The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Must Define Excellence in Education, Establish Its Own Identity, and Move Forward with No Such Wasteful Exercises as the Meeting of 24 March 2015

Seventh Major Communication to MPS School Board


All tasks are made more difficult when the fundamental basis for fulfilling them has not been established. This was revealed clearly at the wasteful exercise of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education in conducting the meeting of 24 March 2015.


I was there for the first hour of that meeting before I had to depart to oversee and teach in the Tuesday Night Tutoring Program of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, one facet of the multiple, seven-day-a-week efforts now being conducted under the New Salem Educational Initiative. I sat through one hour that featured mostly a simple message delivered by Michael Cassidy, Executive Director of the Council of Great City Schools. In a longwinded exposition of consultant-speak, Mr. Cassidy told the members of the school board that in hiring a superintendent, they wanted to do the following:


1) make sure that in hiring a new superintendent they choose a person whose views are in sync with the goals of the school board and administration of the Minneapolis Public Schools; and


2) be clear that while leadership and favorable personality features are desirable, these should be considered only inasmuch as they indicate ability to implement the goals of the school district, presumably already identified in the 2020 plan for improved student performance, especially outcomes at schools where student achievement has languished.


That was it. That took 35 minutes.


Then District member Don Samuels asked about the desirability of having a forceful leader, given that such a person might prove headstrong in moving the school district in a direction not consonant with the established goals of the school district.


Mr. Cassidy then took another 15 minutes to tell Mr. Samuels what should have already been clear in #2 above: Yes, be careful of being swayed by personality characteristics and ensure that commitment to the goals of the district is paramount.


That was it. Another 15 minutes wasted.


Then, for the final 10 minutes that I had for sitting at this temporally untidy and substantively uninformative affair, board members discussed when they might meet to discuss a set of priorities to which they could agree in the hiring of the new school superintendent. District Members Tracine Asberry and Carla Bates took the lead in touting such a meeting, conveying that this should be done before moving forward to hire a firm to conduct the search.


Board chair Jenny Arneson secured from Mr. Cassidy assurance that he needed no longer than an additional hour for his comments (I was hard-pressed not to laugh at that one); although District Member Rebecca Gagnon expressed concerned that this might rush the august presentation of Mr. Cassidy, the board seemed headed for a 7:00 PM discussion on the matter of consensual priorities for this gathering that was slated to end at 8:00 PM.


Here is my advice and commentary to the board on matters raised at and concerning that meeting of 24 March 2015:


1) You should have already essentially decided to hire Michael Goar. He’s good enough.
 
Any need to appear even handed via an open search should have been handled quickly, in house, under the auspices of your own human resources staff. With reference to my previous articles on the matter, don’t fantasize about there being a lot of great candidates out there.


With an in-house approach to a formal search, you might have found a candidate that you felt suited the needs of the Minneapolis Public Schools better than does Mr. Goar. And this could be true now you have opted for the more expensive search firm route.  But this is not likely.


As the district’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Goar worked with Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson in establishing Focused Instruction (curricular consistency for subject areas at each grade level throughout the district), High Priority Schools (boosting performance at schools with students who have struggled academically), and Shift (moving resources closer to students and those who actually work with them in the classroom). You should have just secured Mr. Goar’s commitment to those three most important programs and then moved forward rapidly to hire him or someone else to implement those programs.


There should have never been something called a Chief Executive Officer when there is a position called a Superintendent. But as long as Mr. Goar did occupy that duplicative position, you should now tap his familiarity with the key programs that will maximize chances of reaching the goals of the 2020 Plan.


>>>>>     In cutting district central office staff from 651 to 531 (a reduction of 120 positions, 18% lower than the previous level), Mr. Goar has done as well in that regard as even my still unsatisfied self can realistically expect for a while.


>>>>>     Now you do need to make sure that Mr. Goar is fully committed to Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools.


The promotion of Community Partnership Schools has gotten more verbal play under Goar than have two of the three landmark legacies of Bernadeia Johnson:  To his great credit, Goar has made sizable strides in moving the Shift program forward;  but he and his staff have not spoken very often about Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools during these past three months.


Community Partnership Schools are unnecessary if the school district goes forward at full throttle on Focused Instruction and High Priority Schools. Do not allow yourselves to be distracted by yet another program. Either jettison the Community Partnership Schools or insist that pseudo-charter schools at Bancroft, Folwell, Nellie Stone Johnson, and Ramsey observe the curricular coherence of Focused Instruction.


2) Decide, consistent with the goals of Focused Instruction that you embrace the following definitions of excellence;


>>>>>     An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a rich liberal arts curriculum emphasizing math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and fine arts to all students throughout the K-12 years.


>>>>>     An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge in her or his subject area, with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.




3) As members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, commit to your own accountability and your own obligation to become informed on all matters pertinent to educational excellence and excellent teachers.


You should already have gained clarity as to your own goals and priorities before that desultory meeting of 24 March 2015.


As Albert Einstein, B. F. Skinner, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett would tell you, each according that person’s particular genius, the complexity should come in full detail, not in basic principles.


For you, those basic principles should be the following:


1) Move forward with full implementation of Focused Instruction.


2) Do everything necessary to raise student performance to grade level in math, reading, and all major subject areas, especially at the High Priority Schools.


3) Thank Michael Goar for his courageous and astute work with regard to Shift.


4) Insist that Mr. Goar or any other new superintendent follow through on the three key programs of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift.


5) Make a forceful and enduring commitment to your own accountability for an excellent education, imparted to all of our precious children.


If you so insist and she or he follows through, you will attain the goals of the 2020 plan and achieve excellence in the Minneapolis Public Schools. If you first gain clarity on fundamental precepts and overall goals, and commit yourselves to accountability for achieving these goals, you will not waste your time in degraded exercises such as that to which you subjected yourselves and observers at the 24 March 2015 meeting.


You can thereby save your energies for discussion of issues that really matter, toward the attainment of educational excellence, so that we may witness the cessation of cyclical poverty and the attainment of equitable opportunity worthy of the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.

A Trio of Powerful Experiences for the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education to Consider

Sixth Major Communication to the MPS School Board


I had a particularly powerful trio of academic sessions during Saturday- Monday, 28-30 March, the contents of which the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should consider in an effort to gain greater appreciation for the paramount importance of a rich liberal arts curriculum (to be delivered via the conduit of Focused Instruction) and the role of the adroit teacher in tapping the abiding potential of students from challenged economic circumstances (for application to the cases of students at High Priority Schools).


First, I met with Monique Taylor-Myers (data privacy pseudonym, as with all other names to follow in this article) in our weekly three-hour odyssey into the world of knowledge. We covered a swath of history that included the rise of the Delhi sultanate in India; the impact of the West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay; the turmoil that induced major changes in Europe with the attacks of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks and Gauls; the response of Charlemagne to the changed circumstances of medieval Europe; and the high tide of feudalism that succeeded Charlemagne's death.


