Introductory Comments >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VIII, Number 12, June 2022

Introductory Comments

Seizing the Unprecedented Opportunity Presented in the Selection of a New Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools

Ed Graff’s resignation as Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) presents an unprecedented opportunity to overhaul curriculum and teacher quality at a locally centralized school district that can serve as model for other districts throughout the nation.

To achieve the needed overhaul we must move logically from a vision of excellence in education, toward the succession of steps that must be taken as the search process ensues.  Accordingly, the categorical considerations are as follows:

 

Understanding the Meaning of Excellent Education

Excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts to students of all demographic descriptors throughout the preK-12 years.

An excellent teacher is a scholar of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts to students of all demographic descriptors.

 

Understanding the Needed Qualities in a Superintendent---  and in the Senior Academic Officer

Because certain certifications and licensures are required by the state of Minnesota for the position of superintendent, and because institutional credits leading to those certifications and licensures must be acquired through matriculation in academically insubstantial programs taught by education professors who are not subject area specialists, any candidate for superintendent will be unsatisfactory.

The challenge, then, will be to select the least objectionable candidate for Superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

The position would ideally be occupied by a scholar in a key academic area, but given the formal requirements set by the education establishment, the chance of getting such a scholar is slim in the extreme.  The next best alternative, therefore, is to select a superintendent who is atypically receptive to the momentous changes needed for instituting knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced curriculum and training the teachers needed to impart such a curriculum. 

Since a superintendent possessing education establishment credentials will almost certainly not possess the scholarly credentials necessary to oversee the needed overhaul, a new senior academic officer will be needed.  A senior academic officer does not need any administrative certifications and can thus be a university-based or independent scholar possessing a Ph.D. in a key subject area.

These two elements of the superintendent search, then, are critical to the needed overhaul for the attainment of academic excellence:

>>>>>   selecting a superintendent willing to take the steps necessary to achieve the needed overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality, including;

>>>>>     bringing on staff a scholar possessing a Ph.D. in a key subject area (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, political science, economics, English or world literature) to serve as senior academic officer. 

The Need for an Unconventional Superintendent Search

The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education is likely to turn to an expensive search firm in seeking candidates.  This is a waste of money.  Such firms can never find suitable candidates, because they focus on those with the formalistic but unsatisfactory credentials put in place by the education establishment.  There are at least two staff members at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway) who have the formal credentials but who would be willing to seek the necessary senior academic officer for overseeing the requisite overhaul in curriculum and teacher quality.

Ideally, the MPS Board of Education would decide not to hire a professional research firm but, rather, select from the in-house candidates, in consultation with the MPS Department of Human Resources.

The Board may not have the courage to bypass the engagement of the conventional search firm, though, opting for reasons of public posture to hire such a firm.

In that case, enormous activist pressure will need to be exerted on the firm and the board to select a superintendent with the inclinations stipulated above, including the willingness to engage the services of a scholarly senior academic officer.

The Need for Fierce Resolve in Bucking the Enormous Opposition that Will Ensue from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Many Central Office Staff Members with Vested Interests in the Existing System

The steps recommended above for the superintendent search will engender fierce opposition from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and from many MPS central office staff members.  Further, for reasons that will be detailed in subsequent articles, the specific changes needed to implement the overhauled program designed by the new senior academic officer will also be vehemently opposed by the MFT and others with vested interests in the current system.

As the overhaul ensues and the new program for knowledge-intensive curriculum and excellent teacher quality is moving toward implementation, the Department of Teaching and Learning and the ineffective Office of Black Student Achievement will be jettisoned and staff members of the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education will be replaced with academicians dedicated to the impartation of academically substantive education to Native American students.  Those staff members affected by these moves will rise in heated opposition, as will many in the leadership and rank and file of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.

Community activists will need to be vigilant in their insistence on the needed transformation, willing to meet the opposition of those with vested interests with superior energy and commitment. 

Other Considerations   

Considerations for the New Superintendent and Senior Academic Officer

In achieving the transformation indicated above, the new superintendent and senior academic officer will need to make certain other initiatives in support of the overhauled curriculum and teacher quality.

At the preK-5 level, an hour a day should be devoted to academic enrichment, giving those few students operating at grade level the opportunity to explore driving interests---  and those in the majority functioning below grade level the opportunity to acquire grade-level skills in mathematics and reading.  Similar opportunities and assistance should be provided to students in grades 6-8 and 9-12 to ensure that all students are prepared to benefit from the new academically substantive curriculum.

