Article #2
Open Letters to
Administration, Staff, Faculty, and Students at Minnesota State
University/Mankato
An Open Letter to
Pieter de Hart (Minnesota State University/Mankato) Associate Provost for
Research and Dean of Graduate Studies >>>>> Natalie Rasmussen
Must Issue a Public Apology for Having Served as Chair of the Committee that
Passed the Wretchedly Written Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
April 1, 2025
Pieter---
Earlier today I sent an email to Natalie
Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of
Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for
Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
I can imagine that you are offended by the
prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation, since your own academic
credentials are impeccable:
University of Fairbanks
Ph. D., Marine Biology
Boston University
M. A. Biology, Marine Emphasis
University of Rhode Island
B. S., Marine Biology
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology
for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as Associate Provost for Research and
Dean of Graduate Studies, should also make a public statement lamenting the
bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis
of such an insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would dismiss
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at Minnesota State
University/Mankato.
As was the case with my email to Rasmussen, I
am entering this communication on my blog as an open letter.
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An Open Letter to
Mwarumba Mwavita (Dean of the College of Education, Minnesota State
University/Mankato) >>>>> Natalie Rasmussen Must Issue a Public
Apology for Having Served as Chair of the Committee that Passed the Wretchedly
Written Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
April 1,
2025
Mwarumba---
Earlier today I sent an email to Natalie
Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of
Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for
Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology
for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as Dean of the College of Education,
should also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate
at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would dismiss
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at Minnesota State
University/Mankato.
As was the case with my email to Rasmussen, I
am entering this communication on my blog as an open letter.
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An Open Letter to
David Hood (Provost and Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Minnesota
State University/Mankato) >>>>> Natalie Rasmussen Must Issue a
Public Apology for Having Served as Chair of the Committee that Passed the
Wretchedly Written Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
April 2, 2025
David---
Yesterday I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen
(Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered my communication with Rasmussen as
an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and I also entered follow-up
email communications to Minnesota State University/Mankato President
Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State University/Mankato Assistant Provost
for Research and Dean of the Graduate School Pieter de Hart; Minnesota
State University/Mankato Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on
that blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung as
Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the
K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
I can imagine that you are offended by the
prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation, since your own academic
credentials are also in education, with your Ed. D. in Educational Leadership
and Administration similar to that of Lisa Sayles-Adams:
Tennessee State University
Ed.D., Educational Leadership and
Administration
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University
B. S., Secondary Education (Biology and
History)
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology
for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as Provost and Senior Vice-President
for Academic Affairs, should also make a public statement lamenting the
bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis
of such an insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would dismiss
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at Minnesota State
University/Mankato.
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
(Cell) 507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An Open Letter to
Roshit Niraula, Student Government President; and Rebecca Jay, Student
Government Vice-President; Minnesota State University/Mankato
>>>>> Natalie Rasmussen Must Issue a Public Apology for Having
Served as Chair of the Committee that Passed the Wretchedly Written
Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
April 3, 2025
Roshit and Rebecca---
On this past Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an
email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato
Department of Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral
committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered my communication with Rasmussen as
an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and I also entered follow-up
email communications to Minnesota State University/Mankato President
Edward Inch, Minnesota State University/Mankato Assistant Provost for
Research and Dean of the Graduate School Pieter de Hart; and
to Minnesota State University/Mankato Dean of the College of Education
Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to
you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as
far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria,
Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the
K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
As officers of student government at Minnesota
State University/Mankato, I can imagine that you are offended by the prevailing
circumstances surrounding this dissertation and will be motivated to contact
President Inch and other university officials expressing your dismay.
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology
for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as student government leaders,
you should also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate
at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would argue for
the dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and encourage your colleagues at the
Education Minnesota affiliate at Minnesota State University/Mankato to do the
same.
As was the case with my email to others
at Minnesota State University/Mankato, I am entering this communication on my
blog as an open letter.