We then reviewed (having already read entirely) the most important concepts from the first chapter in the book (Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education) that I am writing, initially largely for and dedicated to Monique and her mom--- Chapter One: Economics. Having covered a mass of material in our prior reading, I called Monique's attention once again to the importance of the Federal Reserve System, the structure of the federal budget (sources of revenue [94% in taxes {personal, business, payroll}], allocations to Entitlement Programs [47% of total spending], outlays to discretionary programs such as those in the sizable military category [16% in this latter], spending for payment of interest on debt [7%], size of the debt [currently $18.5 trillion], approximate deficit [$500 billion]); and the towering contributions of the three great economic thinkers Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.


Then we proceeded to read and discuss fully together the fifteen-page (single-spaced) Chapter Two: Political Science, covering the core ideas of Aristotle, Plato, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Montesquieu; major political formations (absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, liberal democratic republic, dictatorial republic, Marxist state [including comment on corruption in USSR and People's Republic of China of the original idea], fascist state [Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, and especially the Nazi version], and theocracy [with Iran as example]); the frequent mislabeling and true meaning of totalitarianism (opposite ideological versions in Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR); differences between parliamentary and congressional systems; and a detailed overview of United States government.


I kid you not. We did this.


Monique has trained with me for ten years, has imbibed my academic ethic as such students do, and at Grade 12 is functioning as a college junior.


Second, I had academic session number two with Monique's mother, Janette Taylor. Janette is the victim of both familial dysfunction and K-12 atrociousness but is herself hugely gifted of intellect. In just two academic sessions, Janette has gone from a Grade 4 math level to a level at Grade 8, and she is quickly developing a powerhouse vocabulary and enhanced reading skill. 


Janette at this point has a certificate in public health care, and she walked across the stage two decades ago to receive a piece of paper dubbed "high school diploma," at Washburn High School, but she does not even have an associates degree. But we are now talking about pursuit of the bachelor's degree and her becoming my first assistant, perhaps even taking over the program when I go six feet under.


Sheer amazement; absolutely jolting.


And then there is the younger child, Monique's little sister, Ginger Taylor-Myers. Last Saturday morning, this Grade 5 student drew within five pages of finishing a thorough and careful reading of Macbeth, mastered the concepts of square root and exponential powers, and applied these to the solving of equations involving the Pythagorean Theorem.


Can you imagine the delightful swirl in my head as I drove home after these encounters? Can you imagine how deeply this engrains in me the conviction that students from challenged backgrounds are never the problem--- that all such problems reside in the academic delivery system of K-12 public education?


The Minneapolis Public Schools must do better, and I will be working ceaselessly to induce officials at the district (and, by extension, other school districts) to deliver educational excellence in the institutions that hold the future of our children--- and thus our own destiny--- in their hands.


And among others, this means you, members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. As District Member Tracine Asberry has conveyed to you, you are accountable to the citizens of Minneapolis and to the futures of our precious children.


You must do better. I know that you can, and you must.

We Need a New School Board, Whether That Entails an Attitudinal or Corporal Shift

After a half-year of attending every regular meeting (second Tuesday of every month) of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, I have now come to the very definite view that we need a new school board, whether that entails a shift in attitude or composition. Current school board members either need to sharpen and shift their way of thinking about K-12 education, or we need to work to get better candidates in place for future elections.


Here is a brief presentation of the salient features associated with each of the current members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. I will move left to right, according to the district members one sees sitting upon entrance to the school board meeting room at 1250 West Broadway. At the conclusion of this article, I will discuss which of these members have the most potential to become more effective proponents of a truly excellent education.




Rebecca Gagnon


Rebecca Gagnon is an at-large member of the school board whose children attend schools in the well-heeled southwestern section of Minneapolis. She is a highly intelligent, diligent, factually informed person who is especially astute on matters of finance. She also has keen political instincts and shows herself responsive to a diversity of community interests, many divergent and at odds with one another. She is well-connected to Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, but she has shown a capacity for independent thinking that suggests that she is not intractably tied to teacher union positions.


Despite these mostly positive characteristics, Ms. Gagnon demonstrates no consistent philosophy of education, and what can be gleaned in this regard from her voting record is not favorable. She voted to reduce health and physical education requirements at the high school level in a measure that also failed to institute a world languages requirement. She seems overly enamored with the role of contract alternative schools (to which students of the Minneapolis Public Schools go when their schools of attendance have failed them). She leans in favor of Community Partnership Schools (four proposed pseudo-charter schools [reinvention of four presently existing schools] that will be given some autonomy to pursue promising academic strategies under thematic banners such as International Baccalaureate and Fine Arts). Without questioning the academic effectiveness of such putatively college preparatory programs as AVID, Ms. Gagnon sits enamored with presentations in favor of such programs, grasping data-bound detail while failing properly to analyze the figures and cut through the rhetoric. She also errantly voted against an amendment formulated by District Member Tracine Asberry that would have added a clear school board accountability statement to a resolution countering an effort by certain members of the Minnesota Legislature to divide the Minneapolis Public Schools into six separate school districts.




Siad Ali


Siad Ali is an affable new member of the board, having taken his seat in January 2015. He represents the Somali community and a district close to the University of Minnesota, in a role that will be a fixture for many years. He replaced Mohamud Noor, who had performed the same role. Mr. Ali will be fairly effective in his role but thus far has shown little grasp of education policy or philosophy. He has been on the wrong side of all major votes taken thus far in 2015.




Carla Bates


Carla Bates is given to refreshingly pungent comments and seems to care a great deal about equity. But she operates from no compelling educational philosophy and seems overly enamored with technology as a remedy for the ills of education, failing to grasp that technology is a tool rather than a solution. She was on the wrong side of the high school credit requirement vote and the amendment to the resolution in answer to the Legislative six-district division proposal. Like Gagnon, she too blithely listened to the presentation in behalf of contract alternative schools and is too ready to accept the Community Partnership School concept before Focused Instruction (consistency of curriculum at each grade level across the school district) has been fully implemented, and without discussion as to whether Focused Instruction will prevail in the Community Partnership Schools. Ms. Bates is an at-large member of the school board who lives in Southeast Minneapolis.




Kim Ellison


Kim Ellison is a sweet, soft spoken member of the school board who had one shining moment when she spoke in favor of a world language requirement and voted against the reduction of high school credits in health, physical education, and social studies. But she too readily praises the Minneapolis Public Schools in glittering general terms and is no better philosophically grounded than the rest of the school board. She represents neighborhoods in North Minneapolis around Nellie Stone Johnson K-8 School. Ellison has ties to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).




Jenny Arneson


Jenny Arneson is the new chair of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. She represents neighborhoods of Northeast Minneapolis. Ms. Arneson is also tied to the DFL and the MFT. She has had little of importance to say in the half-year that I have witnessed the regular school board meetings. She has been wrong on all major votes taken thus far in 2015 but, to her credit, runs the meetings efficiently and skillfully.




