Ted Kolderie Does Not Understand Excellence in Education or the Proper Mission of the Minneapolis Public Schools as a Centralized School District

Ted Kolderie’s scattershot approach to writing opinion pieces (“The City Schools’ Central Problem,” (Star Tribune, Opinion Exchange, Sunday, April 19, 2015), requires a firm hand in presenting summation. Here is that summary:


Kolderie argues that the Minneapolis Public Schools is in a fight for survival. This can be witnessed in the fact that 17,000 students eligible to attend the district’s schools now attend other public schools. Departing school board members openly wonder whether leaders in the district can respond.


A strategy is now emerging to replace the big urban school district; in Minnesota (similar to options available in other states) students may now enroll in other districts, earn post-secondary credit by attending classes on college campuses and then graduating with one’s high school class, and attend charter schools. The centralized management model of the big urban school district impedes the ability of conventional public schools to compete with the diverse options now available to students.


Actions by the Minnesota State Legislature to restructure public education, such as opening the way for inter-district open enrollment, have presented challenges to which the Minneapolis Public Schools have not responded, despite former Superintendent Richard Green’s vow in 1984 that the district he led would compete vigorously. The option to offer their own charter schools was not enthusiastically pursued by officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and directors of “New Schools” have served their time and then moved on without result.


Upset at national government encroachment on state and local prerogatives, Republican chairs of education committees (Rep. John Kline, Minnesota; Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee) have moved to enlarge the state role. But what is the role of states: continue the traditional provision of funds, take over failing school districts, cede the ability to do the latter to city governments, annex bits of urban districts to those of the suburbs, break big school districts into smaller parts? These answers are variously thus far not successful, inconclusive as to results, or unfeasible.


What, then, might the State of Minnesota usefully do? The state should mandate that the Minneapolis Public Schools establish contracts with those representing schools or clusters of schools within the district, requiring accountability for academic performance in exchange for accountability. The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education would be given first chance to establish these contracts, but if dithering beyond an established time limit would lose that power to the state.


Here and there this sort of approach has been suggested or attempted, but a move in this direction by three Minnesota superintendents back in 1998 proved aborted: Perhaps unforgivably, they never presented a plan to the legislature. And a recent vote by the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education to give greater autonomy to [Community] Partnership Schools will most likely run up against the impulse to centralize and standardize.


Authentic autonomy for performance would return decisions about how to improve learning to schools and teachers; make education responsive to families; and personalize learning according to the needs, aptitudes, and interests of students. This will avoid the scripting of teachers’ work (as is now the case for both the Minneapolis and St. Paul public school districts). Teachers resent this scripting, which is dangerous: Only by giving teachers dignity as professionals will the Minneapolis Public Schools retain quality teachers: and only when teachers are given authority over what matters for learning can the school board hold teachers accountable for student outcomes.


In this manner, the State of Minnesota should mandate accountability-for- autonomy contracts and see if the Minneapolis Public Schools can become a self-improving system, encouraging innovation in the contracted schools while working to improve conventional schools.  


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Kolderie errs on his main premise and the major points flowing from that thesis: Far from being the problem, the centralized school district must always be the solution in the United States.


The best school systems of the world are located in East Asia (Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) and the democratic socialist nations of Europe (Denmark, France, Finland, Singapore, and Sweden). These countries all centralize public education at the national level, so that schools throughout each nation deliver a common curriculum. Most members of the body politic in the European socialist democracies view education in the same way that they view health care, as a vital social good to be distributed equitably to people of all demographic descriptors.


For health care, this results in single payer systems that produce much healthier populations across lines of economic and social class. For education, the result is a common body of knowledge whereby students enter high school with more information stored and processed in their brains than students in the United States typically possess as they stride across the stage to claim a high school diploma.


An ongoing and intractable problem in anything that Ted Kolderie writes is failure to grasp the meaning and purposes of excellent K-12 education and the role of the excellent teacher. An excellent education is knowledge intensive, involving mastery of mathematics, natural science, physical education, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts; with information acquired sequentially and systematically throughout the K-12 years. In high school, each student should also acquire knowledge of a world language and thorough training in the industrial and technological arts. Excellent teachers are those who possess the knowledge pertinent to their subject areas and the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.


The purposes of an excellent education are cultural enrichment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction:


All people who have been educated in K-12 schools of pubic education deserve to have their brains teeming with commonly shared knowledge pertinent to mathematical and scientific principles underpinning the wonder of the natural world. They deserve to understand the prehistory and history that is their own as human beings. They deserve educations in the fine arts enabling them to appreciate Song Dynasty landscape painting and exquisite bronze sculpture from the Ibo; and to revel in the miracle of music of all genres. They deserve lives of cultural enrichment.


All people who have claimed a high school diploma also deserve to be prepared through knowledge of history, government, and economics to vote with discernment, run for government office, and discuss major issues in private conversations and public forums. They deserve to be ready for the obligation and privilege of civic engagement.