Be well, take action, and be in touch as
guided by my identifiers as given below---
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An Open Letter to
Kimberly Chavez and Lina Wang, Teachers of Tomorrow; Minnesota State
University/Mankato >>>>> Natalie Rasmussen Must Issue a Public
Apology for Having Served as Chair of the Committee that Passed the Wretchedly
Written Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
April 3, 2025
Kimberly and Lina---
On this past Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an
email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato
Department of Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral
committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered my communication with Rasmussen as
an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and I also entered follow-up
email communications to Minnesota State University/Mankato President
Edward Inch, Minnesota State University/Mankato Assistant Provost for
Research and Dean of the Graduate School Pieter de Hart; and
to Minnesota State University/Mankato Dean of the College of Education
Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to
you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as
far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria,
Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the
K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
As "Teachers of Tomorrow, " I can
imagine that you are offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this
dissertation and will be motivated to contact President Inch and other
university officials expressing your dismay.
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology
for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as leaders of Teachers of Tomorrow
should also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate
at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would argue for
the dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and encourage your colleagues at the
Education Minnesota affiliate at Minnesota State University/Mankato to do the
same.
As was the case with my email to others
at Minnesota State University/Mankato, I am entering this communication on my
blog as an open letter.
Be well, take action, and be in touch as
guided by my identifiers as given below---
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
(Cell) 507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An Open Letter to
Dwayne Megawu (General Manager, KMSU Radio) >>>>> The Case of
the Wretchedly Written Lisa Sayles-Adams Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 4, 2025
Dwayne---
On Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email
to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato
Department of Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral
committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
Aa I complete the second edition of my
book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of reference has become an
unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts pertaining to which are
conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered my communication with Rasmussen as
an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and I also entered follow-up
email communications to Minnesota State University/Mankato Assistant
Provost for Research and Dean of he Graduate School Pieter de Hart; and
to Minnesota State University/Mankato Dean of the College of Education
Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in like manner as follow-up to
communications with Minnesota State University/Mankato Teachers of
Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina Wang; and with Minnesota
State University/Mankato Student Government President Roshit Niraula and
Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I will be entering this email to
you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as
far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria,
Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
..............................................................................................
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the
K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change only results from
courageous in-person activism.
I write to you as the general manager at KMSU
under the assumption that you or someone else at the station will want to
interview me to get the matter of this academically insubstantial dissertation
being passed in committee at the University of Minnesota/Mankato firmly before
students and faculty; I would be glad to grant such an interview, either
alone or in company with Natalie Rasmussen or others who might want to defend
passing the Lisa Sayles-Adams dissertation and bestowing the ED. D. doctoral
degree upon her on the basis of such a wretchedly written
dissertation.
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
Letters
were also sent to each of the following faculty members of Minnesota State
University/Mankato College of Education Faculty
Minnesota
State University/Mankato
College
of Education Faculty
1)
Praneel
Acharya, Ph. D. , Faculty
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
328 A
Phone: 507 389 1484
Email: praneel.acharya@mnsu.edu
2)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301S
Phone: 507-389-5893
Email: patricia.arnold@mnsu.edu
3)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301R
Phone: 507-389-1153
Email: luzcarime.bersh@mnsu.edu
4)
Beth
Beschorner, Ph.D., Department Chair
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: Remote
Phone: 507-389-5652
Email: beth.beschorner@mnsu.edu
5)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301D
Phone: 507-389-5704
Email: karen.colum@mnsu.edu
6)
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH
107A
Phone: 507-389-5656
Email: diane.coursol@mnsu.edu
7)
Nihad
Daidzic, Ph.D., D.Sc. , Faculty
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
328F
Phone: 507-389-5430
Email: nihad.daidzic@mnsu.edu
8)
Rebekah
Degener, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
328
Phone: 507-389-1528
Email: rebekah.degener@mnsu.edu
9)
Beatriz
DeSantiago-Fjelstad, Ed.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435
Phone: 952-818-8878
Email: beatriz.desantiago-fjelstad@mnsu.edu
10)