Josh Reimnitz


Josh Reimnitz is in his late twenties and often appears in over his head on school board issues. He has a Teach for America background and would seem to offer reformist promise, but he has in that respect been the most disappointing member of the school board. He offers no compelling educational philosophy and is frequently on the wrong side of major votes. He did vote in favor of the Asberry amendment to the resolution offered as defense against the six-district break-up. Mr. Reimnitz represents an area that includes the Bryn Mawr neighborhood. He has potential but needs to calm down, shake off his nervousness, and get focused.



Nelson Inz


Nelson Inz is a new school board member who shows promise as an independent voice. He is a trained Montessori educator, and in that regard can be said to have the firmest educational philosophy on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. Maria Montessori was an interesting figure, an educator with deep concern for equity, having been moved to action in behalf of tenement-dwellers in Italy. She is also fascinating for having spoken the language of so-called “Progressive” education while articulating an approach whereby children are eventually drawn to a substantive base of knowledge and skills by accessing hands-on educational materials for highly particular purposes. Inz demonstrated his independence in speaking forcefully in behalf of the notion that adults should take responsibility for important symbolic stances that affect children’s lives, and on that basis spoke against any measure that would reduce health requirement credits. Inz represents neighborhoods in South Minneapolis. He has been on the wrong side of recent votes but is a new school board member who inspires some hope for educational excellence.




Tracine Asberry


Tracine Asberry is hands-down the best member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education. She can always be counted on to ask questions that demand factual evidence for generalized statements and plans that sound good but may be as insubstantial as previous incarnations. She voted against the reduction of high school credits in certain areas and had very compelling points to make about giving all students a chance to qualify for university attendance by matching credit requirements to those of the University of Minnesota and other institutions. She was in favor of the resolution that countered the six-district proposal but sought to make a clear statement as to school board accountability to the community for results--- and accordingly offered an amendment in line with that view.


Ms. Asberry seems to operate from a viewpoint that calls for content-rich education and better teachers, but she needs to firm up her educational philosophy. With that caveat, do note that Ms. Asberry is the best that this iteration of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education has to offer. She represents an area that includes neighborhoods of South and Southwest Minneapolis.




Don Samuels


Don Samuels is the erstwhile member of the Minneapolis City Council and husband of Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) chief executive Sondra Samuels.  An at-large member of the school board, Mr. Samuels lives in a neighborhood of North Minneapolis close to the junctions of West Broadway and Penn Avenue. He speaks the language of reform but lacks a driving educational philosophy. He is a proponent of charter schools and has errantly stated that Community Partnership Schools potentially represent the salvation of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Mr. Samuels did, to his credit, vote for District Member Asberry’s amendment to the resolution against the six-district break-up but otherwise has been on the wrong side of all major votes.




CONCLUDING COMMENTS


All members of the current Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education must be monitored for their looming votes and urged to firm up their educational philosophies. For varying reasons, Rebecca Gagnon, Josh Reimnitz, Nelson Inz, and Don Samuels offer the most hope for transformation into advocates for policy that can actually result in an excellent education for all of our precious children. Carla Bates is a loose cannon in need of better aim. Even Tracine Asberry must firm up her educational philosophy so as to be an even more effective advocate for students and families. All of these members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education should be monitored for their looming stances and votes, as we determine whether they can transform themselves as necessary or whether we must organize to seek their ouster and replacement with better advocates for excellent education and excellent teachers.

The Need for the Michael Goar Administration to Move Beyond Verbiage to Fulfill the Promise of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift

Fifth Major Communication to the MPS School Board




In the course of the past several months, decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools have articulated a viable framework for achieving educational excellence. At the behest of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, who abdicated her position at the end of January 2015, decision-makers identified three programs with the potential to transform the school district into a delivery system for excellent education:


1) Focused Instruction, under which a common curriculum is consistently delivered to students at the same grade level throughout the Minneapolis Public Schools;


2) High Priority Schools, under which schools wherein student skills in math and reading have lagged for years gain flexibility in hiring and retention of teachers who flourish in such challenging situations and get the resources they need to succeed; and


3) Shift, under which human and material resources are moved toward students and those who work most closely with them, with particular emphasis given to students at High Priority Schools; there is an implication of transfer of resources from the central bureaucracy and from schools where students face fewer economic and academic challenges.


Also touted by school district officials is a 2020 Plan that seeks to put these programs to work for better outcomes by the designated year; an Office of Black Male of Achievement; and Community Partnership Schools (through which the school district aims to adapt the charter school model in four currently existing schools designated to receive exemptions from certain mandates in exchange for meeting academic goals).


I am on record as strongly supporting the three key programs given numerically above. But at a certain point, even those programs become mere verbiage if not given greater definitional clarity and specificity as to what means will be employed for achieving the generally stated objectives. And until the three key programs are defined and implemented in a clear and forceful manner, the 2020 Plan will be a mere exercise in setting goals; the Office of Black Male Achievement will be just another bureaucratic imposition; and Community Partnership Schools will constitute mere hope for better outcomes, before desired results have been precisely identified.


What is necessary at this point, therefore, is a clear and confident articulation by Superintendent Michael Goar and his staff as to the specific approaches that are going to be taken in realizing the promise of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift in delivering results.


Confidently Taking Responsibility for a Well-Articulated Plan to Achieve Educational Excellence


Interim Superintendent Goar should, then, lead his staff in the confident articulation of the exact means for attaining excellent education at all sites of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Such confident articulation should include the following:




#1 >>>>> Clear definition of educational and teacher excellence for the three given purposes:


Definition of an Excellent K-12 Education


An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a content-rich liberal arts curriculum (focused especially on math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts) in grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors.


Definition of an Excellent K-12 Teacher


An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge in her or his subject area, with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.


Purposes of K-12 Education


The purposes of excellent education are to provide students with knowledge and skill sets abetting a life of 1) cultural enrichment, 2) civic preparation, and 3) professional satisfaction.




#2 >>>>> Clear articulation of those principles and actions that will result in educational excellence, for the given purposes:


1) Acknowledge that existing teacher training programs are certification and degree mills with little academic merit, and that teachers (particularly at the K-5 level) will have to be thoroughly retrained;


2) State clearly that Focused Instruction will be implemented according to a strong liberal arts curriculum specified in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years, modeled on Core Knowledge, Common Core, and the curricula that can be found in the August edition (Vol. 1, No. 2) of my publication, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota;


3) State clearly that the school district will implement its own teacher training program for producing teachers capable of delivering the strong liberal arts curriculum, with reference to the program that I detail in the September edition (Vol. 1, No. 3) of my publication, Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota;


4) Carefully place teachers in the classrooms of High Priority Schools who are capable of imparting the strong liberal arts curriculum to students at the designated sites, with the expectation that all students will achieve grade level math and reading skills;


5) Assertively address, utilizing all in-school and after-school tutoring assistance necessary, the math and reading challenges of any students, at High Priority Schools and otherwise, who continue to lag in those key skill areas;


6) Reduce the bureaucracy at 1250 West Broadway Avenue to 25% of the current staffing level, retraining those staff members who prove themselves willing and able to provide needed functions at school sites, such as tutoring of students, communication with families, and delivery of support services.


