Anyone Interested in preK-12 Education Should be Aware of the Opportunities in the Months Ahead to Develop A National Model at the Minneapolis Public Schools

Opportunities present at the Minneapolis Public Schools under the leadership of Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox are immense: 

Somewhere in the United States, changemakers at the level of the locally centralized school district must take action to rectify the injustices of history and for the first time in our national history overhaul public education so as to send graduates forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction---   ending familial cyclical poverty at the urban core and creating the well-informed citizenry envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann.

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The Historical and Philosophical Dilemma

Thomas Jefferson wrote that he knew no safe depository for the blessings of liberty but the people themselves, and should the people not exercise that liberty with a wholesome discretion, the response should not be to take the responsibility from them but to inform their discretion by education.

Horace Mann picked up on that theme and at mid-19^th century advocated energetically for “common schools” via which people of all demographic descriptors would receive that knowledge base necessary for the responsible exercise of citizenship.

By the late 19^th century, public schools were observable across the national landscape, but well into the 20^th century, most people did not attend beyond grade six (6).  Those who attended high schools established mostly in major urban centers were in the minority;  curriculum was informed by the classical curriculum long taught by tutors to children of the wealthy, adapted to include more and higher level instruction in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and physical education.

What were then called junior high schools appeared in 1911, and attendance at this level and high school did increase greatly by mid-20^th century.  But by that time William Heard Kilpatrick (The Project Method, 1918) and other professors at Teachers College/Columbia University during the 1920s were advocating for a version of John Dewey’s ideas that appropriated the appellation of “progressive education,” a farcical misnomer, given that many progressive educators were proponents of eugenics, doubted the intellectual capacity of African Americans and immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, and reluctantly conceded that substantive subject area education might be provided for what they took to be the very few capable of university matriculation, but that others would be placed into “life skills” or (for the more capable among the children of the masses) vocational tracks.

Education professors throughout the nation did and still do take their cue from the ideas of Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg (Child-Centered Education, 1927).  Set bodies of knowledge are not considered necessary by education professors, who convey to the prospective teachers that they train that needed information can always be looked up and that the approach to classroom instruction should be guided by student interest, with cultivation of “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning.”  But these are mere excuses teaching very little at all:  Neither critical analysis nor lifelong learning is possible without ever have truly acquired the knowledge base on which those modes of cognition and propensity may proceed.

The degradation at year 2022 is that most teachers, especially at preK-5 but also at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels, are people of low knowledge.  They are not serious readers.  They do not truly engage their students in critical analysis.  They are not themselves lifelong learners and do not present to their student opportunity for vigorous discussion on the basis of challenging and varied reading across all subject areas that would inculcate those habits that lead to lifelong acquisition of knowledge.  The main pedagogical practices are to assign inefficient group work on projects that have little informational context, show an abundance of videos, and distribute worksheets that students typically fill out in the absence of subject area information, preparatory or follow-up discussion, or much idea of what they were supposed to or did learn.

Thus is education at the Minneapolis Public Schools and most urban districts a disaster and woefully incomplete even in well-regarded suburban and private schools.

We witness the results of this abysmal state of education in the United States in a largely ignorant citizenry incapable of evaluating what they find at websites and in the propensity toward “group-think” in our now highly segmentized society.                                                  

That why the mission of transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools to become a national model for the impartation of knowledge-intensive preK-12 education is so important.

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A Review of My Advocacy for the Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools

In the June 2022 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, I presented my ideas for the overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools in the months ahead, a span of time that will include the superintendent search and the election of five new members of the MPS Board of Education.

In brief, the main points in my prescriptive overhaul include

>>>>>   commitment to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, curriculum as actually implemented in the classroom, with well-defined knowledge and skill sets imparted in logical sequence from preK- through grade 12;

>>>>>   well-designed teacher training that transforms teachers at preK through grade 5 into professionals of deep and broad knowledge across the key subject areas of mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, geography, literature, English usage, and the fine arts--- and assures that teachers at grades 6-8 and 9-12 are subject area specialists with graduate degrees not in education programs but in field-specific university departments.