Great thoughtfulness should be applied to administrative reorganization at the Davis Center.  Those now serving in positions as senior finance, operations, and information technology officers are highly adroit at their positions;  and many others outside the academic division are quite competent.  But, with newly retrained principals and teachers obviating the excuse for many existing positions, academic division staff should be mostly dismissed, along with the position of associate superintendent.

And, though the overwhelming inclination should be toward bureaucratic diminution, one new department, a Department of Resource Provision and Referral should be established, staffed with those comfortable on the streets and in the homes of students from families struggling with issues of finances and functionality.

Considerations for the Public

To seize the opportunity afforded by Ed Graff’s resignation and move forward along the course indicated above, the public will have to become informed and engaged.

An activist contingent will need to embrace and agitate for the overhaul indicated above.

And the activist members of the public will need to be aware of looming important decisions by the MPS Board of Education.

The current board consists of

>>>    District members Nelson Inz (District 5), Kim Caprini (at-large), Jenny Arneson (District 1), and board chair Kim Ellison (at-large), who as a group are resistant to change, heavily connected to the MFT, and concerned primarily with controlling board decisions for maintenance of the current system;  all of their manipulations should be regarded as suspect;

>>>    District members Adriana Cerrillo and Sharon El-Amin, who are independent voices willing to critically examine the existing system;  their actions and comments should be taken with utmost seriousness;

>>>    District members Siad Ali (District 3) and Ira Jourdain (District 6), who have been erratic in their votes and comments but should be encouraged to move toward the positions of Cerrillo and El-Amin.  

The Inz/Caprini/Ellison/Arneson contingent maneuvered to secure the appointment of Minnesota Deputy Commissioner of Education Stephanie Burrage to be the Interim Superintendent of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, to the point of seeking to go public in asserting the desirability of selecting Burrage without properly consulting other board members;  this engendered fervent opposition from those thus not consulted and led the foursome to a fallback position promoting Burrage and former Minnesota Commissioner of Education Brenda Cassellius as the two candidates for consideration.  This maneuver, too, faced opposition, inducing the quest for a candidate upon whom a consensus could be reached.  The consensus candidate who emerged was Associate Superintendent Rochelle Cox, who for many years led the MPS Department of Special Education and in so doing made many improvements in a chronically troubled special education program.   

Cox has been with the Minneapolis Public Schools for almost 25 years;  in addition to her accomplishment in making favorable changes in special education, Cox is atypically inclined for a person who has risen in the education establishment toward academically substantive education and is imbued with a deep love of the young people to whom knowledge-intensive curriculum will be imparted.

>>>>>   At the Tuesday, 14 June, meeting the members of the MPS Board of Education will explain the process for seeking a new superintendent.  The hope will be that the board conveys that the process will not involve a search firm and the fee of $60,000 to $120,000 that such firms typically command for coming up with the inevitably inadequate list of candidates. 

Listen carefully, keeping in view the qualities needed in a new superintendent and senior academic officer as discussed above, as the process for seeking a new superintendent is explained.  Be ready to oppose the hiring of a search firm and to assert the advantages of hiring an in-house candidate inclined toward the needed changes.

And be attentive to all of my comments along the way as we seek to bring knowledge-intensive, skill-replete, logically sequenced curriculum and elevated teacher quality to the long-suffering students of the Minneapolis Public Schools. 

Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VIII, Number 12, June 2022

Article #1                                                                                                                                                                                 

Facing the Dilemma of Ineptitude in the Public Education Establishment

The Intellectual Damage Inflicted by Education Professors and the Incompetence of the Teachers and Administrators Whom They Train

 

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

 

We have known for at least 35 years that we must transform our systems of K-12 educational delivery in order to give citizens of all demographic descriptors an excellent education.  In 1983 a federally commissioned study, A Nation at Risk, signaled the crisis in schools of the United States, with implications for many facets of life in the polity, given the critical importance of education to the quality of life in a nation of advanced economic status and world leadership.

 

By definition, we have not cared enough to make the needed changes.  People do those things about which they care deeply or to which they are addicted.  In the United States, people get married, and secure the most remunerative employment possible.  They have children and angle for the best possible lives for their own particular progeny.  People buy houses, automobiles, electronic goods, and consumer items of many sorts at the upper ranges of what they can afford.  They tweet and text and stare at computer screens.  They ensconce themselves in front of television sets to dance with the stars, identify their favorite new singing voice, and immerse themselves in the reality of other people’s vapid lives.

 

All of this is more important to people as of the year 2022 than the education of our precious children. 

