Convert Your Dissatisfaction into Concerted and Assertive Action: Percentage of Minneapolis Public Schools Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs: Disaggregated for Ethnicity and Gender >>>>> Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017--- A Record of Dismal Failure

As we anticipate new figures on MCA results for spring 2018, everyone who cares about students of the Minneapolis Public Schools should realize that academic performance has been essentially flat but in many key demographic categories (notably, for example, African American and American Indian males) even declining for many years in a row.  Given this miserable failure to fulfill the grandiose goals of the district's Acceleration 2020 Strategic Plan, and with insufficient programmatic initiatives (the Benchmark reading program and Multi-Tiered System of Support [MTSS] are not enough), we can expect results to be released later this month to reveal a continuing pattern of failure:


This pattern of failure and stark programmatic inadequacy will be a major theme of my new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.


Examine carefully and convert your dissatisfaction into concerted and assertive action:


Percentage of Minneapolis Public Schools Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs:

Disaggregated for Ethnicity and Gender

 

Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017

                               

Math

 

                                             2014             2015           2016           2017

 

African American 

 

Male                                     22%               23%            21%            18%

Female                                 22%               22%            21%            19%

 

Hispanic

 

Male                                     32%               33%             32%            29%

Female                                 29%               30%             30%            28%

                             

Native American/ American Indian

 

Male                                    20%               16%            16%            18%

Female                                25%               22%            21%            17%

 

Asian

 

Male                                   44%                 47%            45%               45%

Female                                51%                53%            54%               50%

 

White/ Caucasian

 

Male                                   77%                 78%           77%                77%

Female                               77%                 78%           78%                77%

 

All Students

 

Male                                     43%               44%           43%                41%
Female                                 44%               44%           44%                43%

 

Percentage of Students Recording Grade Level Performance on MCAs:
Disaggregated Data for Academic Years Ending in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017

 

Reading

 

                                              2014             2015           2016           2017

 

African American 

 

Male                                     19%               19%            19%            18%

Female                                 25%               24%            23%            25%

 

Hispanic

 

Male                                     22%               23%            25%            23%

Female                                 25%               27%            28%            28%

                             

Native American/ American Indian

 

Male                                     18%               14%            15%            19%

Female                                 24%               26%            26%            27%

 

Asian

 

Male                                   36%                 36%            39%               37%

Female                               45%                 44%            51%               45%

 

White/ Caucasian

 

Male                                   75%                 74%           74%                75%

Female                               81%                 80%           80%                81%

 

All Students

 

Male                                   39%                 39%           40%                40%
Female                               45%                 45%           46%                47%

Taiwan, One of the Many Nations of Which Ill-Educated Americans Have Little Knowledge

The American people are ignoramuses on all manner of things, including, famously among the better educated populations of a generally ill-educated world, matters of history, geography, and current international circumstance.

 

The controversies between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China are among the many knowledge sets lacking in the American intellectual cabinet.

 

Taiwan is an independent nation whose leaders have thus far demurred from declaring such status under the appellation, Republic of Taiwan.  Ruled from the late 1940s until the of year 2000 by the Kuomintang (KMT, Romanized in pinyin as Guomindang) under the name Republic of China, Taiwan has developed from that millennial year of 2000 into one of the world’s most vital democracies;  the island (one hundred miles off the southeastern coast of China) is also among the world’s most prosperous nations, with a per capita GDP of $39,500 (21^st highest in the world)---  higher, for example,  than France, Great Britain, Canada, and even Japan.  The mainland China nation of the People’s Republic of China, while having a renowned aggregate GDP, is lodged at only number 64 in the world for the more telling per capita GDP.

 

Well into the 1980s, the KMT leadership maintained the fiction of the existence of a Republic of China whose military would return to defeat the communist foes to whom Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters lost control of the mainland in the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949.  But the KMT never really controlled the vast expanses of China, even before the party and government’s hasty escape to Taiwan in the late 1940s.  While during the years 1945-1996 maintaining autocratic control over Taiwan, the KMT controlled only the island of Taiwan and a few surrounding smaller islands.  During the period 1895-1945, Taiwan had been under the control of Japan.  Thus, no politico-military entity that controlled all of China has ruled Taiwan since 1895, the year that the Qing Dynasty lost Taiwan to Japan.