With the practical approach given above, detailed as a viable program for achieving educational excellence in accordance with the three main purposes, Interim Superintendent Goar will be able to demonstrate the kind of decisiveness necessary to instill confidence in the Minneapolis Public Schools and forestall any efforts to take over or redesign the district before programs inaugurated during the Bernadeia Johnson administration have had a chance to fulfill their considerable promise.

The Need for the Administration of the Minneapolis Public Schools To Get Leaner, Stronger, and Much Humbler

Fourth Major Communication to MPS School Board


After a half-year now of observing all school board meetings and attending numerous other gatherings sponsored by the Minneapolis Public Schools, numerous ideas and responses flow from the mental processes stimulated by what I have witnessed. If the school district were a runner trying to move quickly toward a finishing line ahead, that person would need to get much leaner, stronger, and humbler.


Getting Leaner


The bureaucracy of the Minneapolis Public Schools is bloated--- with personnel but also carrying a surfeit of ideational blubber that weighs heavily and distracts decision makers as an ongoing matter. Every department suffers from excess staff members, many of whom do little but stare at a computer most of the day or monitor schedules and keep the calendars of more highly paid staff who fancy themselves important and busy as they rush off to attend meetings that do nothing to advance the educational prospects of students.


Within the last few months, beginning in those immediately prior to the start of the 2014-2015 academic year, a new associate superintendent position was added, in addition to a kind of supra-associate superintendent position the occupant of which monitors other associate superintendents. And a position was created to head the new Office of Black Male Achievement, as decision makers opted for the sort of bureaucratic response to a very real problem that proves to be pointless as an answer and costly as a budgetary item.


There is a sluggish inefficiency that pervades the building at 1250 West Broadway that houses the Minneapolis Public Schools. Reimagined metaphorically as a runner, the school district needs to jettison excess weight, remove impediments to a clear road ahead, and get motivated for moving swiftly toward the finishing line.


Getting Stronger


Investigation of the bureaucratic bloat of the Minneapolis Public Schools exposes the fact that weight does not mean strength. The central school district carries a great deal of excess fat that saps rather than adds to vigor for the most important task--- the impartation of excellent education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors. A strong runner moves swiftly and efficiently toward the line that will indicate completion of the race; the body is leanly muscular and moves without excess pumping of arms and in the absence of other distracting motions. Similarly, decision makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools should move forcefully to eliminate a high percentage of the jobs currently having merely titular impact on the real task of educating our children.


These decision makers need to take responsibility for setting policy with regard to curriculum and teacher quality and then communicate clearly and forcefully to building principals that they must implement these policies and will be held responsible for results. Building principals in turn should communicate matters of curricular content that teachers should deliver to students, rewarding teachers who deliver results and retraining those teachers who fail to deliver; in the latter case, should retraining prove insufficient to produce the desired student outcomes, the inadequate teacher should be encouraged to seek employment in a field more consonant with her or his skills and dedication.


Such an approach would establish a very different model to be followed by decision makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools. There is a great deal of verbiage that flows at school board meetings and other gatherings wherein school district policy is discussed, suggesting that there should be a move toward empowerment of those at the school building level. This sort of rhetoric may be seen in the decision to create Community Partnership Schools. These schools will follow a pseudo-charter school approach, in which management flexibility theoretically is extended in exchange for academic accountability. But the results for which accountability is to be held have been at best suggested in shadowy formulation, with only the implication that math and reading scores should rise for all students and that academic outcomes for students of color and those from challenged economic and familial circumstances should move much closer to the rising standard for all.


These latter results would be felicitous but insufficient. All students at all schools of the Minneapolis Public Schools deserve immediate, energetic attention to their academic needs. These needs most certainly do include grade level skills in math and reading but also the stores of knowledge that is their rightful inheritance as members of the human family. The key responsibility for identifying the knowledge sets that should be delivered in grade-by-grade sequence throughout the K-12 years should reside with decision makers in the central administration of the Minneapolis Public Schools. The need to impart these knowledge sets should be communicated to building principals. Building Principals and teachers should be held responsible for delivery of a well-defined, rich liberal arts curriculum including most especially knowledge from the realms of math, natural science, history, economics, literature, the fine arts, and international languages--- but also, especially from Grade 6 forward, training in technical trade skills for all students.


Implicit in this approach are the values of bureaucratic efficiency and uniform academic excellence. There would be no need to kick responsibility for curricular decision making to those at the school building level. The creation of Community Partnership Schools is not necessary and the model is undesirable. Curriculum is properly decided at the central office level; delivery is naturally the responsibility of principals and teachers at the school building level. Actors at each level should take their particular responsibility. Those actually needed to define curriculum and deliver skill and knowledge sets are limited to a few key central office staff members; and those principals, teachers, teacher’s aides, and tutors (volunteer and professional) operating within each school building.


Accordingly, central office staff at 1250 West Broadway should be dramatically reduced, those formerly occupying unneeded positions would be retrained and moved out to the school building level, and full focus should be trained on the delivery of well-defined knowledge and skill sets to students of all demographic descriptors.


With this approach emphasizing bureaucratic slimming and focus on well-defined academic goals, the promising programs initiated by Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson could realize their potential during the tenure of Interim (and probably longer-term) Superintendent Michael Goar:


1) Focused Instruction would gain better definition as a system for the delivery of rich, logically sequenced K-12 academic content.


2) High Priority Schools would gain the excellent teachers, skilled teacher’s aides, and the properly trained volunteer and professional tutors that will be necessary to lead all students through the exciting world of skill and knowledge.


3) And the Shift program would have realized its promise as an aegis under which bureaucratic bloat is reduced, with concentration of resources on students and those who interact with them right at their schools of attendance.


Becoming Humble


There is an arrogance that suffuses bureaucracies, which suffer under the conceit that those under their employ are experts and authorities, as certain job titles and descriptions would suggest. But this claim is tenuous at best. In the case of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the implicit belief is ludicrous. This is a school district that has failed its students for at least 35 years.


Anyone occupying a position in such a bureaucracy should be humble in the extreme. When one enters the new building at 1250 West Broadway (North Minneapolis), arrogance rages and an undercurrent of racism may be discerned. At the old location on East Broadway, one could sign in and secure a sticker for posting on one’s shirt, indicating the department for which one was headed for business or for seeking address of concerns. Now one engages with a security desk employee, identifies the person with whom one is assumed to have made an appointment, and an administrative assistant comes down the elevator to usher the visitor up to the relevant person with whom the appointment has been made. Those arriving more informally and in the absence of an appointment are not welcome. The attitude on the part of those in the building is that a favor is being extended to the visitor and that the presumably busy and important person with whom a meeting has been arranged is extending a favor.


