Concluding Comments to a Series of Open Letters to >Star Tribune< Reporters Anthony Lonetree, Erin Golden, and Mara Klecker Concerning the Moral Abhorrence of Their Cowardly Journalism

The Intellectually Corrupt Context in Which Systems of PreK-12 of Education Function

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I will be back many times with observations as to the cowardly journalism exhibited by Star Tribune staff writers Anthony Lonetree, Erin Golden, and Mara Klecker in their coverage respectively of the St. Paul Public Schools, state of Minnesota education issues, and the Minneapolis Public Schools.  This concludes, though, the particular five-article series that readers may review in scrolling down the blog.

Cowardly journalism contributes powerfully to the intellectually corrupt context in which our preK-12 locally centralized school systems and---  generally even worse that the main line schools---  charter schools function to academically abuse the students to whom they deny a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, well-taught curriculum.

The most vexing dilemma in K-12 education is abominable teacher and administrator training, delivered by those campus intellectual lightweights dubbed education professors.  United States Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Minnesota Commissioner of Education Heather Mueller have both received the entirety of their training from such philosophically corrupt campus embarrassments;  neither Cardona nor Mueller has even an undergraduate degree in a legitimate academic discipline.

This is true, too, of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Ed Graff and MPS Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing; and no one among the 27 member staff of the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning, nor among Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno has an advanced degree in a legitimate academic area (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, literature, or the fine arts).

Thus are our schools subject to academic decision-making by those who have woeful academic training.  The system is intellectually corrupt from the United States Department of Education, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), right on through the preK-12 local bureaucracy.

As Malcolm X would say, with understated irony, looking straight into the camera as if were going to beak it,

“As you can see---  we have a problem here.”

 

Most of the gadflies who come and go, making noise about education reform and then fading away, have no staying power >>>>>

>>>>>     R. T. Rybak, who left Generation Next for a more lucrative post at the Minneapolis Foundation;

>>>>>     A predecessor at the Minneapolis Foundation, Sandy Vargas, who had vowed to Reset Education but departed with the task tragi-comically unfulfilled;

>>>>>     Former Michelle Rhee (she who herself failed to achieve education change or to reveal even an understanding of the key issues on the national level) and Students First Minnesota point person Kathy Saltzman faded away after the Minnesota chapter was terminated;

>>>>>     Former MPS Board of Education member Don Samuels made and continues to make many noises about education but was an embarrassment during his four-year tenure, prone to boisterous statements, lassitudinous, ineffective.

And so it goes. 

Many make waves and then fade from the scene.  Few indicate that they even understand the most vexing issues pertinent to knowledge-deficient curriculum, poor teacher quality at the median, and intellectually insubstantial academic decision-makers. 

These matters are given considerable coverage in my book, Understanding the Minneapolis Pubic Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect---  and will be updated as the work moves toward commercial publication.

And, to be sure, the cowardly journalism displayed by Anthony Lonetree, Erin Golden, and Mara Klecker is given considerable coverage and will be updated in the manner of other topics covered in this groundbreaking, seminal book.