools respectively.  Further, editorial decision-makers at the highest circulation newspaper in Minnesota give appearance of having a low information base on matters pertinent to K-12 education, and they manifest only very erratic interest in printing expressions of opinion that run counter to education establishment positions.

 

In Klecker’s “History in the making tests teachers” (Star Tribune, January 21, 2021), the focus is on the recent high profile events of the January 6 insurrection at the U. S. Capitol and certification of the Electoral College victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  Teachers report difficulty attempting to cover these events in social studies classes as some parents wonder why students must confront such events and others complain if these occurrences are not covered.  And a social studies supervisor attests to the curriculum that she makes available to teachers in navigating issues supposedly difficult to discuss with students.

 

The underlying truth pertinent to the momentous national events and to the education establishment figures who are chiming in is that these events were not covered at all by most social studies teachers.  This was true, too, of Martin Luther King Day (occurring this year on Monday, January 18), the  presidential inauguration (Wednesday, January 20), and the death of Hank Aaron (Friday, January 22).  And lurking below the surface as the most vital components of brutal reality that gives us such classroom incompetence is the history behind the murky creation of “social studies” in the place of history, government, and economics;  teacher training that produces classroom presences possessing insufficient factual knowledge and unpracticed in analysis of objective information;  and the existence of such bureaucratic creatures as social studies supervisors who themselves are academic lightweights.

 

In Lonetree’s “St. Paul planning online school” (Star Tribune, January 25, 2021), we learn that the St. Paul Public Schools are planning to give grade 9 through 11 students an online option that was already in the planning stage before the advent of Covid-19.  But a reader would have to be aware of all the dilemmas specified in paragraph one above to comprehend the triviality of such as program as compared to curriculum overhaul, teacher training, remedial instruction, family outreach, and the jettisoning of inept academic decision-makers.  Even if one considers online learning as a viable option, the abiding situations of knowledge-deficient curriculum and low-quality teaching will remain, whether online or in the conventional classroom.

 

Readers of the Star Tribune should by all means continue to read the articles of Mara Klecker, Anthony Lonetree, and Erin Golden (who covers statewide education issues).  But inasmuch as those writers never dig below the surface to discover brutal underlying realities or to follow any leads that would confront them with bracing truths, readers will have to interpret what they read in view of the actual dilemmas in public education identified above.  They will either have to do their own research or avail themselves of books and cybernetic sources that give the facts from history and current circumstance upon which analysis of K-12 education can proceed.

 

L. K. Hanson continues to provide thought-provoking quotations and drawings in the political cartoon, “You Don’t Say,” appearing on the opinion pages of the Star Tribune.  Such, in the January 25 edition, is the observation from political theory magnate Hannah Arendt that “The ideal of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i. e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”      

 

Donald Trump has become a deserving but easy symbol as purveyor of lies over truth, with followers who make no distinction between fact and fiction.

 

Much less easy for editors and writers at the Star Tribune to target is the brutal reality of the actual dilemmas of the largest public school districts---  and their own culpability in failing to dig below the surface to discover the truth or even to face the truth when confronted with fact.  And by failing to discover or acknowledge truth, those editors and writers at the Star Tribune become enablers for the education establishment just as complicit as are those political sycophants who abetted the venal words and actions of the most recent ex-president.  

 

Facile Thinking Impedes Identifying the Actual Dilemmas in Public Education

L. K. Hanson’s cartoons of political and social commentary are frequently sources of irony-tinged observation on human foibles.  Consider this offering from Hanson’s “You Don’t Say” series on the Commentary page of the Star Tribune on January 18, 2021:

 

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking.   There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.   Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

 

The quotation is from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose actual birthday is on January 15 but is celebrated as a national holiday on subsequent Mondays such as the January 18 date of Hanson’s cartoon.

 

Two recent articles in the Star Tribune give evidence of the sort of facile thinking to which King refers.

 

Consider comments in an opinion piece by Kevin Qualls, “To fulfill King’s dream, focus on fundamentals” (Star Tribune, January 18, 2021) on the very page as that of Hanson’s quotation of Dr. King.  Qualls laments the high percentage of African American students growing up in single-parent households and then writes, 

 

“Community leaders, academic professionals, and faith leaders should collaborate on a unified program to promote marriage throughout their communities.”

