Article #5 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> Volume IX, No. 12, June2023

Article #5

Historical Ineffectiveness and Current Promise:  Prospects for the Minneapolis Public Schools Becoming a National Model Under the Leadership of Rochelle Cox

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. 

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 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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With the recent extension of Rochelle Cox’s contract through 30 June 2024, Cox is now positioned 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.

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.

Rochelle Cox has recently signaled that she intends to apply for the long-term positions of superintendent.  Strictly from a logical and ethical point of view, the Directors of the MPS Board of Education should forego the typical superintendent selection process and vote to offer Cox the three-year contract typical for superintendents.  If for reasons of public posture, the Directors decide to rely on BWP Associates, the firm selected a few months back to conduct a formal search, to move forward with an official search no earlier than September 2023, then as soon as possible the Board should identify three finalists, with Cox among them.  An objective review of Cox’s distinguished 25 years of service to the Minneapolis Public Schools, her stellar performance as interim superintendent, and the prospects for improving academic programming that has begun under her tenure should impel the Directors of the MPS Board of Education to select her as the next long-term superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Rochelle Cox has focused relentlessly on improving academic programming, especially addressing the needs of those students languishing below grade level in reading and mathematics, but also envisioning curriculum designed for greater rigor and coherence across al grade levels, preK through 12.  Given the promise of her twelve months as interim superintendent, this remarkable public education administrator has prospects for transforming the Minneapolis Public Schools into a locally centralized school district that via the provision of Knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that would be a model for public school districts throughout the United States.

And given the ineffectiveness of education policy and institutions at the federal and state levels, so that real change must come at the level of the locally centralized school district, the phenomenon of transformation at the local level would become a major historic event, with implications for students throughout the nation and for the creation of a citizenry capable of addressing the varied challenges of the 21^st century and beyond.