In fact, most employees of the Minneapolis Public Schools are holding down unnecessary jobs. Those who occupy posts that by some stretch can be considered justifiable do their jobs at a level within the range of mediocrity. They work for leaders (or are themselves such leaders) who have not defined the meaning of an excellent education and in most cases would be dumbfounded if asked to describe an excellent education and the qualities of an excellent teacher. They all work for a school district that has failed its students for 35 years. Such people should be humble in the extreme, but even the best of a lousy lot carry themselves with a certain arrogance.


This must change. Students, parents, and all of those interested in the functioning of the Minneapolis Public Schools should be welcomed, humbly and openly. The preeminent 19th century African American leader Frederick Douglass declared at a gathering in 1882:


If the Republican Party [the party of Lincoln but in the process of reneging on the programs of Reconstruction] cannot take a demand for justice and fair play, it ought to go down. We were human beings before that party was born, and our humanity is more important than any party can be. Parties were made for people, not people for the parties.


Officials and employees at the Minneapolis Public Schools should take note. Any person in any post who does not regard herself or himself as a humble servant of the public should resign or have employment terminated: School districts were made for students and those interested in their education--- not for bureaucratic functionaries in the administrative offices of public schools that by definition exist to serve students and the public.


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Hence, there is an abiding need for decision makers in the offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and on the Board of Education, to get busy redesigning the school district to be bureaucratically leaner, academically stronger, and attitudinally much, much humbler. The public should then, in another appropriate rendering of Frederick Douglass, “exercise judgment” on their work.

Serving Students from Challenged Economic Circumstances: Principles of the New Salem Educational Initiative in Evidence on a Single Saturday

Third Major Communication to MPS School Board


If the Minneapolis Public Schools as an administrative and academic entity is ever going to transform itself into a model centralized school district, decision makers at the district must approach the service of students from economically challenged circumstances in a fundamentally different way. The academic and personal relationships that I have forged with young people and families of North Minneapolis via my numerous roles in the New Salem Educational Initiative have transformed the lives of those I have been fortunate to meet and know and love. Those seriously interested in educating the children of the very poor should read carefully the following account of a single Saturday in the life of the New Salem Educational Initiative--- from which there is much that can be extrapolated for application by the Minneapolis Public Schools.


The names used in the account given below are data privacy pseudonyms.




A Saturday in the Life of the New Salem Educational Initiative




Part One: 9:00 AM


Ginger Taylor-Myers splits time among three different residences in North Minneapolis. Her maternal grandmother lives on 6th Street North not far from the intersection of West Broadway and Lyndale Avenue North. Her father lives on Thomas Avenue North, a block southwest from the intersection of 26th Avenue North and West Broadway. From either of those residences, either Russell Wilson or Tom Brady could throw a football to a waiting receiver positioned in front of the Minneapolis Public School administrative building at 1250 West Broadway. Ginger’s Mom lives at a location that would provide Russell and Tom more of a challenge, inasmuch as she lives on Aldrich Avenue North in far North Minneapolis; the two quarterbacks might prefer to station their receivers at Jenny Lind K-5 school.


Ginger was at her dad’s house on this particular Saturday in January 2015. She had company, a friend I’ll dub Monica Freeman, also a Grade 5 student at Jenny Lind. I have known Ginger since she was two years old, and she has been a participant in the New Salem Educational Initiative since she was in Grade K. From the time that Ginger was a toddler, living at the time exclusively at grammy’s, I would pick her up, swing her around, and begin to teach her informally by speaking to her with a subtly sophisticated vocabulary and running additive and subtractive exercises by her on my fingers. She loved all of this and was proverbially chomping at the proverbial bit to start the program by the time she reached kindergarten.


Ginger asked me on that Saturday morning if Monica could come along, and I said that she could--- but would have to study separately since Ginger and her cousin Barnard would be continuing their reading of Macbeth. I have also known Barnard Williams, who lives at the 6th Street North address of grammy, since he arrived in the world, and he, too, enrolled in Grade K. He began reading Shakespearean literature with me when he was in Grade 6 at Olson Middle School, and he is now on his fifth work of the Bard: He previously read King Lear, Twelfth Night, Othello, and Hamlet.


Ginger first read Shakespeare with me as a Grade 4 student: She read Hamlet as a Grade 4 student, played the part of Osric in my compressed version of the play (all original language, emphasizing the most important scenes in a thirty-minute presentation) at our June 2014 Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, and traveled with me to Winona for the Great River Shakespeare Festival to witness a first-rate take on the dilemmas of the Prince of Denmark. Barnard has already accompanied me to Winona on three occasions (for performances of King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet; he was in the audience at the Guthrie with me for Othello). He has played the part of Kent in King Lear and the part of Laertes in Hamlet in my compressed versions at the banquet.


So Ginger and Barnard, whom I have known for many years, are traveling high in the academic cosmos; Monica, whom I just met on this particular Saturday, is doing fine as a conventional Grade 5 student but not anywhere close to being able to sit and read with the same alacrity as Ginger and Barnard. So I told Monica that I was so happy to have her along and would have some important assignment for her once we arrived at the church (New Salem Missionary Baptist Church at 2507 Bryant Avenue North, where I do all of my academic instruction with students).


As we made our way from the 26th and Broadway intersection to pick up Barnard at the 6th Street North abode, I quizzed Monica on multiplication tables that Ginger and Barnard have known since Grade 2. Monica, in Grade 5, came up short on the products (multiples) of at least five sets of factors, so I knew that this was where we would start once we got to the church. Barnard piled into the car at about 9:15 AM, and over to the church and down to our basement classrooms we went.


Monica sat in one room, going in logical sequence through the problematic multiplication factors, quickly getting those under control. We then successively practiced double and triple-digit multiplication, division by two digit-numbers into dividends of three digits, decimal application of these skills, and addition and subtraction of fractions and mixed numbers--- all skills concerning which Monica felt insecure but in performing with me she emerged confident after our two hours together. She asked if she could participate in my program, and I said that I was mighty full but that I’d make space for her. She wrote out her mom’s phone number and is now attending weekly.


My work with Monica was all done as quick, intensive check-ins as I read Macbeth in another room with Ginger and Barnard. The three of us were at the point in the play at which Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are implementing their plan of assassination on poor King Duncan and setting the guards whom the inebriate up for a fall. This is all engaging stuff, and at the end of the two hours these two young people, whom I love as if they were my own, and with whom I indeed interact as I did with my son Ryan Davison-Reed when he was at the K-12 stage---- were disappointed that we had to leave after two hours, even though we were headed to Taco Bell for lunch.




Part Two: 11:30 AM


We swung by 6th Street North again and picked up Barnard’s brother and sister, Natalie and Desmond. The six of us went to Taco Bell for lunch, at which I sat and worked with Natalie (Grade 1, Jenny Lind) doing mental math and writing out vocabulary items on my yellow pad. Natalie counts backwards from 20 with great skill and can apply that skill to higher starting points in subtractive exercises; similarly, she can count to a hundred and beyond, so she can perform the mental addition exercises that I give her adroitly. Natalie, for example, added 7 to 45 with the correct outcome of 52; and she took 8 away from 72 to get 64--- all in her head.


