Ed Graff should never have been hired as superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
He should submit his resignation immediately.
At last evening’s (Tuesday, 29 March 2022) special
business meeting of the Minneapolis Public (MPS) Board of Education, Superintendent
Ed Graff responded to the profanity used by students protesting the two-week lengthening
of the academic year and addition of 42 minutes to each school day to
compensate for time lost during the recent strike by leaving the room. When the students called out to Graff in opposition
to his departure, the superintendent returned briefly to his microphone to say that
he did not want to be a part of any organization that would allow profanity at
its meetings.
Graff was right in objecting to the profane invective. Officially, such cursing is prohibited at MPS Board of Education meetings. The students were also wrong as to the reason for their protest, inasmuch as not meeting Minnesota minimum requirements for in-school time would, as explained by MPS General Counsel Amy Moore, bring consequences in terms of funding reduction and possible criminal prosecution.
But the student anger was real, even if they do not understand that their disgruntlement is rooted in having now to endure 42 additional minutes per day and two additional school weeks of abysmal teaching that makes heavy use of, as one equally frustrated audience member correctly conveyed, videos and worksheets.
We should take Graff at this word as “not
wanting to a part of” the organization known as the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Graff must go.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Superintendent Ed Graff is an academic
mediocrity and in that regard he is typical of his profession.
Note that Graff has a degree in elementary
education from the University of Alaska, Anchorage; and an online master’s degree in educational
administration from the University of Southern Mississippi. Elementary education, while constituting the
requisite training for one of the nation’s most important jobs, features the weakest
academic training on any college or university campus. The online degree from a lower-tier
university is suspect and in any case whatever of value is learned in the
pertinent courses is not focused on any subject area (mathematics, natural
science, history, government, or English) that should be at the core of any
preK-12 curriculum.
Ed Graff (Superintendent)
Degrees Earned Institution
at Which Degree Was Conferred
M. A., Education
Administration University of Southern Mississippi
(online degree)
B. A., Elementary Education University of Alaska, Anchorage
Other Credentials
Professional Licensures
District Professional Administrator, District Superinten
District Professional Administratodentr, Principal K-12
Professional Background
Anchorage School District, 2000-present [2016]
Superintendent 2013-present
[2016]
Chief Academic Officer 2009-2013
Executive Director, 2008-2009
Elementary Education
Principal, Rogers Park 2005-2008
Elementary School
and K-6 Highly
Gifted Program
Principal, Mountain View 2007
Elementary
School/
Summer
School
Principal, 2005-2006
William L. Bowman Open---
Optional Elementary School/Summer School
In opting for a lightweight
master’s degree, from an institution of meager quality, while serving as an
administrator in the Anchorage School District, Graff exercised the option
typical of the locally centralized school district administrator, who seeks not
knowledge but rather enhanced professional remuneration in ascending the
bureaucratic ladder.
Graff spent ten years as a teacher in the Anchorage School District
(ASD) and then sixteen years as an administrator. Readers should notice that Graff spent five
years in positions that very directly gave him the opportunity to implement an
effective academic program; and another
three years (for a total of eight) as superintendent, whose driving goal should
be to design an organization that delivers knowledge-intensive curriculum,
imparted by knowledgeable teachers.
………………………………………………………………………………..
Ed Graff’s program at the Minneapolis
Public Schools has focused on 1) Social
and Emotional Learning; 2) Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS); 3)
literacy; and 4) equity.
Of these four key programmatic areas
under Graff, literacy is a very basic skill that under previous administrations
nevertheless was not addressed in any coherent fashion. Graff and staff tout the new Benchmark
curriculum as addressing this fundamental skill, but objective results (see
Part One) have not been forthcoming. And
equity can only be achieved if teachers impart a knowledge-intensive,
skill-replete education to students of all demographic descriptors.
In advancing Multi-Tiered System of
Support, the Graff administration seeks to address the needs of students by
identifying academic, psychological, and social needs of students and
addressing those needs with the appropriate professional assistance. This would be a promising initiative if
adroitly conceived and then implemented district-wide. Such conception and implementation have not
occurred.
This leaves Social and Emotional
Learning as defined by the organization CASEL, with which Graff was affiliated
as a failed administrator in Anchorage.
CASEL (Cooperative for Academic,
Social, and Emotional Learning), based in Chicago, was founded in 1994. Both CASEL and the term “social and emotional
learning” were created at a meeting in 1994 hosted by the Fetzer
Institute. The meeting was meant to
address a perceived need for greater coherence in an array of programs
pertinent to drugs, violence, sex education, and civic and moral
responsibility. Social and Emotional
Learning is meant to bring coherence.
In 1997 CASEL and the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) brought together writers and
researchers to produce Promoting Social
and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for
Educators. The Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning claims to have made great advances in
serving the multiple needs of youth over the course of the last twenty and more
years, but the abiding ill-addressed academic, psychological, and social need
of students in urban school districts across the nation (including that of
Anchorage and of the Minneapolis Public Schools during the Ed Graff tenure)
belies those claims.
