Article #4
Recent Actions of Officials at the
Minneapolis Public Schools
That Saliently Sustain Wretched
Public Education >>>>>
The Unsustainable Retention of
Failed Superintendent Ed Graff
Ongoing actions taken by staff and school boards at locally
centralized school districts throughout the nation serve to sustain the
wretched quality of public education in the United States. The public school district of the Minneapolis
Public Schools provides salient examples.
At the Tuesday, 12 October, meeting of the Minneapolis Public
Schools (MPS) Board of Education, four of nine members voted against entering
into contract extension talks with Superintendent Ed Graff, whose current
contract runs through 30 June 2022.
Those voting against extension were District 2 Member Sharon
El-Amin, District 4 Member Adriana Cerrillo, District 5 Member Siad Ali, and
At-Large Member Josh Pauly.
Voting to enter negotiations were District 1 Member Jenny Arneson,
District 5 Member Nelson Inz, District 6 Member Ira Jourdain, At-Large Member
Kim Caprini, and At-Large Member Kim Ellison.
Inz and Ellison are particularly objectionable political
hacks.
Arneson, Caprini, and Jourdain also have strong ties to the
education establishment, at this time complicated by the strain in the relationship
between Graff and Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) President Greta
Callahan. A very remote possibility exists that one of these three
(Arneson, Caprini, or Jourdain} might be persuaded to join El-Amin, Cerrillo,
Ali, and Pauly to discontinue negotiations with Graff. But not one member in the
Arneson-Caprini-Jourdain contingent has any idea of the dramatic changes needed
in curriculum and teacher quality.
Arneson has close ties to Ellison and, though knowledgeable about
MPS and the environment in which the district functions, is capable of
astonishingly outlandish statements in defense of the system as it is.
Jourdain has little grasp of the needed change and is lamentably
an opponent of objective assessment of student knowledge and skill.
Caprini is intellectually and ethically scattered, not a board
member inclined toward the needed overhaul of the teacher force or the
implementation of knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Graff is a failed superintendent, an academically insubstantial
figure with no ability to implement the needed change, as witnessed in his
keeping the similarly academically marginal Aimee Fearing as Interim Senior
Academic Officer for two years before removing the interim categorization.
El-Amin, Ali, Cerrillo, and Pauly deserve commendation for voting
against contract extension talks with Graff. Should another board member
be persuaded to join them, the failed Graff tenure would blessedly come to an
end.
Discontent at the Davis Center (MPS central offices) is rife.
An already widespread dissatisfaction deepened to demoralization with the 5-4
vote.
Should Graff continue as superintendent, staff departures would
ensue.
Should the departures include staff at the ineffective Department
of Teaching and Learning and others in the Academic Division, the departures
would constitute a favorable development. But those departures would most
likely involve many talented key figures outside the Academic Division whose
loss would be lamentable in the extreme.
Currently only 35% of MPS students are proficient at grade level
in mathematics; only 44% read at grade level; fewer than 25% of
students on Free/Reduced Price Lunch and in key demographic categories function
at grade level in those skill areas.
Nothing in the MPS Comprehensive District Design articulates a
viable plan for academic progress or for the design of knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete curriculum for logically sequenced implementation throughout the
pre-K through 12 grades.
Ed Graff is a failure as an academic leader; he
should--- and in all likelihood will--- do what most
superintendents who receive such a slim vote of confidence have
done >>>>>
resign.
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