Article #2 in a Two-Article Series >>>>> Highlighting Inept Reporting of >Star Tribune< Staff >>>>> Note to Mara Klecker

The Mediocrity of Your Reporting for the Star Tribune

December 1, 2022

Mara---

Your article pertinent to the perilous financial condition of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) is serviceable but should have left a reading public with comprehension challenges with a clearer presentation of what Tom Roethke identified as the two chief factors that will lead to catastrophic fiscal repercussions by the end of academic year 2023-2024 if left unaddressed:

1) the absolute decline in school-aged children living in Minneapolis;

and

2)  a student-to-staff ratio and student populations per building that are much lower than in 15 other large Minnesota school districts.

You mentioned these circumstances, but as a teacher I would rate your article as middling in quality for not leaving your reader with clear understanding of those dominant factors in the MPS budget crisis.

As a lamentable ongoing matter pertinent to your reporting, you have never given evidence of grasping the key vexations of MPS with regard to knowledge-deficient curriculum and at best mediocre teacher quality at the median.

And as to the current circumstances prevailing in the district, you also give no evidence of grasping the herculean efforts by Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox and Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing adroitly to circumvent the teacher quality issue by employing outside tutors---  and, even more important, to make dramatic moves to overhaul curriculum for knowledge-intensity and fundamental skill provision.  These efforts have been manifest in a recent succession of regular MPS Board of Education meetings and convocations of the Committee of the Whole. 

My ongoing question regarding the mediocrity of your own reporting concerns whether your shortcomings as a reporter are due to your own deficiencies or just part of toiling for a mainstream newspaper that must safeguard relationships with establishment personages--- 

  

With best regards---

Gary 

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

2507 Bryant Avenue North

Minneapolis  MN  55411

Author,

 

Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative, 2022)

Foundations of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education (New Salem Educational Initiative, 2022)

A Concise History of African America (Seaburn, 2004)

The State of African Americans in Minnesota 2004 (Minneapolis Urban League, 2004)

The State of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League, 2008) 

A Short History of Taiwan:  The Case for Independence (Praeger, 2003)

Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)

Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed] Greenwood, 1998)