Article #5 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> January 2021 Volume VII, Number 7

Article #5

 

Concluding Thoughts:

The Prime Culpability of Inept Staff Members at the Davis Center for Knowledge-Deficient Curriculum and Low Teacher Quality  >>>>>

The MPS Department of Teaching and Learning Must Be Abolished

 

K-12 education is key to ending cyclical poverty and redressing the wrongs of history. 

  

There abides in the conversational ether the fallacious notion that early childhood education can be the prime agent of educational equity.  Such a fantasy jibes well with a major contention of Education Minnesota (the state teachers union) and affiliates such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), because the assertion deflects blame from the entire preK-12 sequence of knowledge-deficient curriculum and mediocre teaching at the median.     

 

Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a logically sequenced, knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum to students of all demographic descriptors throughout the preK-12 years.  An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

The Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) have neither knowledge-intensive curriculum nor excellent teachers at the median.

 

Some of the best teaching at MPS actually occurs in preK-grade one classrooms.  Students arrive in grade 2 having very basic reading and mathematical skills.  The key problems accrue not at the early grade levels but from grade 2 forward. 

 

Students from grade 2 forward lack knowledge that they should possess in mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, literature, English usage, and the fine arts.  They have poor vocabulary development and slim grasp of fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions, and probability necessary to succeed in algebra, geometry, pre-calculus, and calculus courses.  Because of the knowledge-deficient, skill-deplete approach to curriculum and the mediocre teaching in the Minneapolis Public Schools, MPS students do not gain the necessary knowledge and skill base to achieve at a high level on the ACT college readiness exam;  in particular, students from families facing dilemmas of finance and functionality tend to record a score in the 9-14 range, not even reflecting middle school capability.

 

MPS students do not read broadly and deeply across a full liberal arts curriculum.  Students move forward from grade 5 having little knowledge of any subject area.  Curriculum and teaching is not much better in middle school and high school;  only students who take Advanced Placement (AP) courses learn anything of substance, and then only in the off-chance of getting a teacher qualified to impart college preparatory curriculum.

 

Thus, former Minneapolis Federal Reserve leader Art Rolnick has been offering a delusionary solution via the promotion of early childhood education as an engine of equity ever since his days at the helm of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.  During his four-year tenure on the MPS Board of Education, Don Samuels never addressed the key dilemmas pertinent to curriculum and teacher quality.  The Samuels-Rolnick article, “Legislature must focus on inequity’s root cause” (Star Tribune, November 29) errantly promotes early childhood education as the main driver of educational equity.

 

Provision of universal daycare with a strong educational component should be embraced as a public, governmental responsibility;  it is not, however, the prime route to educational equity.   

 

The most vexing dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are the lack of scholars among academic decision-makers;  knowledge, deficient, skill-deplete, incoherent curriculum;  and teachers lacking the subject area training to impart knowledge-intensive curriculum and failing to comprehend the life experiences of young people living at the urban core. 

 

The Minneapolis Public Schools serve no student well;  failure to provide the subject area knowledge necessary to aspire to post-secondary education hurts students mired in cyclical poverty and facing problems of familial functionality the worst.  Most of these students had the requisite rudimentary reading and arithmetic skills upon entering grade 2;  but from grade 2 forward, they never received the knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that would maximize chances of breaking the cycle of poverty and going forth to a life founded on the three great purposes of public education:  cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.

 

Do not pretend that early childhood education is the engine of equity.

 

Do understand that educational excellence and equity will come with the overhaul of public education for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors.      

