This is irresponsible, the tawdry Act II
following Act !, which brought Graff to the Minneapolis Public Schools. The superintendent search that ran from
spring 2015 to spring 2016 was an abysmally botched process. During the first phase, the board failed to
recognize the best candidate, Houston Independent School District turn-around
specialist Charles Faust; then acted in
ways that shut down that phase altogether.
During the second phase, the board only considered two finalists and
opted for Graff.
Graff was a failure as superintendent in
Anchorage, Alaska.
Remember that his record in that school
district was abysmal, represented saliently by academic year 2014-2015 as
follows:
Brief Summary of Achievement Levels during Ed
Graff’s
Tenure as Superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska
Results for Academic Year 2014-2015
All Grade Levels
Language Arts
Does Not Partially Meets
Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets Standard Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 35.1% 42.1% 20.5%
2.3%
American
White/ 13.3% 33.7% 44.3% 8.5%
Caucasian
Hispanic 28.3% 42.3% 26.9% 2.5%
Alaska 42.4% 37.5% 18.1% 1.9%
Native
American/
American
Indian
All Grade Levels
Mathematics
Does Not Partially Meets
Meets Exceeds
Meet Meets Standard Standard
Standard Standard
Student
Categories
African 29.5%
51.3.% 16.9% 2.3%
American
White/ 12.9% 39.7% 36.5% 10.9%
Caucasian
Hispanic 23.4% 50.9% 21.8% 3.9%
Alaska 29.0% 50.3% 18.2% 2.5%
Native
American/
American
Indian
Graff has performed similarly wretchedly as
prime leader of the academic program as MPS superintendent:
Minneapolis Public School proficiency rates
for the years that include two (those ending in 2017 and 2018) of the Graff
tenure are as follows:
MPS Academic Proficiency Rates for
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, & 2018
Math 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 23%
19% 19% 16%
17%
American
American 23% 19% 19% 16% 17%
Indian
Hispanic 31% 32% 31% 29% 26%
Asian
48% 50% 50% 44% 46%
White
77% 78% 78% 77% 77%
Free/
26% 26% 25% 24% 22%
Reduced
All
44% 44% 44%
42% 42%
Reading 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 22%
21% 21% 21%
21%
American
American 21% 20% 21% 22% 23%
Indian
Hispanic 23% 25% 26% 26% 27%
Asian
41% 40% 45% 38% 44%
White
78% 77% 77% 78% 80%
Free/
23% 23% 23% 25% 25%
Reduced
All
42% 42% 43%
43% 45%
Science 2014
2015
2016 2017 2018
African 11%
15% 13% 11%
10%
American
American 14% 16% 13% 16% 13%
Indian
Hispanic 17% 18% 21% 19% 17%
Asian
31% 35% 42% 31% 34%
White
71% 75% 71% 70% 71%
Free/
14% 15% 17% 16% 15%
Reduced
All
33% 36% 35%
34% 34%
Graff has now served as MPS superintendent
for two years and seven months. He
Inherited a Strategic Plan Acceleration
2020 that was a mere exercise in goal-setting with no chance of succeeding
and was based on ill-conceived philosophical principles: Most especially, the plan identified the
school as the unit of change; to the
contrary, the unit of change must be the district as a whole, with consistent
overhaul transpiring in the central office at the Davis Center (1250 West
Broadway) and then throughout the schools of the district.
Graff and staff are working on a new
strategic plan.
In the meantime, the Graff program has
focused on four goals: social and
emotional learning; multi-tiered system
(MTSS) of support; literacy; and equity.
Social and emotional learning focuses on respect for oneself and others
as necessary preparation for receiving academic instruction; this should be a given but in itself cannot
be the basis for a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete academic program. Multi-tiered system of support putatively
gives individual students the array of services, including counseling and
targeted academic intervention, that they need to be successful; were MTSS to work the way that the approach
should, great benefit would accrue, but there have been major problems in
implementation. Literacy should be a
given; but subject area focus should
drive improvement in reading, so that students acquire a broad vocabulary and
depth of reading comprehension across a range of academic disciplines. And equity is a goal that will only be
reached by the provision of a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to
students of all demographic descriptors;
this is not happening.