 

Taiwan and mainland China have had substantially different histories, especially since 1895.  Taiwan has developed into a unique geopolitical entity, one of the most genuinely united nations in the world, with a population that reveres its own history and traditions and, while largely ethnically Han Chinese, identifying as Taiwanese rather than Chinese---  thus resembling, most saliently, Singapore.  The People’s Republic of China is not in accurate political science terms a nation;  it is, rather, an empire, with one-third of its territory consisting of Tibetan and Uighur (the latter in the province of Xinjiang) populations that would break away from the Chinese government if they could.

 

Leaders and corporations in the United States and the other major world economic powers are intimidated by the leadership of the People’s Republic of China, which has a territory about the same size as the United States and an aggregate economy now second only to the United States.

 

But the Taiwanese people remain internationally vigorous and ready to assert their de facto independence.  They deeply resent the manipulations of the government on the mainland.

 

As I close this consideration of Taiwan in the context of the ignorant American population that overwhelmingly has no understanding of the Taiwan-China conflict, consider this recent article from Taiwan Today, emphasizing the resentment of the Taiwanese people toward the bullying tactics of the government of the mainland PRC, one the most autocratic abusers of human rights among the governments of the world:

 

From Taiwan Today August 17, 2018 | Author: |

 

MAC poll finds majority in Taiwan disapprove of China’s political interference

Publication Date: August 17, 2018 | Author: |

 

The majority of people in Taiwan disapprove of Beijing’s efforts to suppress the country’s international space, according to a poll released Aug. 16 by the Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council.

Around 82 percent of respondents said politically motivated pressure by China on the East Asian Olympic Committee to cancel the 2019 East Asian Youth Games in central Taiwan’s Taichung City was not conducive to the healthy development of cross-strait ties. A total of 85.2 percent disagreed with China’s pressure on international airlines to change their designation of Taiwan.

Such actions by the authorities in Beijing and their general attitude toward Taiwan were viewed as “unfriendly” by 65.1 percent of respondents, according to the poll.

To facilitate the healthy development of cross-strait relations, 82.9 percent of respondents said that both sides should uphold mutual respect, set aside differences and engage in communication without political preconditions. Similarly, 82.5 percent said that all exchanges should adhere to the principles of equal dignity and the rule of law, and should not be politically motivated.

According to the MAC, as a responsible member of the international community and model of freedom and democracy in the region, Taiwan has consistently worked to maintain cross-strait stability. The government is committed to safeguarding Taiwan’s dignity and sovereignty, protecting the well-being of the people and defending their free and democratic way of life, the council said, adding that Taiwan will not bow to China’s political manipulation.

Future cross-strait development cannot be determined unilaterally, the MAC said, urging China to squarely face the reality that the two sides are under separate rule and to respect the opinion of the people of Taiwan. Only by resolving differences through constructive dialogue can cross-strait relations be improved, the council added.

Conducted Aug. 9-13 by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University in Taipei City, the telephone poll canvassed 1,093 adults over 20 years of age nationwide. It has a margin of error of 2.96 percent and a 95 percent confidence level.

Results of Election for MPS Board of Education, August 2018 Primary: The Vulnerability of Rebecca Gagnon in the November 2018 General Election

Arriving well under the radar of staff writers and commentators at the Star Tribune and other media sources, the run-off in the Tuesday, 14 August 2018, primary for seats on the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education nevertheless attracted a respectable amount of interest on the part of voters and featured some very interesting and significant results:

 

Kimberly Caprini, a North Minneapolis resident with children who have matriculated at Patrick Henry High School and other Northside schools, garnered a commanding number of votes, thirty percent (30%) of those cast.  Next in order of votes cast, bunched tightly together, were Rebecca Gagnon, Josh Pauly, and Sharon Al-Amin.  Perennial candidate Doug Mann lagged well behind and is now eliminated for the November 2018 general election.

 

Thus, the results yield four candidates who will contest for the two open At-Large seats on the MPS Board of Education.  Our paramount objective in the November 2018 election must be to defeat Gagnon, who over the years of a tenure on the school board dating to January 2011 has proven to be a lackey of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) cohort but ironically failed to get the endorsements for this contest.  Gagnon, whose political calculations this time proved errant, lost her bid for endorsement to Caprini and Pauly.