 

And at the Davis Center, the following people are culpable for the knowledge-deficient curriculum and low teacher quality of the district.  These members include the following:

 

Academic Lightweights Responsible for the Knowledge-Deficient,

Skill-Deplete Curriculum and Low Teacher Quality in the Minneapolis Public Schools   

 

Superintendent of Schools        

EDWARD J GRAFF                                                           

$230,000

 

Interim Senior Academic Officer             

AIMEE Y FEARING                                                           

$159,580             

 

Associate Superintendent          

Ron Wagner                                                      

$154,669             

 

Associate Superintendent          

LaShawn Ray                                                     

$154,669             

 

Associate Superintendent          

Brian Zambreno                                              

$154,669             

 

Associate Superintendent          

Shawn Harris-Berry                                       

$154,669             

 

Staff Members Whose Effectiveness is Constrained by the Political Ether

 

Senior Human Resources Officer            

Maggie Sullivan                                                                              

$158,496

  

Executive Officer, Superintendent Office           

Suzanne Kelly                                                                                  

$190,038

 

Senior Accountability, Research & Equity Officer            

Eric Moore                                                                                         

$158,496             

 

Executive Director,

Engagement and External Relations

CELINA S MARTINA                                                                        

$118,631             

 

Director,

Office of Black Student Achievement   

Michael Walker                                                              

$137,148             

 

Director, Indian Education          

Jennifer Rose Simon                                                     

$112,565             

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Most of the above figures are faqirly high-profile at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

This edition of journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota details less visible figures who just as culpable for the low proficiency rates of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools as are the more highly paid figures above.

 

None of these members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Department of Teaching and Learning have the qualifications to develop knowledge-intensive curriculum.  Thus, first be aware of their identiy:

 

Math 

 

Christopher Wernimont                              

Erin Clarke

Jennifer Hanzak

 

Marium Toure’                

Reading

                                                   

Julie Tangemann, K-5 Literacy DPF

    K-5 Science DPF

 

Meghan Gasdick, K-5 Literacy DPF

 

Molly Siebert, K-5 Social Studies DPF

 

 

Molly Vasich, 6-12 English Language Arts/Reading DPF

Science

 

Erin Clarke

 

Christen Lish                     

Jenn Ross           

Julie Tangemann            

 

Then agitate for the disbanding of the Minneapolis Public Schools Department of Teaching and Learning.

 

 

 

Message to My Friends Adriana Cerrillo and Sharon El-Amin Upon Beginning Their Tenures on the MPS Board of Education >>>>> Be Acutely Aware of the Brutal Reality as to the Actual Dilemmas of the District >>>>> Weak Curriculum, Low Teacher Quality, Lack of Remedial Instruction, Ill-Trained Academic Decision-Makers at the Davis Center, and Three Particularly Ineffective Departments and Offices

Adriana and Sharon  >>>>>

 

I will be rejoicing as the two of you assume your positions on the Minneapolis (MPS) Board of Education this evening.  But I caution you to recoil from stock phrases such as accountability and transparency and focus instead on the real dilemmas at the district.

 

Be focused like a laser on the wretched record of the Minneapolis Public Schools before and during the tenure of Superintendent Ed Graff  >>>>>

 

MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019

 (as indicated by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment [MCA] results for spring of the given years)

 

Math

 

Math                     2014       2015       2016      2017      2018         2019    

 

African                  22%       23%          21%        18%       18%          18%

American

 

American             23%        19%           19%       17%        17%         18%

Indian

 

Hispanic               31%         32%          31%       29%        26%         25%

 

Asian                     48%         50%          50%       47%        50%        47%

 

White                   77%         78%          78%       77%        77%         75%

 

Free/                     26%         26%          25%       24%        22%        20%

Reduced

 

All                          44%         44%           44%     42%        42%          42%

 

Reading

 

Reading               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018       2019

 

African                  22%       21%         21%      21%       22%           23%

American

 

American             21%        20%         21%      23%        24%               25%

Indian

 

Hispanic               23%         25%          26%       26%        27%      29%

 

Asian                     41%         40%          45%       41%        48%      50%

 

White                   78%         77%          77%       78%        80%       78%

 

Free/                     23%         23%          23%       25%        25%      25%

Reduced

 

All                          42%         42%           43%     43%        45%       47%

 

Science

 

