The K-12 Revolution Will Make of the United States the Democracy That We Imagine Ourselves to Be >>>>> (Part Four of a Multi-Article Series >>>>> Major Principles in the K-12 Revolution, for Mandated Study by Aspiring Superintendents and School Board Members)

The United States has never functioned as a democracy. 

 

Throughout most of United States history, the nation has for African American people operated as a totalitarian state. 

 

As of 1789, most people of African heritage counted constitutionally as “all other persons” who were not free, indentured, or Native American.  The free and the indentured were counted in determining apportionment by states in the House of Representatives;  African Americans were counted at the fractional three-fifths, while untaxed Native Americans were counted not at all.  Women were counted for the purpose of determining representation in the House, but they had to wait until 1920 to vote, and they awaited the late 1960s and early 1970s for legal guarantees that moved them nearer to equality with men.

 

African American men should have achieved full citizenship according to the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments, but the Compromise of 1877, Jim Crow, Black Codes, interposition, nullification, vigilante judges, and lynching jurists favored de facto practices over de jure formulations.  Formal citizenship for African Americans came with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but a post-Reconstruction history of migration and Northern-style segregation yielded urban ghettos wherein the equality of opportunity inherent in democracy could not abide.

     

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted on 2 July, fifty years ago at the publication of this new journal.  But fifty years hence, we still do not have democracy.  We will only have democracy when we provide excellent education to all of our young people, providing those living at the urban core a genuine route out of the entrapment of multigenerational poverty, pressures conducive to familial dysfunction, recourse to pharmaceutical pleasure, easy money discovered en route to incarceration, and a life that will never know the cultural sustenance, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction that excellent education bestows.

 

An excellent education provides cultural sustenance.  The world comes alive in appreciation of the musical forms of classical, jazz, rhythm and blues, blues, folk, country, and rock and roll.  The visual cortex lights up with excitement in viewing the work of the Old Masters, Impressionists, Expressionists, Cubists, and Abstractionists.  The cosmos becomes a source of wonder upon contemplation of the great astronomical concatenation that followed a tremendous explosion 13.8 billion years ago.  Language and dramatic insight flow from the literary treasures of William Shakespeare and August Wilson.  Historical context explains the advent of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinhem, the power of their conviction, the impact of their activism. The Pythagorean Theorem is seen for the sheer beauty of its explanatory precision.  Newtonian Laws of Motion explain one’s traverse across earthly expanses, Einstein’s Relativity provides introduction to worlds beyond worlds.

 

An excellent education provides civic preparation.  One understands the great experiment of the Enlightenment that is the United States.  The educated person has a grasp of constitutional principles and can personally evaluate Supreme Court decisions.  One understands the historical forces that have produced roles and statuses pertinent to class and gender.   She who has received an excellent education knows the function and the functioning of the Electoral College, understands caucus and primary, has the knowledge base to file for public office, comprehends the array of issues necessary for effective campaigning.  He who has the educational foundation to join the informed electorate can determine on the basis of historical fact, national relevance, and international circumstances the wisdom of sending the sons of mothers and the daughters of fathers forth into potentially lethal battle.

 

An excellent education provides professional satisfaction.  Fueled with the power of an excellent education, a person can take one’s position in the fields of medicine, law, education, business, or agriculture.  Given the options provided by an excellent education, decisions regarding vocation may be rendered with considerations of responsibility to the family formed of spouse, children, and relatives;  and the family formed of humanity.  Dedication to a satisfying job gives a person a sense of dignity, the spirit of contributing to the familial and the greater good, and the abiding assumption that at the end of this earthly journey a legacy will remain.

 

People of all ethnicities of whatever economic wherewithal deserve the cultural sustenance, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction that an excellent education brings.  Excellent education for most people must be gained in the schools of locally centralized school districts.  An excellent K-12 education is defined by knowledge and skill sets especially yielding information across the liberal arts of math, natural science (biology, chemistry, physics), social science (upon a foundation of history, geography, and economics;  with introduction to political science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology);  and the fine arts (visual and musical).  An excellent education can only be imparted by excellent teachers, who by definition are pedagogically gifted professionals possessing deep and broad subject area knowledge across the liberal arts. 

 

The locally centralized school district is the unit in the United States best positioned to impart an excellent education.  It also must be the organization that provides teacher retraining, so that well-meaning and dedicated teachers who truly strive for excellence can overcome the inadequacy of their training in departments, schools, and colleges of education.

 

We must get this mission in our guts:

 

We must feel in the depths of our individual and collective souls the responsibility to all of our precious children.  We cannot wait until all families are the perfections of our imagination.  If all families are not as we think they should be, be must embrace all children as our own.  Through excellent K-12 education we can shape a different world.  We can pay the debt of history and atone for the misdeeds of our forbearers, even as we seize the instruments of democracy that our ancestors have placed in our hands.  For to be sure, we can at last achieve true democracy by providing equal opportunity for every person via our transformation of K-12 education.

 

The beauty of all of this for those of us living in Minneapolis is that we have been graced with an educational leader in Bernadeia Johnson who has the requisite courage, the intellectual ability, and the manifest compassion that will be needed to turn an underperforming school district into a model for urban educational excellence.  We need not go to Guatemala to build schools, though that is a great service if we can do that, too.  We do not have to wait until the next hurricane hits Haiti, although compassion for people in other places is a wonderful thing.  But there are people very near your house, close to your community, living a short flight of the robin from your abode, who await the justice to which you can contribute if you care enough.

 

You need not go to an international outpost, to Washington, D. C., or even to the state Capitol in St. Paul to make a difference.  The opportunity to make an enormous difference lies in organizational and personal effort to overhaul K-12 educational at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  You can voice support the necessary overhaul at school board meetings and public forums.  You can promote and work for school board candidates who are not lackeys of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and the Democrat Farmer Labor (DFL) party.  You can offer your own tutorial services and recruit others to assist teachers at the High Priority Schools;  and if you can do this well, you will make a direct contribution to educational excellence for every child.

 

And in doing these things you will be helping to realize, for the first time in United States history, the vision of a democratic society by revolutionizing K-12 education.

The Fulfilling Life of the Well-Educated Person (Part Three of a Multi-Article Series >>>>> Major Principles in the K-12 Revolution, for Mandated Study by Aspiring Superintendents and School Board Members)

When a person is well educated, and therefore culturally enriched, that individual sees the world with eyes ever alert, ears always tuned, thoughts constantly responsive to the wonder of the everyday.

 

He notices that his bank building represents a Neoclassical style that prevailed in the Midwest from the late 19^th century into the early 20^th century.

 

She observes admiringly how the Mississippi river wends its way through the vibrant cities near its upper reaches.  She reflects upon the remarkable spectacle of a noble waterway beginning as a stream out of Lake Itaska, widening as it variously ambles and rushes southward on to the Delta at New Orleans, into the Gulf of Mexico.  And she remembers how this riverine highway awakened the literary gifts of Samuel Clemens, inspired him to embrace river captain allusions in opting for the pseudonym of Mark Twain, and moved him to eloquent abolitionist commentary even as he sends readers into belly-holding fits of laughter.

 

Sounds of Scott Joplin emanating from an unlikely urban doorway capture the appreciative comments of the educated person who knows the connections and has come to appreciate the line running from the work songs of the slaves through the forms of blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, all the way to hip-hop.  

 

One of two friends driving down the highway comments that two large formations overhead must be Paris shooting at Hector’s heel.  The other remembers how Hamlet goaded Polonius into sycophantic acknowledgment that a particular cloud was successively---  upon the observation of the Prince of Denmark---  a camel, a weasel, and a whale.

 

A young woman and man feel awkwardness of a first date fade when, after viewing a special exhibit at the special exhibit at the Walker, they engage in a good-natured debate for the remainder of the evening as to whether a Jackson Pollock painting deserves the same consideration for greatness as the work of Leonardo Da Vinci. 

