Article #5
The Reality
Behind the Façade at Tyler Johnson’s North
High School is That Graduates Face Dim Life Prospects
Chip Scroggins, in his “A Super Bowl Trophy
for North Minneapolis,” (Star Tribune, February 9, 2021) extols Tampa Buccaneer
wide receiver and Super Bowl ring-holder Tyler Johnson for his status as a role
model for students at his alma mater, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) North
High School.
Key Northsde presences Larry McKenzie
(Johnson’s former basketball coach) and Charlie Adams (football coach at North)
rave about what Johnson means as a role model for students at North and in
North Minneapolis generally.
“How cool is that?” Mackenzie gushed,
referring to Johnson and his status as a Northsider who trod a noble life path
all the way to the Super Bowl. “Here is
a guy who has shown that if you have positive people in your life, if you
listen and you do the right things, you can get to the top of the world.”
“This is the best thing for the city,”
remarked Adams. “He [Tyler Johnson] has a following like you wouldn’t believe.
Johnson is to be commended for deferring
his participation in the NFL draft until after his senior year so that he could
graduate and receive his bachelor’s degree.
He also is by all accounts (to me personally as well as those mentioned
in the article) a positive moral presence and a humble mentor to young
Northsiders.
Extolling Johnson as a role model, though,
and crediting him for saving North High School from dismantling, are
overwrought.
North High School remains a wretched high
school.
Here are the percentages of students
proficient in mathematics, reading, and science for academic years ending in
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019---
the last for which the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) were
given, and mean score for students taking the ACT >>>>>
North Academy of Arts and Communications
Academic Performance
Mean Score on ACT >>>>> 15.6
Percentage of Students Proficient on the
Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs),
Academic Years ending in 2014, 2015, 2016,
2017, 2018, 2019
North High School Principal
>>>>> Shawn
Harris-Berry/ Mauri Fristleben (2019)
(North Academy of Arts and Science)
Math 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
----- 16% 2% ----- 2%
2%
(-----) (57) (38)
(-----)
(42) (44)
Reading 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
23% 9% 5% 11% 2%
11%
(66) (57) (36) (66) (55)
(85)
Science 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018 2019
----- 10% 5% ----- 2%
0%
(-----) (57) (38)
(-----)
(42) (85)
Note that out of 85 students taking the
science MCA in the academic year ending in 2019, not a single student was
proficient. Proficiency rates for
mathematics were just 2% and for reading only 11%. That mean ACT score of 15.6 indicates barely
a middle school level performance.
This is the school that Tyler Johnson
putatively saved.
For all of his success at collegiate and
professional football, Johnson should not be considered a role model. The percentage of high school athletes
receiving athletic scholarships is minuscule;
of those who do, graduation rates are low. Colleges and universities abuse African
American youth as cash cows. The chances
of being drafted by the NFL are extraordinarily low and of having a professional
football career even lower. Of those who
do play five, ten, or fifteen years the odds of having brain injury argue for
abolishing professional football.
We will know that North High School
deserved to survive as an institution when student academic proficiency rates
approach 100% and mean ACT scores rise to at least 21. We will observe credible roles models when
successful professionals return to their alma mater as physicians, attorneys,
business leaders, professors, and teachers---
the latter at a level of excellence that does not describe the current
staff at North High School.
At North, as for other MPS high schools,
students languish because of knowledge-deficient curriculum, lack of effective
skill remediation for students lagging well below grade level, and low teacher
quality; these are the key reasons for
low academic proficiency rates. Students
who arrive at North and other MPS high schools have had a knowledge-deficient
education throughout their experience in the Minneapolis Public Schools. 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. Middle
school teachers do not have have mastery over their fields; 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.
Below the surface of Scroggins’s article
lurks the reality that many students now matriculating at North High School
will end up living out their one earthly sojourn on the streets or in prisons
because of the wretched level of education delivered by North High School and
in classrooms across the Minneapolis Public Schools.
When Tyler Johnson tells the truths
conveyed above, we might consider him to be the role model that at present he is
not.
No comments:
Post a Comment