Science               2014       2015       2016      2017      2018        2019

 

African                 11%       15%         13%        12%       11%                14%

American

 

American             14%        16%        13%      17%       14%           17%

Indian

 

Hispanic               17%         18%        21%      19%       17%          16%

 

Asian                     31%         35%       42%       38%       37%          40%

 

White                   71%         75%        71%       70%       71%               70%

 

Free/                     14%         15%        17%       16%      15%          14%

Reduced

 

All                          33%        36%        35%        34%      34%                 36%

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

You will not be effective members of the MPS Board of Education if you get distracted by stock phrases and meaningless bromides.

 

Know that the actual dilemmas at the Minneapolis Public Schools are the following  >>>>>

 

>>>>>    Curriculum is abysmally weak. 

 

The problem is not lack of cultural relevance as such but overall knowledge-deficiency.  You must advocate for curricular overhaul for the logical sequencing of subject area knowledge in mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, economics, and world and ethnic-specific literature and fine arts from kindergarten forward through grade 5, continuing into middle and high school, with increasing emphasis also at those levels on the technological and vocational arts.

 

>>>>>  Teacher quality is low. 

Senior Human Resources Officer Maggie Sullivan must invite outside scholars to come to MPS for the development of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum and the training of teachers capable of imparting that curriculum.

 

>>>>>    There is no effective program of skill remediation for those students disastrously behind academically.

You must advocate for the development of such a program during and after the regular school day and during summers.

 

>>>>>    Superintendent Ed Graff, Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, and the entire academic staff of the Department of Teaching and Learning are academic lightweights, as are Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner and Brian Zambreno; and Office of Black Student Achievement Director Michael Walker and Department of Indian Education Director Jennifer Rose Simon. 

These staff members should be jettisoned or in a few cases reassigned, while the aforementioned outside scholars must be brought in to design curriculum and train teachers.

 

>>>>>    As curriculum is redesigned and teachers retrained, the Department of Teaching and Learning and the Office of Black Student Achievement should be disbanded and the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education reorganized for the installation of academically competent staff.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

Senior Financial Officer Ibrahima Diop is one of the three best in the nation at what he does;  trust him fully and give him strong backing.  Know also that Senior Operations Officer Karen Devet, Senior Information Technology Officer Justin Hennes, and Special Education head Rochelle Cox are supreme at what they do. 

 

Senior Officer for Accountability, Research, and Equity Eric Moore is highly valuable as a gatherer and evaluator of data but has no business making overall academic decisions.  Maggie Sullivan is bright and perceptive but needs to focus more aggressively on the issue of low teacher quality.  Senior Executive Officer in the Office of the Superintendent Suzanne Kelly has good grasp of many of the abiding dilemmas but must face these more frankly or be evaluated for the propriety of her $190,000-plus salary.

 

………………………………………………………………..

 

Face the brutality of the facts.

Confront those who are culpable.

 

Doing anything else is to send forth more ignorant citizens and too many of our precious young people to early deaths or lives spent in incarceration.    

 

Stark Incompetence of the Education Establishment is the Most Important Brutal Reality That American Society Must Face

Two articles from recent editions of the Star Tribune, though covering two very different topics, demonstrate the stark incompetence of the education establishment.  Those articles are “A new date that will live in infamy” (Star Tribune, , January 7, 2021), by Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick;  and “Districts weigh expansion of summer school” (Star Tribune, January 10, 2021), by staff writer Erin Golden.

 

In speaking to teachers about the possible use of federal funds designated for summer school remediation for students who have fallen behind academically under distanced learning conditions during the pandemic, Golden notes that “Some teachers worry that the heightened focus on learning losses, especially when measured primarily by grades or test scores, will ultimately be a disservice to students.”  She quotes Minneapolis Public Schools Washburn High School science teacher Angela Osuji as saying that additional help for students could be useful, “as long as it wasn’t just the same type of instruction offered during the school year…  Despite everything, they are still showing up [for school].  So or I don’t know why we wouldn’t celebrate those aspects of their existence.”