Social and Emotional Learning focuses
on five designated competencies: 1) self-awareness; 2)
self- management; 3) responsible decision-making; 4)
social awareness; and 5) relationship building skills. This is the kind of facile thinking
frequently witnessed in the utterances of education professors and pop
psychologists, the kind of goals that should be assumed but not touted for any
transformative power.
For when all of these admirable
competencies have been achieved, there will still be the matter of academic
curriculum that should be at the core of any public school system.
Ed Graff is not capable of devising
such a program, nor is anyone on staff at the Davis Center or elsewhere in the
school district capable of creating such a program. My analysis of the Minneapolis Public Schools
Comprehensive Design will make this incapability abundantly clear.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
This is a district that
between autumn 2020 and autumn 2021 lost 2,909 students (declining from 31,598
to 28,689), a district that for many years has featured academic proficiency
rates for African American, American Indian, and Hispanic students below 25
percent, a district in which those rates for all students have been essentially
flat, falling between 40 and 45 percent for both reading and mathematics during
academic years ending in 2014 through 2021.
Students at the preK-5 level
master no rigorous, systematically imparted knowledge sets pertinent to natural
science, history, government, geography, quality literature, or the fine arts.
Middle school features more courses in those areas but those courses are
knowledge-deficient. At the high school level, only Advanced Placement
(AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses have the potential for
academic substance but are often taught by teachers who do not possess the
requisite knowledge base.
Not a single administrator and
very few teachers are positioned to articulate or implement changes that would
improve the knowledge-deficient, skill-deplete educational program at the
Minneapolis Public Schools. Although they are on opposite sides of
contractual issues pertinent to the current strike, key academic
decision-makers at the Davis Center (central administration) and principals and
teachers at school sites have all been trained in abominable departments,
schools, and colleges of education.
Academic decision-makers and
teachers have all matriculated in classrooms presided over by education
professors who oppose established knowledge and skill sets in favor of ad hoc
curriculum formulated according to teacher and student whim at any given
moment. Both administrators and teachers have moved through the step and
lane system toward higher remuneration by acquiring graduate degrees in such
education programs, rather than in key subject areas: There are very few
scholarly academicians operating either in the Davis Center or at school sites.
Graff has been superintendent in the Minneapolis district since 1
July 2016, so that his administration is responsible for the following results
in the years ending in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021--- and for the failure to
improve at any acceptable standard, even in literacy, one of the avowed
emphases in his four-point programmatic focus (literacy, equity, social and
emotional learning, and multi-tiered system of support).
As is the case with most superintendents throughout the nation,
Graff is a creature of the ironically anti-knowledge education establishment
that assures production of an ignorant populace and cyclical poverty at the
urban core.
Perpend >>>>>
Academic Proficiency Rates as
Indicated by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA)
Academic Years Ending in 2014,
2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021
(Note >>>>> The
MCAs were not administered for the academic year ending in 2020.)
Reading
2014 42%
2015 42%
2016 43%
2017 43%
2018 45%
2019 47%
2021 46%
Mathematics
2014 44%
2015 44%
2016 44%
2017 42%
2018 42%
2019 42%
2021 35%
Science
2014
33%
2015
36%
2016 35%
2017 34%
2018 34%
2019 36%
2021 36%
Academic Proficiency as Indicated
Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs)
Academic Years Ending in 2014,
2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021
(Note >>>>> The
MCAs were not administered for the academic year ending in 2020.)
Reading
African American
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
22% 21% 21%
21% 22%
23% 19%
American Indian
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
21% 20% 21%
23% 24% 25% 20%
Asian/Pacific Islander
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
41% 40% 45% 41%
48% 50% 54%
Hispanic
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
23% 25% 26% 26%
27% 27% 20%
White
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
78% 77% 77% 78% 80% 78% 74%
All
Students
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
42% 42% 43% 43% 45% 47% 46%
Mathematics
(Note >>>>> The
MCAs were not administered for the academic year ending in 2020.)
African American
2014 2015
2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
22% 23% 21% 18% 18% 18% 9%
American Indian
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
23% 19% 19% 17% 17% 18% 9%
Asian/Islander
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
48% 50% 50% 47%
50% 47% 46%
Hispanic
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
31% 32% 31% 29%
26% 25% 12%
White
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
71% 75% 71% 70%
71% 70% 61%
All
Students
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
44% 44% 44% 42% 42%
42% 35%
Science
(Note >>>>> The
MCAs were not administered for the academic year ending in 2020.)
African American
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
11% 15% 13% 12% 11%
11% 11%
American Indian
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
14% 16% 13% 17% 14% 17% 9%
Asian/Pacific
Islander
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
31% 35% 42% 35% 37% 40% 43%
Hispanic
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
17% 18% 21% 19% 17%
16% 10%
White
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
71%
75% 71% 70%
71% 70% 61%
All Students
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021
33% 36% 35% 34% 34% 36% 36%
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
One audience member at last evening’s meeting was
holding a sign urging Graff to resign after over five years as superintendent
for not improving literacy rates.
Another audience member held a sign that read simply, “Ed
Graff, Resign.”
Ed Graff should make good on his own vow that he
does not want to be a part of the Minneapolis Public Schools organization and the
injunctions of the frustrated members of the audience on the evening of
Tuesday, 29 March 2022:
Long overdue, Graff should submit his resignation as
superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
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