 

At a table in a favored restaurant, a crowd of people in their mid-thirties work their way through a conversation that begins with the discussion of the Balfour Declaration and the White Papers, proceeds to the horrors of the gas chambers, continues to the fate of the Palestinians as second class citizens in a land they claim as their own, moves to the matter of resurging Anti-Semitism among some European populations, and ends with a careful examination of the claims of the two sides in the Arab-Israeli dispute.

 

When one friend complains about the many faults of government, an energetic conversation ensues when another friend asserts, “In a democracy, you are the government.”  There is a basis for this discussion, since all of these friends have been educated in schools in which they have accumulated factual information pertinent to electoral college, primaries, caucuses, and lobbyists.  They know the history of the Republican and Democratic parties, including the nature of the very different incarnations witnessed in the 20^th versus the 19^th century.  They understand the historical context in which John Stuart Mill could be a liberal when he seemed so unconcerned with the fate of the underclass;  and how conservative economists in the United States are very proud of the classically liberal economies prevailing in their nations.  They know about the activist organizational efforts of Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Samuel Gompers, A. Phillip Randolph, and Saul Alinsky, so they know that, whatever their differing view on the power that should be granted in the name of governmental institutions, there is a fundamental truth to the idea that if people exercise their rights of citizenship in a democracy, there will be a mutual identity between people and government.   

 

The world of knowledge is a limitless sky under which one can know so much, yearn for much more, stay forever young, forever interested, always engaged, never bored.

 

If education is imparted in the proper spirit, with attention to cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction, the latter becomes a natural extension of the first two purposes of an excellent education.  These three components together have certain unifying themes:   the joy of being alive in the world of knowledge;  the confidence that a solid body of knowing many things brings;  a connection to other people who share as cultural inheritance the literature, art, music, and scientific discovery that their human fellows have produced across the oceans and continents of the globe.

 

A person who possesses the cultural enrichment and the civic preparation that has come with a liberal arts education by definition has acquired the mathematical skill, reading comprehension, and technological knowhow that flow from an excellent education.  A knowledge-heavy education stimulates analysis and discussion with one’s classmates, teachers, and others on the academic journey of the K-12 years. 

 

Such an education provides both the specific skills necessary to undertake additional training for professional specialization;  and the shared knowledge of the human inheritance that promotes productive and rewarding interactions with one’s colleagues in the workplace.

 

Knowledge conjoined with ethics and spirituality is the essence of the happy life.

 

Students of all demographic descriptors are due an excellent education comprised of these constituent elements of knowledge, ethics, and the opportunity to develop a spiritual sensibility upon the solid foundation of those first two elements.

We Must Fulfill the Three Great Purposes of Public K-12 Education (Part Two of a Multi-Article Series >>>>> Major Principles in the K-12 Revolution, for Mandated Study by Aspiring Superintendents and School Board Members)

We must be clear as to the purposes of education, understanding that the purpose of education as identified by professors of education is impoverished and that most other definitions are incomplete.

 

Professors of education typically identify the purpose of education as the development of student “critical thinking skills” and a propensity for “lifelong learning,” with “constructivist” curriculum driven by student experience and interest, so that teachers become mere “facilitators.”

 

The purpose of education identified by education professors is intellectually impoverished, a smokescreen for their own intellectual lassitude and for the insufficient knowledge base of the putative educators whom they produce. 

 

Education reformers who work outside the education establishment, in the world of private enterprise, identify the purpose of education as preparation for the marketplace. 

 

The purpose of education identified by reformers from the world of private enterprise is insufficient.

……………………………………………………………………………………

 

The great purposes of education are cultural enrichment, civic preparation,  and professional satisfaction.

 

Education is a matter of cultural enrichment:

 

The happy and fulfilled person is alive in the world of knowledge.  She or he can go to a production of A Street Car Named Desire or A Raisin in the Sun and have a sense of the place that Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry occupy in the realm of American drama.  She can tune into Cosmos and be alert rather than lost as Neil Degrassey Tyson, the great popularizing successor to Carl Sagan, traces the evolution of humankind from creatures who emerged from the sea and adapted through natural selection to circumstances of the earthly terrain.  He can continue to be animated by the musical worlds of hip-hop, rhythm and blues, rock, and country, while still appreciating the genius of Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin.  She can understand how Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner each challenged the assumption of free will---  and thus evaluate whether our approach to criminal justice actually operates on sound principles of human behavior.  The happy and fulfilled person has a sense of her or his place in a world history that has known the Tang Dynasty, the Togugawa shoguns, the emperors of Songhai, the mathematicians of the Maya, the architects of Anghor Wat, the empires of the Mediterranean world and of European ambition, the genius of a United States Constitution that nevertheless required the responses of Frederick Douglass and A. Phillip Randolph and Gloria Steinem.

 

Education is a matter of civic preparation:

 

People in the United States live in a nation that is the envy of many people across the globe who yearn for democracy.  And yet too many people in the United States do not understand the electoral college system, how primaries differ from caucuses, the constitutional principles that inform the debate between liberals and strict constructionists, the roles of the House of Representatives and Senate when considering a process that leads from impeachment through trial for a president or other federal official accused of “gross crimes and misdemeanors.”  People who have no or little knowledge of the organizational efforts of Sam Adams, Harriet Tubman, Floyd McKissick, Bella Abzug, or Saul Alinsky have no appreciation of the power that lies within themselves if they were to exercise their full rights of citizenship.

 

Instruction in those features of history and government that prepares a person for citizenship is a key component of the purpose of education.  The exercise of citizenship animates a person for the pursuit of causes beyond the self.  Understanding how one may act to advance one’s own rights is important, and that is a part of civic preparation.  But civic preparation also entails an understanding of one’s own demographically defined group, how that group fits into the body politic, and how the rights of the individual, particularistic group, community, state, and nation fit into the complex weave of the polity.  When a person is given the factual information necessary for embracing the responsibility of citizenship, the chances are enhanced that a person’s civic responsibility will be exercised both to enhance personal dignity and to promote human betterment in concentric movement from the person all the way out to the nation as a whole.

 

 

 

And education is a matter of professional satisfaction:

 

Possessed with a full stock of knowledge and skill, the educated person goes forth to life as an economically productive and prosperous citizen, with the ability to locate the work experience consonant with the person’s life values, goals, and aspirations.  When those whose origins are in families that have been stuck in generational cyclical poverty become thus professionally prosperous and fulfilled, generational poverty ceases and the cycle is terminated.  Myriad social problems are curtailed and democracy ensues for the first time in the history of the United States.  

 

A person with a strong sense of self, a grasp of the civic ethic, and dedication to the lives of people in the larger community, is a person whose own purpose in life is multifaceted.  She or he moves forth with a firmness of ego that allows for altruistic commitment to the greater good.

 

Fulfilling the great purposes of K-12 education means citizens realizing their best selves and the citizenry collectively becoming the democracy that we heretofore have only imagined ourselves to be.

  

Major Principles in the K-12 Revolution, for Mandated Study by Aspiring Superintendents and School Board Members >>>>> Part One of a Multi-Article Series >>>>> The Damage Caused by Those Campus Low-Lifers Known as Education Professors, with Intimations for Undoing the Damage

We will transform the nature of the human experience on this earthly sojourn when we revolutionize K-12 education.  In order to wage the revolution in a practical way, in the way that Saul Alinsky would counsel us to implement plans for on-the-ground change, we must be clear as to our objectives, our definitions, and the details of our plan.

 

Professors of education tend to identify the purpose of education as the development of student “critical thinking skills” and a process of discovery that encourages “lifelong learning.”  Undergirding this approach to education is a “constructivist” ideology that maintains that curriculum should be driven by student experiential frame of reference and current interest, with teachers acting as “facilitators” who guide young learners to sources of information used to pursue individual and group projects.