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: AH
324A
Phone: 507-389-5651
Email: karen.eastman@mnsu.edu
11)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: REMOTE
/ AH 301 K
Phone: 507-389-1573
Email: mohamed.elhess@mnsu.edu
12)
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435
Phone: 952 818 8178
Email: antonia.felix.2@mnsu.edu
13)
Chalandra
Gooden, Ph. D. , Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318 G
Phone: 507 389 1777
Email: chalandra.gooden@mnsu.edu
14)
Kiersten
Hensley, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: AH
318P
Phone: 507-389-5665
Email: kiersten.hensley@mnsu.edu
15)
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
318 R
Phone: 507-389-1825
Email: cody.howe.2@mnsu.edu
16)
Andrew
Johnson, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
318S
Phone: 507-389-5660
Email: andrew.johnson@mnsu.edu
17)
Bernadeia
Johnson, Ed.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435 - office 326
Phone: 952-818-8924
Email: bernadeia.johnson@mnsu.edu
18)
Kimberly
Johnson, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: REMOTE
Phone: 507-389-1307
Email: kimberly.johnson-1@mnsu.edu
19)
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH107L
Phone: 2053
Email: becca.thompson.2@mnsu.edu
20)
Jason
Kaufman, Ph.D., Ed.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435 - office 360
Phone: 952-818- 8877
Email: jason.kaufman@mnsu.edu
21)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301F
Phone: 952-818-8866
Email: david.kimori@mnsu.edu
22)
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435
Phone: 952-818-8864
Email: melissa.krull@mnsu.edu
23)
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435 - office 510-4
Phone: 952-818-8891
Email: joel.leer@mnsu.edu
24)
Jacqueline
Lewis, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH
107B
Phone: 507-389-5655
Email: jacqueline.lewis@mnsu.edu
25)
College
of Education | Educational Leadership
Address: 7700
France Ave. S, Edina, MN 55435
Phone: 952-818-8881
Email: leslie.locke@mnsu.edu
26)
Kerrigan
Mahoney, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318F
Phone: 507-389-1390
Email: kerrigan.mahoney@mnsu.edu
27)
Karolyn
Maurer, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: REMOTE
Phone: 507-389-1189
Email: karolyn.maurer@mnsu.edu
28)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301 K
Phone: 507-389-1020
Email: kevin.mcgee.2@mnsu.edu
29)
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
324C
Phone: 507-389-6371
Email: joel.mckinzie@mnsu.edu
30)
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
329B
Phone: 507-389-1530
Email: willy.mekeel@mnsu.edu
31)
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH
107C
Phone: 507-389-5837
Email: ann.miller@mnsu.edu
32)
Thomas
Mitchell, Ph. D., Faculty
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH107K
Phone: 507-389-5658
Email: thomas.mitchell.2@mnsu.edu
33)
Laura
(Belle) Nelson, MLIS, Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
312C
Phone: 507-389-5662
Email: laura.nelson.2@mnsu.edu
34)
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: Remote
Phone: 507-389-1631
Email: ruby.owiny@mnsu.edu
35)
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318H
Phone: 507-389-1788
Email: scott.page@mnsu.edu
36)
Alexandra
Panahon, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: AH
318N
Phone: 507-389-2908
Email: alexandra.panahon@mnsu.edu
37)
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH
107F
Phone: 507-389-5240
Email: tracy.peed@mnsu.edu
38)
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH118A
Phone: 507-389-1495
Email: teri.preisler.3@mnsu.edu
39)
Elizabeth
Sandell, Ph.D. , Faculty
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
329E
Phone: 507-389-5713
Email: elizabeth.sandell@mnsu.edu
40)
Sarah
Sanderson, M.Ed. , Faculty
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301C
Phone: 507-389-1498
Email: sarah.sanderson@mnsu.edu
41)
Mark
Savignano, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318C
Phone: 507-389-5664
Email: mark.savignano@mnsu.edu
42)
Amy
Scheuermann, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318E
Phone: 507-389-6325
Email: amy.scheuermann@mnsu.edu
43)
College
of Education | Counseling & Student Personnel
Address: AH107J
Phone: 507-389-5239
Email: tracie.self@mnsu.edu
44)
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318B
Phone: 507-389-5210
Email: molly.siebert@mnsu.edu
45)
Felicia
Smith, Ph. D., Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
318 D
Phone: 507 389 1909
Email: felicia.smith@mnsu.edu
46)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
301P
Phone: 952-818-8872
Email: kellan.strong@mnsu.edu
47)
Sarah
Tahtinen-Pacheco, Ph.D., Faculty
College
of Education | K-12 & Secondary Programs
Address: AH
312H
Phone: 507-389-1607
Email: sarah.tahtinen@mnsu.edu
48)
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
329C
Phone: 507-389-1821
Email: todd.travis@mnsu.edu
49)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH
329F
Phone: 507-389-2431
Email: lisa.vasquez@mnsu.edu
50)
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: Remote
Phone: 507-389-5653
Email: dana.wagner@mnsu.edu
51)
College
of Education | Special Education
Address: Remote
Phone: 507.389.5381
Email: teresa.wallace@mnsu.edu
52)
College
of Education | Aviation
Address: AH
329D
Phone: 507-389-1572
Email: cheng.wang@mnsu.edu
53)
College
of Education | Elementary & Literacy Education
Address: AH301E
Phone: 507-389-5095
Email: yuxiang.zhu@mnsu.edu
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Article #3
Open Letters to
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Directors, Cabinet Members,
Senior Officers, and Officials of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
An
Open Letter to Catina Taylor
>>>>> Education
Support Professionals (ESP) Chapter
President, Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers >>>>> The Case of the Wretchedly Written Lisa
Sayles-Adams Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by Minnesota State
University/Mankato Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 7,
2025
Catina---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and lead Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Davis Center staff
and other Board of Education directors by calling for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as
