Comprehensive Analysis of the Degraded State of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools

As the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education meets on Tuesday, 12 October 2021, all of those finding their way to my extended comments on the blog should be aware of this comprehensive, concise analysis of the degraded state of education at the district:

>>>>>    The fundamental vexations are that curriculum is weak and teacher quality at the median is poor.

All other problems are secondary to these, either promotive or derivative---  so do not be distracted by masking and vaccination controversies or any of the myriad non-fundamental matters of discussion ever before the board.

Both curriculum and teacher quality vexations originate in departments, colleges, and schools of education at which intellectually corrupt education professors tout an anti-knowledge creed that degrades both curriculum and teacher quality.

>>>>>    Because of the damage done by education professors to administrators and teachers all through the system, only calling upon independent and university-based subject area specialists with doctorates in key academic fields (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, and literature) to design knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and retrain teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum will result in the revolutionized approach to education necessary.

No one currently at the Minneapolis Public Schools has the intellectual wherewithal to superintend the necessary curriculum design and teacher retraining.

>>>>>    Specifically, not a single staff member among the contingent of Superintendent Ed Graff; Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing;  Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno;  Office of Black Student Achievement Director Michael Walker;   Department of Indian Education Executive Director Jennifer Ross;  and the entire 27-member Department of Teaching and Learning has an academically substantive graduate degree, and only a very few have even an undergraduate degree in a major discipline.

>>>>>    Members of the MPS Board of Education are creatures electorally purchased by the support of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), which protects the incompetent teacher force.

District 1 member Jenny Arneson has comprehensive knowledge of the district but no inclination or political resolve to make the needed changes, even if she were to comprehend the nature of the change needed.

District 3 Member Siad Ali is a hail fellow, well met, but lazy and not inclined toward change.

District 5 Member Nelson Inz is a political hack, a very offensive board member.

District 6 Member Ira Jourdain is a creature of the MFT, an opponent of objective assessments, and monumentally irresponsible given the changes needed to improve the life outcomes of his Anishinabe and other Native communities.

At-Large Member Kim Ellison is an ineffective political hack who will most likely never realize her putatively higher electoral ambitions.

At-large member Josh Pauly is ineffective, trained and controlled by the education establishment;  he is not so anti-assessment as some, but his ineffectiveness and political ties give him no chance to be an agent of change.

At-Large Member Kim Caprini is philosophically bereft, intellectually scattered, and politically purchased.

>>>>>    District 4 Member Adriana Cerrillo blessedly defeated Bob Walser but has yet to distinguish herself as an education change agent.

>>>>>    District 2 Member Sharon El-Amin, like Cerrillo, is not beholden to the MFT;  but she has yet to advocate for the needed change at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

>>>>>    The strength of the Minneapolis Public Schools rests in the superlatively talented Senior Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop, Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet, and Senior Information Technology Officer Justin Hennes;  as talented as these staff members are, though, note that they are peripheral to academic decision-making.

>>>>>    Senior Accountability, Research, and Equity Officer Eric Moore is highly valuable as a collector and analyst of data, but he should not traverse the territory of academic decision-maker into which he has oft wandered.

>>>>>    Senior Executive Officer (Office of the Superintendent) Suzanne Kelly receives a greater than $190,000 salary for making no significant impact pertinent to the changes needed in the academic program and teacher corps.

>>>>>    Senior Human Resources Officer Maggie Sullivan has enormous responsibility for superintending the needed program for teacher retraining but has neither the grasp of the details nor the inclination to make the enormous changes needed.

>>>>>    Rochelle Cox has abundant love for the students of the district and has been highly effective as head of special education;  but she was recently shifted to an Associate Superintendent position for which she has no conspicuous qualifications:  She, like the others in this post, has no academic degree at any level in a key subject area discipline.

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The Minneapolis Public Schools constitutes a locally centralized school district that operates in the intellectually corrupt context whereby United States Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Minnesota Commissioner of Education Heather Mueller have no academic competence as leaders:  Consistent with the typical situation throughout the education establishment, neither holds an academic degree in a key subject area discipline.  The whole system is riddled with incompetence and academic insubstantiality from putative apex on down through the system.

However bad you consider public education in Minnesota and the United States to be, know that the condition of K-12 education is much worse than you think.

And no one cares, not R. T. Rybak who made a lot of noise at Generation Next and then departed for the more remunerative position heading the Minneapolis Foundation;  not Don Samuels, who is himself constantly noisy but departed the MPS Board of Education after just one term and in the meantime took a $90,000 position leading Microgrants;  not other former board members who made a lot of “sound and fury but then [were] heard no more”;  not Steve Belton at the Minneapolis Urban League, any of the members of the Minneapolis NAACP, or activist gadfly Nekima Levi-Armstrong, or staff of the Star Tribune who let the education establishment wag them like a dog its tail;  not the general public, which gets exercised over trivial and peripheral issues but rarely indicates any comprehension of the most vexatious issues that maintain a knowledge-deficient, skill-deplete, wretchedly taught brand of public education.

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For those of you who claim to care, know that public education must proceed in such a way as to overhaul curriculum for knowledge-intensity and the training of a teacher force capable of imparting such a curriculum.

Any other matters are at best promotive of or derivative from those main vexations---  and at worst, contributory to the system that sends so many of our precious young people forth to mean streets leading to death or incarceration.