Lack of Rigorous Curriculum in the Academically Vacuous,
Expensive Doctoral Programs in Educational Leadership of
the Twin Cities and Mankato, Minnesota
Superintendents in the locally centralized school district of the United States frequently hold doctorates in educational leadership. The programs that produce doctorates in educational leadership are not academically rigorous.
Such programs include no thorough subject area training in the core subjects of school districts: mathematics, natural science (biology, chemistry, physics), English and world literature, or history and the social sciences (government and economics). Such programs may include some training in quantitative methods and a modicum of statistics, and they may contain courses pertaining to the government institutions and policy that specifically affect education, but few superintendents have detailed, thorough academic knowledge of mathematics or much understanding of history and the social sciences.
Very often superintendents of public school district hold a degree in elementary education, with all graduate degrees bestowed by education departments, colleges, or schools. Since elementary education is the least rigorous, academically insubstantial degree on any college or university campus, and graduate education degrees in education include no training in key academic subject areas, this means that most superintendents have little knowledge of mathematics, the natural sciences, literature, or history and the social sciences.
These are the academic lightweights responsible for overseeing curriculum to our students, our future citizens; we trust academically inadequate superintendents with making judgments for the impartation of knowledge in the very subject areas for which superintendents have little training.
This edition of Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota presents the academically insubstantial curriculum for educational leadership doctoral programs of the Twin Cities and Mankato, Minnesota, in which many future superintendents matriculate. The university programs covered in this edition are those of the State University of Minnesota/Mankato, Hamline University (St. Paul, Minnesota), University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) St. Mary’s University of Minnesota (Winona, Minnesota, and St. Paul, Minnesota), and Concordia University (St. Paul, Minnesota).
These programs are expensive, costing between $615 and $977 per credit, resulting in full-cost tuition ranging from $37,515 to $69,200 over the duration of programs usually taking three to four years to complete. Thus, these programs have earned the moniker of “cash cows” in which aspiring superintendents essentially purchase the degrees (which tend to be in online format) that facilitate attainment of top position in our locally centralized programs of public education.
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