 

Rarely does any child in the United States get an excellent education.  As a nation we do not believe enough in the importance of knowledge-based lives to even imagine an excellent education for our children.  We go to war because in our episodic propensities going to war at the time seems the right thing to do, or we are told by people of our political affinity that it is the right thing to do, not because citizens as a whole have the knowledge base in history and international relations to make considered judgments of their own.  Whether or not, and for how long, the Federal Reserve should pour money into the economy is a policy decision evaluated by people on the same episodic and self-focused basis, not because the typical citizen has a whit of knowledge concerning macroeconomics.  The reality of climate change is evaluated by the typical person not on the basis of any depth of scientific knowledge but on what scientists themselves say, at best, and in view of religious and personal biases, at worst.

 

The unit of delivery of excellent K-12 education in the United States must be our locally centralized school districts.  In public education systems of East Asia and the European social democracies, curriculum and policies are centralized at the national level, but in the United States

people claim an attachment to local control.  So in this nation, any progress that will be made in

transforming K-12 education must be made at the level of the locally centralized school district.  We cannot and should not pin our hopes on charter schools or vouchers.  Most charter schools are worse than conventional public schools.  There are not enough excellent private schools to accommodate the masses of K-12 students, even if a thoroughgoing voucher system could be instituted.  And in any case, should we ever aspire to the quality of education found in East Asia and the European social democracies, we need to find a way to approximate the coherence of curriculum found in those educational systems. 

 

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Mediocrity of K-12 education in the United States originates in departments, colleges, and schools of education wherein professors do not believe that systematically acquired and mentally stored knowledge of the liberal arts is important.  They believe, instead, in so-called “constructivist” approaches that begin with the knowledge base and life experiences of the student as a foundation for seeking information that is relevant to the particular young person. 

This so-called “progressive” approach to education is implemented upon the assumption that the systematic, sequential accumulation of knowledge in math, natural science, social science, history, literature, and the fine arts is not important.  Only those topics that passionately drive a given student, for which a teacher serves as “facilitator” or guide in accumulating this particularistic information, are important.  As to accumulated knowledge from the human inheritance, one can always “look it up.”

But this view of education and the teacher is deeply flawed.  Imagine going to a cardiologist with complaints about chest pains and being told that the doctor would have to take a moment to look up what is known about arterial blockage, because this was not covered in medical school.  Consider describing to an attorney an experience whereby police officers broke into one’s home without a search warrant and being told by this lawyer that this sounds like an interesting predicament that would have to be researched, because such instances were not part of the law school curriculum.

Taught by such professors promulgating the “constructivist,“ “progressive” approach to knowledge and pedagogy, our K-5 teachers, especially, enter our classrooms woefully underprepared.  Those who teach at the grades 6-12 level are a bit better trained, because most receive bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., physics, math, history, economics, English literature, fine arts).  But low licensure requirements mean that those who enter our middle schools and high schools are typically not truly masters of their fields.  Graduate programs for teachers, in the meantime, provide programs for easily attained master’s degrees that are financial spigots for universities.

Teachers unions act in ways to protect such unprepared teachers.  Most central school district and school building administrators are too busy protecting their sinecures of substantial remuneration to contest teacher union power, and thus the status quo prevails.  Our children walk across stages to receive pieces of paper that are diplomas in name only.  Most could not tell you the difference between debt and deficit;  the Roman and Byzantine Empires;  Newtonian and Einstein’s physics;  Ego and Superego;  or the literary styles of Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  And they could not tell you the essential differences, as we direct nominal focus toward Black History each February, in the approaches to the African American dilemma in the early 20^th century as espoused by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Marcus Garvey.

Constructivist ideology and systemic flaws operate in highly similar ways from state to state, so that teacher preparation programs and institutions of K-12 education maintain the status quo of mediocrity in Minnesota and throughout the nation.   But we cannot afford to wait for the needed overhaul of teacher preparation programs on college campuses, nor can we depend on action taken mainly at the state level to produce the needed institutional change.

The needed overhaul of K-12 education will ride the waves of energy emitted by local school district activists who take seriously the great accumulated wealth of knowledge that defines the human experience, working to retrain teachers and revamp curriculum to ensure that children of all ethnic and economic descriptors receive this knowledge as their rightful inheritance.

 

Teachers unions and administrators with their own group affiliations may struggle together over contracts, evaluations, and job assignments, but teachers and administrators at all levels espouse the views that they imbibed from those campus embarrassments known as education professors.