 

Education reformers who work outside the education establishment, in the world of private enterprise, identify the purpose of education as preparation for the marketplace.  These reformers, either explicitly or implicitly dissatisfied with the public schools, emphasize an educational transformation whereby high school graduates will possess the math, reading, writing, technological, and industrial skills necessary to succeed in college, university, and workplace settings.  They want high school, college, and university graduates to be prepared for performing tasks pertinent to well-paying jobs capable of maintaining economically viable nuclear families. 

 

The purpose of education identified by education professors is intellectually impoverished.  The purpose of education identified by reformers from the world of private enterprise is insufficient. 

 

The approach of education professors is a smokescreen for their own intellectual lassitude and for the insufficient knowledge base of the putative educators whom they produce. 

 

I ask my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative all the time to think analytically about the reasons for Hamlet’s dithering once he vowed to revenge his father’s death;  about the relative claims of the Palestinians and the Israelis to territory that each considers theirs as a matter religious and historical right;  about federal budgetary priorities that must be made when considering outlays for defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), physical infrastructure;  about the roots of rock and roll in blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, and country;  about the distinguishing elements of classical, romantic, and baroque music;  about whether the goals sought by the African American Northern Migration were fulfilled;  about the comparative styles of Arthur Miller and August Wilson---  and on and on with application of analytical processes to the world of knowledge.  They come alive when I ask them to give their viewpoints about such matters.  They typically have not been asked to give well-reasoned views at school.  By no means have our students generally been asked to “think critically.”

 

And the projects that they have pursued, so as supposedly to follow their passions and prepare themselves for “lifelong learning,” are inevitably done without proper academic context.  Their teachers facilitate their quest for information by pointing them toward websites, on which they yank down information for which they have little background in assessing value and pertinence.   A student may conduct an African American History Month project in February on Frederick McGee (a St. Paul attorney of the early 20^th century who was a colleague of W. E. B. Dubois and others in the Niagara Movement) may have no sense of the people and issues that led to the founding of the NAACP, or of the circumstances in Minneapolis-St. Paul that drove McGee’s own activism.  A student may lunge into a project on the Cold War with no background as to what communism actually means in theory and practice, or how a figure such as Joseph Stalin was an ally against fascism and Nazism but an enemy in the struggle for postwar international influence.  Students may grab books for sessions known as DEAR (Drop Everything And Read), making selections from mediocre volumes available in their classrooms but never gaining fascination with majestic children’s literature such as Winnie the Pooh, “The People Could Fly,” or poetic visions of Dakota origins.

 

The notion that our children are gaining critical thinking skills or that they are being prepared for lifelong learning is a charade.  They lack the knowledge base upon which critical analysis must proceed, and the projects that they pursue under flimsy guidance are done in such haphazard fashion and with such little respect for the requisite body of contextualizing information that they gain no practice in conducting authentic research or in the systematic quest for knowledge that lifelong learning would entail.  This disrespect for research extends through high school.  I have students in the New Salem Educational Initiative at all levels K-12;  rarely has a student at any level learned in classes at her or his school how to do proper citations, whether internal citations, footnotes, or endnotes.

 

The purposes of education lie in cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction upon receipt of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education, imparted by knowledgeable and pedagogically gifted teachers to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

The sentence immediately positioned above packs a book into one line.

 

Details will be observed in the next articles in this series.

As You Scroll on Down This Blog to the Immediately Succeeding Articles, Be Aware of the Importance of >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, and the Revolutionary Messages Delivered in these Three Latest Editions

Immediately succeeding this article are three lengthy articles in a row, each of them actually five articles in one, presented as they appeared in the April 2018, May 2018, and June 2018 editions of  Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

The latter is an academic journal of the type historically placed in the periodical section of university libraries, now also found online.  I launched the journal in July 2014, at the same time I began my four-year investigation into the inner workings of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  This became a chief means of conveying the results of my research and the ideas that will be featured in my nearly complete book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.

 

These two publications, along with another nearly complete book of my authorship, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, constitute parts of a multi-means effort to overhaul K-12 education at the level of the locally centralized school district, beginning with the Minneapolis Public Schools, so as to make that district a model for the impartation of excellent education.  The focus is on public K-12 education institutions, because these are of paramount societal importance;  the revolutionary effort is by extension applicable to all schools, at all levels, everywhere.

 

The other means of waging the necessary revolution include my direct teaching of students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, wherein students demonstrate their propensity for achievement as observed in the acquisition of knowledge and the manifestation of high ethical standards;  my television show, The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison (Minneapolis Telecommunication Network [MTN] public access Channel 17 in Minneapolis);  the blog that you are now reading, on which you will find 686 articles of heavyweight scholarship and thought;  and public appearances, including first-up conveyance of my messages at monthly meetings of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.

 

Mine is the life of the revolutionary.  I spend 16 to 18 hours each day delivering my message pertinent to the future of K-12 education, at the core of which will be knowledge-intensive curriculum imparted by excellent teachers.    

 

The academic journal, three editions of which you now have a chance to read below, demonstrates the seriousness of revolutionary intent and by inference shows my own stance as very different from other education change advocates.  I am the strongest supporter of K-12 public education that one will find---  and also the severest, best-informed critic.  My revolution is waged on the basis of unprecedented knowledge of the inner workings of institutions of public education;  and an unrivaled work ethic.  The content of the journal articles that you will now read are major cases in point.

 

The first two editions (April 2018 and May 2018) that you will read focus on the wretched quality of articles, written by both in-staff and outside authors of opinion pieces, in the Star Tribune.  The third edition to which you will come as you scroll on down the blog focuses on the woeful philosophy that undergirds teacher training as perpetrated by education professors and that is ingrained in their verbiage.    

 

Education professors are at the root of all maladies in public education.  Their intellectual shallowness and purveyance of errant notions have ruined generations of teachers and administrators.  The abominable quality of coverage of K-12 issues in the Star Tribune brings into sharp relief both the lack of a viable public information source and the culpability of many people and institutions for the wretched quality of K-12 education:  The culpable parties include those in the public education establishment of education professors, teachers, and administrators;  but also consist of people and institutions external to the education establishment who are complicit in the sustenance of the injustice perpetrated on students and thus our society, whose citizens are the students who variously graduate or do not graduate from our public school districts.

 

Hence, you should read the following articles at a high level of focus.

 

They are part of a unique academic journal and the most important effort to transform public education in the United States.        

Part One of a Series from >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota< >>>>> Volume IV, No. 10, April 2018 >>>>> Mediocrity of Star Tribune Coverage of Issues Pertinent to the Minneapolis Public Schools and K-12 Education

Volume IV, No. 10                           April 2018

                              

Journal of the K-12 Revolution

            

Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota

               

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor

Part One

A Five-Article Series         

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

New Salem Educational Initiative

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Mediocrity of Star Tribune

Coverage of Issues Pertinent
to the
Minneapolis Public Schools
and
K-12 Education


Part One

A Five-Article Series        

Copyright © 2018 by Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

Contents

Article #1            

Introductory Comments                                                                                                              

Factors in K-12 Mediocrity That
Star Tribune Feature and Opinion
Writers Fail to Discern or Are Afraid
to State               


Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education
at the Minneapolis Public Schools That You’ll Never
Read in the Star Tribune Unless I Detail Them in an
Opinion Piece

Article #2                            

Assessment #1                                                                                                 
From Star Tribune, Page A1, 28 February 2018,
“Graduation Rate at High Mark: 
State Record Clouded by
Persistent Achievement Gap”

Article #3                            

Assessment #2                                                                                           
“No, Learning Isn’t Booming. 
Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud.”
From (Star Tribune, Commentary
by Peter Hutchinson, 2 March 2018)


