Article #5
Result of Poor-Quality State Level Educational
Administrators:
The Ineffectiveness of the Minnesota Department of
Education
Few administrators at the United States federal, Minnesota state,
or city (Minneapolis and St, Paul) levels holds even a bachelor’s degree
received from a college or university department representing a key subject
area taught in the public schools.
Thus do we get a chronically ineffective Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), as witnessed in a recent Minnesota State Office of Legislative Auditor’s (OLA) report. The report’s importance, beyond the specific revelations and recommendations, concerns the reality of incompetence at the Minnesota Department of Education that underpins the report.
The OLA report reviews MDE oversight of four programs:
American Indian Education (AIE),
Achievement and Integration (A&I), World’s Best
Workforce (WBWF), and Regional Centers of
Excellence (RCE). WBWF legislation in Minnesota was
passed in 2013 and A&I was given that
appellation and updated in the same year. These
programs anticipated federal Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESSA) legislation then under development
and passed in Congress in 2015.
WBWF programs purportedly have the five-fold goal of
closing the achievement gap, readying
all students for school as kindergarteners, promoting
grade-level literacy for all third-grade students,
preparing all high school graduates for career or
college, and sending all high school students forth to
graduation. Similarly, A&I goals are to reduce
academic disparities, pursue racial and economic
integration, increase student academic achievement,
and increase equitable educational
opportunities. None of the programs under WBWF and
A&I have achieved their aims and have no capacity to do so. These programs
serve only to meet the legalistic requirements of ESSA and the
state response to ESSA known as the North Star
Accountability System.
Minnesota school districts submit annual reports to
MDE concerning programming for WBWF
and A&I, but none of the programs are effective in
increasing student proficiency for those lagging
below grade level, typically serving only a fraction
of the “protected groups” (African American/Black,
Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Indigenous students,
and those receiving free/reduced price lunch)
targeted for increased proficiency. Further, as the
OLA report conveys, MDE does little besides
receiving the reports and reporting in turn to the
Legislature: no follow-up in terms of investigating
program effectiveness ever occurs.
As to AIE, state legislation and MDE implementation is
also ineffective. The legislation, passed
in 2021, serves the aim of closing the achievement gap
“between American Indian students and their
more advantaged peers.” In this case, MDE is given an
explicit statutory responsibility to develop a
strategic plan for addressing the achievement gap, and
to consult with the American Indian
community, evaluate the state of American Indian
education in Minnesota, approve pertinent district
and charter school plans, assist districts and charter
schools in meeting goals, and approve
preparation programs for teachers of American Indian
language and culture. The OLA report finds
that MDE has not met most of these statutory
responsibilities.
The OLA report, reflecting negatively on the efficacy
of WBWF, A&I, and AIE programs and
MDE oversight, is more favorable to the Regional
Centers of Excellence (RCE). But the evidence cited
in offering the positive comments is very thin. The
success cited involved just 20 percent of schools
served. Although RCE staff members are not formally
employed by the state of Minnesota, most of
those involved in addressing academic proficiency have
been teachers certified and operating within
the same system that has produced such wretched
proficiency rates (just 46% in reading and 53% in
mathematics for white non-Hispanic students, with
achievement gaps of 37, 30, and 29 percentage
points between non-Hispanic white students and their
American Indian, African American, and
Hispanic peers respectively).
There are only 57 total staff members at the six RCEs
(located in Sartell [11 staff members],
Mountain Iron [10], Thief River Falls [10], Rochester
[15], Marshall [9], and Fergus Falls [6]; the
Minneapolis Public Schools and St Paul Public Schools
supposedly receive direct MDE support similar
to that provided by the RCEs. There are over 2,100
traditional and charter schools in Minnesota with
a total of 843,404 students. Considering that RCE
staff members total only 57, this means that there is
one staff member for every 37 schools and for every
14,797 students. Given the establishment
qualifications of RCE staff members and those high
ratios, the notion that RCES can address lagging
student proficiency rates in Minnesota is
preposterous.
No federal or state level bureaucracy will ever result
in knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
curriculum or improve teaching quality in the school
districts of Minnesota and throughout the United
States. Because of our mania for local control, only a
locally centralized school district could
superintend the needed overhaul. My own efforts are to induce the requisite
transformation in the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
And any official in that school district, or at the
Minnesota Department of Education, who
would like to engage me in a formally refereed debate
in a public forum regarding the analysis made
above, know that I stand ready at any time to have that debate.
I do not expect school district or MDE officials to engage me in that debate; they will not be eager for me further to expose their incompetence.
That general incompetence of public education administrators is what makes Rochelle Cox such a unique presence on the scene, having designed an unprecedentedly knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum, with all of the programmatic initiatives for successful implementation.
With the contract extension of 7 March 2023, Cox can now
implement her academically substantive initiatives in a period that runs
through June 2024; the next step would
be for the Minneapolis Pubic Schools Board of Education to comprehend the
obvious and tap Cox as the next long-term superintendent.
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