 

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

Emphasis on the individual interest of the student as the driver of what was to be learned fit well with the zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Over the decades since the 1920s, parents, teachers, and local communities had often objected to the views of education professors, but during the years from the 1960s to the present year of 2022, the ideology of the education professor has been dominant in our schools.  When a student gets to high school, she or he may scramble quickly to make up for lack of knowledge by taking substantive Advanced Placement (AP) courses;  but even the most ambitious college-bound student graduates with large gaps in the knowledge and skills necessary to make the most of the college or university experience.

 

Although this key anti-knowledge message took different forms as pedagogical fads came and went, the essential core of the message has never changed.  That message is entirely consistent with the contemporary education professor’s insistence on the ability to think critically and to become an enthusiast of lifelong learning as the key components for students in K-12 schools.  The education professor maintains that the acquisition of specific knowledge and skill sets is not important, for those can always be looked up or learned as necessary.

So never think that such pap is new or “progressive,” although education professors appropriate the latter appellation.  Such harmful jargon has been the consistent usage of education professors for a century.

Professors of cognitive psychology demonstrate through research published in professionally refereed journals that knowledge builds on knowledge, freeing up limited short-term memory for quick retrieval in the pursuit of knowledge sought in the moment.  Adept and informed critical thinking depends on knowledge.  Love of learning most often happens when students pursue knowledge systematically as a matter of acquired habit, a labor of love.  Critical thinking and lifelong learning are functions of knowledge purposely pursued;  they are not efficiently or effectively demonstrated in the absence of systematically acquired knowledge.

Education professors have done much harm in seeking to make a place for themselves at colleges and universities, where they occupy the lowest rung with regard to professorial status.  They send forth ill-trained teachers, particularly at the K-5 level, who know very little about mathematics, natural science, history, economics, psychology, literature, English usage, or the fine arts.  Middle school teachers are little better, and most high school teachers are not capable of serving as instructors in advanced courses such as those for Advanced Placement.

 

Thus do we get abominable performance by students in the United States on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment);  and by students in Minnesota on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).

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Education professors are objectionable generally.  Mathematics education professors are objectionable particularly.  A mathematics education professor is someone without the intellectual mettle to pursue a degree in mathematics, thus retreating to a similar-sounding credential.  Many mathematics education professors lack the intellectual discipline to master the intricacies even of algebra and geometry, much less calculus, differential equations, linear and advanced algebra, topography, and the ever-ascending challenges in a legitimate mathematics masters or doctoral program.  

 

Because mathematics professors are themselves mathematically challenged, they are forever contriving ways to make what is simple seem difficult, so as to avoid what is truly difficult.  Notice that their gimmicks are never applied to mathematics at the higher levels;  their ruses would never be applicable to Advanced Placement courses at the high school level.  The schemes of mathematics professors always come with a pretension of philosophical depth, always focused on relatively simple mathematics at the K-5 level. But simple does not mean trivial.  The operations and concepts pertinent to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, fundamental probability, ratios, proportions, graphs, and tables are vitally important.

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative inevitably come to me for academic assistance because they have not been taught these skills in their classroom.  This is especially true for K-5 students, but the point is also that until I teach them these skills most high school students have never acquired the requisite ability in the fundamental operations and basic skills to succeed at higher mathematics.  I teach them skills, then we ascend to college preparatory mathematics.

 

Students of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other school districts perform so wretchedly in mathematics because mathematics education professors have been playing with their lives, in order to survive pseudo-professionally.

 

They must stop.

 

The pseudo–profession of education professor should be no more.

 

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As we agitate for the elimination of departments, schools, and colleges of education, though, we must move ahead with teacher training at the level of the locally centralized school district.  We cannot allow our students to be subjected to the abuse heaped on them by education professors and their harmful anti-knowledge creed.

 

In the search for the new superintendent, we must find an administrator who, while fulfilling the necessary licensure requirements, is willing to move beyond her or his own insubstantial academic training to seek a new senior academic officer who will in turn bring forward field specific scholars to design academically substantive curriculum delivered in grade-by-grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.

 

In facing the dilemma posted by the nature of training in departments, schools, and colleges of education, we must realize that all of those in the Academic Division, notably the 28 members of the Department of Teaching and Learning have been ruined by the nature of such training;  that not a single member of the Office of Black Student Achievement holds an advanced degree in a key subject area;  that this is true, too, for the Associate Superintendents and staff in the Department of Indian Education.  As curriculum design overseen by subject area scholars proceeds, the Department of Teaching and Learning and the Office of Black Student Achievement should be disbanded;  the position of Associate Superintendent should be eliminated;  and the legislatively mandated Department of Indian Education should be overhauled, current members dismissed, and the focus of the department directed toward raising academic proficiency rates for Native American students.