 

Golden paraphrases Mahtomedi Middle School teacher Virginia Mancini as saying that “students should be focused on addressing students’ mental and emotional health and resist letting outdated or ‘unfair’ types of measurement, like test scores, be the barometer for how much students have succeeded or failed.”  Mancini conveyed that her students “have made major strides in their ability to use technology, work independently and problem-solve,”  and that she recently “taught her seventh graders how to draft a business-style email---  an important life skill that she said won’t show up on any typical measure of academic growth.”

 

All manner of student struggles should be addressed by caring and trained professionals, including  student challenges pertinent to psychological and emotional health.  Writing a business-style email can be counted as a useful skill.  But the comments of Osuji and Mancini are typical of teachers who have absorbed the anti-knowledge ideology of education professors and tend to emphasize many aspects of the school experience over academics.  Emphasis on everything but academics is why, for example, at the Minneapolis Public Schools, fewer than 42 percent of all students are proficient in mathematics, 47 percent in reading, and 36 percent in science, with 20 percent of students in many demographic categories not rising to proficiency in any of those academic areas.

 

Under such conditions, students should receive aggressive skill remediation, during regular classes, after school, and in summer school.  It is understandable why, given the way that teachers are trained and in their tendency to avoid tough truths, they will tout certain positive student traits and skills while ignoring those that are most academically essential;  but doing so produces the wretched results that we observe year after year, denying students the knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education that they should have.

 

The associated press authors were writing one of the first accounts of the events of Wednesday, January 6, whereby a group of supporters of President Trump stormed the capitol building in Washington, D. C., so as violently to disrupt certification of the electoral results.  The point relevant to preK-12 education in my reference here is that few current students, and many adults who have graduated from public schools, are capable of comprehending these events or the account given in the article.  They have insubstantial knowledge of the two houses of the United States Congress, the Electoral College system, the origin of the phrase “day that will live in infamy,” and many other aspects of government and history that must be understood properly to analyze that fateful Wednesday’s events. 

 

And most high school students have such poorly developed vocabularies that they would not know the meanings of the following words and terms:   democracy (I kid you not), insurrection, infamy, deployed, instituted, integrity, descend, reconvene, dismay, unilateral, unprecedented, glee, rotunda, breached, profane, foment, stoking, mobilize, and certify.  They would not know what is meant by “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx.”

 

We will get nothing right until we overhaul preK-12 education for the provision of a substantive academic education.  The ignorance of the American public has been much on display of late.  The knowledge base of current students and adult citizens alike is our worst disaster.

 

The catastrophe of student and citizen ignorance is the most important brutal reality that we must face, and that we must address by overhauling curriculum and teacher training at the level of the locally centralized school district.

 

Telling the Truth Up Close Requires Much More Courage Than Aiming at Those Who Are Far, Far Away

The following text of L. K. Hanson’s political cartoon in the Opinion section of the Star Tribune on Monday, January 4, 2021, offers fecund verbal territory for exploring the courage of truth telling up close and from far, far away:

  

The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original.  We hardly dare face our bewilderment because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real.  We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age.   These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

 

Hanson features a caricature of Donald Trump, accompanied by quotations that capture the essence of Trump’s recent assertions regarding the November 2020 presidential election:

 

“It was rigged!”

“President forever!”

 “They love me!”

  “Was cheated!”

  “Fake news!”

  “It’s a hoax!”

“A Democrat plot!”

 

My observation is that truth-telling is particularly lacking at the local level, directed at people in one’s presence or at those with whom one very likely may come face to face.  Hanson’s implication in quoting from historian Daniel Boorstin is that citizens representing a high percentage of the public find reason to believe Trump’s assertions, rather than to rely on factual evidence:  They prefer the fantasy over the truth.  But the quotations are of the kind lampooned by liberal and moderate pundits and derided by Trump’s detractors among the citizenry;  actually, then, the truth is fairly well known and spoken by quite a few on the matter of Trump’s utterances.