Teacher Chapter President, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, should be
offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as Teacher Chapter President, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other leaders at the
Minneapolis Public Schools during the fourteen months that have ensued since
Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
You are,
furthermore, deeply culpable for overseeing the lamentable process that
resulted in the selection of Sayles-Adams as superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Marcia Howard
>>>>> Teacher
Chapter President, Minneapolis Federation
of Teachers >>>>> The Case of the Wretchedly Written Lisa
Sayles-Adams Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by Minnesota State
University/Mankato Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 7,
2025
Marcia---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and lead Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Davis Center staff
and other Board of Education directors by calling for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as
Teacher Chapter President, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, should be
offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as Teacher Chapter President, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other leaders at the
Minneapolis Public Schools during the fourteen months that have ensued since
Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
You are,
furthermore, deeply culpable for overseeing the lamentable process that
resulted in the selection of Sayles-Adams as superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Isaiah Martin, Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Student Representative
April 7,
2025
Isaiah---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The dissertation
that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never been approved by
the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as student
representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be
offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, student
representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should
also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate
at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation, then take appropriate action,
calling for dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of
Educational Leadership at Minnesota State University/Mankato and the
resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed] (Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Lyn Ampey, Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Student
Representative
April 7,
2025
Lyn---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The current unavailability
of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams
is unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs
counter to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
You, as student
representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be
offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, student
representative on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should
also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate
at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation, then take appropriate action,
calling for dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of
Educational Leadership at Minnesota State University/Mankato and the
resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Collin Beachy, At-Large Member and Chair of the Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Collin---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and lead Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Davis Center staff
and other Board of Education directors by calling for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you, other MPS Board of Education
directors, and staff members at the Davis Center during the fourteen months
that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the role of MPS
superintendent.
You are,
furthermore, deeply culpable for overseeing the lamentable process that
resulted in the selection of Sayles-Adams as superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Lucie Skjefte, District 3 Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Lucie---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Greta Callahan, District 6 Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Greta---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Joyner Emerick, At-Large Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Joyner---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent
of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Kim Ellison, At-Large Member and Vice-Chair of the Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Kim---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Greta Callahan, District 6 Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Greta---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Lori Norvell, District 5 Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Lori---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Abdul Abdi, District 1 Member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board
of Education
April 7,
2025
Abdul---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Adriana Cerrillo, District 4 Member of the Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education
April 7,
2025
Adriana---
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this
email to you on that platform, with an international viewership that includes
nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as a
member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should be offended
by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, should also
make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota
State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed] (Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Senior Finance Officer Ibrahima Diop
April 4,
2025
Ibrahima---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual account,
that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
..............................................................................................