 

Once we have faced the dilemma posed by the anti-knowledge creed of education professors and dismissed those tainted by that ideology, we can proceed to focus on the key tasks in the overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools:   curriculum redesign by academic field specialists;  and the training of teachers capable of imparting knowledge-intensive, skill-replete curriculum.

 

Article #2 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VIII, Number 12, June 2022

 Article #2                                                                                                                   

Overhauling Curriculum

Curriculum

 

Developing and projecting a model of K-12 educational excellence for the locally centralized school district in the Minneapolis Public Schools begins with the establishment of a rich curriculum in the liberal, vocational, and technological arts.

Those seeking to establish such a curriculum should read as many works by Core Knowledge Foundation founder E. D. Hirsch as possible, including The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (1996) and the parent resource books, What Your [Preschooler, Kindergartener, First Grader, Second Grader, Third Grader, Fourth Grader, Fifth Grader, Sixth Grader] Needs to Know, for which Hirsch has served as chief editor for volumes that have appeared as initial and updated editions since the 1990s.   The K-12 curriculum summarized below features an adaptation of the Core Knowledge curriculum for grades K-5 and my own extension of the knowledge-intensive approach to grades 6-12. 

Curriculum for Grades K-5

 

At the K-5 level, students will focus on the key liberal arts areas of mathematics, natural science (geology, biology, chemistry, and physics), literature & English usage, history & economics, and fine arts (music & visual arts).  In mastering such a rich curriculum, students graduating from Grade 5 will acquire knowledge of

 

>>>>>      mathematics through introductory algebra and geometry. They will have knowledge of the earth’s formation and defining qualities; the chronological emergence and defining characteristics of plant and animal forms;  

>>>>>     fundamental facts concerning subatomic particles, the structure of the atom, molecular structures, and the array of elements found on earth;  and the basic laws of gravity and motion, especially as contrasted in the work of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein;

>>>>>     classical literature, including Western classics, world literature, and literature specific to a multiplicity of ethnic groups.

>>>>>     United States and world history (necessarily including the history of many ethnic groups);  United States and world geography;  United States and world governmental systems;  and the fundamental concepts of microeconomics and macroeconomics.  

>>>>>     the theory and forms of the visual and musical arts, and of how to play at least one musical instrument.

Graduates from Grade 5 will have a mastery in these informational realms that exceeds the knowledge and skill level evidenced by many high school graduates today.  These knowledge and skill sets will continue development in middle school (grades 6-8) so as to solidify student academic foundations for very advanced study in high school.

Curriculum for Grades 6-8
             

Curriculum at the level of the middle school (grades 6-8) will follow logically from the knowledge and skill base established during grades K-5.

Students will emerge from Grade 8 with knowledge of

 

>>>>>     mathematics through Algebra II and in functions, statistics, and trigonometry;

 

>>>>>     advanced concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics;

 

>>>>>     works of classical literature, including Western classics, world literature, and literature specific to a multiplicity of ethnic groups;  and how to write expositional and argumentative essays;

 

>>>>>     highly sophisticated concepts pertinent to United States history, world history, political science (including United States political processes, United States Constitution, and world governmental systems), microeconomics and macroeconomics;  and foundational knowledge in psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

 

>>>>>     visual and musical arts, including mastery of at least one musical instrument at each student's maximum possible level of skill and opportunities to participate in choral, band, and ensemble musical groups.

 

>>>>>     at least one foreign language;

 

>>>>>     human anatomy, physiology, and sexuality, with the opportunity to participate in a variety of sports in physical education courses at each grade level;

 

>>>>>     vocational trades (including the skills of the electrician, auto mechanic, and the carpenter);

 

>>>>>     computers and other devices of contemporary technology.

 

Graduating from Grade 8 with mastery in these informational realms, students will possess knowledge and skill sets that exceed those evidenced by many high school graduates today.

Curriculum for Grades 9-12

At the high school (grades 9-12) level, then, students can proceed to acquire knowledge that we associate with mastery at the level of first and second year university students, and at two-year colleges of both the liberal arts and technical type.  

All students (except those facing genuine learning disabilities, who will be given the most challenging instruction possible) in grades 9-12 will take

>>>>>     sequential courses in calculus as preparation for Advanced Placement;

>>>>>     Advanced Placement courses in biology, chemistry, and physics;  in American and world history;  and in English.