 

Qualls also cites low rates of academic proficiency for African American students in the public schools:

 

“Over 50 percent of Black students in the Minneapolis Public Schools perform below state and national averages, while Black students from the same neighborhoods that attend Ascension, Cristo Rey, and Hope Academy perform above state and national averages.  These schools have waiting lists from desperate parents wanting a better life for their children.

 

Qualls offers as remedy more school choice for young people attending schools producing poor academic results for African American students.

 

From columnist Lee Schafer we have an article, “Distrust all around, especially in America” (Star Tribune, January 17, 2021)  in which he laments the information base of the American public and the propensity to follow and pass on only material that confirms one’s prevailing biases.  By way of solution, Schafer writes:

 

“There is no great answer to the question of how to find information that can be trusted other than to read widely, from as many different sources as you can find.  As for those who think they have too much to do to have any time for reading, well, that has never been a good excuse.  The costs of being ill-informed seem to only be going up.”

 

In the above comments, Qualls fails to realize that familial dysfunction and the single-parent phenomenon are historically produced conditions that must be addressed via the overhaul of public education.  Qualls overhypes the quality of education at the private schools cited and in counseling expanded school choice offers a copout rather than a solution.

 

The actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools may be observed only by those willing to gather facts and to think hard, as advocated by Dr. King.  Those dilemmas are knowledge-deficient curriculum, low teacher quality, absence of academic remediation, and the lack of staff comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families facing the challenges of life at the urban core.  Were the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school systems overhauled for the provision of knowledge-intensive, carefully sequenced curriculum, retrained teachers, remedial instruction, and adept on-the ground counselors, students would then go forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.  Provision of such an education to students of all demographic descriptors would terminate cyclical poverty and maximize the likelihood of building strong nuclear families.

 

Schafer’s recommendation for wide reading by the public is correct but facile as rendered.  In the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other locally centralized school systems, students read too little and what they do read is typically unchallenging.  Poorly developed vocabularies and the lack of vigorous class discussions produce low rates of comprehension.  Since most adults, as Schafer conveys, do not read widely, students lack models productive of ambitious reading and ability to analyze information.  Again, the provision of excellent, knowledge-intensive education is the only route for the dilemma under discussion.

 

We will get nothing right until we produce a more informed citizenry.  This will take the design and implementation of a program for the overhaul of public education.  Design and implementation of such a revolutionized system will require hard thinking of the sort advocated by Dr. King, not the sort of facile recommendations and simplistic analysis witnessed in the Qualls and Schafer articles. 

 

 

 

 

Front Matter and Contents >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> January 2021 Volume VII, Number 7

Volume VII, No. 7                                

January 2021

 

Journal of the K-12 Revolution:

Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota        

                                                                                

A Five-Article Series         

 

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor

                               

Specification of Inept and Culpable Staff Members in the Minneapolis Public Schools Department of Teaching and Learning

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

 

New Salem Educational Initiative

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Specification of Inept and Culpable Staff

Members in the Minneapolis Public Schools

Department of Teaching and Learning

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Copyright © 2020

Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Contents

 

Article #1                                                                                                    

Introduction: 

MPS Department of Teaching and Learning: 

Expensive, Intellectual Wasteland

                                                                                                                                       

Article #2                                                                                                               

Christopher Wernimont, Erin Clarke, Jennifer Hanzak, and Marium Toure’ are
Academic Lightweights Who have No Idea How to Generate Mathematics Curriculum or Teach Mathematics   >>>>>  Identification of Minneapolis Public Schools Davis Center Staff Responsible for Abominable Student Proficiency Rates in Mathematics

 

Article #3                                                                                                                                            

Ineptitude of Julie Tangemann, Lisa Purcell, Meghan Gasdick, Molly Siebert, and Molly Vasich  >>>>>  Meager Academic Qualifications of MPS Department of Teaching and Learning Staff Members 

and Cluelessness as to Development of Reading Skill Results in Abominable Levels of Student Proficiency

 

Article #4

Erin Clarke, Christen Lish, Jenn Ross, and Julie Tangemann Bear Major Responsibility for the Wretched Levels of Student Science Proficiency in the Minneapolis Public Schools   

 

Article #5                                                                                                    

Concluding Thoughts: The Prime Culpability of Inept Staff Members at the Davis Center for knowledge-Deficient Curriculum and Low Teacher Quality

Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> January 2021 Volume VII, Number 7

Article #1 

 

Introduction: 

MPS Department of Teaching and Learning:  Expensive, Intellectual Wasteland

 

Microcosmically representing the most vexing dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) is the staff at the district’s Department of Teaching and Learning.

