Adriana Cerrillo and Sharon El-Amin >>>>> The Vital Role That the Two Newest Members of the Minneapolis Public School Board of Education Must Play in the Overhaul of Curriculum and Teacher Quality
Adriana
Cerrillo and and Sharon El-Amin, both elected in November 2020, must become the
key advocates on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education for
the mandatory overhaul of curriculum and teacher quality that must take place in
the 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.
Readers should scroll on down the
blog, taking the opportunity to read and reread these articles, driving as they
do to the core of the dilemmas of preK-12 education in the United States,
including those that vex the very typical locally centralized school system in
Minneapolis. And with regard to the
latter, readers should pay careful attention to my analyses of the intellectual
corruption that applies to MPS Board of Education members Jenny Arneson, Kim
Ellison, and Nelson Inz, Kim Caprini, Ira Jourdain, Siad Ali and Josh Pauley.
Grasp of the degradation that pervades
the board of which they are now members will obligate Cerrillo and El-Amin to
use their independent circumstances to become the activists that they need to
be. Neither Cerrillo nor El-Amin were
endorsed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) or the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) and therefore are not controlled by the
MFT/DFL cohort, as is the case for bought-and-paid-for members Ellison, Inz, Caprini, Jourdain, Ali, and Pauly.
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 Cerrillo
and El-Amin.
They must be acutely aware 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.
Cerrillo and El-amin must read and study 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.
>>>>> Finance
Senior Officer Ibrahima Diop, Information Technology Senior Officer Justin
Hennes, Operations Senior Officer Karen Devet, and Associate Superintendent for
Special Education Rochelle Cox are supreme talents.
Cerrillo and El-Amin must 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.
Thus, Cerrillo and El-Amin must 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.
But anyone claiming to seek change
must heed my message---
Cerrillo and El-Amin must go to
work >>>>>
The lives of our babies, and thus our
own future, is at stake.
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