Supreme Days in the K-12 Revolution Proceed Space >>>>> Burgeoning Enrollment in the New Salem Educational Initiative: How the Experience of a Recent Student Enrollee Serves as Microcosm for Much That is Wrong with Public Education in the Minneapolis Public Schools and Across the United States

Supreme days in the K-12 Revolution proceed apace. 

Academic sessions in the New Salem Educational Initiative are in high demand, with a new burst of interest after my students and I performed those speeches of Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X on the last Sunday of February/Black History Month 2025.

For many moons I have endeavored to keep Saturday and Monday free for work in the Caves, given my labor of joy on multiple written platforms and ever more energetic and focused activism at the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), with as much of Tuesdays as necessary also reserved for attendance at MPS meetings. 

But with an already long waiting list and especially urgent pleas from three mothers for help for their babies, I am returning to a schedule that includes Saturday, which on that very day of the week on 15 March I will be adding three one-hour (rather than the more typical one and one-half hour) academic sessions that will feature work with five students, two sibling pairs (grade 3 and grade 6;  grade 1 and grade 2), plus a grade 6 student who has not been treated well academically at any of her schools of attendance.

That latter case is instructive, constituting one of those microcosms of systemic dysfunction in K-12 education that I am in a constant state of observing.  From kindergarten through most of grade 5, this student attended Harvest Prep (where you and I attended an E. D. Hirsch talk when you were nine or so years old), for a number of years a better than average charter school that struggled to maintain adequate staff, but with school leader Eric Mahmoud striving to maintain academic rigor and once aspiring to adopt a Core Knowledge curriculum.  

But an incident induced this student to finish that fifth grade year online, whereupon she moved to Anwatin Middle School (MPS) for grade 6;  however, finding Anwatin disorderly and lacking in academic substance, she moved to Westwood Middle School in Spring Lake Park Middle School.  As is typically the case with such moves, parents and students are successful in landing in a school with less drama---  but do not get an appreciably more substantive education.

This is a tale of a charter school declining to the level of most charter schools;  an attempt to give the Minneapolis Public Schools a chance;  the mostly futile quest for a better school in the near suburbs;  and then the appeal to Gary Marvin Davison to provide academic instruction that will save a life from either being defined by dissolute professional and personal experiences or the dangers of the street, with violence or prison typical results.

And so I have added this academically abused grade 6 student and four others to my burgeoning enrollment.

As the Ancien Regime of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Totters on the Brink of Destruction, My Persistent Revolutionary Activism Will Result in the Overhaul of K-12 Education, with MPS as Model

These are supreme days in the K-12 Revolution. 

I continue to demonstrate the art of imparting abundant knowledge and skill sets to my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative as they flourish first in basic mathematics and reading skill mastery, then proceed to acquire vast stores of information across the liberal arts.

Whether a student is struggling with severe learning disability in reading or math, dealing with disturbing psycho-emotional issues or proceeding on a an enhanced fast-track college preparatory experience, all of my students eventually succeed at high levels of knowledge and skill mastery for application in post-secondary educational experiences.      

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And I continue my persistent revolutionary activism on various platforms, including my blog, my monthly academic journal (Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota), the second edition of my book on the Minneapolis Public Schools (Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect), and my activism in public forums, especially the regular monthly meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.

Metaphorical comparisons to the reckoning of Ancien Regimes with inexorable forces of revolution rocket frequently across my mental screen.

France endured a turbulent19th century in becoming a republic, but political and social life in France was never the same after 1789.

After the failure of reformist Self-Strengthening and the more urgent reformist efforts of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, the Qing regime met its revolutionary fate in 1911.

After the disastrous Russo-Japanese War and then the formation of the Duma in 1905, the too little/late phenomenon impelled the Romanovs toward destiny in 1917.

So will the administration and Board of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools meet the Gary Marvin Davison-induced inevitable revolutionary transformation as I continue my relentless presentation of the grave flaws of the district.

Will the Ancien Regime of the Minneapolis Public Schools delay fate with ineffective reformist efforts?

Will the impact be more immediately dramatic?

Either way, we revolutionaries are patient as necessary, and we are persistent in the extreme.