Article #4 in a Series >>>>> How to Avoid Speaking Like an Education Professor: Be Careful with These Terms >>>>> Individual Differences; Individual Learning Styles; Learn to Learn; Metacognitive Skills; Multi-Aged Classrooms; Open Classrooms; Passive Listening; Performance-Based Assessment; Portfolio Assessment; Problem-Solving Skills

Education professors have damaged generations of K-12 teachers and administrators at the Minneapolis Public Schools and in locally centralized school districts throughout the United States with notions rooted in the need for the education professor to survive at universities at which other professors know so much more.  

 

Consider these terms from the education professor’s lexicon, followed by my comments:         

 

Individual Differences

 

As “progressive educators” sent forth by education professors, most K-12 teachers and administrators  emphasize the individuality of each student, understood to have significant differences in familial circumstances, ethnicity, learning styles, interests, and other characteristics that necessitate differentiated instruction and curriculum variance from student to student.

 

Individual Learning Styles

 

These follow from the conceptualization of multiple intelligences by the psychologist Howard Gardner, who maintains that there is no one kind of intelligence as in an intelligence quotient (I. Q.), but rather a least eight categories of intelligence:  musical, visual, verbal, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic;  education professors and the students whom they send forth as K-12 teachers and administrators believe that instruction should vary according to the modality in which each student learns best, depending on her or his dominant form of intelligence.  

 

Learn to Learn

 

Education professors assert that mastery of a set body of knowledge is not important;  rather, the student should learn how to learn by developing skills in accessing information from multiple sources.

 

Metacognitive Skills

 

These skills involve student contemplation of what she or he is doing in any learning activity;  rather than just mastering a discrete skill, the student should ask questions as to why the skill is being learned and what process is being utilized in learning the current task.

 

Multi-Aged Classrooms

 

Preference for classrooms in which students vary in age is grounded in the education professor’s  contention that each student should learn at her or his own pace;  in this scheme, traditional grouping of students of like age at specific grade levels gives way to classrooms filled with students of different ages studying at their own pace and assisting each other in learning activities.

 

 

Open Classrooms

 

These were much in vogue from the 1970s into the early 1980s, during which many school buildings were constructed so as to feature classrooms without permanent walls, allowing students to move easily from class to multi-media room, auditorium, cafeteria and other rooms throughout the building, eliminating the physical and psychological obstruction of enclosed spaces.

 

Passive Listening

 

Education professors and their proteges deride the transmission method of learning via teacher lecture or direct instruction as encouraging passivity;  they favor active projects, personal investigations, and hands-on learning activities.

 

Performance-Based Assessment

 

This involves evaluation of student demonstration of learning by the classroom facilitator, who assesses the quality of a portfolio or presentation rather than giving conventional objective tests;  this is what education professors and their vocational progeny call “authentic assessment.”

 

Portfolio Assessment

 

This is one form of performance-based assessment, whereby in this specific case the classroom facilitator evaluates the academic and creative production selected by students for inclusion in portfolios, again as an alternative to conventional objective tests.

 

Problem-Solving Skills

 

This is another emphasis of the education professor, who maintains that mastering specific subject area knowledge is not important;  rather, the student should learn to exercise critical thinking to solve problems, thereby accessing the information and utilizing the skills actually necessary to a given task.

 

 

My Comments     >>>>>

 

Individual Differences

 

The master teacher should always be aware of a student’s particular life circumstances and special talents;  but students at given ages have much in common and all have a need to learn the same body of knowledge and the array of skills necessary to academic success.

 

Individual Learning Styles

 

These are magnified for emphasis way out of proportion to their validity and applicability;  the master teacher should always be aware of talents possessed by her or his students, but all students respond to well-crafted lectures, direct instruction, and classroom discussions.

Learn to Learn

Learning how to learn should occur in the process of mastering well-defined, logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets, delivered in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.

 

Metacognitive Skills

Education professors as a rule lack the intellectual ability to engage in this sort of deep think at the upper grade levels, so they pretend that they are grand philosophers working their wonders with children at grades K-5;  students at grades K-5 would be much better off learning to read well, master basic mathematical operations, and practicing good principles of English usage and composition.

 

Multi-Aged Classrooms

 

Children and adolescents are much better off being matched with their peers, who have very similar intellectual and social propensities.

 

Open Classrooms

 

These proved to present irritating distractions;  classrooms enveloped by walls are quieter, more comforting places, conducive to learning challenging knowledge and skill sets.

