St. Paul Public School District Writer Anthony Lonetree Will Now Metaphorically Be Twisting on His Own Petard

Morning message just sent to son Ryan Davison-Reed >>>>>

Very efficient start to the day >>>>>

Within two hours effectively been to the gym, barbershop, bathroom & shower stall, newspaper reading room, and (Gary's green chili cheese egg) diner---  now ready metaphorically to make St. Paul Public Schools  >Star Tribune< beat writer Anthony Lonetree twist on his own metaphorical petard---  and to make education establishment figures in many quarters squirm---  trust that your Wednesday will be better than will these next hours for Anthony and his fellow culprits, Beloved Son---

Article #3 Series of Open Letters to >Star Tribune< Reporters Anthony Lonetree, Erin Golden, and Mara Klecker Concerning the Moral Abhorrence of Their Cowardly Journalism

 

An Open Letter to >Star Tribune< Reporter Anthony Lonetree Regarding the First of Two Articles Written on Saturday, 23 July 2021  >>>>>  “2 St. Paul School Board Candidates Come Up Short of DFL Endorsement”

>>>>>             An Initial Very Biog Hint to My Readers

With regard to school boards, remember that the Minneapolis Public Schools edition features seven hopeless members and two that seem likely to prove disappointing. 

Jenny Arneson (District 1), Siad Ali (District 3), Nelson Inz (District 5), Ira Jourdain (District 6), Josh Pauly (At-large) and Kim Ellison (At-Large) are all agents of the Democratic-Farmer-Labot (DFL)/Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) cohort that will always oppose the necessary overhaul to desing and implement knowledge-intensive curriculum and elevated teacher quality. 

Ariana Cerrillo (District 4) will continue to be an improvement over former occupant Bob Walser and Sharon El Amin (District 2) much better than KerryJo Felder but neither of these members who were elected in November 2020 seems poised to advocate for the needed changes.

And that is what an effective member of any school board should do:  advocate for the needed overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality, upon an understanding that in doing so they will have to oust many central officer administrators.  At the Minneapolis Pubic Schools (MPS), this would mean facilitating the exit of MPS Superintendent Ed Graff;  Interim Senior Academic Offficer Aimee Fearing;  Associate Superintendents Shawn Harris-Berry, LaShawn Ray, Ron Wagner, and Brian Zambreno;  and the entire 27-member MPS Department of Teaching and Learning.

Such assertive action will require an understanding of the needed changes, the depth of incompetence of central administrators, the intellectual insubstantiality of all academic decision-makers, the courage to serve as agents of change, and the political independence of the MFT to challenge the inept education establishment.

With that very big hint in view, now read Anthony Lonetree’s shorter of two  articles in the Saturday, 23 2021 edition of the Star Tribune >>>>>

………………………………………………………………………………..

“2 St. Paul School Board Candidates Come Up Short of DFL Endorsement”

(Anthony Lonetree, Star Tribune, 23 July 2021)

 

St. Paul’s all- virtual DFL city convention wrapped up Friday with no endorsement being given to two candidates seeking a four-year school board seat.

 

Jim Vue, the board’s vice-chairman, and James Farnsworth, a member  of the Unversity of Minnesota Board of Regents, fell short of the 60% delegate support needed for the party nod.

 

Earlier, DFLers endorsed three school board candidates, leaving Vue and Farnsworth to compete for support in the second round of balloting that ended Thursday.  The field tally had Vue at 58.7%, Farnsworth at 35.6%, and “no endorsement” at 5.7%.

 

The filing period for the city’s mayoral and school board elections opens Tuesday.

 

The final slate of DFL-endorsed candidates includes Mayor Melvin Carter, who is seeking a second term in office;  Halla Henderson and Uriah Wood, who aim to fill two fo the three four-year school board seats up for election;  and Clayton Howatt, who wants to complete the remaining two years of the seat vacated by former member Steve Marchese.

                

…………………………………………………………………………….

