Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff’s Academic Ineptitude Powerfully Demonstrated in His Retention of Academic Lightweight Aimee Fearing as Interim Senior Academic Officer for One and a Half Years
Aimee Fearing and the Entire Staff of
MPS Teaching and Learning Should Be Dismissed
Over summer 2019, the
position of Executive Director of the Department of Teaching and Learning
was bestowed upon Aimee Fearing. This was another affront to Cecilia Saddler,
who had assumed leadership of that department as Deputy Chief of Academics,
Leadership, and learning after being passed over for Chief of Academics,
Leadership, and Learning with Michael Thomas’s departure for Colorado Springs,
Colorado.
Fearing’s credentials
are as follows.
Academic Credentials for Aimee Fearing
Minneapolis Public Schools
Executive Director, Teaching and Learning
Degree Conferred
Bachelor’s Degree
Field in Which Degree
Was Conferred
ESL Education
Institution at Which Degree Was Conferred
University of Northwestern
13 May 2000
Degree Conferred
Master’s Degree
Education
Institution at Which Degree Was Conferred
Hamline University
23 May 2003
Degree Conferred
Doctorate
Education
Institution at Which Degree Was Conferred
Hamline University
30 April 2015
Other Credentials
Professional Licensures
K-12 Principal Licensure
Expiration, 30 June 2023
K-12 ESL Licensure
Expiration, 30 June 2023
5-12 Communication Arts Licensure
Expiration, 30
June 2023
Thus, Fearing has the
typical profile for an academic decision-maker at the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Her training is entirely in
education rather than in an academic discipline (mathematics, natural science,
history, government, English) that should be at the core of the curriculum of a
locally centralized school district.
Fearing is not a scholar. She is
not a subject area specialist. She
should not be making decisions pertinent to academics. And yet she leads a department that has the
official responsibility for the academic program of the Minneapolis Public
Schools.
The position of
Executive Director of Teaching and Learning was most ably filled by Mike
Lynch. Lynch served under Superintendent
Bernadeia Johnson and was fully behind her program of Focused Instruction,
which had the potential for imparting a Core Knowledge curriculum that Lynch
also embraced. But Lynch encountered a
great amount of opposition for his support of knowledge-intensive curriculum
from staff members of the Department of Teaching Learning. Although he and his immediate superior, Chief
of Academics Susanne Griffin, seemed to have a good relationship, Griffin herself
made few initiatives and leaned more to the prevailing anti-knowledge,
education professor-espoused view of her Department of Teaching and Learning
staff. Lynch departed for graduate study
in Boston in 2015.
Griffin brought in Macarre Traynham, whose main expertise
was in Culturally Relevant Curriculum. I
met with Traynham and did not find her to have much enthusiasm for
knowledge-intensive curriculum or what by then was a Focused Instruction plank
of the Bernadeia Johnson program that was being sabotaged by Teaching and
Learning staff members. A mid-level
Teaching and Learning official by the name of Tina Platt had responsibility for
Focused Instruction, without possessing impressive credentials or the requisite
knowledge base to oversee knowledge-intensive curriculum. I advocated for the dismissal of Traynham and
Platt; Traynham lasted just a few months
and Platt also departed the district.
There was no Executive
Director of Teaching and Learning during academic years 2017-2018 and
2018-2019. Mercifully, this bloated
department was slimmed down from 53 staff members to a current 30. But the department is still overstaffed and
full of incompetent occupants of sinecures.
The department should be cleared of present occupants, all of whom are
trained in education rather than academic programs, at the graduate level and
for most even at the undergraduate level.
Again, we have the
phenomenon of non-academicians bearing the responsibility for the academic
program of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
If teachers were
properly trained in their subject areas, there would be little need for a
Department of Teaching and Learning. No
such department exists on college and university campuses to train professors,
who are experts in the subjects they teach.
Such a department would be ludicrous.
The MPS Department of
Teaching and Learning should be disbanded.
Interim Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning should be
reassigned to a position in her English Language Learner specialty. My program for teacher training would produce
subject area specialists, so that the Department of Teaching and Learning would
pass into much deserved oblivion.
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