>>>>>     courses in classical English and world literature;

>>>>>     college preparatory courses in economics and psychology, with elective course options in sociology and anthropology.

>>>>>     courses in visual and musical arts, with opportunities to participate in choral, band, and ensemble musical groups;

>>>>>     world language courses through the second-year college level;

>>>>>     two years of physical education, with various physical education options beyond two years;

>>>>>     courses in the vocational and technological arts.  

>>>>>     courses of student option in government and in specific geographical and topical areas of world history and literature (e.g., history of the Roman Empire, dynastic China, Africa, African America, Latin America, medieval era, early modern era, contemporary [recent] history);

>>>>>     a course in academic research, with the production of a research paper following the student’s driving interests, of at least ten pages, with proper citations and format.

 

Thus, all students will be well-prepared for study at either liberal arts or technical colleges, and at universities, upon high school graduation.  No student will be tracked for either of these options;  rather, each student will graduate with the confidence that she or he has the preparation for pursuing post-high school courses of study of either type.

Article #3 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VIII, Number 12, June 2022

Article #3                                                                                                                   

Overhauling Teacher Quality

Teacher Training

 

The most important features of the teacher training program to be implemented by the Minneapolis Public Schools include the following:

1) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades K-5 level will earn a Masters of Liberal Arts degree organized by officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools. This will involve a 34-week intensive course of study during one full academic year, followed by a summer of research, writing, and defense of a master’s thesis.

2) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn field-specific, non- education master’s degrees giving them expert knowledge relevant to the classes that they will teach.

3) >>>>>   Teachers aspiring to teach at all grades (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Thus, all teachers aspiring to teach in the Minneapolis Public Schools will earn a master’s degree in a rigorous academic program and then serve one full year of internship.

Before proceeding to further discussion of my program for teacher training, I give here a summary of prevailing teacher training programs:

The Currently Abysmal Training of Prospective Teachers for Grades K-5

Programs that train large contingents of prospective teachers include the University of Minnesota/ Twin Cities, Augsburg College, and the Universities of Concordia, Hamline, St. Catherine, and St. Thomas, and Minnesota State University/Mankato.

 

At most of these institutions, prospective grades K-5 teachers major in elementary education. Hamline is unique among the metro area institutions offering teacher preparation programs in requiring its aspiring K-5 teachers to earn bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., mathematics, chemistry, history, economics, English, fine arts).  At most other institutions, teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5 get a degree in elementary education.  For such a degree, students take courses that include Educational Psychology, Diversity and Education, Theory to Practice, Schools and Society, and Exceptionality.

The only meek nod to subject area specificity is in courses such as Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science Instruction in the Elementary Grades.  Education professors, not subject area experts, teach these courses.

Students at the University of Minnesota who aspire to teach, both at grades K-5 and grades 6-12, are strongly encouraged to get a master’s degree.  Students in the College of Education and Human Development typically do their coursework during the summer and fall terms;  they student teach in the spring, also taking two education courses online.

The route to the Masters of Education degree takes just three semesters.  Once the college or university certification program is complete, prospective teachers must take exams that include a basic skills exam, a content-focused pedagogic exam, and a mathematics exam.  Upon passing these exams, licensure is granted.  The license is permanent, given the teacher’s ongoing demonstration of professional development through certified participation in teacher-in-service days, workshops, conferences, and the like;  and with the option to pursue an advanced degree, typically a Masters of Education in teaching elementary education (remembering that a master’s degree is strongly encouraged by officials in the College of Education and Human Development for students who seek teacher certification via the schedule of courses at the University of Minnesota).

 

The Need to Retrain Teachers at the Level of the Locally Centralized School District

Such teacher training programs are cash cows for colleges and universities:

Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education are academically insubstantial but huge revenue generators for institutions of putative higher learning.  The ruse pulled by officials the University of Minnesota in encouraging students to pursue both of these empty degrees for certification constitutes irresponsible philistinism of the worst sort.

 

Over the long haul, we need to dissolve our departments, colleges, and schools of education and come to a consensus on a new approach to training teachers:

The transformation nationally will require much time to confront entrenched interests of the many adults in the education establishment who benefit from the current system that is so deleterious to the interests of excellent teachers and students waiting to receive a substantive education.  The program designed for the Minneapolis Publics Schools could be implemented immediately, given full focus and dedication to the task, before that time when we can expect to dismantle departments, schools, and colleges of education.  The immediate task is to retrain teachers newly certified after participating in current, useless programs of teacher preparation.