 

Caprini is a longtime education activist who lost narrowly to KerryJo Felder for the District 2 North Minneapolis seat in November 2016;  her MFT/DFL ties are problematic, but we could do worse that her candidacy.  Sharon El-Amin is free of MFT/DFT obligations and based on views expressed so far would bring the acumen of a businesswoman who, in the absence of endorsement, is relatively unencumbered by the highly influential MFT/DFL political force that inevitably resists measures that would address the wretched academic performance of MPS students.   

 

My nod at present, then, would be toward the November 2018 candidacies of El-Amin and, more tentatively, Caprini.  I’ll be evaluating both Caprini and Pauly more closely and, for that matter, will be seeking clarification as to the specific education policy positions of El-Amin.

 

What is certain is that we must defeat Gagnon, who in this run reveals herself to be extremely vulnerable, running as she did in a virtual dead-heat with Pauly and El-Amin, the latter two of whom entered this race with much less name recognition than Gagnon.

 

Here are the 14 August 2018 primary results for the two At-large seats on the MPS Board of Education:

  

Candidate                                           Number of Votes             Percentage of Vote

 

Kimberly Caprini                                     36,113                                            30%

Rebecca Gagnon                                     26,390                                            22%

Josh Pauly                                                  25,071                                            21%

Sharon Al-Amin                                        24,912                                            21%

Doug Mann                                                 8,355                                              7%

 

Inasmuch as school board elections (lamentably, since public education is our best hope for genuine democracy) do not attract as much attention as statewide races and legislative contests, the number of votes cast for the seats given above was encouraging.  Caprini received about half of the votes, for example, as did Ilhan Omar in her run to represent Congressional District 5, for which Keith Ellison did not run again (the latter contesting instead, successfully, for the DFL Minnesota Attorney General slot in the November 2018 election).

 

Compare:  

 

Ilhan Omar                                              64,569                                            48%

Anderson Kelliher                                  40,413                                            30%

Patricia Torres Ray                                 17,427                                            13%

Jamal Abdulahi                                          4,939                                              4%

Bobby Joe Champion                                3,801                                              3%

Frank Drake                                                2,434                                              2%

 

Compare also, though, how many more votes Tina Smith, for example, garnered in her run for the Senate seat vacated by Al Franken (to which Smith was appointed by Governor Mark Dayton):

 

Tina Smith                                               421,037                                            76%

Richard Painter                                        76,077                                            14%

Ali Ali                                                          18,512                                              3%

Greg Iverson                                             17,213                                              3%

Nick Leonard                                            16,097                                              3%

Christopher Seymore                               4,907                                              1%

 

No politician occupying a seat in a city, state, or local legislative body is in a position to effect change in the locally centralized school district, where the K-12 Revolution must take place.  For the overhaul of K-12 education to take place, we must act according to precepts articulated in the over 700 articles on this blog.  We must concomitantly overhaul the MPS Board of Education for composition by board members responsive to measures of transformation.

 

As part of that effort, we must now focus intensely on the November 2018 election, oust Rebecca Gagnon,  and elect two candidates who are most responsive to our program of knowledge-intensive, skill replete education, bringing thorough transformation of education at the level of the locally centralized school district.  

Remember That Defeating Rebecca Gagnon is the Major Objective in Today’s Run-Off--- and That Your Vote for Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education Will Be Your Most Important in Today's (Tuesday, 14 August 2018) Primary

Defeating Rebecca Gagnon is the paramount objective in today's run-off among five candidates, four of whom will go on to the general election in November.

Given popular disgust with both the congressional and presidential spectacles in Washington, D. C., the November 2018 election is much in the public discourse.  But the most important election that will take place next November will be that for the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education---  and your vote in today’s 14 August 2018 primary will determine the precise slate of candidates that will appear on the ballot in November.

School board elections get short shrift by comparison to congressional elections, which in turn do not draw as many voters as do presidential contests.  But school board elections are in fact the most important in the United States, pertinent as they are to the core problems that chronically vex this body politic.

