The Travesty That Is the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> Members Whose Multiyear Ineffectiveness Makes Paramount Their Immediate Resignation
Kim Ellison’s ’s Tragi-Comically Silly
Comment Regarding Alternative Schools as a Model for the Minneapolis Public
Schools >>>>> Time for
Resignation of Another Member Who Should Have Departed a Long time Ago
At the same Tuesday, 22 October 2019,
Committee of the Whole meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of
Education at which District #1 member Jenny Arneson made her astonishingly
stupid comment regarding the sequence of United States history courses in the
district, At-Large member Kim Ellison chimed in with a remark of her own that,
when taken together with her nearly decade of ineffective participation on the
board, should induce her resignation and departure with Arneson out the Davis
Center door.
After hearing Executive Director of
Teaching and Learning Aimee Fearing and Chief of Research, Evaluation,
Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore engage in double talk and
jargon-infested presentation of an academic plan that has no hope of success, Ellison
felt impelled to make a comment pertinent to Social and Emotional Learning
(SEL). Ellison commented that Graff’s
emphasis
on Social and Emotional Learning
resonated with her immediately because of her experience as a teacher at an
alternative school. She did not mention
the name of the school, but the school of reference was known as Plymouth
Christian Youth Center (PCYC) for a number of years, now rendered as Plymouth
Youth Center (PYC) Arts and Technology High School. Ellison said that at her school there was a
strong emphasis on teacher and staff relationships with students, with the
implication that this produced student success.
Ellison is half-right but the
half-wrong part reveals the abominable level of academic substance delivered at
such schools. The City, Inc., and the
Street Academy/Minneapolis Urban League High School were schools at which
relationship building was touted; those
schools are now defunct. The Minneapolis
Public Schools contracts with seven privately run alternative schools to
provide academic and other services to students whom MPS failed to engage. Those contract alternative schools are 800
West Broadway, Loring Nicollet, Menlo Park, Merc, PYC Arts and Technology
(Ellison’s school of reference), Tatanka Academy, and Volunteers of America
(VOA) High School. Academic performance
for many years at these schools has stagnated at levels witnessed in the
following aggregate results for academic year 2018-2019:
Percentage of Students Proficient at
MPS Contract Alternative Schools
(Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment
[MCA])
Mathematics 2%
(52 tested)
Reading
(32 tested) 22%
Science
(30 tested) 13%
Many more than 52 students are
enrolled at these alternative schools, so that even the number (52) representing
students taking the mathematics MCA fails to capture the number of students
enrolled. But absences are high; on any given day, a small percentage of
enrolled students actually are in attendance.
There was also some formal opting out, as well as spontaneous refusal to
take the tests.
Staff members at alternative schools
do tend to build amicable relationships with students and to reach out to
families with a persistence and compassion not prevailing in mainline MPS
schools. In that sense, the overwrought
term, Social and Emotional Learning, could resonate with Kim Ellison’s
experience at PYC High School. That she
would only mention this facet of the school, though, is telling.
Article #5 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota<, Volume VII, Number 12, June 2021 >>>>> Origins and Maintenance of a Corrupt System
of Public Education in the United States
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