 

Passive Listening

The master teacher provides scope for active learning but also encourages her or his students to become good listeners, adept at deriving information from lectures and classroom discussions.

 

Performance-Based Assessment

 

This form of assessment should be supplementary to objective and standardized tests, which are fairer and more dependable forms of assessment.

 

Portfolio Assessment

 

As with performance-based assessments, this form of assessment should be supplementary to objective and standardized tests, which are fairer and more dependable forms of assessment.

 

Problem-Solving Skills

 

Students should learn to analyze material and solve problems while mastering challenging curricula comprised of well-defined knowledge and skill sets;  these latter make possible more efficient and well-informed investigation into current events and matters of immediate interest.

Article #3 in a Series >>>>> How to Avoid Speaking Like an Education Professor: Be Careful with These Terms >>>>> Culturally Biased Curriculum; Culturally Biased Tests; Drill and Kill; Exhibitions; Factory-Model Schools; Facts: Inferior to Understanding; Facts: Soon Outdated; Hands-On Learning; Holistic Learning; Learning by Doing

Education professors have damaged generations of K-12 teachers and administrators at the Minneapolis Public Schools and in locally centralized school districts throughout the United States with notions rooted in the need for the education professor to survive at universities at which other professors know so much more  

 

Consider these terms from the education professor’s lexicon, followed by my own comments:        

 

Culturally Biased Curriculum

 

This is the notion that the key problem with curriculum as conventionally presented in K-12 classrooms has a bias toward the West, mainly Europe and the United States.

 

Culturally Biased Tests

 

This term refers to the cultural bias that education professors and their acolytes in the education establishment assert makes standardized tests unfair to students of color and to other populations who are unfamiliar with vocabulary and references that originate in the culture of European Americans who dominate in constructing the tests.

 

Drill and Kill

 

“Drill and kill” is the moniker assigned by education professors and others in the education establishment to rote methods of learning and to the memorization of factual material, considered by those who use the term to destroy creativity and promote a distaste for school-based learning.

 

Exhibitions

 

This refers to presentations made by students, following group projects or from portfolios from which students select items to present to teachers, to other evaluators, or to an audience of parents and other interested observers.

 

Factory-Model Schools

 

This is a derogatory term applied by education professors and other “progressive” educators to the traditional high school, held to be a fossil from an industrial age when the function of schools was to train students as if working in lockstep on an assembly line in a factory on the floor of which a foreman did the bidding of those higher in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

 

Facts are inferior to understanding

 

Education professors assert that factual knowledge is unimportant, except as sought by the student herself or himself;  what is more important is a deep conceptual understanding of the concepts to which the facts are pertinent.

 

Facts are soon outdated.

 

Education professors hold that in this fast-changing world of technology, discreet facts are soon outdated, so that learning how to learn is more important that systematic acquisition of defined knowledge sets.

 

Hands-On Learning

 

In the view of education professors and the “progressive” educators that they train, real-world experience with tactile objects is preferable to book learning. 

 

Holistic Learning

 

This term refers to learning as natural engagement with the totality of one’s environment, featuring interconnection rather than segmention into artificially designated subject areas.

 

Learning by Doing

 

Similar to hands-on learning, this term stresses the importance of learning through activity, in the real world or in application, rather than memorization, of concepts and information.

My Comments    >>>>>

 

Culturally Biased Curriculum

 

The real problem in K-12 education is the absence of any systematically presented curriculum, especially at K-5, which if properly constructed would reflect the human cultural inheritance across all cultures of the world.

 

Culturally Biased Tests

 

Great attention has been paid over the course of that last twenty years by those who construct standardized tests to present examples from a variety of cultural contexts that resonate with students of diverse cultures;  especially with regard to mathematics, though, there is not much cultural bias embedded in the four basic operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions;  and concepts from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus.

 

Drill and Kill

 

Athletes and musicians practice certain motions, learned from the best practitioners, to the point of automaticity, all the better preparing them for individualistic creative expression as their knowledge and skill level increases;  K-12 students should do the same.  

 

Exhibitions

 

These are adjunct ways of demonstrating what a student knows;  objective tests and standardized assessments more accurately and fairly indicate what a student knows across a broad and deep range of knowledge.

 

Factory-Model Schools

 

Conventional schools provide classroom settings conducive to efficient learning;  when conducted by a master teacher, lectures and classroom discussions abet the accumulation of a multiplicity of knowledge and skill sets in an engaging and intellectually challenging learning environment.  

