Introductory Comments
Minneapolis
Public Schools (MPS) Superintendents from the 1980s include Richard Green,
Robert Herrera, Peter Hutchinson (officially, his organization [Public
Strategies Group] constituted a collective superintendent), David Jenkins,
Carol Johnson, Thandiwe Peebles, Bill Green, Bernadeia Johnson, and Ed
Graff. They have all been failures; in particular, none of these superintendents
articulated a viable plan for providing necessary skill acquisition for
students facing grave economic and associated challenges; but further, none of these superintendents
succeeded in providing knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum for MPS
students as a whole.
The iteration of the MPS Board of Education that ended in January 2023 conducted a clearly failed first search and then an inadequate second search during academic year 2015-2016, with multiple miscues in the first search and a very unsatisfactory result from the second.
The long-waiting students of the Minneapolis Public Schools must not be failed again.
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The history of failure of locally centralized school districts I Minnesota makes the ascendance of Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox to the leadership position at the Minneapolis Public Schools a development of supreme importance.
Cox has created a substantially new cabinet that includes an entirely new contingent of associate superintendents who have been given a directive carefully to monitor academic programming and results at the specific schools for which each is responsible. There is a new math curriculum (Bridges/Number Corner) that for the first time in recent memory will be implemented across all grade levels at all schools. And for reading/language arts, a similar uniformity of implementation will be guided by the primary curriculum (Benchmark Advance), with students facing particular struggles at schools that have confronted such challenges for years receiving highly intentional skill development on the basis of programs known as Groves, PRESS (“Pathways to Reading Excellence”), and LETRS (“Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling”). High dosage tutoring will be provided by the firms of Carnegie and Axiom.
At the behest of Cox, Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, Deputy Senior Academic Officer Maria Rollinger, and Director of Strategic Initiatives Sarah Hunter are leading an effort to bring subject area substance to grades pre-K through 5, so that student verbal skills will be developed, as they should be, in the context of logically sequenced readings in history, government, geography, multi-cultural literature, and the fine arts; accordingly, students will develop vocabulary across a multiplicity of subjects that lie at the core of advanced reading development.
And in the last two months, Cox and staff have added online high-dosage tutoring and online ACT training for this (2022-2023) academic year, with in-person highly intentional tutoring in the offing for academic year 2023-2024; the latter initiative will feature 325 three-person professional teams (one licensed teacher, two trained Education Support Professionals [ESPs]), each team responsible for addressing the academic needs of students lagging below grade level and having not experienced growth in reading or mathematics skills for two successive quarters.
This is an interim superintendent and staff with a chance to provide an unprecedentedly high quality of education for students at a locally centralized school district, particularly those facing challenges born of a brutal history that has created and maintained conditions of cyclical familial poverty for many decades at the urban core.
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The 7 March Committee of the
Whole meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education could
very well prove an occasion of far-reaching historical
significance.
The only item on the agenda was
to consider and vote on a one-year contract extension for Interim
Superintendent Rochelle Cox. Board Chair Sharon El-Amin (District 2)
was again masterful.
After discussion and two failed
motions, the final vote went as follows >>>>>
>>>>>
Board Chair Sharon El-Amin
(District 2) >>>>> Yay
Board Vice-Chair Collin Beachy
(At-Large) >>>>> Yay
Director Abdul Abdi (District
1) >>>>> Yay
Director Lori Norvell (District
5) >>>>> Yay
Director Adriana Cerrillo
(District
4) >>>>> Not
present for the vote
Director Sonya Emerick (At-Large) >>>>> Yay
Director Kim Ellison
(At-Large) >>>>> Yay
Director Ira Jourdain (District
6) >>>>> Nay
Director Fathia Feerayarre
(District 3) >>>>> Nay
This clears the way for Rochelle
Cox to move forward with her highly promising initiatives to bring
knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and enhanced teacher quality to
the Minneapolis Public Schools, potentially projecting MPS as a model for other
locally centralized school districts throughout the nation, with implications
for public education internationally.
As the following articles in
this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis,
Minnesota demonstrate, the academically insubstantial training that
superintendents and other public school administrators receive results in
terrible quality of public education.
Rochelle Cox is a unique force
among public school superintendents, realizing as she does the importance of
academically substantive curriculum across the liberal, technological, and
vocational arts and now implementing a program that promises to send forth
knowledgeable and skilled graduates capable of living as culturally enriched,
civically prepared, professionally satisfied
citizens ready on this one earthly sojourn.
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