 

>>>>>             A Moment for Readers to Ruminate

 

Readers now take a moment to think about the subtext of the Lonetree article, the actual issues of importance versus the surface issues always covered by the cowardly reporers of the Star Tribune.

 

Then read my opn letter to Anthony Lonetree pertinent to the article of

note  >>>>>

 

…………………………………………………………………………….

 

July 24, 2021

 

Anthony---

 

You article, “2 St. Paul School Board Candidates Come Up Short of DFL Endorsement,” in yesterday’s 23 July 2021 edition of the Star Tribune is another serviceable mediocrity, informational but requiring no courage

to write.

 

With regard to school boards, remember that occupants are overwhelmingly agents of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party/Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) cohort that will always oppose the necessary overhaul to

design and implement knowledge-intensive curriculum and elevate teacher quality.  Even rare independent candidates fail to comprehend the needed changes.

 

And that is what an effective member of any school board should do:  advocate for the the needed overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality, upon an understanding that in doing so they will have to oust many central officer administrators.  This means ousting current central office leadership consisting of the superintendent and all academic program decision-makers

Such assertive action will require an understanding of the needed changes, the depth of incompetence of central administrators, the intellectual insubstantiality of all academic decision-makers, the courage to serve as agents of change, and the political independence of the MFT to challenge the inept education establishment.

Understand, then, that the DFL nominating process, which those of us on the left will have to tolerate for positions such as mayor and legislators, is corrupt with regard to public education issues:  Members of the DFL are controlled by Education Minnesota and local union affiliates.  Teacher unions will always oppose the installation of knowledge-intensive curriculum that teachers at the median do not have the academic training to impart, and they will oppose the needed teacher training to prepare teachers able to deliver substantive knowledge and skill sets.

In this situation, the DFL-endorsed candidacies of Halla Henderson, Uriah Ward, and Clayton Howatt should be viewed with suspicion;  and those of Jim Vue and James Farnsworth considered more favorably, since if they are elected they will not bear the moral weight of DFL/St. Paul Federation of Teacher sycophancy.

You should at the very least be aware of the subtext of your articles for anone who comprehends the most vexatious issues of public education.

And some day you should gather the courage to shed your cover as a journalistic mediocrity and challenge the curriculum, teacher quality, and institutional corruption that shortchanges our precious young people in the public schools every day they go forth to another day of academic abuse to which they are subjected by administrators and teachers.

With the comprehension that comes with 50 years of teaching students at the urban core---

Gary

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.

Director, New Salem Education Initiative

http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com

Article #2 in a Series of Open Letters to >Star Tribune< Reporters Anthony Lonetree, Erin Golden, and Mara Klecker Concerning the Moral Abhorrence of Their Cowardly Journalism

 An Open Letter to Star Tribune Cowardly and Irresponsible Minnesota Education Beat Reporter Erin Golden 

 

>>>>> 

 

Covid a Serious Public Health Issue That Conveniently Allows MDE and Local District Incompetents to Mire Academic Abuse of Students in the Muck of Distraction

 

<<<<< 

 

July 23, 2021

 

Erin---

 

Your online under lingering Covid conditions article is serviceable but cowardly, as always avoiding the most vexatious issues in public education.  Perpetual distractions 

obscure the academically important issues that would follow as streams from the thematic river of your article >>>>>

 

>>>>>  Heather Mueller is an intellectual lightweight with not a single degree in a major subject area;

 

>>>>>  Ed Graff and MPS curriculum decision makers have similarly slim credentials;

 

>>>>>  Students have not suffered academically under Covid online conditions because the standard education received is knowledge-deficient and skill-deplete;

 

 >>>>>  Deferring to local districts on Covid matters at this point jibes with abiding preK-12 conditions in which national and state policy always gives way to locally centralized reality, which undermines putative reforms, most of which are pretenses anyway;

 

>>>>>  Under these actualities, public education produces ignorant citizens, maintains degraded conditions at the urban core, induces violence born of frustration, and sends potential societal jewels to prison.