Article #4                            
Assessment #3                                                                                        
From Star Tribune, Editorial Pages,
Staff Editorial, 5 March 2018
“Grad Rates Can Be Deceiving ”


Article #5                            
Concluding Thoughts                                                                           
External Reasons for the Abominable Quality
Of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools

The Role of the Star Tribune and the Importance

of Reading with Analytical Discernment

Article #1

Introductory Comments

Factors in K-12 Mediocrity That Star Tribune Feature and
Opinion Writers Fail to Discern or Are Afraid to State


Reasons for the Abominable Quality of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools That
You’ll Never Read in the Star Tribune Unless I Detail Them in an Opinion Piece

In early autumn 2017, the Star Tribune ran a multi-article series on the tendency of students, often at the behest of their parents, to flee from the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) in the course of the last half decade.  The articles offered only a thin veneer of reasons, citing concerns over safety, achievement levels, or program options;  fleeing students or their families sought in suburban, charter, private, and parochial schools specific programs and learning environments that in some way addressed these concerns.  But the articles offered no definition of an excellent education or sought any from the students or parents who were quoted or whose motivations for fleeing were described.  The matter of whether or not students would actually graduate from such schools and districts as truly more knowledgeable, skillful people was not covered.   And nowhere in the article did readers get any sense of the most vexing impediments to the impartation of an excellent education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  This is most likely because Star Tribune staff manifest little understanding of K-12 education or the abiding problems within the Minneapolis Public Schools that impede the delivery of a high quality education.  Except for the opinion pieces that I publish in the Star Tribune, little understanding of the core dilemmas of the school district are evidenced either in articles written by the newspaper’s staff or other opinion writers.

Be reminded that the core reasons for the abominable quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools are as follows:

1)  Those making key decisions regarding curriculum are not dedicated to a knowledge-intensive, skill replete education.  Superintendent Ed Graff and his key decision-makers on academic programing have all trained under education professors who devalue knowledge as the key pursuit of K-12 education.

2)  The resulting curriculum is extraordinarily weak:  Students at K-5 learn very little regarding the key subject areas of biology, chemistry, physics, history, geography, economics, and the fine arts,  and they read very little challenging, high-quality literature;  students at grades 6-8 fare little better; and high school curriculum is bolstered only by the presence of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, for which too few knowledgeable teachers are available.

3)  Teachers come to their positions ill-prepared;  those at K-5 have endured the weakest program on any college or university campus;  those at grades 6-8 and 9-12 may be certified even with lackluster performance in their subject area undergraduate programs, and they rarely pursue advanced degrees in any programs other than education.

4)  There is no district-wide, coherent tutoring program to assist struggling students.

5)  Efforts to reach out to families struggling with poverty and dysfunction are few and ineffective.

6)  Central bureaucracy staffing is bloated and staff is overpaid, with 68 staff members (of a total 444) receiving salaries in excess of $100,000.

7)  The guiding Strategic Plan Acceleration 2020 is a mere exercise in setting goals for student achievement, none of which have been reached;  the plan offers no viable means for boosting student performance and errantly identifies the school as the unit of change, rather than correctly designating the district as a whole for transformation.

8)  The district’s Educational Equity Framework is a jargon-infested document that typifies the tendency of district decision-makers and members of the MPS Board of Education to profess concern for student outcomes and equity in the abstract while offering no plan for moving verbal proclamation to action.

9)  The fourteen programs identified for meeting Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) World’s Best Workforce (WBWF) regulations for closing racial achievement gaps or boosting academic performance for impoverished students have no prospects for success;  they serve too few students and have too little academic focus.

10)  Members of the MPS Board of Education, individually and collectively, have no guiding educational philosophy;  they ask few discerning questions regarding academic programming and have no committee dedicated to advancing the academic program of the district.

11)  The teacher’s union, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), resists objective measurement of student performance and the establishment of knowledge-intensive curriculum;  eight of the nine MPS Board of Education members have strong ties to this politically powerful union.

12)  Disciplinary policies in MPS schools are weak:  Many teachers have so little control over their classes that very little learning occurs;  cases at Folwell K-8, Justice Page (formerly Ramsay) K-8, and North High School have come to my attention as particularly egregious.

13)  Building principals are so weak as to engender an extra layer of bureaucracy occupied by associate superintendents (four in number);  with weak academic training themselves, Ron Wagner, Laura Cavender, Lucilla Davila, and Carla Steinbach are paid $144,333 per annum to try to improve site level leadership.

14)  Students are not prepared well for either the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) or the ACT college readiness exam;  teachers resist the former, which has been vitiated by opt-out tactics, and few teachers are academically competent enough to prepare students for the latter.

15)  Chief of Research, Innovation, Assessment, and Accountability Eric Moore is a talented statistician, Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop is one of the best at his position in the nation, and Operations Chief Karen Devet, Information Chief Fadi Fadhil, and Human Resources Chief Maggie Sullivan are also talented;  but on the whole, performance of staff members at the Davis Center ranges from wretched to merely acceptable, and high salaries promote the comfort of sinecure rather than courageous calls for change.

This is a school district long mired in trouble.

This is a school district that must be dismantled and reconstructed with dedication to knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education for students of all demographic descriptors.       

But you will get little understanding as to the core dilemmas from most of what is published in the Star Tribune.  This is because staff writers at the Star Tribune have little grasp of K-12 issues, the inner workings of the school district, or the historical factors that have abetted the development and persistence of such a wretched system.  And this is true also of most opinion writers who submit their articles to the editorial staff.  Star Tribune staff members also give the appearance of being afraid to probe too deeply for the actual problems facing the district, dependent as they are on situations and quotable remarks that make for eye-catching copy.

This April 2018 issue of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota presents an article by staff at the Star Tribune, a reply from Peter Hutchinson (who in the 1990s led a firm that, in an unusual situation, formally acted collectively as superintendent), and a staff editorial that took Hutchinson’s article as a point of departure.  I intersperse these articles with my own commentary, exposing the many faults of both the Star Tribune and Hutchinson articles.  In the May 2018 of this journal, I will follow up with an examination of non-staff opinion pieces submitted to and published in the Star Tribune, indicating that outside writers have as little understanding of K-12 issues of the Minneapolis Public Schools as is the case with the newspaper’s staff.

Article #2

Assessment #1
From Star Tribune, Page A1, 28 February 2018,
“Graduation Rate at High Mark: 
State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap”

Contributing to the environment of wretched K-12 education at the Minneapolis Public Schools is the mediocrity of coverage by reporters at the Star Tribune.  The past several reporters at the Star Tribune covering the Minneapolis Public Schools have been Steve Brandt, Alejandro Matos, and Beena Raghavendran;  Faiza Mahamud now seems to have replaced Raghavendran, with Anthony Lonetree now covering the St. Paul Public Schools.  Articles written by these journalists are at best serviceable;  often, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete. 

Star Tribune writers Mila Koupilova and Maryjo Webster are now also covering K-12 education for the Twin Cities Metro and the state;  they joined Faiza Mahamud in writing the article that I post below.  Please read the article, paying careful attention to my own comments at multiple points in the heading and the text  >>>>>

Heading and text of Star Tribune article, >>>>> “Graduation Rate at High Mark:  State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap” (Page A1, February 28), by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud  >>>>>

>>>>> 

“Graduation Rate at High Mark:  State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap” by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud  >>>>>

My Comment

The “Graduation Rate at High Mark” title was the large, dark-type heading for the article.  This was most likely the fault of another Star Tribune staffer;  I know from my own experience with articles of mine printed on the Opinion Pages that the title of the author rarely is what goes as the heading, and in the case of staffers, as opposed to outside contributors, they may in knowing this not even provide their own title when they file their report.