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($215,250) in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Until
these last few months, I have always regarded you as a person of highest
integrity; your sycophancy, though, toward Lisa Sayles-Adams, has caused
me to question that multi-year assessment.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Associate Superintendent Shawn
Harris-Berry
April 4, 2025
Shawn---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia)
assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this qualitative
study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as
“Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($189,625 in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History
of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Associate Superintendent Yusuf
Abdullah
April 4, 2025
Yusuf---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia)
assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this qualitative
study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as
“Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($189,625 in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History
of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Associate Superintendent Laura
Cavender
April 4, 2025
Laura---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia)
assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this qualitative
study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as
“Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($189,625 in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History
of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Senior Human Resources Officer
Alicia
Miller
April 4,
2025
Alicia---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
..............................................................................................
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($179,000) in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Until
these last few months, I have always regarded you as a person of considerable
integrity; but, while your skill at your particular position at the
Minneapolis Public Schools is still apparent, your sycophancy toward Lisa
Sayles-Adams has caused me to question that multi-year assessment.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your action
in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition of my
book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Executive Director, Communications
& Marketing, Donnie Belcher
April 4,
2025
Donnie---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
..............................................................................................
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($215,250) in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
Until
these last few months, I have regarded you as a person of considerable
integrity; your sycophancy, though, toward Lisa Sayles-Adams, has caused
me to question that assessment.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Executive Director, Strategic
Initiatives, Sarah Hunter
April 4,
2025
Sarah---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
..............................................................................................
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members of the
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($148,625) in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Again,
similar communications will be forthcoming to Ryan Strack and the members
of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, to go with the bevy of
emails already sent and entered as open letters on my blog.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
I once
regarded you as a person of considerable integrity; your sycophancy,
though, toward Lisa Sayles-Adams, has caused me to question that assessment.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Assistant to the Superintendent and
Board, Ryan Strack
April 4,
2025
Ryan---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, that you should cease addressing Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title,
"Dr.," and join with others in the cabinet by calling for her
resignation.
You are,
along with Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education Director Sharon
El-Amin, one of two people at MPS (in addition to prominent figures in
Minneapolis, the Twin Cities Metro area, and Mankato) to whom I have given a
hard copy of my Analysis of the Wretchedly Written Dissertation of
Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams:
Hold on
to that document for the reference of other Board members, in addition to
Director El-Amin.
You
should have by now read Analysis of the Wretchedly Written Dissertation
of Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams; you
have been remiss if you have not done so and should do so very soon;
just as importantly, you should locate the items that I identify in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation (attached to this email) so as to verify my analysis.
..............................................................................................
On
Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the
Minnesota State University/Mankato Department of Education; dissertation
adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
As I
complete the second edition of my book, Understanding the Minneapolis
Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of
reference has become an unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts
pertaining to which are conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch; Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I acted in
like manner as follow-up to communications with Minnesota State
University/Mankato Teachers of Tomorrow leaders Kimberly Chavez and Lina
Wang; and with Minnesota State University/Mankato Student Government
President Roshit Niraula and Vice-President Rebecca Jay. Similarly, I
will be entering this email to you on that platform, with an international
viewership that includes nations as far-flung as Russia, Germany, France,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Similar
communications will be forthcoming to the members of the Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education; in the cases of these inept Board
members, though, to whom I once communicated sophisticated analyses in emails
that they were either too ignorant, in denial, or corrupt to understand, my
communications will to most be strictly in the open letter format.
..............................................................................................
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change
only results from courageous in-person activism.
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and other highly paid
($132,225 in your own case as of September 2024, mostly likely higher at this
juncture in April 2025) staff members at the Davis Center, Minneapolis Public
Schools, during the fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams
assumed the role of MPS superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
But you
and other key staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools must
assume this responsibility as your own, whatever the MPS Board of Education
does or does not do.
