April 13, 2021
Adriana and
Sharon---
In this
fourth letter to the two of you since you began your tenure on the Minneapolis
(MPS) Board of Education in January 2021, I stress the critical role that you two must play in advocating for the changes actually necessary at the
school district.
I have been
entering on my blog for these last many days a multi-article series that
details all of the most vexing dilemmas facing preK-12 education in the United
States, in Minnesota, and at the Minneapolis Public Schools specifically,
representative as MPS is as a wretched locally centralized school district of
the type so prevalent in the United States.
As you scroll on down the blog, you
will have the opportunity to read my analyses of the intellectual corruption
that applies to your fellow MPS Board of Education members Jenny Arneson, Kim
Ellison, and Nelson Inz; similar
articles will appear in the next few days detaining the like hopelessness of
Kim Caprini and Ira Jourdain and the faint chances that Siad Ali and Josh
Pauley can become acceptable members of the board.
Thus are your important roles
apparent:
If the needed overhaul at the
Minneapolis Public Schools is going to gain contribution from MPS Board of
Education members, that contribution must come via the advocacy of the two of
you.
Be reminded of the following >>>>>
>>>>> I have detailed the needed change in
my 562 page book, Understanding the
Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect. The book
is currently in the hands of Federal Reserve Minneapolis President & CEO
Neel Kashkari and many others who have opined on matters pertinent to equity
and excellence in public education, as well many of those responsible for
sustaining the current abominable system.
The two of you should have read and
studied the facts, analysis, and philosophical and historical context that I
provide in this book, resolved then to act accordingly.
None of the usual bromides, such as
“transparency” or “accountability,” will get very far in advocating for the
needed overhaul.
We must be precise in identifying the
problems, as follows >>>>>
>>>>> The
education establishment is pervaded by a degraded philosophy that dates to the
1920s at Teachers College of Columbia University. By the 1970s this philosophy had taken hold
and now corrupts everyone who has trained under those campus low-lifers know as
education professors. The intellectual corruption
runs deep, so that from national through state through local public schools systems
we have academic lightweights making academic decisions that result in
knowledge-deficient curriculum.
>>>>> Thus
from U. S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to Minnesota
Department of Education Commissioner Heather Mueller to MPS administrators Ed
Graff, Aimee Fearing, Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian
Zambreno you will find no one with a legitimate, substantive, academic master’s degree; this is true, too, of that 27-member (now, having
recently added two members) intellectual wasteland dubbed the MPS Department of
Teaching and Learning.
Not a single scholar.
Not one.
>>>>> The
Office of Black Student Achievement (OBSA) and the Department of Indian
Education are similarly devoid of scholars.
The OBSA should be nixed and Director Michael Walker should be moved to
a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral, staffed with people comfortable
on the ground and in the homes of students from families struggling with
dilemmas of finances and functionality.
We are stuck with the legislatively mandated Department of Indian
Education but this bureaucratic entity should be overhauled so as to be staffed
by academicians.
>>>>> You
have supreme talents in Finance Senior Officer Ibrahima Diop, Information Technology
Senior Officer Justin Hennes, Operations Senior Officer Karen Devet, and Associate
Superintendent for Special Education Rochelle Cox.
Just let those staff members alone and
let them do what they do so very well.
The problem concerns the academic
program, with no help forthcoming from the MPS Comprehensive District Design or
Ed Graff-‘s longstanding, ineffectual four-point program.
Focus on the overhaul needed to bring
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and teacher training so as to
produce professionals capable of imparting such a curriculum to all of our precious
children, of all demographic descriptors.
Mine is a hard message, delivered
after 49 years as a teacher in tough urban environments and after seven years of
painstaking research into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Heed my message---
Go to work---
The lives of our babies, and thus our
own future, is at stake---
Love & Peace---
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
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