In any case, the dark heading puts the most positive spin on a miserable K-12 education situation in Minnesota, by emphasizing increasing graduation rates.  Anyone skimming the pages of the Star Tribune without paying much attention to the subtitle or to those mitigating references in the text very well could come away thinking, “Oh, good, we’re seeing progress in K-12 education in Minnesota.”

In fact, going from a graduation rate of seventy-eight percent to eighty three percent in the span of five years and calling that success should remind one of the blues lyric,

I’ve been down so long,

down looks like up to me.”

One way to look good by making progress is to start so low in the first place that gains to a still low level seem to indicate significant advancement, rather than the persistence of abysmal conditions.

The text of the article began as follows  >>>>>

Minnesota high school graduation rates continued to tick up in 2017, but progress stalled in closing a wide gap between the rates for whites and students of color.

A record nearly 83 percent of students graduated from high school on time last year, according to data released by the Minnesota Department of Education.  That’s an overall gain of about 5 percentage points during the past five years.

Yet a gap of almost 19 percentage points separates the graduation rates of white students and their peers of color.  Only about half of American Indian students graduated on time last year;  roughly two-thirds of black and Latino students did, compared with 88 percent for whites.

But the state has made marked gains toward closing those gains since 2012, with students of color showing more pronounced gains than their white peers over time.

My Comment

The writers return again to the positive spin.  This can be seen as journalistic balance, but in the absence of a generous amount of commentary elsewhere in the newspaper at which reportorial coverage gives way to analysis, K-12 decision-makers (both central school district staff and school board members) are continually given an escape route for maintaining academic mediocrity.

The central fact on which readers should concentrate is that in Minnesota approximately half (50%) of American Indian students are not graduating within four years and that for African American and Latino students in Minnesota the figure is thirty-three percent (33%).

In what world is this acceptable?

The text of the article continues as follows  >>>>>

 “While our graduation rates have continued to climb and gaps are narrowing, we have too many students who are not receiving a diploma,” Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said, adding that much work remains to reduce disparities.  Graduation rates for low-income, special education, migrant and homeless students as well as English language learners also lagged significantly behind the state average.

My Comment

Brenda Cassellius has been making these statements for seven years now.  She serves in a Mark Dayton gubernatorial administration that terminated the MCAs (though still administered) as  graduation requirements, issued a murky Multiple Measurement Rating System (MMRS) that eased pressures on locally centralized school districts to improve, and in many ways did the bidding of Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), who heavily supported Dayton’s campaigns and those of other Democrat-Farmer-Labor party politicians. 

The text of the article continues as follows:  >>>>>

In Minneapolis, about two-thirds overall graduated on time in 2017---  a 1-percentage point dip---  placing the district just shy of the bottom for metro graduation rates.  But that’s still up about 14 percentage points over five years ago, representing one of the biggest gains of any Twin Cities district.

My Comment

Note that the graduation rate for all student populations at the Minneapolis Public Schools actually declined just a bit.  This is a very significant fact in the context of an article that gives a generous measure of approval for improved graduation rates.  If a school district starts with graduation rates well under fifty percent and then improves, failure looks like success and even decline for a given year is given positive spin.

Again, we remember  >>>>>

I’ve been down so long,

down looks like up to me.”

The article continues as follows  >>>>>

St. Paul graduation rates inched up to 77 percent, and the districts made modest headway toward reducing disparities for students of color.  In both urban districts, rates remained lowest for blacks and American Indians, while Latino students made significant gains in recent years.

Districts in the west and north suburbs led the metro pack in overall graduation rates:  The St. Anthony-New Brighton district graduated almost 98 percent of its students on time last year and posted the largest gains in the past five years.  Minnetonka, Orono, and Edina flowed close behind.

On the flip side, Brooklyn Center ranked at the bottom of the metro, with half of students graduating in four years.  There, officials noted that a majority of students attend two alternative high schools, including a statewide online program loosely affiliated with the district.  They noted the district’s traditional high school outperformed the state as a whole.

The state education department touted a decrease in the percentage of high school graduates who took remedial classes at Minnesota colleges and universities over the past five years---  a sign that more students are leaving high school ready to tackle college.  But those rates remain high, particularly for some students of color:  In 2016, more than 40 percent of black high school graduates took such courses, which have been shown to reduce the odds of finishing college.

My Comment  >>>>>

The stark fact here is that forty percent of African American students statewide have to take remedial courses once matriculating on college and university campuses.  Since many of those students attend two-year colleges and those institutions are now frequently addressing academic deficiencies of entering students via remediation not officially labeled remedial, the figure is even higher.  And for less that fifty percent (50%) of African American students who do actually graduate from the Minneapolis Public Schools, the substantial majority require remediation and, worse, given their initial deficits just cannot perform academically at the college and university level.  They drop out and all too often go forth to lives that are not at any level as rewarding as they should be.  

The article continues as follows  >>>>>

 

Because of federal law changes, the state tweaked the way it calculates graduation rates.  Changes included adding categories for students who identify as two or more races, migrant students and those who experience homelessness.  The education department recalculated rates for the past five years using the new approach for an accurate comparison.

                                                                                                                                                                         

In an interview, Cassellius voiced confidence that the state can meet ambitious goals it set last year:  a 90 percent statewide rate and racial group rates of at least 85 percent by 2020.  She singled out notable gains in recent years for the new category of multiracial students.  She also highlighted a plan to extend state support this spring to more high schools with lagging graduation rates, reserved until now for schools with high numbers of low-income students.

 

“We need to keep pressing the accelerator down to make sure every kid graduates on time and ready,” she said.

 

In a statement, Gov. Mark Dayton called the report great news for the state even as he acknowledged that “unacceptable disparities” remain.

 

My Comment  >>>>>

 

Remember my comments above regarding the Dayton administration and the political corruption of the DFL on K-12 education issues.

 

Brenda Cassellius is a friend of mine. 

 

She is a sincere and dedicated educator. 

 

I came to favor her selection as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools when she was in the running along with the ultimately elected Ed Graff. 

 

Cassellius has a strong sense of what must be done to move toward excellence at the level of the locally centralize school district, but at the state level she must do the biding of the DFL and Dayton.  

 

The article continues as follows  >>>>>

 

In Minneapolis, Superintendent Ed Graff highlighted the “on track” program, which uses attendance, behaviors, and grades to promptly identify struggling students, who are then put on a help plan.  He also noted the credit-recovery efforts that helped more than 2,000 students earn credits during the school break.

 

Michael Thomas, chief of academics, leadership, and learning, noted that the district’s high number of English language learners and students with disabilities who struggle to graduate in four years and touted increases in the district’s seven-year rate, to 73 percent in 2017---  data the state released for the first time this year.

 

Still, a 28 percent percentage-point graduation rate disparity between white and minority students persists.  Graff acknowledged that the district must redouble efforts to narrow the gap and ensure graduating students are ready for college and jobs.

 

The article continues as follows  >>>>>

        

Michael Thomas is forced into making statements that he knows are only fractionally revelatory, hamstringed as he is in serving boss Ed Graff, who imagines that social and emotional learning, an emphasis on literacy, verbal testimony to valuing equity, and externally subsidized and very limited tracking and support mechanisms are going to produce better (very murkily defined) academic results.  Thomas is a talented administrator who must assert the case for a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum as he prepares to be the next superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.   

 

The article continues as follows  >>>>>

 

In St. Paul, officials noted that American Indian, Latino, black, and homeless students, as well as English language learners and those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, outperformed state averages for those groups.  They highlighted a “check and connect” approach in which social workers and other mentors check in with special education high schoolers at risk for dropping out;  the district has also worked to open opportunities to earn college credit to more high school students.

 

A push is underway to improve graduation rates for American Indian students, officials said, and the district plans to keep closer track of five- and seven- year rates.

