The Academic Hopelessness of the Ed Graff Tenure
Ed Graff was doomed to failure as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) from the beginning of his tenure on 1 July 2016.
Numerous duties pertain to the role of superintendent of a locally centralized school district; among those duties, academic leadership, toward creation of knowledge-intensive curriculum and training of teachers capable of imparting such curriculum, is paramount.
Graff could never have been such a leader.
His academic training is insubstantial.
Graff's undergraduate degree (B. A,
University of Alaska/Fairbanks) was in elementary education, entailing the most academically unsubstantial course of study on any university campus. His graduate degree (M.Ed., University of Southern Mississippi) was in educationl administration--- an online professiional degree involving no substantial academic training.
Thus, despite Graff's commendable trust in superlative Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop to put MPS
finances in order with structurally balanced budgets, and reliance on the strengths of Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet and Senior Information Technology Officer Justin Hennes in their respective areas, Graff has not overseen the development of the academic program that is at the core of the mission of any locally centralized school district.
The Unfortunate Decision to Install Aimee Fearing as Senior Academic Officer
No one with the proper qualifications has occupied the post at the top of the academic division during the tenure of Ed Graff. His early decision to oust the incapable Susanne Griffin was correct, but Graff soon installed Eric Moore in the position.
Oppositon to that move by inept staff in the wasteland known as the Department of Teaching and Learning could be construed as a compliment, but for entirely different reasons Moore was not the person for the role. Moore's gifts, still utililized as Senior Accountability, Research, and Equity Officer, is in data collection and analysis, not in matters of curriculum design and teacher training.
Graff retreated for many months to a state of affairs in which he acted as senior academic leader, then he quixotically turned to former Wellstone International High School Principal Aimee Fearing, who for many months held the title of Interim Senior Academic Officer; just a few weeks ago, Graff removed the interim designation.
Fearing has no training in any key academic subject (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, geography, literature). Her undergraduate training is in English as a Second Language (ESL); both her master's and doctorate were conferred by education programs.
The Academically Insubstantial Program of Ed Graff
The four major components of Graff's acadenic program have been woefully inadequate from the beginning.
The components are social and emotional learning (endeavoring to ensure that students are socially and emotionally prepared to receive academic instruction), multi-tiered system of support (MTSS, seeking to remove all nonacademic impediments to student learning and focusing instruction on each student's most critical needs), literacy, and equity.
But social and emotional learning, even if effectively implemented (which has not been the case) is only preparatory to academic learning.
Multi-tiered system of support has been hazy as to detail and ineffective as to implementation.
Literacy is an embarrassing low academic bar that has even more embarrassingly not been achieved (only 46% of MPS students at grade level in reading [with only 35% at grade level in mathematics]).
Equity will only come by providing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors.
And while the MPS Comprehensive District Design (CDD) admirably rationalizes transportation routes, centrally locates magnet programs, and induces attendance at neighborhood schools, the academic section is full of education professor jargon and bereft of specifics as to curriculum and teacher training.
Ed Graff's failure is grievous and manifest.
He must go.
The Qualifications Needed in the Next Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools---
and the Imperative Overhaul of Curriculum and Teacher Quality
No one who possesses a superintendent's license is on the basis of that formal requirement likely to be the needed academic leader of the district >>>>>
Her or his graduate training will have emphasized educational administration, not a key academic subject area.
Therefore, the next superintendent
must hire as senior academic officer a university-based or independent scholar to oversee
>>>>> the development of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum for logically sequenced implementation across grades preK though 12;
>>>>> and the training of teachers capable of implementing such a curriculum.
The central office bureaucracy should be slimmed and refocused on the impartation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.
The Department of Teaching and Learning should be disbanded, to be replaced by scholars selected for design of knowledge intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts and for the training of teachers capable of delivering such a curruculum.
Upon the basis of curriculum in history and literature that necessarily includes all cultures, the ineffective Office of Black Student Achievemen should be eliminated and the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education restaffed with academicians.
Included in bureacratic slimming should be the dismissal of associate superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno, with the return of Rochelle Cox to special education leadership.
The position of administrator, office of the superintendent (currently designated for annual remuneration in excess of $190,000), should be jettisoned, entailing tbe dismissal or reassignment of Suzanne Kelly.
While diminution of central office bureauracy should proceed vigorously, a new Department of Resource Provision and Referral should be established, staffed with people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families struggling with dilemmas of finances and functionality. Current Director of the Office of Black Student Achievement Michael Walker is qualified to lead this new department.
............................................................
Ed Graff's tenure as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools must end.
A new program featuring knowledge-intensive curriculum and teacher-scholars must be implemented.
There are lives in the balance.
The time is now.
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