 

And you and Anthony and Mara persist in your cowardice and abominable ignorance to merely parrot the utterances of those who academically abuse our precious young people every day their feet hit the ground---

 

Conveyed with the power of 50 years teaching young people of central cities---

 

Gary

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com

An Open Letter to >Star Tribune< Reporter Anthony Lonetree Concerning the Moral Abhorrence of His Cowardly Journalism and That Of Fellow Culprits Erin Golden and Mara Klecker

July 21, 2021                                                                                                      

Anthony---

Yours and Mara's and Erin's articles belie the most abysmal naivete;  the public school establishment wags you like a dog its tale---

Neither MPS nor Saint Paul Public Schools has the curriculum or teacher quality to deliver a well-rounded education.  Even those students who manage to graduate walk across the stage to receive a diploma in name only.

The three of you should be ashamed of cowardly journalism that perpetuates a system that sends so many young people living at the urban core to desperate lives on mean streets leading to early death or incarceration---

With 50 years of teaching and research experience,

Gary

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph.D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

http://www.newsalemeducation.blogspot.com

Front Matter and Contents >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VIII, No. 1, July 2021

Journal of the K-12 Revolutiion:  Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota

Volume VIII,

No. 1

July 2021

Journal of the K-12 Revolution:

Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota         

A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Editor

               

               

Why Gary Marvin Davison Is the Guy Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never Fool  >>>>>   

Illustrative Experiences of Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

 

New Salem Educational Initiativ

Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Why Gary Marvin Davison Is the Guy Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never Fool   >>>>>   

Illustrative Experiences of Students in the

New Salem Educational Initiative

 

A Five-Article Series         

 

Copyright © 2021

Gary Marvin Davison

New Salem Educational Initiative

 

Contents

 

Introduction                                                                                                                            

 

Why I am the Guy Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never

Fool

 

Article #1

                            

Exposure of the Academic Abuse Heaped on Children at the Minneapolis Pubic Schools  >>>>>

                                                   

A Remarkable Tuesday, 1 June, in the New Salem Educational Initiative Demonstrates the Intellectual Corruption of the Minneapolis Public Schools and        the Mediocrity of Charter and Near Suburban Alternatives

 

Article #2 

 

Salient Student Academic Sessions on Thursday, 10 June 2021

 

Article #3

 

Importance of Well-Established Body of Knowledge as Witnessed in Student Academic Sessions of 11 June 2021

 

Article #4

 

The Enormous Importance of Loving Young People in Imparting Knowledge-Intensive, Skill-Replete Education:  Illustrative Experiences Every Sundday in the New Salem Educational Initiative

Introduction >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota Volume VIII, No. 1, July 2021

Introduction

 

Why I am the Guy Officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools Will Never

Fool

 

Students of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools are academically abused by their teachers and administrators every day their feet hit the ground.  In this respect, they are typical victims of our wretched public schools in the United States, which leave a few people able to survive, whether because of extraordinary personal dedication and study, by gaining access to the few teachers capable of teaching Advanced Placement courses, or by having the financial wherewithal to hire personal tutors or attend private schools with the curricular focus and the connections to send students forth to well-regarded college and university experiences.

 

But few people in the United States are broadly or deeply educated across the natural sciences and the liberal arts.  Even those students who go forth to the colleges and universities of best reputation maintain major gaps in their knowledge that are not rectified in post-secondary level.  Students may dabble in other fields during their first and second years of a four-year college experience, but then the focus is trained on a major and a minor field or two of study.  They then may go on to even narrower training in graduate or professional schools.

 

Thus do we have a nation of citizens who know little of the United States Constitution, how the electoral system works, any sense of the history of the nation or of the world.  Their reading in nonfiction and nonfictional works tends to be slim or trivial.  Citizen grasp of the details of climate science, the functioning of liberal capitalist and democratic socialist and state capitalist economies, or international trade dynamics tends toward zero.  Most people live out their earthly sojourns devoid of knowledge of and appreciation for multiple musical genres or the visual art of the West or Asia or Africa.  They have little idea of how the food that they eat is produced, the nutritional content of their diet, or the most healthful maintenance of the bodies that must carry them forth throughout their earthly sojourn.  Very few citizens have broad knowledge of world systems of religions and, most important ethics, from which to forge their own meaing and sense of purpose.