 

This intellectual wasteland costs the district over $2,000,000 in salary, an enormous misuse of funds in a budget that is projected to become ever more challenging as the Minneapolis Public Schools lose an ascending number of students for the next half-decade.

 

As you read the articles in this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, understand that no degree in education is an academically substantive degree, that an Education Specialist degree is obtained to avoid writing a dissertation while rising in the administrative hierarchy, but that this is just as well since any doctorate in education is so meaningless.

 

The Department of Teaching in Learning is farcical in its existence:  This inept staff should be jettisoned as teachers are retrained to become masters of knowledge-intensive curriculum, so that they will as in the case of college and university professors carry curriculum in their brains, with little patience for the pretensions and the ineptitude of Department of Teaching and Learning staff.

 

This inept staff is culpable for the following dismal results  >>>>>

 

Math 

 

MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 (as indicated by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment [MCA] results for spring of the given years)

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  22%       23%          21%        18%       18%          18%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       17%        17%         18%

Indian

 

Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%

 

Asian                     48%         50%          50%       47%        50%        47%

 

White                   77%         78%          78%       77%        77%         75%

 

Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%        20%

Reduced

 

All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%

 

Reading

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

African                  22%       21%         21%      21%       22%           23%

American

 

American             21%        20%         21%      23%        24%               25%

Indian

 

Hispanic               23%         25%          26%       26%        27%      29%

 

Asian                     41%         40%          45%       41%        48%      50%

 

White                   78%         77%          77%       78%        80%       78%

 

Free/                     23%         23%          23%       25%        25%      25%

Reduced

 

All                          42%         42%           43%     43%        45%       47%

 

Science

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

African                 11%       15%         13%        12%       11%                14%

American

 

American             14%        16%        13%      17%       14%           17%

Indian

 

Hispanic               17%         18%        21%      19%       17%          16%

 

Asian                     31%         35%       42%       38%       37%          40%

 

White                   71%         75%        71%       70%       71%               70%

 

Free/                     14%         15%        17%       16%      15%          14%

Reduced

 

All                          33%        36%        35%        34%      34%                 36%

 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

 

Keep these abysmal results firmly in view as you read the following articles, detailing the inept staff members responsible for these low student proficiency rates in mathematics, reading, and science in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Article #2 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> January 2021 Volume VII, Number 7

Article #2

Christopher Wernimont, Erin Clarke, Jennifer Hanzak, and Marium Toure’ are
Academic Lightweights Who have No Idea How to Generate Mathematics Curriculum or Teach Mathematics   >>>>>  Identification of Minneapolis Public Schools Davis Center Staff Responsible for Abominable Student Proficiency Rates in Mathematics

 

As the K-12 Revolution wrought by my book, understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, sweeps over the district, certain individuals are going to be squirming. 

 

For decades students of the Minneapolis Public Schools have been academically abused with impunity.

 

No longer.

 

So be clear, among the highest paid staff at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway), Superintendent Ed Graff and Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing are the top decision-makers with regard to the academic program. 

 

Responsible for implementing the program are Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno. 

 

Not a single one of these individuals is a scholar with any firm grasp of any academic field.

 

Among other Davis Center staff responsible for the academic program are the woefully trained staff members at the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning.  Not a single staff member in this department of twenty-four people is a scholar with a master’s degree in a key subject area.

 

Thus, from the very top-paid staff at over $150,000 per annum (Graff receives $230,000) to those in the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning who knock down an average of $80,000 per year, there are no scholars or anyone who knows what she or he is doing in generating knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum---  even if there was the inclination to do so.