By the time that they graduate from high school students should have such thorough training in the liberal and industrial arts that they have multiple options at either two-year technical schools or four-year colleges and universities. All people deserve to possess the knowledge and skill sets that will allow them to move in this earthly sojourn with professional satisfaction.


This excellence of education would be best defined at the national level for implementation at the local level. But in the United States, there is a fixation on local control. Attempts to enforce or guide national policy such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core are invariably vitiated by interest groups on both the political left and right. So in this nation the unit of centralization must be the local school district. Officials at that level must, with reference to the curricula of Common Core, Core Knowledge, and the world’s best public education systems, define an excellent education in the liberal, industrial, and technological arts; and retrain their teachers in the delivery of this curriculum.


Ted Kolderie argues for decentralization of the Minneapolis Public Schools with an approach to K-12 education modeled on charter schools. Charter schools have been miserable failures. And they will never be capable of educating the broadly informed populace that Thomas Jefferson knew was necessary for a true democracy; or producing a unity of knowledge possessed by people of all demographic descriptors, as advocated by Horace Mann through “common schools.”


Interim School Superintendent Michael Goar and his staff would be much better advised to follow through on Focused Instruction (curricular consistency at all grade levels in all schools), High Priority Schools (aggressive skill development for academically faltering students), and Shift (reduction of central office staff with resource transfers to students and those working most closely with them).


Goar and staff should not allow themselves such distractions as Community Partnership Schools (modeled on faulty charter-school approaches) and the careless verbiage of Ted Kolderie.

Three Important Matters to Consider in Anticipation of the 14 April 2015 MPS School Board Meeting: Your Abysmal Three-Month Performance; Firmness vs. Flexibility; Community Partnership Schools

Eighth Major Communication to MPS School Board


As you anticipate the next meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, you should take stock of your terrible start with newly composed membership at the advent of 2015.


Three matters are paramount:


1) Your three-month performance has been abysmal.


Because you have so little grip on your identity as a school board and have no sense of what excellent education means, you are forever making terrible decisions. You sent a lamentable message to students and teachers by cutting high school credit requirements in health, physical education, and social studies, while also failing to implement a world language requirement; the latter should be at least two years. In taking this action, you revealed two deficiencies in your powers of reasoning:


(1) You have no abiding definition of an excellent education.


(2) You lack faith that all students are capable of advancing along a challenging liberal arts course of study.


To fully understand your bad judgment, you must understand and start to internalize the following definitions, which by now you have read a number of times before in these communications to you:


>>>>>    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.


You must now spend some time in serious individual contemplation and group discussion. Think about these definitions. Internalize, get in your gut, that an excellent education proceeds on the basis of a solid set of knowledge and skills, well-defined, acquired sequentially, implemented logically at each successive grade level, so that your students walk across the stage holding more than a piece of paper in their hands upon the receipt of that diploma that is supposed to authenticate graduation from high school. Your students deserve to be people who possess an authentic high school graduate’s and college aspirant’s knowledge of math, natural science, history, economics, literature, and the fine arts; and to have gained great training also in world languages and the industrial arts. Reflect on how little your students now know after thirteen--- count them, thirteen --- years in your awful schools.


You should exercise extreme caution in backing off high school credit requirements that are already set;  you should never have even allowed discussion on such changes until you had established a higher quality academic program, upgraded your counseling services, and added many more counselors.

You are either just not thinking or you are prevaricating when you declare that students will still get good health information in the early grades to make up for any loss in health course hours at high school; and likewise will be launched on a course of study in world languages from the early grades of their K-12 years.


Students are not getting good health, physical exercise, and proper nutrition information now, and there is no solid reason to expect improvement until the upgrade in information has actually been observed. And there is absolutely no evidence that you have the staff in place to provide high quality world language instruction during the K-5 or even Grades 6-8 years.


You must quit making careless statements, based on mere hope or daunting ignorance or audacious deception--- in the stated assumption that things will be a certain way before you have any reason to think scenarios are likely to unfold as you imagine (or say that you imagine) that they will.


You plainly lack confidence that most students are capable of rising to the challenges of a rigorous course of academic study. Mouthing platitudes proposing “different pathways to success” constitutes alternative phraseology for tracking.

We do not want alternative pathways for different students, with some focusing on a connotatively academic track, while others pursue trades;   rather, we want the same alternative pathways for all students, training each of them so that she or he can go forward for more liberal arts education found at four-year colleges and universities---   or enter a technical arts program at a two-year institution. We should offer to all K-12 students the lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparedness, and professional satisfaction that will only come with thorough training in the liberal arts, backed especially at the high school level with high-quality industrial arts training, as well.


