Defining Smart Down

The Strib endorses the St. Paul school levy. This would be the third levy since 2000. The endorsement is the same old claptrap for the same old tax hike. But some of the "justifications" for the endorsement grabbed my attention:If...
Posted by Mitch on October 27, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

All The Options (As Long As They're Meaningless)

The Strib wants us to deal with school violence by keeping all the options - as long as they don't trouble any of the sacred cows of the left:Any comprehensive strategy to curb school shootings should deal with both subjects....
Posted by Mitch on October 17, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Teacher Has Two Critics

The good news? Katherine Kersten - the Twin Cities' media's best columnist - has a blog! The bad news? She's got so much material. She writes about a protest at a Minneapolis public school:The scene last Saturday at the Interdistrict...
Posted by Mitch on October 16, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Wrong Solution?

I've raised questions - admittedly half-formed ones - over schools' process of "locking down" whenever there's any kind of emergency. In the case of school shootings, I think it's generally a deeply stupid idea, keeping students locked into their rooms...
Posted by Mitch on October 12, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Parents Are Obstacles

Granted, this letter to the editor in the Strib about last week's incident at St. Louis Park High is from a "security employee" at a "neighboring" school. The incident - in which the superintendent closed the school due to rumor...
Posted by Mitch on October 09, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (19) | TrackBack

Essense of Bull

Eric Black in Big Question:Was told that the task formerly known as “homework” would no longer be designated by that term because of the negative connotations it carries. New term for the task formerly known as homework: “Celebration of Learning.”...
Posted by Mitch on September 21, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Space-Time Continuum Rips

Hilton busted for DUI:Celebrity Paris Hilton was arrested and charged with driving under the influence early Thursday after driving erratically and failing a field sobriety test, police said.The lawyer's take?At the time of her arrest, Hilton was driving home from...
Posted by Mitch on September 07, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

They Put Up A Poster Saying "We Know More Than You"

Craig Westover posts a response to a comment from a post about education. It sums up not only every reason the DFL must be kept from office in Minnesota, but in fact is a fine example of why I left...
Posted by Mitch on August 15, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

This Is Good News

Few things will rile up a conversation quite like the question "what should kids learn?" To some, "the basics" - reading, writing, math, and fairly straightforward history - are the focus. Others favor a less-focused curriculum focused on developing broader...
Posted by Mitch on June 06, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (12) | TrackBack

At Risk

The greatest success (say those of us who have become detractors of the current educational system) of supporters of compulsory education is that they've convinced most of society that there is no better way to educate children than the current...
Posted by Mitch on June 05, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (27) | TrackBack

Stop Digging

Minneapolis DFL delegates rebel against the school board at the city convention (Minneapolis being a one-party town, the convention is the only election that matters). They opted to dump current board president Joseph Erickson:Erickson said his bid was affected by...
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Smoke Filled Schoolroom

EdAction warns that the comprehensive list of intrusive pre-school programs we warned you about is still very much alive in this session: Last week, Rep. Doug Meslow (R-White Bear Lake), House author of the Nanny State provisions, predicted, "Don't count...
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The War On Charter Schools

The NYTimes goes after charter schools in yesterday's editorial. The charter school movement began with the tantalizing promise that independently operated schools would outperform their traditional counterparts — if they could only be exempted from state regulations while receiving public...
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ugh

Night Writer on his trip back through time... ...via the "movie" Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the Gee Gees and ..Peter Frampton? Read the whole thing. But this bit caught me up short:I was just about to turn...
Posted by Mitch on May 08, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's In A Grade?

The Headline in the Strib:State's Education Tech Grade dips to a DThe story says:When it comes to technology, it seems that seven years is enough time to go from trend-setting to obsolete. Minnesota finds itself in unusual territory -- second-to-last...
Posted by Mitch on May 04, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

If You Don't Eat Your Meat, You Can't Drink the Bong Water

The letter of the day - for both this blog and the Strib - appeared in the Strib this morning. The author is one Mark Anderrson:I was shocked to hear that Macalester's student government allotted student funds to hold a...
Posted by Mitch on April 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Don't Look Now, But...

Education Minnesota - the teachers' union - is running an ad campaign dim-witted and factually-devoid enough to have been designed by Ken Avidor. You know the one I'm talking about - the one with the pasty sixtysomething Dick Cheney impersonator...
Posted by Mitch on April 12, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Changing Times?

Racial tension coincided with the Immigration debate to lead up to a scuffle at Phoenix-area school. Some anglo students burned a Mexican flag which some Mexican students had raised (above the US flag). I won't say it's "nice" that someone...
Posted by Mitch on March 31, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Down The Ratlines

I've always felt it was one of the Democrat party's great weaknesses; the urban African-American base over which the party needs to maintain absolute control to survive, is up in arms over the miserable state of public education. I've come...
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (17) | TrackBack

Kids' Heads Checked While U Wait

The Minnesota Legislature is looking into a proposal to have all Minnesota childrens' mental health checked at least once before preschool. As usual, Matt Abe at MERN is on the case:Mental health screening is subjective and inaccurate in children. Diagnoses...
Posted by Mitch on February 22, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Why Do Academics Hate Free Speech?