 

As Malcolm X would say, staring straight into a camera as if he were going to break it,

 

“As you can see, we have a problem here.”

 

………………………………………………………………………………

 

Student mathematics proficiency at the Minneapolis Public Schools is an abomination.

 

The reason is rooted in the lack of mathematicians among decision-makers and a faulty approach to the instruction of mathematics derived from the exhortations of mathematics education professors (those academic lightweights who themselves struggle with calculus and differentials equations while waxing pseudo-philosophical in their approaches to instruction in the basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, fundamental proportions, and simple probability.

 

The result is an enormously time-wasting approach utilized by math-phobic elementary school teachers and the spectacle of grade 5 students poised to make the middle school transition without knowing how to perform long division, lacking mastery of multiplication tables, lacking facility in preforming basic operations with fractions, decimals, and percentages;  and having little idea as to the principles behind and the relationships among those latter skills comparing part to whole

 

Students then go on to middle school, at which they continue to rely too heavily on calculators as they learn fundamental pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry, so that they are at a loss to explain what they are doing in utilizing the Pythagorean Theorem, solving linear equations, and calculating and graphing slope.  In the absence of fundamental skill mastery, they then wander through high school courses in algebra, geometry, pre-calculus (if they even take this latter course in functions, statistics, and trigonometry), and they muddle through--- for those few who take calculus---  the putatively highest course offered at the high school level.

 

Students thus wander through a murky forest of inept and faulty mathematical instruction, many still thinking in their heart of hearts that fractions constitute a higher mathematical skill---  true, too, of many teachers, especially those presiding at grades preK-5.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………

 

This is all sinful:  There is not actually that much mathematics to learn.

 

Properly rendered, instruction should make clear the very basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, ratios, proportions, simple probability, graphing, and construction of tables and charts.  Then students would be prepared to go forth properly prepared to comprehend algebra, geometry, pre-calculus, and calculus.

 

But Graff and Fearing have little training in mathematics. 

 

None of the associate superintendents has advanced very far in the study of mathematics. 

 

What graduate training those in the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning responsible for generating or implementing mathematics curriculum or overseeing pedagogy have is all under mathematics education professors, not under mathematicians---  between which there is an enormous distinction (no one holding a flimsy mathematics education doctorate would ever be accepted by colleagues in a college of university department of mathematics).

 

Peruse the qualifications of these MPS Department of Teaching and Learning staff members responsible for designing or implementing mathematics curriculum at the Minneapolis Public Schools: 

 

>>>>>    

 

Math 

 

Christopher Wernimont                              

Degrees Conferred                                    Institution at Which Degree Was Conferred

M.A., Mathematics Education                   University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

B.A., Economics                                                Grinnell College

Licensures:                                                               

Mathematics

 

Erin Clarke, K-8 STEM DPF

B.A., Geology (College of William & Mary)

M.A., Geology (University of Wisconsin)

M.A. Education (Univeristy of Minnesota

 

Jennifer Hanzak, K-5 Math DPF

 

B. A. , Child Psychology (university of Minnesota)

M.A., Education (University of Minnesota)

 

Licensure:

Elementary Education

 

Marium Toure’, K-5 Math DPF                  

M.A., Education                                     St. Mary’s University of Minnesota          

B.S., Education                                        University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

Licensures:

Elementary Education

   

Now consider student proficiency rates >>>>>

 

MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 (as indicated by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment [MCA] results for spring of the given years)

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  22%       23%          21%        18%       18%          18%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       17%        17%         18%

Indian

 

Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%

 

Asian                     48%         50%          50%       47%        50%        47%

 

White                   77%         78%          78%       77%        77%         75%

 

Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%        20%

Reduced

 

All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%

 

Thus, be clear:

Christopher Wernimont, Erin Clarke, Jennifer Hanzak, and Marium Toure’ are academic lightweights who have no idea how to generate mathematics curriculum or teach mathematics, their field of responsibility for which they are paid approximately $80,000.

Wonder no longer why student mathematic proficiency rates are so abominably low for the ill-served students of the Minneapolis Public Schools:

Those responsible are academic lightweights who have no chance of developing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete mathematics curriculum and have no grasp of how to render instruction.