 

Many people, so devoid of knowledge and ethics and purpose, give themselves to various forms and levels of violence, to destructive pharmaceuticals, and to behaviors that may end their lives before any adult consciousness has been attained and in any case well short of their possible life span.

 

Most abused are young people living at the urban core who must attend schools at which the knowledge and skills imparted are minimal, the atmosphere is intimidating and abusive, and the prospects for a fulfilling life are dim.  Thus do cycles of familial poverty continue.  Thus are the urban poor entrapped.   Entrapment is also witnessed in the rural poor and those for whom a vision of a soul-enriching contemporary life is not found on the reservations and territories of indigenous peoples.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

I am blessed in the New Salem Educational Initiative to be able to provide to my students the education that they do not get in the Minneapolis Public Schools, nor in institutions to which some of them flee in their unfulfilled search for a decent school-based education.  But I cannot teach everybody, and thus do I press on with the K-12 Revolution.

 

Through my experiences with my students, the frustrations conveyed to me by them and their families, and the factual data of my exhaustive research, I know the deficiencies of education in the United Staes as does no one else on the planet.

 

As the following articles make clear,

 

I am the guy that officials of the Minneapolis Public Schools will never fool.

Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota Volume VIII, No. 1, July 2021

Article #1 

Exposure of the Academic Abuse Heaped on Children at the Minneapolis Pubic Schools  >>>>>

                                                   

A Remarkable Tuesday, 1 June, in the New Salem Educational Initiative Demonstrates the Intellectual Corruption of the Minneapolis Public Schools and        the Mediocrity of Charter and Near Suburban Alternatives

 

Note to my readers  >>>>>

 

>>>>>  Student names given in the following article are data privacy pseudonyms.

 

My interactions with students on Tuesday, 1 June, represent in microcosm the power of the New Salem Educational Initiative and the wretched quality of  education  delivered both by the Minneapolis Public Schools and alternative options---  those options exercised by parents seeking to facilitate the escape of their children to better academic programs.

 

……………………………………………………..

 

At 2:30 I met with Janelle Robinson, a student with roots to North Minneapolis who attends high school in a near suburb;  under my tutelage, Janelle has moved from being a B student in middle school to a contender for valedictorian in high school.

 

Janelle works hard to get good grades and takes selective genuine interest in her classes but does not read enough or accumulate sophisticated vocabulary enough on her own, nor does she acquire such vocabulary in her high school classes;  I am working hard to convince her that if she wants first to have a chance to hit 21 (national average) on the ACT (which according to my pacing for her she will take next October) and then move as far upward from there as possible, she cannot depend on any magic academic wand I can wave but must put in more time herself.

 

On Tuesday I was set to continue reading with Janelle my United States history chapter from my nearly complete book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, then move on to some articles in the Star Tribune.  As is the case with all students who come to me from the Minneapolis Public Schools or near suburbs, subject area knowledge and grasp of current events are proscribed by unsubstantial knowledge sets provided at school.  Newspapers and quality news websites are strange new entities for my students until I introduce them to these sources of information.

 

But, as is often the case, I found myself needing to respond flexibly to an immediate need unmet at school.  Janelle had a driving desire to better grasp the essentials of the Korean War than she had gotten in her world history class;  she has a final exam looming that emphasizes that conflict.

 

Thus did I proceed to go through a bevy of information, that in addition to the wretched beginning for the United States-led United Nations troops;  the figures Kim Il-song, Syngman Rhee, and Douglas MacArthur;  the innovative mid-peninsula landing and comeback for the U.N. forces;  the impressive Chinese troops seeming to turn the tide for the North;  and then the U.S./U.N. counterattack and the controversies that stalled the war at the 38^th parallel---  I in the meantime had to go back over all manner of information pertinent to World War II, Cold War, communism (theoretical and in practice), fascism, and capitalism (as functioning in both democratic and authoritarian political systems).  Students never have any firm understanding of world political systems or the historical background to the topics they are studying in the high school classroom.