This has come up in Minnesota; a group - in this case, conservative UCLA alumni - are looking for stories of liberal bias among professors:An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes...
Posted by Mitch on January 24, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (46) | TrackBack

Book Review

The other day, as I was muling a load of cocaine from Little Rock to Hastings, I stopped by a biker bar in some little town in Missouri to carry out a contract hit on a couple of guys who'd...
Posted by Mitch on January 11, 2006 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Insert Miracle?

There's a classic cartoon that appeared (if memory serves) in the New Yorker. A pair of mathematicians stand in front of a chalkboard; on the left third of the chalkboard, a dense mass of equations and calculations; on the right...
Posted by Mitch on November 16, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (21) | TrackBack

Small Town, Small School, Big Bureaucracy

The collapse of the inner city school system gets a lot of coverage (although almost none of it will come anywhere near the true cause of the problem of blue-city schools). The disappearance of the small town school is at...
Posted by Mitch on November 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Above The Rules?

The far left has decided that November 2 is a national Moonbat holiday. Not only that, they've decided to make it a school holiday, too. Someone at Protest Warrior sent me a heads-up; the Minneapolis Left has broken into Grampa's...
Posted by Mitch on October 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (35) | TrackBack

Worldviews

King Banaian points us to this year's Beloit College Mindset List, which purports to enlighten us on what the new generation of students regard as their baseline reality. You know the survey; it's the one that enlightens us with things...
Posted by Mitch on August 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Party On! And On! And On!

Attending an obscure little Liberal Arts college on the prairie, I always wondered what it would be like going to one of the "legendary" party schools (which, in that place and time, were Moorhead State University in Moorhead, MN, and...
Posted by Mitch on August 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Bleeding in Denver

Marc Cohn - songwriter, pianist and the writer of long-time Cities 97 warhorse song "Walking In Memphis", was shot in the head in a parking ramp in Denver.A Grammy-winning musician and husband of ABC news reporter Elizabeth Vargas was treated...
Posted by Mitch on August 09, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Sly Coup

I'm a very casual consumer of comics. "Dilbert" has been the bulk of my comic diet since "Calvin and Hobbes" left production. That's not, of course, a reflection of my real interest, of course. In fact, if there's a great...
Posted by Mitch on July 13, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

First Theorem of Parody

Berg's First Theorem of Parody:Any attempt to parody pretentious academic or critical writing will be undercut by a serious example that is even worse. I'm looking for any evidence disproving this theory, before we promote it to law. Anyway. A...
Posted by Mitch on June 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Education? Schooling?

There was a guy in my high school class - let's call him Dwight, for that was indeed his first name - who could reasonably be termed "obstreporous". He loved an argument. If you've been reading my blog for a...
Posted by Mitch on June 02, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Sin Of Commission?

I'm going to draw a parallel here, on both sides of the aisle. Hugh Hewitt draws our attention to John Leo's excellent piece on the Newsweek flap as well as the fallout - much of it from Hugh's interview with...
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

News Flash: Hollywood Doesn't Get Christians

Via David at the Monkeys, Jonah Goldberg on Law and Order's latest anti-faith faux pas:But the most recent episode of NBC’s doddering Law & Order series is where I draw the line. The episode tells the story of a racist...
Posted by Mitch on May 19, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Be Cruel To Your School

A couple of kids at Moundsview High (a north suburb of the Twin Cities) have developed a mod of a first-person shooter game... ...set in Moundsview High School:Mounds View High School senior Jordan Everhart remembered talking last year to his...
Posted by Mitch on May 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Smearers, Smear Thyselves

I fully expect that my kids could very easily wind up completely different from my own politics. After all, all three of the grandparents I remember were solid Republicans, while both of my parents are Democrats. Anything can happen. Such...
Posted by Mitch on May 12, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (66) | TrackBack

The Instant Vacation

This story makes me wonder - have students cracked the code? If an elementary school boy wants a day off, he makes a gun shape with his fingers. Bingo - suspension. If you want serious time off - no problem....
Posted by Mitch on May 11, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Intervention

Humans, and their institutions, measure success and failure in many different ways, for many different activities. Let's say, for a moment, that you're having a social occasion - a dinner party, for example....
Posted by Mitch on May 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Sitting Ducks

In a much more serious vein... The other day my daughter came home from school. "We had a practice lockdown today". Lockdown? Sounds like the kids are in the slammer (see my "Abolish Grade School" post). Now, the person in...
Posted by Mitch on May 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

How To Save Public Schools

When I hear blowhards like Nick Coleman ranting about how Republicans want to "abolish the public school system", I get a chuckle. I grew up in the public schools - Dad was a high school teacher, and a great one....
Posted by Mitch on April 18, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Kill The Messenger