 

Facts are inferior to understanding

 

Factual knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for deep contemplation and full understanding.

 

Facts are soon outdated.

 

The preponderance of facts accumulated over centuries of experience by scientists, mathematicians, historians, and other scholars are permanent fixtures in the intellectual architecture of the major academic disciplines;  mastery of time-tested facts and concepts is necessary to evaluate information in contemporary contexts and to engage in processes that produce new knowledge sets.

 

Hands-On Learning

 

Reading books or cybernetic print sources  and listening to lectures are the most efficient ways to accumulate vast stores of factual knowledge;  hands-on learning is an engaging way to apply and experiment with what one has learned from lectures and reading.

 

Holistic Learning

 

Mastery of knowledge and skill sets in the discreet academic disciplines abets holistic learning.

 

Learning by Doing

 

Learning by doing is not as efficient as learning from hard copy and cybernetic print sources or from lectures, but learning, practicing, and experimenting through activity is a powerful adjunct to the more efficient means of accumulating vast stores of knowledge.

Article #2 in a Series >>>>> How to Avoid Speaking Like an Education Professor: Be Careful with These Terms >>>>> Accessing Skills; At Their Own Pace; Authentic Assessment; Break the Mold Schools; Child-Centered Schooling; Competition; Constructivism; Cooperative Learning; Critical Thinking Skills; Developmentally Appropriate

Education professors have damaged generations of K-12 teachers and administrators at the Minneapolis Public Schools and in locally centralized school districts throughout the United States with notions rooted in the need to survive at universities wherein other professors know so much more.   

 

Consider these terms from the education professor’s lexicon, followed by my own comments:         

 

Accessing Skills

 

This refers to the use of websites and other forms of cyber-technology, along with traditional encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other forms of print to gain information needed at a certain time for a particular purpose.

 

At their own pace

 

The term of reference asserts that a child best learns at her or his own pace, rather than according to the dictates of a teacher or in the context of learning targets to be met by an entire group of students at the same time.

 

Authentic Assessment

 

This form of assessment is of the portfolio, project, demonstration type, allowing a student to show what she or he knows about a topic typically selected by the student herself or himself;  this form of assessment is counterpoised to measurement of student skill acquisition via multiple choice and other formats for providing definite answers in taking standardized tests.  

 

Break the Mold Schools

 

This is a term much in vogue from the 1980s forward, referring to schools inaugurated by parents, teachers, and community members who endeavored to utilize methods that could produce higher rates of learning or more satisfying learning opportunities for students;  the advent of charter schools in the early 1990s became a widely prevalent version of “break the mold” schools.

 

Child-Centered Schooling

 

This is a term first made popular by Harold Rugg in his 1928 book, The Child-Centered School;  “child-centered schooling” focuses on the interests and perceived needs of the individual child, in contrast to traditional instruction, which transmits set bodies of knowledge to students.

 

Competition

 

“Progressive” educators have since the 1920s argued against pitting students against each other in attempting to achieve top grades and high scores on test.  

 

 

Constructivism

 

Proponents of this view assert that education should begin with the life experience of each individual child, so that all information is either sought by the student as an extension of personal experience or carefully introduced by the classroom facilitator so as to build on what the child already knows.

Cooperative Learning

 

This form of learning provides opportunities for students to pursue information on topics selected by the classroom facilitator in a group context, advocated by education professors as preferable to requiring students to study or seek information individually.

 

Critical Thinking Skills

 

Along with “lifelong learning,” this is one of the key emphases of education professors, who maintain that critical examination of topics of immediate interest is more important that learning a set body of knowledge.

 

Developmentally Appropriate

 

Educators and other “progressive” educators maintain that introducing concepts before a child is ready can be demoralizing and psychologically harmful to the girl or boy;  the student should not be presented with information earlier than age ranges at which children typically encounter concepts.

 

My Comment    >>>>>

 

Accessing skills

 

These are not efficiently utilized in the absence of strong bases of knowledge;  the absence of contextualizing information necessitates quick and typically shallow understanding, rather than the acquisition of knowledge inculcated and internalized over an extended time, to the point of automaticity.

 

At their own pace

 

Letting students decide how fast they will learn is by no means satisfactory for acquiring the enormous body of knowledge at the core of an excellent education;  students should be the recipients of knowledge and skill sets possessed by teachers who are themselves broadly and deeply knowledgeable, with a strong sense of the pace at which information is best acquired.

