Feb 10, 2021

Readers Must Always Search for the Reality Behind the Façade in Articles Such as Star Tribune staffer Mara Klecker’s “A Warm Welcome on a Cold First Day” (Star Tribune, 9 January 2021) >>>>> The Terrible Academic Record at Principal Holly Kleppe’s Jefferson Community School

Star Tribune staffer Mara Klecker’s “A Warm Welcome on a Cold First Day” (Star Tribune, 9 January 2021) focused on the return to physical classes by some of the youngest students at Jefferson Community School.  Cited were remarks by and about relieved parents, wary parents, irritated MFT (Minneapolis Federation of Teacher) members, and students themselves.

A telling comment was attributed to Jefferson Community School Principal Holly Kleppe, reported as saying, “This week is all about those rituals and routines.  That’s education and that’s what we do best.”

The reality is that Jefferson Community School School does not “do” education well at all.  Jefferson Community School delivers a terrible quality of education. Kleppe did not comment, nor did Klecker inquire, about the abysmal academic proficiency rates of students at this Minneapolis Public Schools preK-5 school.

Those rates are as follows for the most recent years ending as given, for which the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) have been administered  >>>>> 

Jefferson Community School                Principal >>>>>         Holly Kleppe

 

Math             2014   2015    2016   2017   2018     2019

 

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

 

                        (380)  (369)   (391)  (323)  (342)   (296)

                                                           

Reading        2014  2015   2016   2017     2018     2019

 

                       18%  15%   17%   16%     19%     21%

 

                        (364)  (363)    (385)  (362)  (343)    (294)

 

Science         2014    2015    2016   2017    2018     2019

 

                      11%    10%    12%    11%    11%      11%

 

                        (114)  (129)   (121)  (112)  (105)    (93)

 

 

Student Population

 

Enrollment:  not tabulated as yet by MPS officials

 

                                    Percentage of         Percentage of

                                    Enrollment              Enrollment

     at site                       Districtwide

 

Native American             3%                          4%

African American         46%                         36%

Asian American              3%                           6%

Hispanic American       44%                         20%

White American             4%                         34%

 

English Learners           54%                         24%

Receiving Free or          94%                         63%

         Reduced Price Lunch

Receiving Special         14%                         14%

         Education Services

 

Contact Information

1200 West 26th Street

Minneapolis  MN  55405

Grades PreK-8

Principal:  Holly Kleppe

Hours:  9:30 AM-4:00 PM

Phone:  612-668-2720

FAX:       612-668-2730

Email:  Holly.kleppe@mpls.k12.mn.us

Website:   jefferson.mpls.k12.mn.us

 

Neither did either Kleppe or Klecker explain the key reason why such an abysmal record accrues  >>>>>

Prospective elementary school teachers have the most academically insubstantial training of any students matriculating on a college or university campus.  They are deficient in knowledge pertinent to history, literature, fine arts, mathematics, and the natural sciences.  Their main pedagogical recourse is to distribute boring worksheets, assign individual and group projects with little background information, and to show videos that go unexplained and undiscussed as to reason presented and pertinence to topic studied.  They are mentally suffused with the anti-knowledge ideology and pedagogical approaches conveyed by education professors from the late 1970s forward, leaving our students devoid of knowledge and diminished life prospects, particularly for our economically most impoverished students, such as those at Jefferson  Community School, struggling with the dilemmas of life at the urban core.

Much was made in the article of reference about the subzero cold on the day (Monday, 8 January) on which the young students returned to school at Jefferson.

Below the surface of the article lurks the reality is that those temperatures might be taken as metaphor for the cold prospects in life--- the streets on and the prisons in which too many will live out this one earthly sojourn---  because of the wretched level of education delivered by Jefferson Community School and in classrooms across the Minneapolis Public Schools.

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