In his book, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017), Ta-Nehisi Coates details in eight essays the level of racism that continues to haunt citizens of the United States.  The aggregate message of these essays is that the history of the United States conveys two prime narratives, one portraying the nation as a testing ground for the great ideals of the Enlightenment;  the other revealing the nation to have been a police state for African Americans.  Remarkably, there is much truth in each of these narratives.  For white Americans, representative democracy built upon the principles of Locke and Montesquieu and applied by Thomas Jefferson and John Madison, has largely been a reality.  For African Americans, the conditions of slavery and the failure of Reconstruction have yielded a history in which the conditions of slavery, sharecropping, and segregated urban life have been abiding realities, even for those who through herculean effort were able to escape.

The aggregate account that can be assembled from three other books provide further insight into the imagined and actual degree of democracy in the United States.  The books are E. D. Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (1996);  Diane Ravitch’s Left Back:  One Years of School Reform (2001);  and Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World (and How They Got That Way) (2013).  The composite history of education in the United States that emerges in these books is the following:

In the 19^th century, Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann envisioned common schools that would give every citizen, of all economic classes, the fundamental information in natural science, mathematics, English composition, history, and government to become economically viable and well-functioning citizens.  In the early 20^th century, an anti-knowledge creed was promulgated by education professors in teachers colleges that became attached to universities;  desperate for relevance in a context whereby field-specific professors were better positioned to provide content knowledge instruction, education professors maintained that factual knowledge is not important and that the pedagogical mission of teachers is to cultivate in students an ability to think critically and to acquire a drive for lifelong learning.  As immigration from southern and eastern Europe ensued, and inasmuch as these populations were deemed to have aptitudes mainly for manual labor, a tracking system became another defining element in American education.

The upshot of these trends was that the education professor creed took hold over the course of many decades, culminating in a generally anti-knowledge approach to education with enough of a begrudgingly administered college track curriculum to allow a few students to satisfy university entrance requirements.  And there abided an assumption that the great bulk of students needed much less of the broad knowledge for citizenship envisioned by Jefferson and Mann.

The dual realities of suburbanization and fair housing laws in the late 1960s induced both white and black middle class flight from the inner city, leaving behind the poorest of the poor at the urban core.  From the 1970s forward, the conditions of life for African Americans living at the urban core defined the circumstances of those living in the major cities of the United States.  For African American students, the assumptions about the vocational propensities of southern and eastern European immigrants now were applied to them, and the anti-knowledge views of education professors now were entrenched.  Given the rise of crack cocaine and gang activity in the nation’s cities from 1980 forward, administrators and teachers were faced with additional challenges to which they have never articulated a viable response.

Thus do we have those students in systems such as the Minneapolis Public Schools who either fail to graduate or who graduate with little knowledge and with skills so low as to need remediation once attempting matriculation on college and university campuses.  The only answer to this debased situation is to overhaul curriculum for knowledge and skill intensity and to articulate a program that allows students of all demographic descriptors to go forward to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.

In doing this, we will be able for the first time in the history of the United States to resolve the tension between the historical narratives of Enlightenment and racism, finally achieving democracy for people of all demographic descriptors.

To do this, we will need to overhaul leadership at the locally centralized school district, including the election of a new school board membership.  Administrators and teachers are all trained in the education professor creed that has deprived generations of students of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education.  School board members, even when growing contentious with school district leaders, remain under their sway as to matters of curriculum and teacher quality.  Since both public school administrators and school boards formulate or approve policies typically consonant with the anti-knowledge creed of education professors, we must move to transform both administrative leadership and school board membership.

In the context of a nation fixated on local control, we must work to make a single locally centralized school district a model for others.  We have the responsibility to make the Minneapolis Public Schools such a model.  We should work on overhauling administrative leadership in this school district, and we should work to overhaul the membership of the MPS Board of Education in the November 2018 election.

The inadequate educational preparation of our nation’s citizens is at the root of all our most vexing, intransigent dilemmas.  Hence, school board elections are more important than either congressional or presidential contests.  Accordingly, because she manifest's the very worst features typical of school board members, we should oust Rebecca Gagnon and prepare the way for an election in November. 