I once
regarded you as a person of considerable integrity; your skill in your
position is still evident, but your sycophancy toward Lisa Sayles-Adams has
caused me to question that assessment.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to facilitate the exit of Lisa
Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Article #5
Open Letters to
Others in Minneapolis Who Should Have an Interest in the Case of the Wretchedly
Written Dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams
An Open Letter to
J. Patrick Coolican (Editor-in-Chief, >Minnesota Reformer<)
>>>>> The Case of the Wretchedly Written Lisa Sayles-Adams
Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by Minnesota State University/Mankato
Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 4, 2025
Patrick---
On Tuesday, 1 April 2025, I sent an email
to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota State University/Mankato
Department of Education; dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral
committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams) that began
"You must issue a public apology for
having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written
dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
..............................................................................................
Aa I complete the second edition of my
book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current
Condition, Future Prospect, the issue of reference has become an
unexpectedly important topic of focus, the facts pertaining to which are
conveyed herein.
..............................................................................................
Attached to this email is the March 2025
edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research
from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which I analyze the dissertation (African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of Sayles-Adams that astonishingly
passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen as dissertation adviser,
Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams took the highly unusual step of
putting the dissertation on “embargoed” (delayed availability to the public)
status for almost two years after publication. The dissertation became
available in November 2024. I ran a hard copy of the dissertation
(downloaded copy also attached to this email) and read that document
thoroughly, multiple times. This doctoral thesis is a confoundingly
terrible presentation of research, full of misspelled words, word usage errors,
run-on sentences, and awkward syntax. Further, the dissertation is
gravely flawed with regard to structure, presentation of findings, and analysis
of data.
The dissertation that appeared to the public
in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with
“Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a
detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I
analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation:
Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the
Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III,
“Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V,
“Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February
2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended
and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection
of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at
link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According to librarians at University of
Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone
listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the
K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current
"withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the
Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is
unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter
to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
.....................................................................................................
Readers of my blog know that in African
American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their
Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African
American women school principals with the objective of determining how these
principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at
the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions
with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa
Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English
usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed
interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with
questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is
replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word,
tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as
reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times
misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five
interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also
once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
.....................................................................................................
Institutional change only results from
courageous in-person activism.
I write to you as the Editor-in Chief of
the Minnesota Reporter under the assumption that you will want
to publish an opinion piece by me or a story by one of your staff writers about
this factually verifiable breach of academic ethics.
I am available for any questions that you may
have and encourage you to contact Natalie Rasmussen or others who might want to
defend passing the Lisa Sayles-Adams dissertation and bestowing the Ed. D.
doctoral degree upon her on the basis of such a wretchedly written
dissertation.
With best regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
2507 Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis MN
55411
(Cell) 507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding the Minneapolis Public
Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New Salem Educational Initiative,
second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State of African Americans in Minnesota
2008 (Minneapolis
Urban League, 2004)
Tales from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short History of Taiwan: The Case for
Independence (Praeger, 2003
Culture and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural Development and the Fate of
Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History: Links Across Time and
Place ([with six
other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
Communication
to Lara Bergman (Minneapolis Public Schools Parent and Candidate for Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education District 6 Seat in November 2024; sent only as email)
April 7,
2025
Lara---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, whereby I conveyed to the superintendent’s cabinet, Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Directors, and many others that they should cease addressing
Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title, "Dr.," and call for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I have also sent
a similar communication to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota Department of
Education) and members of the Minnesota State Professional Ethics and Licensing
Board, in the form of emails and open letters entered on my blog.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as
an adroit candidate this past autumn in the contest for the District 6 seat on
the Minneapolis Public Schools--- and keen advocate for literacy and
equity--- should be offended by the
prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as an involved parent and skilled candidate, should also make a public
statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State
University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the many who have followed--- or neglected to follow---events at the
Minneapolis Public Schools during the fourteen months that have ensued since
Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the superintendent position.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
……………………………………………………………………………
Now is
the time for you, Lara, to muster the courage to join with others to facilitate
the exit of Lisa Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr."
