Interlude >>>>> The Cluelessness Revealed in the Decision by Minneapolis Public Schools Officials to Seek Guidance from the University of Minnesora College of Education and Human Development

The recent decision by officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to seek advice from staff at the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) for addressing inequities in student achievement saliently demonstrates the incompetence of MPS academic decision-makers.

Education professors at the CEHD are the biggest culprits in producing wretched systems of public education such as that found in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

These are the people who have given us knowledge-bereft, slimly specified curriculum in preK-5 schools;  the notion of middle schools as centers of socialization rather than academic advancement;  high school teachers possessing lightweight Masters of Education (M.Ed.) degrees rather than M.A. or M.S  degrees in major academic disciplines;  invented spelling and whole language reading (over explicit instruction in phonics);  pseudo-philosophical notions such as metacognition and constructivism (rather than mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, and probability); inefficient group projects rather than individual acquisition of logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets;  and portfolios rather than objective assessments.

These approaches are traceable to those advanced by Harold Rugg, Wiiliam Heard Kilpatrick, and others at Teachers  College/Columbia University from the 1920s, pedagogic features of which finally gained prominence in school districts across the United States during the 1970s.

At the Minneapolis Public Schools we witness the deleterious effects:  35% student proficiency rates in math, 46% in reading,with rates under 25% for many demographic groups;  and, among those who actually manage to graduate, students who walk across the stage woefully deficient in knowledge pertinent to mathemstics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, geography, economics, psychology, classic and ethnic-specific literature, English usage, music, visual art, and the vocations.

And across the landscape of the United States we witness an ignorant citizenry, at least a quarter of which is mired in superstition, vulnerable to all manner of fact-bereft explanations in lieu of data-replete information from carefully constructed scientific research.

The tenure of Ed Graff is viewed negatively by four of nine members of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  This recent linkage to failed approaches  emanating from the CEHD should be grounds for other board members to oust Graff and other academic decision-makers at MPS, acting then to bring forth scholars from key academic fields to design knowledge-intensive curriculum and the training of teachers capable of imparting such curriculum.  

There are lives in the balance at.the urban core and a nation at stake in the next decades of the 21st century.