………………………………………………………………
Note to
Readers >>>>> I am off to Tucson, Arizona, for two weeks to
visit my son, Ryan Davison-Reed. Please
use the time to review the 1700- plus articles on this blog, with particular
attention to the 25 articles entered thus far detailing the intellectual corruption that pervades public education in the United States.
………………………………………………………………………..
Adriana and Sharon---
The two of
you have now been members of the Minneapolis Public Schools MPS Board of
Education for five months and thus should be settling in and accumulating observational
details on the reality that I have conveyed in my book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, editions
of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis
Minnesota, opinion pieces for the Star
Tribune, Public Comments, and over 1,700 articles on my blog, including my
most recent multi-article series detailing the degradation that is public
education in the United States, from the national to the state to the local
level, saliently in the latter case as
found in the Minneapolis Public Schools.
You must
grasp the brutal realities regarding public education in the United States and
take action at the most important level of the locally centralized school
district >>>>>
>>>>> You
must understand that the dilemmas of public education are traceable to a
corrupt ideology that developed at Teachers College, Columbia University,
during the 1920s and became a fixture in public education from the late 1960s
forward.
>>>>> All
academic decision-makers and teachers in the public education establishment are
intellectually corrupted by the anti-knowledge creed of education professors.
>>>>> At
the national level this intellectual corruption and academic insubstantiality includes
United States Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona; at the state level it includes Minnesota Commissioner
of Education Heather Mueller: Both are
academic lightweights with no substantive academic training.
>>>>> Those
intellectually corrupted at the Minneapolis Public Schools include Superintendent
Ed Graff; Interim Senior Academic
Officer Aimee Fearing; Associate
Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brain
Zambreno; the entire 27-member Department
of Teaching and Learning; the leadership
of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and all rank and file teachers except
those very few who via their own reading, research, and self-training have
overcome the myriad obstacles that produce such wretched teaching at the
median.
>>>>> Along
with the Department of Teaching and Learning, the Office of Black Student Achievement
and the Department of Indian Education are enormous bureaucratic burdens; the former two should be disbanded and the
legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education staff should be
overhauled to become a serious engine of academic advancement for the
academically abused Native student population.
>>>>> Senior
Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop, Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet, Senior Information
Technology Officer Justen Hennes, and special education leader Rochelle Cox are
superb in their areas of expertise, and General Counsel Amy Moore and Communications/Marketing
Executive Director Julie Schultz Brown are also solid in their roles.
>>>>> But
occupying an intermediate position between the abominable academic
decision-makers and the superb staff given immediately above are three positions
that should be examine and monitored for effectiveness and areas of expertise >>>>>
>>>>> Senior
Research, Equity, and Accountability Officer Eric Moore is an excellent analyst
of student data but should not be making overall academic decisions;
>>>>> Suzanne
Kelly has comprehension of insufficiency of MPS curriculum and teacher quality
but needs to study harder and act more forcefully to accomplish the necessary
overhaul;
>>>>> Maggie
Sullivan also comprehends the worst dilemmas vexing the district but has not
mustered the courage or secured the assistance from university-based and
independent scholars she needs to implement the necessary thorough retraining
of the teachers.
>>>>> The
Comprehensive District Design contains no provisions for the necessary overhaul
to design and implement a logically sequenced, knowledge-intensive, skill
replete curriculum or to provide for the mandatory teacher training necessary
to impart such a curriculum; nor does Graff’s four-point emphasis on Social
& Emotional Learning, Multi-Tiered System of Support, Literacy, and Equity offer any hope in the absence of the curriculum
overhaul and teacher training that could give reality to those programmatic
features that are at present mere bromides.
……………………………………………………………………………………
The MPS
Board of Education membership other than yourselves consists of political hacks
who are bought and paid for by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. The strength of the two of you lies in recognition
of many of the system’s woes and the fact that you are not corrupted by the
MFT/DFL cohort.
But you two
have a lot of reading, research, and fact-gathering that you must do. You must be diligent in attaining full
comprehension of the most acute dilemmas vexing the Minneapolis Public Schools,
then you must act with courage and energy.
Otherwise,
Adriana and Sharon, you will serve out your term or terms without making any
difference in the lives of the long-suffering students of the Minneapolis
Public Schools.
Take stock
over the summer.
Take vigorous
action as classes resume for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Or know that
you will fail as have all previous members of the MPS Board of Education have
failed,
and that you
should feel that as a heavy moral burden that you cannot ethically bear.
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