As to veteran teachers, my abiding estimate is that no more than 10% of the teachers presently on staff in the Minneapolis Public Schools are truly excellent;  15% are so terrible that they never should have been allowed in a classroom;  and the remainder fall in the broad 75% that are intolerably mediocre.  The terrible teachers in that 15% category will most likely always be terrible and in almost all cases will have to be jettisoned.  Most teachers in the 75% category of mediocrity should be given the option to retrain and prove their mettle for retention.

In my program for retraining teachers of the Minneapolis Pubic Schools, teachers aspiring to teach at the K-5 level will have to undergo an intensive full year of weekly, all-day training leading to a high-quality Masters of Liberal Arts degree;  followed by a full academic year internship.

The Masters of Liberal Arts Degree for Aspiring Minneapolis Public Schools Teachers at Grades K-5

Teachers at level K-5 should be broadly and deeply knowledgeable scholars, at home in the intellectual worlds of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts.  The key components of the academic program leading to this degree are described below.  It is expected that the courses taken for the Masters of Liberal Arts will be taken intensively, five days a week, during one full school year, from late August until early June.  Over the summer, the aspiring teacher studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will write her or his master’s thesis, then the remaining months of the master’s program will be spent as a classroom intern undergoing a full academic year of classroom observation and teaching under the guidance of a teacher identified as highly competent.  The latter teacher will be chosen for manifesting as much excellence as we dare hope, given current realities with regard to teacher quality.

 

Officials in the Minneapolis Public Schools should embrace these components and set about establishing a program in conjunction with one of the universities in the Twin Cities.  Those representing the Minneapolis Public Schools should articulate exactly what they want from the degree-granting institution.  From the degree-granting university, this will mean embracing the details of the program given below, providing the professorial expertise required, and following through on the administrative aspects leading to the granting of the Masters of Liberal Arts to the K-5 teachers of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

The program and requirements for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree for prospective teachers at levels K-5 are given as follows:

Mathematics

During the full academic year of retraining of teachers at grades K-5, professors of mathematics should be brought in by decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to give educators of the very young a thorough overview of mathematics up through calculus.  Teachers at grades K-5 need a fundamental readjustment of the way that they view themselves.  They must regard themselves as capable learners and practitioners in the full range of human knowledge.  We cannot abide the level of math phobia that often abides in the hearts of many current K-5 teachers.  The way for an aspiring teacher to overcome mathematical phobia and prepare to launch the young student on the K-12 mathematical experience is for everyone involved to know what is ahead on this exciting quest for knowledge in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus.

University of Minnesota Mathematics Professor Jonathon Rogness has commented to me, “It is always advisable that a teacher have knowledge far beyond the concepts that he or she immediately covers in class.”

If teachers themselves had a substantive education in either high school or as undergraduates at a college or university, then reviewing previously learned mathematical concepts will not be difficult:  Much of the information is either lying latent for reawakening or, even more happily, is actually operating nearer the surface to be pulled upward into the brightness of mental reflection, ready for application.  But for those teachers who have done what our K-12 schools and universities too often encourage, somehow muddling through math courses without really understanding for lack of teachers capable of giving them clarity, then the process will be more arduous.

And since we want them to be teachers who most certainly never themselves abet the muddling through approach to mathematical education, we want them to have confidence as capable mathematicians.

Over the course of ten (10) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for mathematics:

Week #1 >>>>> Fundamental Math
Week #2 >>>>> Algebra I
Week #3 >>>>> Geometry
Weeks #4 and #5 >>>>> Algebra II .
Weeks #6 and #7 >>>>> Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry (FST)
Weeks #8, #9, and #10  >>>>> Calculus (corresponding to a full year of college-level calculus)

Natural Science

Prospective teachers at K-5 should also be highly confident in themselves as students of natural science, one of the five key subject areas emphasized during the K-5 years. The three natural science fields that should dominate their own study in route to the Masters of Liberal Arts degree are biology, chemistry, and physics.  Professors in these fields should teach compact courses of about two weeks each, during which the prospective K-5 teachers review (ideally) or learn well for the first time (as too often will be the case) the most important concepts pertinent to these important fields of natural science.

Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for natural science:

Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>>  Biology
Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>>  Chemistry
Week #5 and Week #6 >>>>>  Physics

History

 

Teaching for all subjects in our current system of K-12 education is mediocre.  Knowledge of history is particularly unskillfully imparted to students. And what is true generally is especially true at the K-5 level. In our K-5 schools, history is subsumed under an amalgamation known as “social studies,” in an innervated curricular approach that is entirely consistent with the “constructivist” precepts under which teachers have been trained.  There is a great deal of focus on the lives of the students, in which they are asked to reflect about their own families and community, in the absence of any social scientific context in which to compare their own family mores and structures with others that prevail in the general society.  Nothing is learned of any substance in the way of sociology, psychology, economics, and government--- and certainly nothing very coherent in the way of history.