 

Authentic Assessment

 

This is a supplementary rather than primary format for the demonstration of student knowledge and skill;  well-constructed standardized tests are the fairest, most objective means to measure student achievement in mathematics, reading, and all subject matter.

 

Break the Mold Schools

 

Well-trained scholars operating at the level of the locally centralized school are better positioned than most parents and community members to inaugurate and manage schools;  the perceived need to launch “break the mold schools” is a testimony to the terrible training that administrators and teachers receive in departments, colleges, and schools of education.

 

Child-Centered Schooling

 

Adult educators should nurture young people as village elders and responsible adults have always imparted knowledge and wisdom to those who shall carry forth and innovate upon their cultural inheritance.

 

Competition

 

Numerous scholarly investigations demonstrate that tests and grades are powerful motivators for the acquisition of specified knowledge and skill sets;  an excellent teacher conveys an excitement about the pursuit of knowledge for the intrinsic satisfaction of learning while establishing instruments for measuring student achievement.

 

Constructivism

 

Especially for students whose families have had limited opportunities for education, travel, and experiences with the world, the intentional introduction of knowledge and skill sets by a broadly and deeply knowledgeable teacher is vital to an excellent education;  all children should be understood in the context of their life circumstances, but such circumstances are neither the basis for the starting point of study or the foundation for curriculum.

 

Cooperative Learning

 

Group study must be adroitly overseen by a highly killed teacher as a supplementary rather than prime mode of learning;  vital student learning proceeds best on the basis of individual assignments, group discussions, and individually demonstrated acquisition of knowledge and skill sets on objective assessments.

 

Critical Thinking Skills

 

Astute thought can only occur on the strength of a strong body of knowledge pertinent to the matter being analyzed.

Developmentally Appropriate

 

No preconceived notion of when a child can learn a given skill or knowledge set should proscribe what the precocious or highly motivated learner seeks to know or is able to learn under the sensitive guidance of a master teacher.  

Introduction to a Multi-Article Series >>>>> How to Avoid Speaking Like an Education Professor

All problems of the locally centralized school district in the United States are traceable to wretched teacher and administrator training programs. 

 

Although central office administrators, building principals, and teachers within the locally centralized school district have their particularistic differences connected to roles occupied within the education establishment, their fundamental views on curriculum and pedagogy are essentially the same.  Teachers unions and administrators with their own group affiliations may struggle together over contracts, evaluations, and job assignments, but teachers and administrators at all levels espouse the views that they imbibed from those campus low-lifers known as education professors. 

 

Ever since the transformation of the normal school into teacher’s colleges created within universities during the 1920s, education professors have sought to make a place for themselves in their new institutional setting.  Lacking the knowledge base of field specialists such as psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, chemists, literary scholars, historians, and economists who were best positioned to provide prospective teachers with a strong knowledge base, education professors began to emphasize pedagogy over subject area training for teachers.  They came to view schools as dispensers of many attitudes and vocational tools purportedly for the good of students:  training for a life of work integrally connected to the employment and social position of parents, socialization for citizenship, and for a period of the early 1930s the internalization of a collectivist outlook for constructing a socialist society at a time when the Great Depression had undermined faith in liberal democracy.

 

Education professors came to profess a belief in a “constructivist," "child-centered” approach to education that minimized the value of imparting logically sequenced, commonly shared knowledge sets, in favor of giving great scope to the child’s own life experiences and interests, with the presiding classroom presence transformed from teacher into “guide” or “facilitator.”  Student mastery of well-defined knowledge sets, education professors maintained, was not important.  In addition to preparing for one’s vocational and civic responsibilities, the student should learn to think critically about topics of immediate personal and societal importance and to access information as a lifelong learner.

 

Emphasis on the individual interest of the student as the driver of what was to be learned fit well with the zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Over the decades since the 1920s, parents, teachers, and local communities had often objected to the views of education professors, but during the years from the 1960s to the present year of 2018, the ideology of the education professor has been dominant in our schools.  When a student gets to high school, she or he may scramble quickly to make-up for lack of knowledge by taking substantive Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses; but even the most ambitious college-bound student graduates with large gaps in the knowledge and skills necessary to make the most of the college or university experience.

 

The multi-article series of articles that will appear on this blog over the course of the next few days focuses on the mercurial lexicon of the education professor.  The list given below will be taken ten items or so at a time;  I will convey the meaning of each of the terms from the perspective of the education professor, then I will explain the harmful impact that education-professor-speak has had on administrators, teachers, students, and society.

