Article #4
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 Klecker, 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.
Klepper 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 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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