I sketched out the words freedom, pause, family, mother, father, residence, compare, grandmother, and wisdom for her on my yellow pad--- and before we departed what I call “Taco Shells” (my malapropism for Taco Bell, to mess with the kids’ brains and bring a smile to their faces as they correct me), Natalie had learned definitions as necessary and spelled all of these words correctly.


I then drove Barnard and Natalie to grammy’s; I took Monica and Ginger to the latter’s dad’s house.


“Nice to meet you today, Monica,” I told my new student. “I’ll be in touch.”


“Nice to meet you, too, Gary,” she returned. “Don’t forget to call my mom.”


“Hey, wassamatta, you think the ol’ man can’t remember nothin’?” I joked.


“I just meant---“


“Bye-bye, Snodgrass,” I said to Ginger, using the silly name with which I’ve addressed her since she was knee-high to a tadpole.


“Good-bye, Harry,” Ginger said with her own chiding appellation.


I acted like I was going to get out of the car to chase the girls and they both squealed with delight as they ran to dad’s front door and I drove away with Desmond still in the car.




Part Three: 12:30 PM


I’ve known Desmond since he was an approximation of humanity in his momma’s womb. We went down to the same room at which I had read Macbeth with Ginger and Barnard. I ran him through his multiplication tables, on which he started in Grade 1 and mostly mastered in Grade 2. He’s still perfecting the inevitably most difficult factorial sets to remember: 6 x 7, 7 x 7, 7 x 8, and 8 x 8. By the time that we departed that day, Desmond had these under control. He is among only five students in his Grade 3 class who has all of the multiplication tables through nine committed to memory.


Desmond and I also read some lively stories that are part of the compilation put together by scholars and teachers working to produce What Your 3rd Grader Needs to Know: The Fundamentals of a Good Third-Grade Education under the editorship of E. D. Hirsch. We read “The People Could Fly,” “The White-Bone Demon,” and a selection from One Thousand Arabian Nights ("Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”) . We then did some explicit vocabulary work form those selections, including words as follows: staggered , overseer, snarled, scroll, monk, demons, feast, niche, wondrous, and precious. Before I ran Desmond to grammy’s at 2:00 PM he could define and spell all of these words.




Part Four: 2:30 PM


I went back over to the church for a few moments to put some materials in order and then went by three different homes to check on matters of concern to the families of my students. One child had been acting out in his Grade 1 class at Nellie Stone Johnson; another (Grade 7 at Northeast had gotten in a fight that week and been suspended for three days. These two students are relatively new to my program; these sorts of difficulties tend to abate upon several years of participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, and they almost never start for children whose families I have known for a long time.


My third visit came when I went over to the new residence of a family whose members I have known for a decade. The New Salem Educational Initiative participants are now Grade 9 and Grade 10 female students at North High School. The family is dysfunctional in the extreme and presents me with my gravest weekly challenges. North is the eighth school that these girls have attended in three years. Their Mom is chronically volatile, mercurial, and occasionally abusive. The Grade 10 student met a guy on Facebook who raped her, got away with it, and left her with emotional scars several depths below those she already had. I talked momma out of a diatribe-laced funk as I worked with the Grade 10 student on the introduction to an essay and led the Grade 9 student through the logical steps of an algebra problem of mid-level difficulty.


This latter family seemed less likely to cut each other’s throats as I headed over South to pick up a brother duo (Marco, Grade 5; and Mateo, Grade 7) and their cousin (Maria, Grade 7), all students at Folwell.




Part Five: 4:00 PM


Hispanic kids make up about 35% of an otherwise African American student contingent of participants in the New Salem Educational Initiative. Marco, Mateo, and Maria have familial roots to Mexico; their parents have periodic immigration issues and at times have had to leave the United States for as many as three months at a time. These three have participated in the New Salem Educational Initiative for four years each in the cases of Marco and Maria, a total of five years in the case of Mateo.


Maria is razor-sharp mentally but at times has been inattentive to homework. She fell far behind on assignments as a Grade 6 student, caught up during that academic year (2013-2014), and has mostly charted a better course during this academic year 2014-2015.


Marco is academically gifted but psychologically spacey and still bears separation anxieties due to a long absence by his mom when he was in Grade 2. But he is inevitably cheerful with me and a genuine mathematics whiz, having learned his multiplication tables with me during Grade 1, read Hamlet with me at Grade 4, and now proceeding to algebraic tasks conventionally learned at Grade 9 and now being introduced in Minneapolis Public Schools classrooms during grades 7 and (more intensively) at Grade 8.


Mateo is an interesting case of a student who entered my program at Grade 2, was lost in a residential netherworld wherein even I could not locate him (I maintain multiple phone numbers and generally know when the families of my students are moving), and then reemerged into the light of my universe in Grade 4. Mateo is not as intellectually gifted as younger brother Marco, and when he first reentered the program he had fallen two years below level of school enrollment in both math and reading. His confidence was at low ebb and his mood was frequently surly. But he came back around in good time and has been on an academic ascent ever since.


On this particular day, I guided Mateo and Maria through a mathematics homework assignment wherein they were asked to figure ratios from stated student population situations and from participant composition in various organizations. Both came in very confused but went out confident and smiling.


Marco had no homework and rose to every algebraic and geometric challenge I put before him. I also led him through a reading from a Barron’s ACT exam preparation manual, defining along the way words such as disposition, acquiescent, truculent, detachment (military unit), and raw-boned. Even enormously bright Hispanic and other immigrant kihuge English language vocabulary deficiencies that I have to be continually addressing through very aggressive acquisition efforts.


Marco, Mateo, and Maria were all smiles and frenetic action when I told the “church ghost--- Phil” to get off of Maria’s shoulders; The students beat me to the car by a full minute in their escape from the frightful spirit.




Part Six: 6:30 PM


About this time every Saturday I drive over to the apartment a block off Maryland Avenue, just east of I-35N in St. Paul., that houses two half-brothers, their mother (Evelyn), and her significant other (Marcel); the latter functions as a stepfather to the boys, Damon Peterson (Grade 6) and Terrill Baker (Grade K). These are the only participants in my program who live in St. Paul. The students in the New Salem Educational Initiative live overwhelmingly in North Minneapolis, with a few Southsiders and a smattering of students who live in Northeast Minneapolis. How Damon and Terrill landed in St. Paul quite a story.


Terrill was just a babe in arms when Damon first entered my program at Grade 1. Evelyn and Marcel had just moved to Minneapolis from Southside Chicago, finding housing on Dupont Avenue, a block off Glenwood Avenue North in a venerable old section of the Northside that is long past its residential prime. Damon thrived in the program, overcoming a perceived speech impediment and numerous unfavorable teacher reports to gain solid academic footing by the end of his Grade 2 year. Evelyn was very attentive and enormously thankful for my help, always sharing information pertinent to grade reports and conferences at school.