 

For now, please examine the following list.  Think about what you have read and heard of these terms.  Form your own initial view of these terms.  Then ready yourself to consider what I have to convey about these items of the education professor’s terminological expostulations as to their impact on the quality of K-12 education.

 

Please now review and ponder these terms:         

 

Accessing Skills

At Their Own Pace

Authentic Assessment

Break the Mold Schools

Child-Centered Schooling

Competition

Constructivism

Cooperative Learning

Critical Thinking Skills

Culturally Biased Curriculum

Culturally Biased Tests

Developmentally Appropriate

Drill and Kill

Exhibitions

Factory-Model Schools

Facts are inferior to understanding

Facts are soon outdated.

Hands-On Learning

Holistic Learning

Individual Differences

Individual Learning Styles

Learning at their own pace

Learning by Doing

Learn to Learn

Metacognitive Skills

Multi-Aged Classrooms

Open Classrooms

Passive Listening

Performance-Based Assessment

Portfolio Assessment

Problem-Solving Skills

Project Method

Promise of Technology

Research has shown

Rote Learning

Self-Esteem

Student-Centered Education

Teach the child, not the subject

Teach the whole child

Textbook Learning

Thematic Learning

Transmission Theory of Schooling

Whole-Class Instruction

Whole-Language Instruction

Ed Graff is Clearly in Over His Head as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools

Yesterday (Thursday, 22 February 2018) at the beginning of the Finance Committee meeting of the Minneapolis (MPS) Board of Education, Superintendent Ed Graff wasted everyone’s time by lauding the members of this stunningly ineffective iteration of the school board.  Graff’s was a dissembling bromide delivered with obligatory reference to National School Boards Week. 

 

Graff may be unaware that this formulation of the MPS Board of Education has become a running joke with key leaders of the school district, who squirm and remain facially impassive amidst inner expressions of disgust at the silliness, prevarication, and political expediency that they witness at school board meetings.  Or, just as likely, Graff, who in my observation is often himself irritated by the mental density and moral dishonesty on display, was just giving his own version of political expediency manifested before board members who have the power to renew or terminate his contract.  

 

The stark truth, though, is that Graff is at least as incompetent and ill-suited for his current post as the members of the school board are wildly out of their depth:

 

Ed Graff is clearly in over his head As Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  

 

He has no training in a key university academic discipline:

 

 

Ed Graff               (Superintendent)

 

Degrees Earned                                                                Institution at Which Degree Was Earned

 

M. A., Education Administration                              University of Southern Mississippi

                                        

B. A., Elementary Education                                       University of Alaska, Anchorage

 

 

Graff’s emphasis on “Social and Emotional Learning” as framed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is as close to a philosophy of education that he has expressed as MPS superintendent.  But the performance of students during Graff’s tenure as superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska, for three academic years (2013-2014, 2014-2015, and 2015-2016) produced results similar to the disastrous results for students in the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

 

A look at the Anchorage figures strongly suggests why Graff’s contract was not renewed by the school board in that district, and the reason why that school board was less than impressed with the Social and Emotional Learning strategy as utilized by Graff:  

 

Results for Academic Year 2014-201

All Grade Levels

 

Language Arts

 

Does Not      Partially       Meets         Exceeds

Meet             Meets           Standard    Standard

Standard      Standard

 

Student

Categories

 

African                                   35.1%             42.1%         20.5%              2.3%

American

 

White/                   13.3%            33.7%            44.3%            8.5%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic                28.3%            42.3%          26.9%              2.5%

 

 

Alaska                     42.4%            37.5%          18.1%              1.9%

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

All Grade Levels

 

Mathematics

 

Does Not      Partially       Meets         Exceeds

Meet             Meets           Standard    Standard

Standard      Standard

 

           

 

Student

Categories

 

African                                   29.5%             51.3.%        16.9%              2.3%

American

 

White/                   12.9%             39.7%            36.5%        10.9%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic               23.4%             50.9%            21.8%         3.9%

 

 

Alaska                   29.0%               50.3%         18.2%          2.5%

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

All High School Mathematics Students

 

Does Not      Partially       Meets         Exceeds

Meet             Meets           Standard    Standard

Standard      Standard

 

Student

Categories

 

African                                  48.6%             36.7%             13.5%          1.2%

American

 

White/                 26.5%             35.4%             31.3%          6.8%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic              47.8%            35.4%           15.2%            1.6%

 

 

Alaska                   46.0%             35.4%           17.5%            1.0%

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

Grade 10 Mathematics Students

 