There are five candidates in the run-off for two At-Large seats on the MPS Board of Education, four of whom will go on to the general election in November:

 

Sharon El-Amin

Doug Mann

Kim Caprini

Josh Pauley

 

Rebecca Gagnon  (disregard and do not vote for this candidate)

 

Kim Caprini and Josh Pauley are the MFT/ DFL endorsees;  the other two candidates besides Gagnon are Sharon El-Amin and Doug Mann.  I know Kim Caprini and like her personally, but the MFT/ DFL endorsement is problematic.  Mann is a perennial candidate of the sort whose political pursuits can become stale over time;  he seeks to address teacher turnover issues and to support academically lagging students and schools that struggle with declining enrollment.  El-Amin is an MPS parent and businesswoman who may be the best and freshest presence on the school board election scene.

By ousting Gagnon and giving our full attention to today’s election and the general election in November, securing much more responsible membership on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education, we will be on our way toward resolving the tensions in our competing historical narratives;  and we will for the first time in our nation’s history provide an excellent education to all of our precious children, of all demographic descriptors. 

Defeating Rebecca Gagnon is Paramount in Election for an At-Large Seat on the Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education >>>>> The Process for Expediting Gagnon’s Exit Begins Tomorrow at the Occasion of the 14 August 2018 Primary

Rebecca Gagnon’s candidacy for another term as At-Large member of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education is an opportunity to forward the overhaul of processes at MPS so as to induce the transformation of that school district as model for central school districts throughout the United States.

Ironies abide in Gagnon’s candidacy.  Rebecca Gagnon has long been a sycophant of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT)/ Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party cohort that exerts such political influence in the Minnesota State Legislature and thrusts money and organizational effort into school board electoral contests.

In the last few months, though, Gagnon has made many political miscalculations:

Gagnon had determined not to run for reelection to her At-Large MPS Board of Education seat, deciding instead to seek a seat in the state legislature.  But when she did not get the DFL endorsement for that legislative run, she retreated to another candidacy on the school board.  Gagnon did one of her finger-in-the-wind acts when parents in her Southwest Minneapolis base sought to restore lost funding, particularly at Washburn High School.  Superintendent Ed Graff and staff, particularly the brilliant MPS Finance Chief Ibrahima Diop, had spent months crafting a budget to eliminate the $33 million deficit of the district, but in a 5-4 vote in which Gagnon’s advocacy was prominent, the MPS Board of Education sent Graff, Diop, and staff back to the drawing board with a dictate to restore $6.4 million in funding to Washburn and other high schools.      

But Gagnon apparently failed to calculate the MFT interest in the originally proposed budget, and she has generally offended her longtime backers in the MFT/ DFL establishment with her bald self-seeking political maneuvers.  Having lost her bid for DFL endorsement for a legislative seat, she also lost the endorsement of that cohort in the school board race.

There are five candidates in the run-off for two At-Large seats on the MPS Board of Education, four of whom will go on to the general election in November.  Kim Caprini and Josh Pauley are the MFT/ DFL endorsees;  the other two candidates besides Gagnon are Sharon El-Amin and Doug Mann.  I know Kim Caprini and like her personally, but the MFT/ DFL endorsement is problematic.  Mann is a perennial candidate of the sort whose political pursuits can become stale over time;  he seeks to address teacher turnover issues and to support academically lagging students and schools that struggle with declining enrollment.  El-Amin is an MPS parent and businesswoman who may be the best and freshest presence on the school board election scene.

In the run-up to the general election in November, I will be making precise recommendations in the races that will feature two candidates for each of the two contested At-Large seats for the MPS Board of Education.

For now, defeat of Gagnon is paramount.  Despite her political miscalculations and lack of MFT/ DFL  endorsement in the school board race, Gagnon is a canny political operator.  If she emerges as one of four candidates for the two seats in the November general election, then I will be making the rounds at various venues to advocate for her defeat.

Please abet my efforts by weakening Gagnon’s candidacy and, ideally, ending it with your vote for two of the other candidates in tomorrow’s Tuesday, 14 August, primary election.

Readers Please Review My Important Article from Autumn 2016, Relevant to the Minneapolis Public Schools Department of Teaching and Learning, as Context for Looming Comments on the Current Status of That Department Two Years Later

Two years ago, in autumn 2016, I wrote an important article concerning staffing in the Minneapolis (MPS) Department of Teaching and Learning, stressing the bloat in this ineffective department.   In articles to come, I will be commenting on improvements that have been made in that department under the leadership of Superintendent Ed Graff, who at the time of the 2016 article had just begun his tenure. 