But the apartment, shabby as it was, apparently became too expensive by the end of that academic year 2010-2011, and the family moved into a high-rise just off Olson Highway, not all that far on a trek northward from the Glenwood area residence. There had always been a sort of reefer stench about Evelyn and Marcel’s apartment and personages. This condition seemed to intensify with the move to the high-rise. The apartment was soon cluttered with debris of various sorts. Evelyn and Marcel seemed less happy with each other. But Damon’s participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative continued almost every week, and he prospered as a Grade 3 student at Bryn Mawr K-5 next to Anwatin Middle School.


Then, as I returned from Dallas, Texas, in the late summer of 2012, following a visit with my then 90 year-old mother, the family had vamoosed from the high-rise. Evelyn’s cell phone number had changed, and Marcel’s seemed to be out of order due to unpaid bills. Four weeks went by as I sought leads to the family’s whereabouts. Then finally, as I was driving northward from Olson Highway close to Harvest Prep with Damon’s academic session mates one Saturday, Marcel came running up behind the car, waving his hands. He told me a story that included separation at the insistence of Evelyn, who had moved he knew not where.


  Then, two Saturdays later, Evelyn called me on my cellphone from her own new phone. I got the address of her new apartment complex in far South Minneapolis, close to a Cub Foods just north of the Crosstown Highway. I connected with Damon, who had already fallen behind in school and was clearly suffering from the dislocations. He was acting out in school and not turning in assignments.


Then in the summer of 2013, Evelyn moved again. She was concerned that Damon might be separated from me again. I assured her that my relationships with students and families are forever. I began during the 2013-2014 academic year to drive over to St. Paul every Saturday evening about 6:30 or 7:00 PM. When I could, I took Damon over to New Salem to get him into a different physical environment and mental space. But my Saturdays eventually became so packed and the time so tight that we began conducting our academic sessions in the hallway outside the apartment. The apartment had too little furniture and was too messy and dimly lit.


Terrill clamored for entry and I allowed him to start formal academic sessions with me when he was a preschooler. He is now a Grade K student at Bruce Vento K-5 in St. Paul, thriving with the math and reading skills that would do an upper middle class student proud. Damon and I continue to work in that same hallway, sitting on the floor, back against the wall. He of the former speech impediment has mastered oratory full of eloquent Frederick Douglass flourishes. His most recent report card revealed all “A’s” but one. He bats not an eye at the challenges of algebraic equations that I place before him.


Prior to last June’s Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet, I got a gloomy text message from Evelyn that confided that the family might not have bus fare to make it from St. Paul. I drove over to the apartment and slipped Marcel (the adult at home at the time) a twenty dollar bill before returning to the church and preparations for the banquet.


That night, Damon did his Frederick Douglass speech. Terrill showed the crowd that as a preschooler he could count backward from twenty. The boys beamed. Evelyn andTerrill fought back tears amid competition with broad smiles.


I wondered why I should be the one so blessed to spend my life this way.

On the Matter of the Search for a New Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent: Select Michael Goar, and Get on with What’s Important

Second Major Communication to MPS School Board


There are two important categories of consideration for the members of the Minneapolis Schools Board of Education to keep in mind as they articulate and implement a process for hiring a new superintendent: 1) the new superintendent should be absolutely committed to the three key programs of outgoing Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson: Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift; and 2) the school board should move as swiftly as possible to hire a superintendent dedicated to those programs, with the logical decision appearing to be that of hiring Michael Goar.




Hiring a New Superintendent Committed to Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift


Focused Instruction


Focused Instruction is the name given to the program articulated during the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson under which the leadership of the district is striving to bring a higher quality and more cohesive curriculum to students throughout the public schools.


For many years, consistency of curriculum in the Minneapolis Public Schools was lacking, particularly at the K-5 level. Students in a Grade 3 class at Jenny Lind, for example, might be working on projects focused on the family and community, with students reflecting on and perhaps writing about how their own families affected and were affected by the communities in which they lived. Students in a Grade 3 class at Green Central, quite by contrast, might be sharing ideas and seeking information about warfare, perhaps writing up their personal reflections about war, citing any family members who had served in a military capacity in Vietnam, the first Persian Gulf War, or more recent engagements in Iraq or Afghanistan.


The problem with this approach to education is that it lacks consistency and rigor. The topics identified by the teacher (perhaps in consultation with students) resonates with the misguided “constructivist” education-speak of education professors, who have failed our students so miserably. This approach to education has little respect for knowledge as incrementally, logically imparted information from teacher to student. Students whiling away time in the classroom of a teacher under the sway of constructivism dive into projects without the proper background.


In the project cited above for Jenny Lind, the student is unlikely in the extreme to have much knowledge of the family as an anthropological form and the various ethnic contexts in which family life unfolds. Children from immigrant families may have little knowledge of how family life in their country of origin differs from situations into which they have been thrust in the United States; or how their particular community of immigrant families differs from other native and immigrant communities in the United States. Children of African American families may have little information on the impact of slavery, the failure of Reconstruction, or the dislocations of the Northern Migration for families in the course of time and in the present.


In the project identified for Grade 3 Green Central students, students are unlikely in the extreme to have studied particular wars in any depth, to have any real sense of the causes of the Vietnam War or the first Persian Gulf conflict; they almost certainly could not convey any comprehension of British and Russian involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan or the internecine struggles that have made for turbulent history in those countries, those regions.


This failure to provide strong bases of information falls most heavily on children from economically challenged families, the formal education of which has typically not reached beyond high school and may not have included even high school graduation. Children from such families may still learn a great deal about life from hardworking and dedicated parents, who have had experiences from which middle class and upper middle class parents could learn. But in terms of academic matters, children of impoverished parents lacking formal education are not likely to get as much information and sophisticated vocabulary as a function of family conversation as do the offspring of more affluent, better educated parents.


Children of impoverished families also tend to follow their parents’ search for affordable Section 8 housing, often in a quest that may find them at three or four different residences in the space of a school year. This often involves transfers from one school to another, or among multiple schools within the academic year. When there is so much variance in what is taught from classroom to classroom, residentially mobile students are forever confused, ever in an educational netherworld, wandering from classroom to classroom like odd parts to decrepit machines, never able to fit and with tremendous deficits in knowledge and skill sets.


Focused Instruction addresses the unacceptable situation that has abided for decades in our K-12 schools, most notably during the crucial K-5 years. According to Focused instruction, students in one Grade 3 classroom studying meteorological change from season to season will be learning the same body of information as those in another classroom, at any school. A student in one Grade 4 classroom studying the conflict between the British government and the American colonists in the run-up to the American Revolution will find students in another classroom engaged in the same course of study at about the same time, should she or he have to switch schools. And a Grade 6 student who must move from one school to another will not have to wonder what students at another school will be studying, because she or he will know that (for example) proportions and ratios are the abiding topics at that time of year from school to school.


Initiating Focused Instruction was one of the major achievements of leaders in the Minneapolis Public Schools during the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson. Focused Instruction proceeds according to sound principles of educational excellence and equity. The next superintendent must embrace, implement, and continue to improve curriculum under the aegis of Focused Instruction.