 

For some students, four years to graduate is an arbitrary and even inappropriate bar,” said Joe Munnich, assistant director of research, evaluation, and assessment for the St. Paul district.

 

Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school system, saw a 2 percentage point drop in its graduation rate, from the 2015-2016 school year to last year, though the district noted that its students of color outperformed state averages.

 

According to the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, about 70 percent of the state’s students enroll in college in the fall immediately after graduation.  In 2016, that number was 72 percent of white students compared to 61 percent of students of color.

 

“It’s important to note that disparities that are happening in K-12 education are also happening in higher education,” said Meredith Fergus, manager of financial aid research for the Minnesota Department of Higher Education.           

 

My Comment  >>>>>

 

Insufficient academic preparation at the K-12 level will indeed continue to weigh heavily on the chances of students to succeed at the collegiate and university level.  All of the K-12 commenters cited and quoted in the article continue to make excuses and to convey in subtext that they do not feel the necessary sense of urgency in making the changes needed to create a democratically equitable, excellent program of K-12 education

 

…………………………………………………………………….

 

The article provided tabular and graphical material, summarized as follows  >>>>>

 

On Time Graduation Gains:  2011-12 to 2016-17

 

All students                >>>>>             +  5 points

 

American Indian       >>>>>              +  6 points

 

Asian                           >>>>>             + 10 points

 

Black                           >>>>>             +  19 points

 

Hispanic                     >>>>>             +  11 points

 

Two or more races   >>>>>             +  15 points

 

White                          >>>>>             + 5 points

 

BIGGEST INCREASES AND DECLINES IN GRAD RATES

 

[Note  >>>>>   Minnesota Districts with the greatest six-year change in their graduation rate                       

(increases and decreases).  Many districts with large decreases had very high rates 

to begin with.

 

Greatest 6-year improvement, 2011-12 to 2016-2017

 

Richfield                     >>>>>             +  14 points

 

Minneapolis              >>>>>             +  14 points

 

St. Anthony-              >>>>>             +  11 points

   New Brighton                   

 

St. Paul                     >>>>>                +   9 points

 

Prior Lake-                >>>>>               +   8 points

   Savage

 

Largest 6-year declines, 2011-12 to 2016-2017

 

 

Belle Plaine                     >>>>>          -    2 points

 

White Bear Lake            >>>>>           -    4 points

 

Mahtomedi                    >>>>>           -     4 points

 

Randolph                       >>>>>            -     5 points

 

Shakopee                       >>>>>           -      5 points

 

 

…………………………………………………………………….

 

Summary Comments  >>>>>

 

Editors at the Star Tribune are not sufficiently interested in the matter of improving K-12 education.  They are not knowledgeable enough on education issues to make the proper advocacies even if they were inclined to do so.  Furthermore, as employees of a mainstream newspaper, editors are hesitant to offend the offenders who give them access for interviews to do lightweight, sycophantic stories even when articles tend toward the feature rather than the reportorial.

 

In this situation, readers must always apply their own analytical reasoning in considering K-12 articles in the Star Tribune.

 

For that reasoning to be effective, readers must ever endeavor to increase their own knowledge of K-12 issues.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                               

Article #3

Assessment #2

“No, Learning Isn’t Booming.  Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud.”

 From (Star Tribune, Commentary by Peter Hutchinson, 2 March 2018)

 

Contributing to the environment of wretched K-12 education at the Minneapolis Public Schools is the mediocrity of coverage by reporters at the Star Tribune.  The past several reporters at the Star Tribune covering the Minneapolis Public Schools have been Steve Brandt, Alejandro Matos, and Beena Raghavendran;  Faiza Mahamud now seems to have replaced Raghavendran, with Anthony Lonetree now covering the St. Paul Public Schools.  Articles written by these journalists are at best serviceable;  often, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete. 

 

Star Tribune writers Mila Koupilova and Maryjo Webster are now also covering K-12 education for the Twin Cities Metro and the state;  they joined Faiza Mahamud in writing the first of three articles that I posted in the course of last week, asking readers to look for meaning in subtext and to analyze the articles for quality of reporting.

 

Please now read this third of the articles again, paying careful attention to my own comments at multiple points in the heading and the text;  the article given for consideration below was written as the lead editorial rendered in the name of the editorial board of the Star Tribune on 5 March 2018

 

>>>>> 

 

Star Tribune, Quality of Reporting, Assessment #3

From Star Tribune, Opinion Pages, March 2, 2018

“No, Learning Isn’t Booming.  Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud.”

 

Peter Hutchinson

 

“You lied to me!”

 

I was running for governor in 2006, and this young woman was on my case before I even got a word out.  Once I regained my composure, I asked her what she meant.

 

“I did everything you adults told me to do,” she said.  “I went to school every day, did my homework every day, got good grades.  I got a diploma from a five-star Minnesota high school.  I enrolled in community college.  When I got there, they told me I had to take math and English all over again because I had not really learned enough in high school.  You adults told me that high school graduation meant that I had learned.  But you lied to me!”

 

I was stunned, mad, embarrassed.  I went to find the facts.  In 2006, 28 percent of high school graduates who went to college in Minnesota (two- or four-year) ended up taking high school (remedial) classes in college.  We lied to them.  We gave them a diploma that was a fraud.

 

Now, over 10 years later we read in the Star Tribune that high school graduation is at an all-time high, according to a new report from the Minnesota Department of Education (“Graduation rate at high mark, Feb. 28”).  The data seem to point in that direction---  the percentage of students graduating from high school is up significantly (from 75 percent in 2006 to over 82 percent in 2016), while the percentage of those going to college requiring remedial education is down( from 28 percdent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2015).

 

………………………………………………………..

 

My Comment

 

Peter Hutchinson notes that his reading of the Star Tribune’s article, “Graduation rate at high mark, Feb. 28,” the first of those posted in this series, came over ten (10) years after he ran for governor, a point at which he found that at that juncture “28 percent of high school graduates who went to college in Minnesota (two- or four-year) ended up taking high school (remedial) classes in college.  We lied to them.  We gave them a diploma that was a fraud.”

 

I note here that Peterson’s run for governor came just over ten (10) years after he his 1993-1997 term as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools came to an end.  What he does not hasten to convey to you, though is that during his own tenure as superintendent student achievement rates were just as abysmal as they are now and students went off to college needing remediation in mathematics and reading at similar rates to those that he cites, because the diplomas that he passed out to students were just as much of a fraud.

 

Note also that Peterson represents one of many cases of what I label the “Corey Booker Phenomenon.” 

 

Booker forged a substantially deserved reputation as a mayor who made significant progress in making the very challenged city of Newark, New Jersey, into a more cohesive urban community with greater hope for the future;  but Booker departed before he had gotten anywhere close to completing his avowed goal of making Newark a peaceful and thriving urban center.  He now serves in the United States Senate, with designs on the presidency;  from neither of those political perches can Booker or anyone do as much to address the problems of people living at the urban core as effectively as can a city official position to make policy at the local level.  This is especially true given that in the United States we have a mania for local control in education, and education is central to solving the problems of people living at the urban core.  A mayor could do much to create a social and economic environment abetting the efforts of a visionary and philosophically astute superintendent to advance a program of educational excellence.  Hutchinson also departed a local post, in this case that very role of superintendent, before his work was done;  the gubernatorial position that he sought in 2006 has limited impact on academic programming at the level of the locally centralized school district, despite campaign claims and public perception.

 

If Hutchinson had been serious about improving public education, he would have continued to work for change at the level of the locally centralized school district.

 

I have never seen him at a meeting of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education.

 

…………………………………………………………….

