The meeting
of the MPS Board of Education on 12 December, just two days ago as I tap out
this article, was an abominable waste of
time, due most especially to Graff’s weak leadership in the absence of a
driving educational philosophy. When I
returned to the meeting after running the Tuesday evening tutoring program at
New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the focus of the meeting was the community
survey conducted by Research, Assessment, and Accountability Chief Eric Moore.
There were
several problems evident in the proceedings.
First, Ed
Graff is attempting to lead the district by putting his finger in the wind to
see which way community opinion is blowing.
He wants to know how community members feel about student outcomes,
equity, teacher effectiveness, and stewardship as priorities for determining
policy and programming. Even these
categories are derived from conversations that he had with community members,
students, teachers, and MPS staff; he
conveyed these soundings to members of the school board at a retreat held last
August. Getting a sense of what
community and staff are thinking should come naturally as a superintendent gets
out and about in the schools and neighborhoods of Minneapolis. But such soundings should be placed in a mental
file already containing a firm educational philosophy that he in turn conveys
to those with whom he is having conversations.
His own educational philosophy should be communicated clearly to
community members and staff at the Minneapolis Public Schools and should drive
everything that the district does by way of academic programming and policy
formulation.
Second, in
the absence of a driving educational philosophy, administrative decision-making
determining academic programming flounders.
Chief of Academics and Leadership Michael Thomas and Associate Chief of
Academics and Learning Cecilia Saddler have no firm guidance from the
superintendent, nor does Eric Moore, who has assumed a role in academic policy-making,
as well. Other key staff at the Davis
Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) move forward in what should be
the performance of important functions without any firm sense of goals in
service of the academic programming that should be at the core of all endeavors
of any locally centralized school district.
The Office of Black Male Achievement, the Department of Indian Education,
the Department of College and Career Readiness do not do what they should be
doing as suggested by the appellations borne by those administrative entities. The associate superintendents have little
guidance as to the messages that they should be conveying to the principals
whose leadership they are supposed to be supporting and improving.
Third,
meetings of the MPS Board of Education become wildly inefficient. Board members, the superintendent, and all
other participants flail wildly in the hopes of finding something of value to
discuss and to determine. KerryJo Felder
tries to advocate for her Northside constituents without any idea of what will
actually improve academic quality. Jenny
Arneson articulates commendable views in favor of uniform rigor throughout the
district, but in the absence of a driving philosophy that installs a rigorous, logically sequenced curriculum from
Grade K through Grade 12, her best intimations cannot be acceptably realized. Board discussion pertinent to equity and
student outcomes proceeds as mere verbalization, noble sounding goals without
any notion as to their actual meaning as determined by a driving educational philosophy. The board gets mired in its own bureaucratic muck,
with conversations focused on the internal functioning of the board itself. Board members stare at their own navels while
students awaiting knowledge and skill sets are deprived of an education of
excellence, or any approximation thereof, year after year.
Imagine
health professionals relying on their patients to provide medical cures or law
professionals telling their clients to provide representation on legal
matters. This is analogically what Ed
Graff is doing in asking those whom he serves to determine education policy at the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
But Ed Graff
cannot articulate an educational philosophy if he has none.
Thus, his
leadership will flounder, student achievement will not advance, and the public
will have to await a leader of the future willing to be the professional that
departments, colleges, and schools of education do not train.
We are ever
caught in the maze created by the strange world of the education establishment.
Only a rare
leader able to think and act outside of that strange world, upon a philosophy centered on knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education,
can lead the public out of the maze.
