Open Letters to Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Directors, Cabinet Members, Senior Officers, and Officials of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
The open letters covered in this article at
those for Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Directors, cabinet
members, senior officers, and officials of the Minneapolis Federation of
Teachers.
To get a sense of the contents of these
letters, my letter to Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education At-Large
Director Ands Chair Collin Beachy is given;
others may be viewed in the Appendix.
…………………………………………………………………………….
Minneapolis
Public Schools Board of Education Directors, Cabinet Members, Senior Officers,
and Officials of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
Ibrahima Diop, Senior Financial Officer,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Alicia Miller, Senior Human Resources Officer,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Ibrahima Diop, Senior Financial Officer,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Shawn Harris-Berry, Associate Superintendent,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Laura Cavender, Associate Superintendent,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Yusuf Abdullah, Associate Superintendent,
Minneapolis Public Schools
Ryan Strack, Administrator to the
Superintendent and the Board, Minneapolis Public Schools
Sarah Hunter, Executive Director of Strategic
Initiatives
Donnie Belcher, Executive Director of
Communications and Marketing
Marcia Howard, President, Teachers Chapter,
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
Catina Taylor, President, Education Support
Professionals Chapter, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers
Collin Beachy, At-Large Director and Chair,
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Kim Ellison, At-Large Director and Vice-Chair,
Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Lori Norvell, District 5 Director, Clerk, and
Policy Committee Chair, Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Abdul Abdi, District 1 Director and Finance
Committee Chair, Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education
Sharon El-Amin, District 2 Director
Lucie Skjefte, District 3 Director
Adriana Cerrillo, District 4 Director
Greta Callahan, District 6 Director
Joyner Emerick, At-Large Director
An Open Letter to
Collin Beachy >>>>> Minneapolis Public Schools Board of
Education At-Large Member and Chair >>>>> 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
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
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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