I have students in the New Salem Educational Initiative who come from the roughest backgrounds imaginable. I have recounted to you how I work with two brothers in the hallway outside their shabby apartment, because that abode is so litter-strewn, ill-lit, and furniture-poor. These youngsters are thriving in school, one at Grade K, the other at Grade 6, because I will not have it any other way. The mom of these boys is something of slob, and the dude who functions as their stepdad is frequently high on weed--- but these two care a great deal about their kids, call me if they go astray in their school assignments, and count on me to show up every week to give these two desperately impoverished but eager young students most of their real education.


So you cannot fool me, and it is impossible for anyone--- most certainly including yourselves--- to match the hours that I spend each week serving the poorest of the poor. They read Shakespeare. They read Aeschlyus and Sophocles. They master world and American history. They contemplate the essential theoretical claims of Einstein and Newton. They solve quadratic equations in Grade 5.


They do things that you would be hard-pressed to do, which just may be why you have so little faith that they can do these things.


There are some kids who have those sub-60 IQs that are hard to surmount in teaching them all that we should want to teach them. Those cases are rare, though. Most students respond with alacrity to all of the challenging material that I put before them. And they know what the word, “alacrity,” means. They are so knowledge-hungry after spending day after day in your lousy schools that they fervently desire all the knowledge that I can give them, which is considerable. And they know what “fervently” means.


The reasons that these students are not getting the full-throttle liberal arts education that they deserve is that you cannot define an excellent education; and you do not have teachers knowledgeable enough at every grade level and in every classroom to guarantee that a challenging liberal arts curriculum could be delivered, even if you were somehow able to internalize the definition of educational excellence.


So get faith in all of these students who want to be and can be brilliant, if you get your definitions straight. And proceed immediately to retrain your teaching force for the delivery of a challenging liberal arts education. You’ve made a start with Focused Instruction, but your effort thus far is just the bare beginning.


You must improve on your abysmal performance thus far in the year 2015.


2) Toward improving your performance, stop worrying so much about trying to parrot mostly wretched charter schools and emulating that sort of nonsensical “flexibility”; opt for firmness instead.


Focused Instruction is the programmatic conduit into which you can build a challenging, knowledge-based curriculum and retrain teachers while doing so. So gain some focused instruction yourselves--- with curricular richness and consistency manifested in schools throughout the district. Train the teachers needed to impart such a curriculum. Understand that site-based freedom for action should be in how to deliver the curriculum: Pedagogically, there are many means of delivery; but the content in knowledge and skills must be delivered to all students, in all classrooms at corresponding levels, through the schools of public education in Minneapolis.


3) Irritating in the extreme was my discovery of Community Partnership Schools already in the forecast of coming attractions on the Minneapolis Public Schools website.


You as a school board have the power to stop that juggernaut approach. Be careful. Nixing these applications from Bancroft, Folwell, Nellie Stone Johnson, and Ramsey is still very much possible. Make sure before signing off affirmatively on any of these applications that the requirement to observe all aspects of Focused Instruction is made clear and accepted unreservedly; otherwise, make this the definitive deal-breaker for Community Partnership Schools.


Beware of education-professor-speak that intones on and on about critical thinking and lifelong learners.


 Oh, please---  give us all a break.


I will challenge any of these emolument-snatching, lazy-brained escapees from the demands of K-12 teaching, these imposters who have ruined generations of teachers with their verbal refuse, to a debate featuring critical analysis and the actual result in books read and written as a function of lifelong learning.  Out of the mouths of these human urns of lassitude have come words that have denied at least four decades worth of precious human specimens their real education.


Do this instead, as indicated above:


1) Know the meaning of excellence in K-12 education and teaching.


2) Let this definition guide all of your decision-making. Pursue educational excellence firmly, with content defined and any flexibility coming with the pedagogy.


3) Take responsibility.


You should have moved forcefully through an in-house human resources search to expedite the hiring of Michael Goar--- and if not him, someone else dedicated to the signature programs of Bernadeia Johnson: Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift.


You should have integrated District Member Tracine Asberry’s amendment--- emphasizing school board accountability for positive educational outcomes--- into your counter-statement to the foolishness of a 6-district breakdown. Quit being knee-jerk petty to all of Ms. Asberry’s good suggestions, and act in behalf of the young people and their families whom you should be serving instead.


Do these things, internalizing the necessary definitions and philosophical premises. Act clearly, courageously, and consistently toward the goal of true educational excellence for all for these precious students. They are so capable. You need to match the capability of your students as revealed in the decisions that you make in their behalf.


The impartation of excellent K-12 education to students of all demographic descriptors will end generations of familial cyclical poverty. By properly educating all of our precious children, we will become the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.


You must dedicate yourselves to hastening the delivery of excellent K-12 education, achievable only via the talents of excellent teachers. If you cannot so dedicate yourselves, you should go. If you do not dedicate yourselves as you should, or if you lack the ability and do not make your exit, understand that I am in this for the long haul and will be building a community movement that will leave you no other option but to commit your daily activity to other pursuits.

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.