 

Please now read this article as context for articles soon to come that stress improvements in the MPS Department of Teaching and Learning and the current challenges faced by the key department vitally affecting academic programming of the Minneapolis Public Schools:

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

The Bureaucratic Bloat in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools Saliently Demands a Vote of "No" on the 8 November Referendum

Gary Marvin Davison, 7 November 2016


The overstaffed Department of Teaching and Learning at the Minneapolis Public Schools is responsible for curriculum adoption and development, professional development of teachers, online learning, and special programming such as the college preparatory AVID program and initiatives such as Focused Instruction.

This is the largest single department in the central offices (Davis Center, 1250 West Broadway) of the Minneapolis Public Schools: The Department of Teaching and Learning has 52 current staff members, or 9.5% of the total 550 employees at the Davis Center.

The positions given for this department are as follows:


Teaching and Learning Staff Directory 2016-2017

Administrative


1. Macarre Traynham, Director

Office Support

2. Amanda Andrews ITT and Online, Office specialist
3. Jeanne Lacy, Executive Assistant
4. Yana Manalov, Business Services Financial Specialist

AVID

5. Maria Roberts, Program Manager, AVID
6. Christen Lish, AVID Elementary Coordinator
7. Paula Killian, AVID Middle School Coordinator
8. Tommie Casey, AVID High School Coordinator

 

Elementary Team      

9. Casey Seeley, Director, Elementary Education
10. Janna Toche, Elementary DPF
11. Julie Tangeman, Elementary DPF
12. Sara Naegli, Elementary DPF
13. Sarah Hunter, Elementary DPF

Focused Instruction

14. Tina Platt, Project Manager
15. Jake Hirschman, Curriculum Assets Assistant
16. Nancy Mai, Curriculum Assets Assistant

Instructional Technology Team

17. James Stock, Learning Assistant Administrator DPF
18. Jeff Brazee, Applications Trainer
19. Kevin Keller, Technology Integrationist DPF Material Management Position
20. Terry Dinovo, Materials Coordinator
21. Judy Stack-Nelson, Materials Handler

Online Learning

22. Edith McDonald, Online Art
23. James Carr, Online Physical Education
24. Karen Maverick, Online Special Education
25. Katy Hemmah, Online Program Counselor
26. Kelsey Zogby (Passa), Online Math Telescope
27. Lynn Lurvey, Online English
28. Seth Levitt, Online Math, Elementary
29. Tom VanErp, Online Health
30. Tony Patterson, Online Associate Educator
31. William Holm, Online Math, High School

Science Center    

32. Timothy Lilla, Science Senior Materials Handler
33. Donell Shinder, Science Materials Handler
34. Mark Berg, Science Materials Handler
35. Tara Newhouse, Science Materials Handler of Living Organisms

Secondary Team

36. Naomi Taylor, Director, Secondary Education
37. Chris Wemimont, Secondary Math DPF
38. Colleen Atakpu, Secondary Math DPF
39. Hibaq Mohamed, Secondary ELA/ Reading
40. Jennifer Rose, Secondary Science DPF
41. Katy Stephens, Secondary ELA/ Reading DPF
42. Kleber Ortiz-Sinchi, Secondary Social Studies DPF
43. Samantha Weiman, Associate Educator

Specialists

44. Ashley Crohn, K-12 Library and Information Media DPF
45. Kathy Dunbar, Arts Exploration and Extension Coordinator
46. Nora Schull, K-12 Arts DPF
47. Sara Loch, K-12 Health/ Physical Education

STEM

48. Charley Ellingson, STEM Integrationist
49. Elizabeth Stretch, STEM Integrationist

Talent Development and Advanced Academics

50. Alyssa Pollack, Elementary Talent Development and Advanced Academics DPF
51. Kelly McQuillan, High School Talent Development and Advanced Academics DPF
52. Theresa Campbell, Middle School Talent Development and Advanced Academics DPF

Thus, there are three (3) staff members in office support roles, four (4) connected to the AVID program, six (6) for elementary education (including the staff member designated for “talent development and advanced academics”), ten (10) for secondary education (including the middle school and high school staff members designated for “talent development and advanced academics”), three (3) for Focused Instruction, three (3) for material management, ten (10) for online learning, four (4) designated at the Science Center, four (4) assigned as art, media, and physical education specialists, and two (2) for the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program.