High Priority Schools


For many decades, students from economically challenged families have been concentrated at certain schools. The academic skills of students at these schools have consistently languished below grade level. Currently the schools identified as High Priority Schools include Bethune, Jenny Lind, Sheridan, Green Central, Lucy Laney, Green Central, Hall International, Hmong International Academy, Broadway Arts and Technology, and North Senior High.


Administrators of the Minneapolis Public Schools have endeavored to gain greater flexibility in the hiring and retention of excellent teachers to preside in the classrooms of students at High Priority Schools. Over time, the effort will be to staff every classroom in High Priority Schools with teachers of proven capability to move students with math and reading skill deficits toward grade level performance in those key skill areas. While recognizing that pedagogical skill matched with many years’ experience can produce a powerful teacher talent, and making an effort to attract and retain teachers both excellent and experienced, decision makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools will consider pedagogical skill paramount, and teacher quality will trump the sort of experience represented by tenure alone.


Efforts to address the skill deficits of students in High Priority Schools have resulted in more in-class and after school time focus on fundamental math and skill development. These efforts must be intensified in the days to come, sooner rather than later. Much more needs to be done to train tutors, some of them college students and qualified elder volunteers, some of them professional teachers and aides, to instruct students directly in those skills, particularly those in math and reading, languishing below grade level.


Only when a student has mastered mathematics at the prevailing grade level can she or he look toward high achievement in math, natural science, and technical subjects in the years to come. Only when a student is able to comprehend reading material pertinent to the key subject areas of language arts, history, economics, natural science, math, and the fine arts will she or he be capable of receiving an excellent liberal arts education from teachers who themselves will increasingly possess elevated levels of knowledge and skill. The next superintendent must fully embrace the designation of High Priority Schools and oversee efforts to bring every single student within the broad range of normal intelligence and above up to grade appropriate achievement in mathematics and reading.


The fundamental issue of equity is manifest in the concept of High Priority Schools, a program from the tenure of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson that must be continued.


Shift


Central school district bureaucracies are notoriously overstaffed. My own estimate is that central office staff could be reduced to 25% of current levels without any negative outcomes as to administrative functioning or student performance. Over time, the emphasis in resources expended on positions in the central office now at 1250 West Broadway should shift toward positions in school buildings, and particularly in the classrooms where students actually receive their education.


If key administrators in the central school district bureaucracy were to establish overall curriculum and policy to be implemented consistently across the school district, then place responsibility for implementation in the hands of those at the school building level, drastic reductions could be made in central office staff. Principals would be held responsible for teacher performance. Teachers would be held responsible for student performance. Family and community outreach workers would be responsible for establishing relationships with the families of students. Counselors and health workers would administer to student mental and physical health. Young people would be much better served by a school district designed to focus clearly and relentlessly on imparting a consistently excellent education, and therefore on attracting, retaining, and compensating excellent professionals who actually interact with students.


The idea of moving resources closer to the students themselves is inherent in the Shift program, also articulated during the tenure of Bernadeia Johnson. The evidence for implementation in this program is not strong, though. There has been some movement of resources from affluent schools of the southwestern neighborhoods of the Minneapolis Public Schools to schools populated by students from economically challenged families, and by implication from schools wherein student academic performance is high by the standards of the district to those schools where academic performance lags.  But key additions have been made to central office staff during the Bernadeia Johnson tenure. Decision makers at the district created Michael Goar’s position of Chief Executive Officer. They increased the number of Associate Superintendents. The Office of Black Male Student Achievement was added, with the positions of Director Michael Walker and staff coming onto the payroll. And so it has gone.


So, very soon, as the Minneapolis Public Schools implements its plan to dramatically increase student achievement by the year 2020, much work needs need to be done to realize the promise of the Shift program. By moving resources to the school building level, holding professionals at that level responsible for raising student achievement, a greatly reduced central administrative contingent could increase compensation for those actually working directly with young people, including additional tutors for bringing academically faltering students up to grade level.




Carefully but Quickly Hiring a New Superintendent


My West Texas pappy was an ol’ farm boy who rose to a high-level of executive management for a previous incarnation of Southwestern Bell Telephone Company on the strength of his ability to make good decisions. He was fond of telling me, “A decision maker needs to gather all of the available information quickly and completely. Then that person needs to study that information with great care. And when that has been done, it’s time to make the decision, because you’re not likely to know any more later than you do at that point, and you can be just as right or wrong later as you can at an earlier stage--- so at a certain point it’s time to quit hemming and hawing and just take responsibility for the decision.”


This is what the members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education now need to do: Make a decision on a new superintendent. Currently the board is considering a recommendation from the Human Resources Department to hire outside talent researchers and recruiters to conduct the superintendent search. There is another option to have the Human Resources Department itself do the job. And there is a third option, intermediate between the other two, that would involve hiring an outside firm to make more limited recommendations from a smaller pool of candidates, to the Human Resources Department and to the members of the Board of Education.


The tendency of the central school district to hire outside consultants grates on me. One would think that with a $720 million budget, a central office building staff of 651 people, and a department for every function of which the human brain is likely to conceive, there would be the wherewithal to make key decisions based on the research and decision-making prowess of the staff already being paid, many overly generously.


In this case, former CEO Michael Goar appears to have the inside track. In an interview with Star Tribune reporter Alejandra Matos, Goar expressed strong support for the kinds of initiatives necessary to fulfill the potential of High Priority Schools and Shift. He appears to be intent on pushing forward with the key programs of the Bernadeia Johnson administration of which he was a part. Goar is a person of sound administrative experience, having held two other posts in the Minneapolis Public Schools, as well as positions in Memphis and Boston. Complaints that he does not have classroom teaching experience are inconsequential. Administrators administrate and teachers teach. The main thing is that he knows that he must accelerate the initiatives begun under Bernadeia Johnson and that he has the spine to persevere in the likely event of opposition from those bent on the status quo.


Those being paid at the Human Resources Department of the Minneapolis Public Schools need to take responsibility for questioning Goar aggressively on his apparent enthusiasm for continuing the course for change that will be necessary to realize the goals of the 2020 plan. School board members need to do their own homework and consider the best evidence available to them. Then they should make a decision. They can consider other applicants as they wish and as legally obligatory. But Goar’s familiarity with the policies and inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools are legitimate considerations that will work to his advantage, given his viable administrative experience.


Goar is the likely candidate to emerge at the end of the process, whether hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on outside consultants or not. So why wait? The amount of talent available from the universe of administrators trained in departments, colleges, and schools of education is in any case not great. The notion that there is talent to match the territorial splendor of this vast nation is ill-considered. Central school district superintendents who get caught up in some sort of malfeasance, false claims, or political controversy are replete in the sordid history of the search for the position atop the institution charged with the responsibility of educating our precious children. The reality is that we should strive for someone who will first do no harm during the three to five years typical for the post.


So check him out. Consider all of the evidence in Goar’s case, and in the cases of other applicants as necessary. Then make the decision.


As my West Texas pappy would tell everyone concerned, the decision is not likely to be any better many months from now than it will be in the much nearer future.