 

With regard to preK-12 education, one of my own key matters of advocacy, the search for the truth, ability to embrace the truth when revealed, and willingness to speak the truth if grasped are all notably absent.

 

We therefore get a string of assertions regarding the condition of preK-12 education and remedies for contended maladies that have little bearing to reality.  We get general exhortations to follow best practices, provide culturally relevant curriculum, give every student regardless of demographic descriptors access to quality early childhood education.

 

But best practices are not very evident and just as accessible via logic as observation.  Cultural relevance is of low utility unless embedded in a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum that necessarily encompasses the history, literature, and art of people of all ethnicities.  And most students currently enter second grade with minimal literacy needed to thrive;   the real problem is the abominable curriculum and teaching that they receive in grades 2 through 12.

 

With regard to the actual problems at the Minneapolis Public Schools, the truth is hard to embrace, takes perceptivity to comprehend, and once comprehended takes courage to tell.

 

Perpend:

 

The key problems at the Minneapolis Public Schools concern knowledge-deficient curriculum and poor teaching at the median.  Knowledge-deficient curriculum exists because all major academic program decision-makers have been trained the same way, by education professors making ideological anti-knowledge proclamations traceable to Teacher’s College of Columbia University dating to the 1920s. 

 

Of this type at the Minneapolis Public Schools are Superintendent Ed Graff, Interim Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing, and the four mainline school associate superintendents Shawn Harris Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno.  Of this type also are all subject area facilitators in the 24-member Department of Teaching and Learning.  And neither Michael Walker (Director, Office of Black Student Achievement) nor Jennifer Rose Simon (Director, Department of Indian Education) have the required training necessary to comprehend or implement knowledge-intensive curriculum. 

 

Senior Human Resources Officer Maggie Sullivan does not have the background required to train the necessary teacher-scholars.  Eric Moore, Senior Officer for Accountability, Research, and Equity, is a masterful collector and purveyor of data but lacks the ability to grasp and implement knowledge-intensive curriculum.  Suzanne Kelly (Senior Executive Officer, Office of the Superintendent) has better ability to grasp the curriculum and the elevated quality of teaching necessary but lacks the courage to risk her salary in excess of $190,000 to tell the truth.    

 -

But these are people that one has to face at the local level, at meetings of members of the inept MPS Board of Education, and other gatherings at the district.  People take comfort in accessing whatever bromides are in the conversational ether, rather than digging deeply into the history of public education in the United States, discovering the source of the problem in errant anti-knowledge ideology, and doing what actually needs to be done to develop logically sequenced, grade-by-grade curriculum in the liberal, technological and vocational arts, and training teachers capable of imparting such a curriculum.

 

Discovering the truth about the wretched proficiency levels of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools takes time, patience, and discernment.  Once discovered, effort must be made to embrace the truth.  And then the truth must be told.

 

And though this truth involves discomfort in the telling at the local level far beyond launching deserved verbal bombs at Donald Trump, nothing is more important than speaking that truth to power or to anyone making decisions that currently ruin the lives of so many of our precious children.

 

For we will get nothing right until we overhaul preK-12 education for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to each one of our youthful human treasures, of all demographic descriptors.

Low Bases of Information Cost Citizens of the United States Gravely During 2020

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, the first of January 2021, many citizens will be celebrating the end of 2020, with hopes that 2021 will be better.  But while that hope may come to pass in terms of fewer catastrophic events, year 2020 was never at fault: 

 

We were.                                                                                                             

 

And if we do not rectify our ways, we will be just as blameworthy in 2021 in terms of the foundational reason for our culpability:

 

Our ignorance.

 

As we entered the week that will bring 2020 to a close and inaugurate 2021, reported cases of Covid-19 in the United States had reached nearly 19 million, with deaths at approximately 330,000. 