Under our new curriculum, history will be the subject identified for study at the K-5 level.  History as an appellation is used rather than “social studies,” because humankind’s experience over time has produced the life that we live today, and when we study history in depth, we also learn a great deal about sociology, psychology, economics, and government.  For that matter, great discoveries in mathematics and natural science are contextualized in a study of history, and knowledge of the essence of those discoveries is gained.

Hence, history is key to full understanding of all subjects germane to the liberal arts.

Over the course of eight (8) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for world and American history:

Week #1 >>>>>  Prehistory and Developments Through Earliest Civilizations (Beginnings to 700 B. C.)
Week #2 >>>>>  Classical Period (700 B. C to 500 A. D.)
Week #3 >>>>>  European Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Contemporaneous World       

                             Development (500 A. D. to 1500 A. D.)
Week #4  >>>>> The Rise of the Nation-State and the Importance of the European Enlightenment (1600 to 1800)
Week #5 >>>>>  Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution (1600 to 1900)
Week #6 >>>>>  Major Events of the 20th Century and Early 21st Century (1900 to 2016)
Week #7 >>>>>  American History through the 18th Century
Week #8 >>>>>  American History from 1800 through 2022

                                                
Language Arts

 

Over the course of six (6) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for language arts:

Week #1 and Week #2 >>>>> 

 

Classical Greek and Roman Literature; Classics of World Literature;

Premodern and Renaissance Classics of Europe; Shakespearean

and Elizabethan Literature

 

Week #3 and Week #4 >>>>> 

 

Modern and Contemporary British and American Literature

 
Week #5 >>>>> 

 

African American Literature and the Literature of Other Major Ethnic Groups in the

United States

Week #6 >>>>> English Grammar, Syntax, and Written Composition

Fine Arts

Over the course of four (4) weeks, aspiring K-5 teachers studying for the Masters of Liberal Arts degree will pursue the following topical schedule for fine arts, which adopts a chronological approach for presenting the history of the visual arts, architecture, and music:

Week #1 >>>>> 

 

The Prehistoric World (Beginnings to 3,000 B. C);

The Ancient World (3,000 B C. to 700 B. C.)

Week #2 >>>>> 

 

The Classical World (700 B. C. to 500 A. D.);

The Medieval World (500 to 1500 A. D.)

Week #3 >>>>> 

 

The First-Stage Modern World (1450 to 1750); The Second-Stage Modern World (1750 to 1945);  The Contemporary World (1945-2022)

Week #4 >>>>> 

 

Survey of Musical Forms and Composition;

Composers and Music in the Western Classical Style;   

Traditional Music of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; 

Blues, Blues-Based, and Blues-Inspired Music

in the United States;  

Folk and Country Music;

Musical Instruments

Additional Requirements for Prospective Teachers at Grades K-5

Teachers aspiring to teach at grades K-5 will, after completing the above-given course of study during a full academic year, research, write, and defend a master’s thesis in the course of the following summer.

Then, during the succeeding academic year, aspiring K-5 teachers will serve a full year of internship before gaining consideration for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Revolutionizing Training for Teachers of Students in Grades 6-8 (Middle School) And Grades 9-12 (High School)

Teachers of students at grades 6-8 and at grades 9-12 will, in the revolutionized curriculum in this program for achieving academic excellence, of necessity be first-rate scholars possessing broad and deep knowledge of the subject areas that they will teach.

As with teacher aspirants at the grades K-5 level, a master’s degrees in education will not be recognized. Teachers aspiring to teach at the grades 6-8 and 9-12 levels will earn degrees in departments relevant to their teaching fields (mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, history, government, economics, world literature, music, art, world language, vocational or  technological).

As in the case of K-5 teachers, teacher aspirants at the secondary level (grades 6-8 or 9-12) will serve a full year of internship before undergoing evaluation for employment in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

Thus, for both teacher aspirants at the K-5 level and those at grades 6-8 and 9-12, the entire program in the aftermath of earning a bachelor’s degree will typically take three years.

 

Such teachers will thereby gain professional status via academic training as rigorous as programs in law and medicine.  They should be paid accordingly, with median salaries rising to $95,000 from the currently prevailing median of $77,000.