 

I covered this information within two hours;  the whirlwind tour of important topics gave Janelle the preparation that this conscientious student needed to gain the academic ballast necessary to go forward confidently to her exam.

 

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At 5:00 I met with a grade 4 student, Chanette Martin, another young person with North Minneapolis roots who nevertheless attends a charter school in St. Paul.  She is a fascinating case.  Complications at birth left her with neuro-challenges yielding good verbal but terrible math reasoning.  I am working hard to train those areas of the brain involved in mathematical calculation and reasoning. 

 

Chanette is making significant progress.  In terms of the four basic operations, she is now adding multiple digit problems with high accuracy.  But subtraction continues challenging for her.  I am working with Chanette on counting backwards, a skill that involves significant rewiring for her:  She will start to count down from twenty but about 15 start to go back up again. 

 

I have found that repetition is especially important in Chanette’s case.  Rather than just relying on her counting orally, I wrote down the numbers descending from 20 and had her read those as necessary, then with each attempt encouraged her to rely less and less on the written numbers, until finally Chanette did not rely at all on the numerical script.

 

No such innovative techniques are utilized by the special education or mainstream teachers at Chanette’s school.

 

We had a breakthrough day on this key preparatory skill for subtraction. 

 

Chanette, her mother, and I were elated. 

 

……………………………………………………………………………..

 

At 6:30 I moved on to Bellina Frampton, a grade 7 student this year who began to study with me last academic year, at grade 6;  she also has eschewed the Minneapolis Public Schools:  She attends a North Minneapolis charter school.

 

Bellina is manifesting exalted skills in all area of academics and the intellectual curiosity and self-motivated quality so often lacking even in students who get good grades at school.  I had given Bellina a goal of reading on her own three pages from my single-spaced, informationally dense 11-page version of the United States history chapter---  and she had buzzed through, looking up vocabulary as necessary, to master material featuring the achievements and limitations of Jacksonian Democracy;  the Westward expansion (with an effort to convey objectively the motivations of the white settlers, as well as the deleterious impact on Native Americans);  the formation of the Republican Party and the North-South tensions that led to the Civil War;  the promise and demise of Reconstruction with the Compromise of 1877;  and nearly 100 years of misery that should not have been in the aftermath of Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws, with reference, too, to the implications of the episode of 1890 at Wounded Knee, the closing of the American frontier, and the brutal treatment of Native Americans in the worst days of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and assimilationist policy, 1890-1936.

 

Along the way, Bellina and I had excellent discussions of the brutality perpetrated against African and Native Americans from the late 19th century forward, beyond the oft if not very incisively covered period of slavery and the treaty system.  We also discussed at length how the Andrew Jackson presidency did expand the electorate to poor white men, even if expansion to African American men had to wait until the 15^th Amendment (1868) and then, with poll taxes and literacy tests and such, to the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and for women until at least the 19^th Amendment (1920).

 

Bellina has an ability to handle nuance and to grasp the subtleties of subject matter that exceeds the intellectual reasoning of most high schoolers.  We have an enormously firm relationship, laughing easily and moving fluidly from mathematics to history to literature and across the liberal arts. 

 

Bellina is one to watch for the future.

 

She will be hands-down the New Salem Educational Initiative Student of the Yrear for this academic year 2020-2021.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………

 

Whether remaining as students enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools or engaging in an unfulfilled attempt to get a better education in near suburban systems or charter schools, young people are academically shortchanged every day by teachers and administrators.

 

In their two hours meeting with me per week, my students gain the preponderance of their knowledge-intensive skill-replete education. 

 

As I often remind members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education during my monthly Public Comments, I know fully how wretched are the schools of the district and the alternatives.  My frequent remark is,

 

“Now when I finish these comments, I want you to say to yourselves, ‘There’s the guy that we will never fool:   He daily provides the instruction that we do not, to the students whom we academically abuse every day our feet hit the ground.’ “