 

If most United States citizens had merely worn masks, avoided large gatherings, stayed at least six feet apart, health professionals estimate that 150,000 or so of those who died would still be alive.  If in some fantasy world the citizens of the United States could muster the discipline and convey the respect for knowledge of counterparts in Taiwan and New Zealand, the lives lost might have been much more dramatically reduced.

 

Approximately 48 percent of the electorate voted to keep the presidential administration in power that had induced such a circumstance with its policies;  two out of three Republicans think that Donald Trump won the November presidential election.   

 

But the United States is a nation in which private enterprise and individual freedom are values pursued for private gain but little understood as expressions of constitutional principles.  Immigrant populations, ill-treated during the last four years, have long sought the shores of the USA for freedom to sell their labor at a price far beyond that prevailing in the home of origin or to seek a profession or launch a business with the prospect of economic return similarly higher than in the immigrant’s nation of nativity.

 

The United States economy booms, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $63,000, substantially higher than Japan’s $44,000 and Germany’s $54,000.

 

But life expectancy lags by comparison in the United States, health indicators are less favorable, and students score lower in mathematics, reading, and science on the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) by comparison with students in those same nations:

 

The United States economy booms on the strength of minimally fettered private enterprise, but the absence of a collective spirit undermines the health and education of the United States citizenry. 

 

The approach to education in the United States embodies our societal dilemmas and promotes citizen ignorance. The system of public education and curricula at colleges and universities produce citizens who have low information bases.  At best, preK-12 systems provide tracks leading to Advanced Placement courses in which students gain a measure of substantive information and objective testing opportunities that, along with ACT scores, may be used to get into prestigious colleges and universities.  But even the few students who so augment their records walk across the stage at graduation with gaping holes in their information bases, and the great bulk of students who manage to graduate in four years walk across such stages having very little knowledge to claim for thirteen or more years spent in school.

 

Most college and university undergraduate programs do not provide the broad knowledge base that students should have gained at the preK-12 level.  Those who are mislabeled as best-educated matriculate in graduate and professional programs that give them highly focused training in a narrow specialty.

 

In the course of the typical educational experience, no one is educated very well.  Very few people have grasp of the fundamentals of biology, chemistry, and physics.  Historical knowledge is abominable.  Knowledge of government and the United States Constitution is meager in the extreme.

 

Thus do we pay for these educational deficiencies in our denial of scientific reality as pertinent to a virulent pandemic that becomes more deadly than it should have been.

 

Thus do nearly half of United States citizens show little regard for constitutional principles or the electoral process.

 

People in the United States may be proud of an economy that booms, despite periodic busts, most of the time and under typical conditions.  But they should be ashamed of the low value they place on mass education and health, and on the collective good.

 

We must have a national discussion about our values and the educational systems that embodies those values and makes of us such an ignorant and self-seeking people.  Private enterprise is economically beneficial under most circumstances;  public neglect of education and health is detrimental.

 

Particular catastrophes struck in 2020, but the calendar was not at fault.  The year 2021 will not be better as to our social and political foundations if we do not build those more solidly on the basis of knowledge and on consideration for the public as well as the private good.

 

Let us blame not the year 2020 for our woes, but ourselves.

 

Then let’s be about the work of making of ourselves a better people through the power of education.     

 

 

Nativity 2020

Nativity 2020

 

We now stand exposed

for

the

depths of our ignorance,

gravity of our corruption,

imbecility of our religions,

incapable of communicating

Divinity:

Ethics

Compassion

Empathy.

 

But we remain

Blessed

with

the

Wellspring

of

Supreme Wisdom,

Cyclical Inspiration,

Continual Promise

of

Redemption,

Renewal,

Hope.

 

Let us, then,

abandon the

Lie,

embrace the

Truth,

Discovering

in all

Humanity

our

Sister,

Brother,

the

Saving Grace

of

Universal Love.

 

 

GMD

Christmas 2020