Too often public bureaucracies take on a corporate world ethos and spawn all sorts of assistants whose functions are extraneous. The office and executive assistant positons in the Department of Teaching and Learning are not necessary; and there are staff members in the MPS Department of Finance who could absorb the functions of the business specialist.

Most positions in the Department of Teaching and Learning should not be necessary if teachers were properly trained in departments, colleges, and schools of education. If K-12 teachers came to their school districts with the kind of knowledge base possessed by college professors, their curriculum would be embedded in their brains and the eighteen (18) elementary and secondary curriculum and instruction staff members would be imminently dispensable--- as indeed they should be now, since they are so ineffective.

Decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools would be much the wiser for putting teachers through a rigorous, knowledge-heavy teacher training program such as I advanced in the September 2014 edition of my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota--- before staff members officially occupy teacher positions in the classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

With such well-trained and knowledgeable teachers in all classrooms of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Department of Teaching and Learning could then be disassembled and revamped as a small group of perhaps ten staff members.

For, indeed, most positions in the Department of Teaching and Learning would also be expendable if teachers were well-trained from the beginning of their employment experience at the Minneapolis Public Schools:

If art, media, physical education, math, science, and technology teachers arrived as genuinely skilled practitioners and scholars, at least six (6) of the above given positions would fade away.

Focused Instruction is a worthy program intended to implement curriculum coherently and consistently by grade level throughout the schools of the district. But Tina Platt does not have the subject area knowledge to direct such a program, and the program has not been effective in the half-decade of its existence. All three (3) staff members assigned to Focused Instruction would be dismissed, to be replaced by professionals of general scholarship and familiar with knowledge-intensive curriculum such as that of E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation.

Ten instructors for online learning should be examined for efficacy and necessity.

Department of Teaching and Learning Director Macarre Traynham was hired by Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin to bring expertise in “culturally responsive curriculum.” A Core Knowledge approach provides extraordinary cultural responsiveness in a meaningful context of knowledge-intensive curriculum across the key subject areas of mathematics, natural science, history, literature, and the fine arts. Traynham has little knowledge of such curriculum, and her own training has been primarily in iterations of those notoriously weak programs overseen by education professors, rather than in the legitimate subject area disciplines. Traynham should be dismissed and her position examined for its necessity and level of remuneration.

Macarre Traynham reports to Chief Academic Officer Susanne Griffin. Ms. Griffin is a compassionate and dedicated educator but, as discussed in other articles on this blog, she has no training in any of the main academic programs that should define a knowledge-intensive curriculum. This absence of scholarly credentials and the wretched academic performance of the Minneapolis Public Schools argue powerfully for the termination of Ms. Griffin as Chief Academic Officer.

The Department of Teaching and Learning saliently represents the bloat and superfluity endemic to the central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools.

This condition of bulimic bureaucracy with no correlation to the academic progress of our precious young people is a prime reason to vote “No” for the 8 November referendum.

Ode to Rebecca Gagnon and Cohorts: Exposing the Destroyers of Children’s Lives

You may win


the August contest


but the real test


will be in November


by which time an


effort to dismember


your design for


winning


will likely terminate


your sanguine


grinning,


and you will


find


the strategy that you've


designed



will be


upended,


suspended,


ended.
 


Thus you'll find


yourself seeking other


surety 


in coping with your personal


insecurity,


and you can no longer use as


buffer


those whom you've made to


suffer.




So any winning August votes


cast 




will be your


last.



And thus you will be made


to pay for having looked for

advancement,

career

enhancement,

acting with

stealth,

in the interest of

self,

all at the

expense

of children’s

lives,

making no

recompense

for taking all those

dives.

But the day of

reckoning

is ever

beckoning,

moving incessantly

nearer,

turning feared into

fearer.

You'll be among those

pretenders to

power

brought down from the

tower,

no longer

players,

children

betrayers,

just offenders

exposed

deposed

tried

by those to whom they

lied.