Does Not      Partially       Meets         Exceeds

Meet             Meets           Standard    Standard

Standard      Standard

Student

Categories

 

African                                  69.5%             24.7%            ---------                       ---------

American

 

 

White/                 36.9%             30.6%            25.6%         6.9%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic              61.3%             23.2%              14.4%         1.1%

 

 

Alaska                   69.4%             24.5%           ---------                     ---------

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

All                          48.7%            27.9%         19.4%          3.9%

Students

 

Grade 10 Engllish/ Language Arts

 

Does Not      Partially       Meets         Exceeds

Meet             Meets           Standard    Standard

Standard      Standard

 

 

Student

Categories

 

African                                  35.9%              53.3%          ---------                        ---------

American

 

 

White/                 12.5%             44.7%            39.7%           3.1%

Caucasian

 

Hispanic              28.6%             50.5%          ---------                        ---------

 

 

Alaska                   47.3%              40.5%          ---------         ---------

Native

American/

American

Indian

 

All                          23.9%             46.6%           27.7%            1.8%

Students

 

 

Composite Achievement Gaps (All Grade Levels)

 

 

English/          Mathematics

Language

Arts       

 

Student

Categories

 

African                                    30.0%              28.2%

American                                                                                                 

vs.

White/ Caucasian                           

 

Alaska                      32.8%              26.7%

Native

American/

vs.

White/ Caucasian

 

Asian                        22.4%             12.5%

vs.

White/ Caucasian

 

Native                   40.2%              32.5%

Hawaiian/

Other Pacific Island

vs.

White/ Caucasian

 

Hispanic                23.4%              21.7%

American

vs.

White/ Caucasian

 

Two or More        15.9%              13.7%

Ethnicities

vs.

White/ Caucasian

 

These abysmal results are similar to but actually worse than the abominable achievement levels of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools during a period that includes an academic  year (2016-2017) under the Graff administration;  furthermore, evidence suggests that the second year of Graff’s tenure as MPS superintendent is on course toward familiar terrible student achievement rates.

 

Compare the results for Anchorage with these figures for Minneapolis:

 

Math

                                            

African American 

 

                              2014           2015        2016         2017

 

   23%        23%         21%         18%

 

Hispanic

 

                              2014           2015        2016        2017

 

    31%       32%        31%       29%

 

Native American/ American Indian

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   23%        19%       19%       17%

 

Asian/ Pacific Islander

                 

               2014         2015        2016     2017

 

  48%         50%       50%      47%

 

White/ Caucasian

 

                              2014           2015        2016       2017

 

   77%        78%        78%      77%

 

All Students

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   44%        44%        44%      42%

 

Reading

                                            

African American 

 

                              2014           2015        2016        2017

 

    22%       21%        21%       21%

 

Hispanic

 

                              2014           2015        2016      2017

 

   23%        25%       26%       26%

 

Native American/ American Indian

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   21%        20%       21%      23%

 

Asian/ Pacific Islander

                 

               2014         2015        2016     2017

 

  41%         40%       45%      41%

 

White/ Caucasian

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   78%        77%       77%      78%

 

All Students

 

                              2014           2015        2016      2017

 

   42%        42%       43%     43%

 

Science

                                            

African American 

 

                              2014           2015        2016       2017

 

    11%       15%       13%       12%

 

Hispanic

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   17%        18%       21%      19%

 

Native American/ American Indian

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   14%        16%        13%     17%

 

Asian/ Pacific Islander

 

    31%        35%       42%     35%               

 

               2014         2015        2016     2017

 

White/ Caucasian

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

   71%        75%       71%      70%

 

All Students

 

                              2014           2015        2016     2017

 

    33%       36%        35%     34%

 

 

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

Ed Graff is not an academician or a scholar.

 

The current superintendent has little in the way of a philosophy of education;  what little he expresses as to philosophy has a track record of failure in application.

 

Many staff members at the Davis Center have lost faith in Superintendent Graff;  they are as disenchanted with him as they are the members of the MPS Board of Education that Graff lauded in such clueless or dissembling manner at the 23 February MPS Board of Education Finance Committee meeting.

 

Ed Graff is clearly in over his head and always has been in the role of superintendent, both at Anchorage and now in Minneapolis.

 

Graff should find a vocation for whatever talents he can muster as he heads out the door of the Davis Center, clutching a severance but relieving the district of the $225,000 in salary with which the citizens of Minneapolis have been burdened for two academic years.