Be well,
take action, work toward a better day at the Minneapolis Public Schools, in
public education throughout the USA, and therefore a more enlightened citizenry
and electorate.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
Communication
to Paula Luxenberg (Minneapolis Public Schools Parent and Volunteer; Campaign Manager for Joyner [then Sondra) Emerick
[Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education At-Large Seat {November 2022}; and for Lara Bergman [Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Education District 6 Seat {November 2022}; sent only as email)
April 7,
2025
Paula---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, whereby I conveyed to the superintendent’s cabinet, Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Directors, and many others that they should cease addressing
Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title, "Dr.," and call for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I have also sent
a similar communication to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota Department of
Education) and members of the Minnesota State Professional Ethics and Licensing
Board, in the form of emails and open letters entered on my blog.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as
an adroit campaign manager and involved parent of children in the Minneapolis
Public Schools, should be offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding
this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as an involved parent and a skilled Minneapolis Board of Education candidate
campaign manager, should also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of
a doctorate at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an
insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation, then take appropriate action,
calling for dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of
Educational Leadership at Minnesota State University/Mankato and the
resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the many who have followed--- or neglected to follow---events at the
Minneapolis Public Schools during the fourteen months that have ensued since
Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the superintendent position.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
…………………………………………………………………………
Now is
the time for you, Paula, to muster the courage to join with others to facilitate
the exit of Lisa Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr."
Be well,
take action, work toward a better day at the Minneapolis Public Schools, in
public education throughout the USA, and therefore a more enlightened citizenry
and electorate.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Josh Crosson, Executive Director, EdAllies >>>>> The Case of the Wretchedly Written Lisa
Sayles-Adams Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by Minnesota State
University/Mankato Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 7,
2025
Josh---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, whereby I conveyed to the superintendent’s cabinet, Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Directors, and many others that they should cease addressing
Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title, "Dr.," and call for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I have also sent
a similar communication to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota Department of
Education) and members of the Minnesota State Professional Ethics and Licensing
Board, in the form of emails and open letters entered on my blog.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The current unavailability
of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams
is unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs
counter to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to
contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
You, as
Executive Director of ED Allies, should be offended by the prevailing
circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership,
Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with
the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges
they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender,
especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as Executive Director of ED Allies, should also make a public statement
lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State
University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the many who have followed--- or neglected to follow---events at the
Minneapolis Public Schools during the fourteen months that have ensued since
Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the superintendent position.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to join with others to facilitate the
exit of Lisa Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary
Marvin Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World
History: Links Across Time and Place ([with
six other authors] (McDougal Littell, 1988)
An
Open Letter to Heather Anderson, Advancing Equity Coalition >>>>> The Case of the Wretchedly Written Lisa
Sayles-Adams Dissertation Astonishingly Approved by Minnesota State
University/Mankato Department of Education Chair Natalie Rasmussen
April 7,
2025
Heather---
This
email is sent with the essential message, undergirded by the following factual
account, whereby I conveyed to the superintendent’s cabinet, Minneapolis Public
Schools Board of Directors, and many others that they should cease addressing
Lisa Sayles-Adams by the title, "Dr.," and call for her resignation.
………………………………………………………………….
On 1
April 2025, I sent an email to Natalie Rasmussen (Chair of the Minnesota
State University/Mankato Department of Educational Leadership;
dissertation adviser and chair of the doctoral committee for Lisa Sayles-Adams)
that began
"You
must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that
passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams."
I entered
my communication with Rasmussen as an open letter on my blog ( http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com ), and
I also entered follow-up email communications to Minnesota State
University/Mankato President Edward S. Inch, Minnesota State
University/Mankato Assistant Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate
School Pieter de Hart; and to Minnesota State University/Mankato
Dean of the College of Education Mwarumba Mavita on that blog. I have
also now sent a similar email to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota
Department of Education) and entered that communication as an open letter of my
blog. Similarly, I will be entering this email to you on that
platform, with an international viewership that includes nations as far-flung
as Russia, Germany, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Algeria, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I have also sent
a similar communication to Willie Jett (Commissioner, Minnesota Department of
Education) and members of the Minnesota State Professional Ethics and Licensing
Board, in the form of emails and open letters entered on my blog.
Attached
to this email is the March 2025 edition of my Journal of the K-12
Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in which
I analyze the dissertation (African American Women Principals: A
Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership) of
Sayles-Adams that astonishingly passed the committee comprised of Rasmussen
as dissertation adviser, Candace Raskin, and Efe Agbamu.