During the Graff administration, student
academic achievement levels have been mostly flat but in certain areas for
particular demographic groups have actually fallen. The number of African American students
proficient in mathematics has fallen from 19% to 17%; the American Indian student mathematics proficiency
rate also has fallen from 19% to 17%, the mathematics proficiency rate for
students on free or reduced price lunch has dropped from 25% to 22%, and
overall mathematics proficiency has declined from 44% of to 42% during the
Graff years.
Reading proficiency has risen from an
overall rate of 43% to 45% during the Graff years, a slight improvement
similarly witnessed for most demographic groups. But for African American students, reading
proficiency was flat at 21% and is still under 30% for American Indian and
Hispanic students, and for students on free or reduced price lunch.
Proficiency in science also remains
abysmal, just 34% overall with declines from 13% to 10%, 21% to 17%, 42% to
34%, and 17% to 15% respectively for African American students, Hispanic
students, Asian students, and recipients of free or reduced priced lunch.
These figures are very similar to those
describing student performance when Ed Graff was superintendent of schools in
Anchorage, Alaska; very tellingly, Graff
received an award from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional
Learning (CASEL) during the years encompassing that tenure of wretched student
academic attainment.
…………………………………………………………..
My investigation into the inner workings of
the Minneapolis Public Schools reveals superior performance in the Department
of Finance, headed by Chief Ibrahima Diop;
and in the Department of Information Technology led by Fadi Fadhil. The Operations Division is also ably run by
Karen Devet; and Maggie Sullivan is a
bright young woman who is struggling mightily to bring higher teacher quality
to the schools of the district.
But the academic program that should be the
core concern of any localized school district is languishing unacceptably. A few months back, brilliant research
division leader Eric Moore was given lead responsibility for the academic
program, with Cecilia Saddler as second in authority for the academic program
as Deputy for Academics, Leadership, and Learning. Working under the constraints of the
inadequate Graff program, neither of these able people has articulated a vision
or overseen initiatives capable of improving the academic program. Chief of Staff Suzanne Kelly took the lead in
developing the Comprehensive District Design;
that program is too tentative and does not place proper emphasis on
knowledge intensity and skill development.
Associate Superintendents Ron Wagner, Carla Steinbach-Huther, and Brian
Zambreno erroneously and irresponsibly act so as to protect building principals
and teachers from scrutiny, rather than endeavoring to improve academic
performance; my analysis indicates that
these three do not have the philosophical grasp or the professional training to
implement a viable academic program, even if they embraced the responsibility.
Michael Walker is in his fifth year as head
of the Office of Black Male Achievement;
with 7,000 African males in the district, the office serves fewer than
500 students in what is still a pilot program.
Walker’s salary has risen from $114,000 to $128,000 during his tenure.
Anna Ross is a woefully inadequate leader
for the Department of Indian Education;
she reveals little understanding of the data that show wretched academic
performance for American Indian students and little vision as to how to improve
acquisition of key knowledge and skill sets by American Indian students.
Thus, the academic program of the
Minneapolis Public Schools is the Counter-Gestalt: rather than being more than the sum of their
parts, those collectively involved in the academic program are individually
less than they could be. Even those with
talent and promise are less effective than they could be: A system of knowledge-poor curriculum,
inadequate teachers, and misguided approach drags everyone to a lower level.
……………………………………………………………………………..
The prime duty of superintendent in a
locally centralized school district is to oversee the creation of an academic
program that provides students with a knowledge-intensive, skill-replete
education. There is no hope that the
four-point program of Ed Graff or the MPS Comprehensive Design can even raise
mathematics and reading skills to grade level.
An abiding embarrassment for those involved in the development of the
MPS academic program is that we cannot move beyond discussion of the
development of basic skills to the provision of the full array of knowledge
sets in mathematics, natural science, history, economics, government,
literature, and English composition because the
administration of Ed Graff is so incompetent even in addressing basic
skills.
Graff and the academic decision-makers and
program implementers that he has assembled have failed to promote the academic progress
of the young people whose education is their sacred responsibility.
Members of the MPS Board of Education are
poised to vote to give MPS Superintendent Ed Graff a new contract.
If that be the case, the mass movement to
overhaul processes at the Minneapolis Public Schools must build, gather force, and
sweep away those board members up for reelection in November 2020.
And in the meantime, the sweeping away and
cleaning out must include the many incompetent academic decision-makers in the
current administration.