As ancillary measures, the

Department of Teaching and Learning

and the

Office of Black Male Achievement

should be disbanded; 

the Department of Indian Education overhauled

to become academically substantive; 

a new

Department of Resource Provision and Referral

created and staffed with people comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families facing dilemmas of finances and functionality at the urban core; 

and a new

Academic Enrichment Hour

set aside every day in preK-5 classrooms for skill development for those students languishing below grade level or (for those few functioning at grade level) to pursue subjects of driving interest.

Such initiatives will necessitate

>>>>>     securing a superintendent who meets state licensure criteria and therefore is academically ruined by the system but capable of understanding and embracing knowledge-intensive education;

and

>>>>>     hiring an academician (not necessitating superintendent licensure) with a doctorate in a key subject area who will oversee a group of other field-specialist scholars who will articulate curriculum as actually imparted in the classroom and provide teacher training to produce a professionalized core of teachers capable of imparting knowledge-intensive education. 

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Resources That I Will Have Available

Even before I started doing the research that eventually produced Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, I had already substantially completed a book entitled Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  I use chapters from this book to give my students the education that they do not receive at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  The chapters of the book are focused on the following subject areas  >>>>>

>>>>> 

mathematics

world history

American history

African American history

psychology

political science

world religions

literature (including reading lists for classical Western, world, ethnic-specific literature)

English usage

fine arts (fundamental of music composition, musical genres, and visual art)

biology

chemistry

physics.

I am still working to complete the biology, chemistry, physics, and fine arts chapters but otherwise immediately can adapt these to use as teacher resource documents.

In addition to my history of African America, I will also soon have ready histories of

Native Americans/American Indians

Hispanics/Latinas & Latinos

Somalis

Hmong.

And I am producing documents explaining my approaches to teaching efficiently and effectively 

mathematics;

reading.

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Awareness must be elevated as to the opportunity present by the August 2022 primary and the November 2022 general election pertinent to contested seats for the MPS Board of Education, candidates of which are the following  >>>>>

>>>>> 

At-Large             (Two positions open)

*****Keri Jo Felder  (5/17/2022)

*****Collin Beachy (5/17/2022)

Sony Emerick  (5/24/2022)

Jaton White  (5/24/2022)

Harley Meyer  (5/26/2022)

Lisa Skjefte  (5/27/2022) 

Comment   >>>>>    

Note the absence of Caprini---

District 1

*****Mary Jo McCollow  (5/17/2022)-----     withdrew 6/2/202

Abdul Abdi (5/27/2022)

Comment     

McCollow withdrew, even after receiving the DFL endorsement.  I am now working to determine whether Abdul Abdi, a late filer, received any de facto DFL endorsement and if McCollow's withdrawal was the result of some sort of political deal. 

District 3

*****Fathia Feerayarre  (5/17/2022)

Comment---      Karn Engelsgjerd seemed poised to run, even without DFL endorsement, which he lost after one ballot;  he never filed, apparently waiting to observe the results of endorsement.

District 5

*****Lori Norvell  (5/17/2022)

Lorraine Spies (5/18/2022)

Leslie Haugland-Smith  (5/24/2022)

Laurelle Myhra  (5/24/2022) 

Elena Codos  (5/31/2022)

Comment    >>>>>    This district featured no surprises for me.

<<<<< 

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The above constitutes the program for which I have been advocating and will continue to advocate in the days, months, and years to come---  along with resources that I can provide;  and the matters of  which anyone interested in the needed overhaul of preK-12 public education must be aware.

I will be attentive to the pragmatic progress toward the needed overhaul at the Minneapolis Public Schools and offer any help that I can to the very experienced Rochelle Cox, who in my observation understands the need for academically substantive public education and is already making highly favorable changes in pursuit of that noble goal.