 

Hutchinson’s opinion piece continues >>>>>

 

All true and on the face of it pretty fantastic.  The message:  In Minnesota we have done what few other places have done:  We have gotten more of our students to learn---  and to learn at ever-hbigher levels.  It’s unbelievable!

 

Indeed, it is not believable.  These two measures---  graduation and remedial course-taking---  tell us about events in the experience of students but not what they learned.

 

We have three pieces of very reliable data on student learning that got left out.

 

First, in elementary and middle school, the National Assessment of Educational Progress measures the proficiency of our students in both reading and math.  In the last 10 years, there has been no significant improvement in student learning---  with only 40 to 50 percent of our students being rated as proficient or better.  These are the students enrolling in our high schools.

 

Second, the ACT measures the degree to which our high school graduates are ready for college.  Over the last 10 years, the average score has remained virtually unchanged---  with only 30 percent of students meeting all of the ACT’s benchmarks for college readiness.  Nevertheless we graduate over 80 percent of students from high school, and the vast majority of them (75 percent) go on to college---  and especially to our two-year colleges, where about one-third of the enroll.

 

So then what happens?  The Department of Education argues that the reduction in remedial course-taking means that our students are better prepared.  The data on student achievement in elementary, middle, and high school say otherwise.  And so do the outcomes for college students. 

 

Over 80 percent of all remedial course-taking is done by students enrolled in our two-year colleges.  For them, it is accurate to say that remedial course-taking has dropped.  But that is largely because our two-year colleges have redefined and redesigned how to support underprepared students, steering them away from old-style remedial classes.

 

What’s more important is that the percentage of students successfully graduating from our two-year institutions has dropped---  only 49 percent now get a degree and transfer to another college.

 

Yes, we are graduating more students from high school, and enrolling more in college, and then we are letting them flounder and leave without getting a degree.   That is a scandal.

 

We should put a warning label on our high school diplomas saying:  “This is not a certification that you are ready for college.”  Our system is failing students by lying to them.  Reports and stories like these only perpetuate the lie and keep the rest of us in the dark.

 

And in the dark, things look a lot better than they really are.

 

………………………………………………………..

 

My Concluding Comment

 

Hutchinson did his own generous amount of lying to students when he was Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  He served that three to five (3 to 5) years typical of the superintendent of the locally centralized school district.  He did not advance policies pertinent to curriculum or teacher training central to the attainment of educational excellence.  Ironically, he did nothing to advance a program of academic enrichment that would have included tutoring for students languishing below grade level in mathematics and reading, maximizing prospects that colleges and universities would have to provide remediation, whether in remedial courses as such, or in some other way.  Hutchinson did not create a professional force of staff comfortable on the streets or in the homes of students living in families facing challenges of finances or functionality;  he did not emphasize resource provision or referral of the kind needed to ensure that students of all demographic descriptors arrive at school in emotional and physical states conducive to learning.

 

Hence, Peter Hutchison is correct to question the significance of improved graduation rates in view of the wretched K-12 education that yields pieces of paper that are diplomas in name only.

 

But Hutchinson is himself deeply culpable for his own part in sustaining the system that he correctly derides during his tenure as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools;  and for failing to commit his post-tenure energies to addressing the problems that he left behind.

 

The failure of people who have professed to care about K-12 education to demonstrate staying power is among the many reasons why we have made no progress toward a system of excellence in public education in the United States.

 

The overhaul of K-12 education in the Minnesota and across the United States will take sustained activism.

 

It must take sustained activism.

 

This is the activism of which you read in this journal.

 

It is the activism that I challenge you, my readers, to embrace.

 

Article #4

Assessment #3

From Star Tribune, Editorial Pages,

Staff Editorial, 5 March 2018

“Grad Rates Can Be Deceiving ”                                       

 

Contributing to the environment of wretched K-12 education at the Minneapolis Public Schools is the mediocrity of coverage by reporters at the Star Tribune.  The past several reporters at the Star Tribune covering the Minneapolis Public Schools have been Steve Brandt, Alejandro Matos, and Beena Raghavendran;  Faiza Mahamud now seems to have replaced Raghavendran, with Anthony Lonetree now covering the St. Paul Public Schools.  Articles written by these journalists are at best serviceable;  often, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete. 

 

Star Tribune writers Mila Koupilova and Maryjo Webster are now also covering K-12 education for the Twin Cities Metro and the state;  they joined Faiza Mahamud in writing the first of three articles that I posted this week, asking readers to look for meaning in subtext and to analyze the articles for quality of reporting.

 

Please now read these articles again, paying careful attention to my own comments at multiple points in the heading and the text;  the article given for consideration below was written as the lead editorial rendered in the name of the editorial board of the Star Tribune on 5 March 2018 >>>>>

 

Star Tribune, Editorial Pages, Staff Editorial, February 5, 2018

“Grad Rates Can Be Deceiving ”

 

Heading and text of Star Tribune article, >>>>> “Graduation Rate at High Mark:  State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap” (Page A1, February 28), by Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud  >>>>>

 

Minnesota high schools reached a milestone last year:  Nearly 83 percent of students got their diplomas on time---  a record high graduation rate.  According to the state Department of Education, that’s and improvement of just over 4 percentage points from 2012 to 2017.

 

For the same period, the number of graduates taking remedial, catch-up courses during their first two years at state colleges and universities dropped by 26 percent, suggesting that more Minnesota students are leaving high school prepared.

 

The trend lines are slowly moving in the right direction, but too many kids are still too far behind.  Other measures show that even as more Minnesota teens finish K-12, unacceptably high numbers of them are not mastering the basics:  Statewide test scores have remained flat in recent years, and the stubborn achievement gap between white students and students of color persists.

 

My Comment

 

In the aftermath of publishing the mediocre article of 28  February 2018, “Graduation Rate at High Mark:  State Record Clouded by Persistent Achievement Gap,” written by Star Tribune staffers Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud;  and then publishing an opinion piece, “No, Learning Isn’t Booming.  Our Diplomas are Still a Fraud, ” written by former Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Peter Hutchinson (Star Tribune Opinion Pages, 2 March 2018);  the editorial staff tried to wander onto the thematic terrain traversed by Hutchinson.

 

>>>>> 

 

The editorial continues as follows  >>>>>

 

As former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Peter Hutchinson argues in a Star Tribune commentary, the National Assessment of Student Progress assessments, given every four years to a state sample of students, have shown no significant improvement in the past decade.  Only 40 to 50 percent of Minnesota students taking those texts were considered proficient in both reading and math.  And although Minnesota regularly has among the highest ACT college entrance exam scores among the states, only 30 percent of students taking the exam here meet all of the ACT benchmarks for college readiness.

 

The graduation data showed varying levels of improvement for all groups and some districts where disparities have narrowed.  Still, a difference of almost 19 percentage points remains between the two groups.  More than 88 percent of whites graduated, compared with about half of American Indian students and about two-thirds of black and Latino students.

 

My Comment    >>>>>

 

Star Tribune editorial board members and reportorial staff have diligently recorded those failures for the decade cited and, furthermore have given K-12 education mediocre coverage for prior decades.  Much like the MPS Board of Education and the Ed Graff administration, Star Tribune decision-makers and writers reveal themselves to be alternatively clueless or dishonest.

 

Just as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was putting severe pressure on school districts to make needed changes, staffers at the Star Tribune joined the national chorus led dually by forces of the left and the right to terminate the most promising national legislation that had ever been passed (under the dual leadership of Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican John Boehner).  Never grasping the details of NCLB, editors and writers at the Star Tribune nevertheless felt emboldened to echo the forces that eventually undermined legislation that put a deservedly harsh spotlight on the universally wretched level of K-12 education in Minnesota and the other 49 states, especially when disaggregated data necessitated by NCLB regulations revealed that while K-12 education in the United States is generally terrible, the quality of education rendered to impoverished young people and to African American, Hispanic, Native American, Somali, and Hmong students represents a moral abomination.

