Introduction

My name is Eric Mandel and I am a parent of two high school students in the Hopkins Public Schools District 270 (MN).

The purpose of this blog is to provide thoughts and principled criticism of the views, actions, and inactions, of the district administration, led by Superintendent Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed. To be clear, this blog will seek to scrupulously avoid ad hominem arguments. Dr. Mhiripiri-Reed is a qualified professional educator and I have no doubt she is acting in good faith to implement her vision of a modern educational system. That said, an Ivy League education does not render her opinions–however strongly held–or her actions to be indisputable or beyond reproach.

As I start this blog, I expect to address the following topics:

Vision 2031
Inquiry-Based Learning
Evidence-Based Decision-Making
Equity, Equity, Equity
Intersectionality and Bias
School Safety and Discipline
Restorative Justice
Hopkins 270 Group Speak

My Background

I am a licensed attorney, but have spent my career switching between legal, business and consulting roles. My experience in formal education is limited. I have my own educational experiences of going through K-12, undergraduate studies and law school with a learning disability (thus please forgive any typos and minor grammatical errors). I do a lot of thought-leadership work in my area of expertise, and through that I had two valuable experiences in education: First, I learned about formal pedagogy (i.e., alignment of teaching methods, learning activities, assignments and testing with intended educational outcomes) while participating in building a certificate program at Hamline University. Second, I learned about psychometrics (i.e., quantitative measurement practices) when I was selected to work on re-building the test question set for a professional certification.

I also feel it is important to mention up front where I sit politically. I identify as a liberal Democrat, but I find myself increasingly distanced from progressivism in America. This will be certainly reflected in my writings. In separate post I will further address my political views and other biases that I knowingly bring to the discussion.

To understand why I started this Blog, please read this next post: Why Start this Blog?