Sayles-Adams
took the highly unusual step of putting the dissertation on “embargoed”
(delayed availability to the public) status for almost two years after
publication. The dissertation became available in November 2024. I
ran a hard copy of the dissertation (downloaded copy also attached to this
email) and read that document thoroughly, multiple times. This
doctoral thesis is a confoundingly terrible presentation of research, full of
misspelled words, word usage errors, run-on sentences, and awkward syntax.
Further, the dissertation is gravely flawed with regard to structure,
presentation of findings, and analysis of data.
The
dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never
been approved by the committee.
In my own
document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive
chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and
others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the
Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments”
and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the
Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV,
“Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of
November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status
of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was
listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for
Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1266/ .
According
to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the
dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers
of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and
Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they
may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of
the dissertation.
The
current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave
questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for
public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral
dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual
universe of public knowledge.
You, as
President of the Advancing Equity Coalition, should be offended by the
prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation.
.....................................................................................................
Readers
of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A Phenomenological
Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams
interviews five African American women school principals with the objective of
determining how these principals coped with the challenges they faced because
of their position at the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard
to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently
discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the
many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the
poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow
up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in
understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful
contribution to scholarly literature.
As
readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused
words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times;
presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling
of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than
“Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this
qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym,
Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie
Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the
committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you,
as President of the Advancing Equity Coalition, should also make a public
statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State
University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden
dissertation, then take appropriate action, calling for dismissal of
Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at
Minnesota State University/Mankato and the resignation of Lisa Sayles-Adams as
Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
As was
the case with my email to Rasmussen and many others pertinent to this breach of
academic practice, I am entering this communication to you on my blog as an
open letter.
………………………………………………………………………………….
There has
been a notable lack of courage on the part of you and many others during the
fourteen months that have ensued since Lisa Sayles-Adams assumed the role of
MPS superintendent.
You are,
furthermore, deeply culpable for not speaking out about the lamentable process
that resulted in the selection of Sayles-Adams as superintendent.
Gone are
the promising initiatives for improving student basic skills and moving
toward knowledge-intensive curriculum.
Gone is
the notion of genuine "Transformation," with the necessary closing or
repurposing of buildings once inferred by Thom Roethke in his first-rate
presentation of the grim demographic scenario in Minneapolis and the Twin
Cities area.
This is a
school district in shambles, as I observe each week as more and more parents
approach me at the New Salem Educational Initiative to tutor their children in
a program already burgeoning at 50 students, with a 25-person waiting
list. Poignantly, most of these families are flocking to Ascension
Catholic Academy or the near-ring suburbs, vainly seeking an education that is
little better than that delivered at the Minneapolis Public Schools; at
Ascension, the near-ring suburbs, and the now forlorn KIPP and Harvest Prep
academies, families may find a little less drama but are discovering that there
is nowhere to turn in the quest for an acceptable education for their
children. Thus do the requests for my academic assistance increase
perpetually.
Your
response, or lack thereof, will be recorded for posterity on my multiple
platforms.
Now is
the time for you to muster the courage to join with others to facilitate the
exit of Lisa Sayles-Adams from the Minneapolis Public Schools.
And
never, never, address this imposter as "Dr." again. Your
action in this regard will also be recorded on my blog, in the second edition
of my book, and on my other platforms.
With best
regards,
Gary
Gary Marvin
Davison, Ph.D.
Director,
New Salem Educational Initiative
2507
Bryant Ave North
Minneapolis
MN 55411
(Cell)
507-301-9902
http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com
Author,
Understanding
the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect (New
Salem Educational Initiative, second edition, 2024
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, 2008)
The State
of African Americans in Minnesota 2008 (Minneapolis Urban League,
2004)
Tales
from the Taiwanese (Libraries Unlimited, 2004)
A Short
History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence (Praeger,
2003
Culture
and Customs of Taiwan ([with Barbara E. Reed]
(Greenwood, 1998)
Agricultural
Development and the Fate of Farmers in Taiwan, 1945-1990 (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1993)
A World History:
Links Across Time and Place ([with six other authors] (McDougal
Littell, 1988)
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