 

Meanwhile, Star Tribune staff lauded the now moribund efforts of former mayor R. T. Rybak at the ineffectual Generation Next;  Rybak soon shifted to a much more remunerative and cushy job heading the Minneapolis Foundation.  And from time to time the Star Tribune editorial board would sound off in favor of alternative licensure, great scope for Teach for American candidates, and other peripherally significant items touted by reformers (who have little idea themselves as to the constituent features of an excellent education).  Worse, Star Tribune staffers sounded favorable notes for school choice and for charter schools, the latter of which are as a rule even worse than conventional public schools.

 

One would search in vain for any indication that the editorial board or staff writers at the Star Tribune had much idea of the actual impediments to achieving excellent K-12 education at the level of the locally centralized school district, where the needed overhaul must go forth.

 

The editorial continues as follows  >>>>>

 

State Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius and Superintendents Joe Gothard in St. Paul and Ed Graff in Minneapolis were pleased with the limited progress, but acknowledged the pressing need to do more to improve academic achievement for more students.

 

“While we recognize the accomplishments, we must be sure [Minneapolis Public Schools] graduates leave school fully prepared for college and career,” Graff said in a statement.  “We know what we’re doing right---  but what can we do now to see the same gains in achievement that we’re seeing in graduation?”

 

To address that question, the Minneapolis Public Schools is focusing on literacy, expanding student support systems and increasing credit-recovery opportunities.  In St. Paul, the district recently announced a plan for improving literacy and math skills as well as kindergarten readiness.  And Cassellius says her department will send support to high schools with low graduation rates to address school-specific needs.

 

My Comment    >>>>>

 

Editorialists and staff writers at the Star Tribune are forever inclined to give serious credence to the inevitably failing efforts of education establishment figures such as Graff, Gothard, and Cassellius.  In these specific cases, the former two are superintendents who left their prior school districts still struggling with major issues of educational quality.  Graff was a conspicuous failure during his three years as superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska (where the school board declined to renew his contract;  achievement levels were woeful, in many areas even worse than abysmal achievement levels at the Minneapolis Public Schools.  As to Cassellius, she is a talented and perceptive educator who would make a good superintendent but whose tenure as Minnesota Education Commissioner has been vitiated by the need to follow the dictates of Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Governor Mark Dayton and DFL legislators similar politically purchased by Education Minnesota and local teachers unions such as the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.    

 

The editorial continues as follows  >>>>>

 

Those are worthy initiatives, but they’ll require sticking with models that work and letting ineffective programs go.  It will take focused instruction and support from families and communities.  The state has set a goal to have a 90 percent graduation rate statewide by 2020, with no student group falling below 85 percent.  With students of color still below 70 percent, that target will not be met given the current rate of improvement.

 

Steps must be taken to speed up the use of strategies that work for struggling learners.  Unless that happens, higher graduation rates won’t necessarily translate into well-educated students.

 

My Comment    >>>>>

 

Phrases such as “worthy initiatives,” models that work,” “ineffective programs,” ‘steps must be taken,” and “well-educated students” quintessentially represent the vacuous verbiage of Star Tribune editorialists and staff writers.  The term “focused instruction” actually denotes in one manifestation a promising program of Bernadeia Johnson that had resonance with the Core Knowledge approach of E. D. Hirsch;  here the Star Tribune editorial board uses the term murkily and cluelessly, as is that board’s wont.

 

……………………………………………………………………

 

Summary Comments  >>>>>

 

Editors at the Star Tribune are not sufficiently interested in the matter of improving K-12 education.  They are not knowledgeable enough on education issues to make the proper advocacies even if they were inclined to do so.  Furthermore, as employees of a mainstream newspaper, editors are hesitant to offend the offenders who give them access for interviews to do lightweight, sycophantic stories even when articles tend toward the feature rather than the reportorial.

 

In this situation, readers must always apply their own analytical reasoning in considering K-12 articles in the Star Tribune.

 

For that reasoning to be effective, readers must ever endeavor to increase their own knowledge of K-12 issues.  

 

Article #5

Concluding Comments

External Reasons for the Abominable Quality

Of Education at the Minneapolis Public Schools

 

The Role of the Star Tribune and the Importance

of Reading with Analytical Discernment.

 

I detailed the internal reasons for the abhorrent quality of education in the Minneapolis Public Schools in the first article (Introductory Comments) of this edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The external reasons for the wretched education imparted to MPS students, are as follows:

 

1)  Personnel at colleges and universities do not care about K-12 education;  they are content to make money off the lives of young people while sustaining the careers of themselves and their fellow staff members.  Education professors are the least regarded of the professorial presences at any college or university;  post-secondary administrators and professors have at least a remote understanding of the philosophical corruption of those who train K-12 bureaucrats and teachers, yet they accept and sustain their presence on campus.  Furthermore, since teacher training programs are cash cows that generate huge revenue for colleges and universities, administrators in those settings reap material benefit.  As for professors in legitimate academic departments, they like to complain with an air of superiority about the wretched knowledge and skill sets of students sent forth to them from K-12 systems, but they are content to perch in their sinecures without taking any action.  And pressed, very few professors have any cogent philosophy of education, content as they are to retreat to the comfort of “my field.”

     

2)  Most putative reformers have grave flaws.  They tend to emphasize matters such as alternative licensure, school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and legislative initiatives.  None of these emphases accomplish any change at the level of the locally centralized school district.  Teachers unions (e. g., Education Minnesota and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers [MFT]) wield enormous power;  they purchase the support of Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) politicians and give Republican legislators a well-deserved cold shoulder.  Teachers unions always go into motion to defeat or sabotage any reform initiative;  they must be taken on courageously at the local level, because given the penchant for control in the United States any substantive and enduring change will occur in K-12 education at the level of the locally centralized school district.

 

3)  The public is variously clueless or indifferent about K-12 education.  Citizens mostly do not embrace the responsibility for citizenship;  they are ill-informed and frequently misguided.  With regard to matters pertinent to K-12 education, the public apparently trusts that there is something called the education professional who understands how to superintend school district and K-12 education;  but there is no such entity as the education professional, in the sense that there are professional physicians and attorneys.  Administrators and teachers at the K-12 level have all been

trained in abysmal departments, colleges, and schools of education;  they are not academicians or scholars, and they do not believe in knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.  In this context, the harm inflicted by public ignorance and apathy about those who oversee wretched systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools is magnified.

 

4)  Reporting on K-12 education at newspapers such as the Star Tribune ranges from mediocre to abysmal.   Steve Brandt, Alejandro Matos, Beena Raghavendran, and Anthony Lonetree have all written articles that are at best serviceable;  at times, their articles betray their misinformation and naivete.  Writers Mila Koupilova, Maryjo Webster, and Faiza Mahamud have recently written articles of like mediocrity and ingenuousness.

 

This April 2018 edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota has given readers an opportunity to consider my dissection of three articles that expose the inadequate journalistic quality exhibited by Star Tribune staff in coverage of K-12 issues.  Such low-grade journalistic coverage is among the external reasons for the maintenance of wretched systems of public education such as the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

 

The next edition of this journal focuses on the similar lack of grasp of the defining qualities of K-12 education that prevails among most of those who submit and get their opinion pieces published in the Star Tribune.  In that context of undiscerning articles appearing in the Star Tribune, my readers must be prepared to analyze critically all that they read pertinent to K-12 education, learning to look for subtext, flaws in reasoning, and the absence of many matters of importance that should gain coverage but do not.

 

Based on information gained and habits of analysis trained in reading this journal, citizens may then go forth to promote the overhaul of K-12 education in the Minneapolis Public Schools as a model for the locally centralized school district, so that we arrive at that point wherein our schools are excellent and our society the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.