More Zero Tolerance in action; a principal suspends a student who caught her breaking the law:Smoking within 25 feet of a school is illegal in Rhode Island. Eliazar Velasquez, a sophomore at Central High School in the Providence Public School...
Posted by Mitch on March 24, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Understatement of the Year

I missed David Horowitz's speech in Minneapolis yeaterday, but the Strib covered it. Sort of....
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Zero Tolerance - Bloom is Off

Texas is finally taking a look at the "Zero Tolerance" policies that have swept through schools in the past decade. It's about time....
Posted by Mitch on January 27, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kick Me On The Bus

If dad did one thing right (he did many things right, but work with me here), he always lived close by school. It was a natural thing, of course; he was a high school teacher, and we lived in a...
Posted by Mitch on January 07, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

"It's 0-2...and Sandberg parks it in the furniture!"

Ryne Sandberg, legendary Cubbie, gets into Cooperstown on the third try.Sandberg, the 1984 National League MVP for the Chicago Cubs, was picked by 393 voters. He appeared on 76.2 percent of ballots, just above the 75 percent cutoff (387). Sandberg...
Posted by Mitch on January 04, 2005 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Spoiled by self-esteem?

(Guest post by Steve Gigl) Just out of curiousity (and prompted by this entry at SCSU Scholars): is there an easily determined starting date for the nationwide emphasis on self-esteem in education? A few Google searches suggest that it became...
Posted by on December 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (6) | TrackBack

The Point and its Missing

Flash from Centrisity took a whack at the Northern Alliance's and Craig Westover's criticisms of Nick Coleman's Maxfield columns yesterday....
Posted by Mitch on December 22, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Just Go Away

I live in Saint Paul. I have two kids who attend Saint Paul schools - one in elementary school, and on in Junior High. I'm up to my ears in Saint Paul schools - their strengths, their weaknesses, the whole...
Posted by Mitch on December 20, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

"I Got It Bad, Got It Bad, Got It Bad..."

Jenna Bush looking at a teaching job in DC. Let the Van Halen references begin....
Posted by Mitch on December 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Real Diversity

Erin O'Connor writes about the formation of a Black Republicans Club at the U of Pennsylvania:. If one believes that campuses should be places where minority groups can express themselves freely, in all their wide cultural variety, then Penn's Black...
Posted by Mitch on December 15, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Trunk V. Coleman V. Westover V. Wiley V...

Trunk at Powerline combines his own writing with links to Brian "Saint Paul" Ward, King Banaian, and others to write the most complete synopsis yet of the tangled rhetorical and editorial web that is the flap between Nick Coleman and...
Posted by Mitch on December 13, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Cage Match

Craig Westover gets a response from Nick Coleman, and responds. I'm going to do them all one better. I'm going to invite all the principals - Coleman, Westover, and Maxfield Elementary School principal Zelma Wiley on to the Northern Alliance...
Posted by Mitch on December 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Caught In Passing

Flash from Centrisity notes:The contextually challenged of the NARN are taunting Nick Coleman, again, this time on education. They are trying to screed him into a corner so they can call him a liar. Now I'm not a big fan...
Posted by Mitch on December 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (16) | TrackBack

So...Good? Bad? Indifferent?

So - are the Minneapolis school closings a a prudent response to economic and demographic realities in the city?:Minneapolis school board members are poised to adopt a reasonable facilities plan that would close 17 schools and shift programs in several...
Posted by Mitch on December 01, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Zero Patience

If you're already depressed about the state of public education, the Zero Intelligence blog is noplace to feel better about things. And yet it's becoming an essential read. School district "Zero Tolerance" policies are only turd icing on a rotten...
Posted by Mitch on November 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Park the Vote!

Via ASV... ...well, just watch it. (Not suitable for work)...
Posted by Mitch on October 31, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Too Big For School

Speed Gibson has this piece on the decline and fall of the Robbinsdale school district, one of Minnesota's largest.What has happened to Robbinsdale and other large districts like Osseo will happen to the others eventually, for the same reason: lack...
Posted by Mitch on October 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Swift on Schools

Tom Swift gives his blog's mission statement over at Pair o'Dice:People have accused me of wanting to see the public system destroyed in favor of vouchers but they are wrong. The strength of our country lies in our well educated...
Posted by Mitch on October 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Damnation with Faint Self-Parody

The word for the day is "Arromediojeering". Bear with me. Doug Grow is a perfectly capable writer - in terms of actual writing talent, he puts Nick Coleman to fully unrequited shame. And the Star-Tribune has many editors who are...
Posted by Mitch on July 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (9)

Urban Conservative, Part II

I keep asking people this question: "Inner city minorities vote Democrat to the point that they are completely taken for granted. Why do they keep doing it?" The reasons are obvious enough; Asians have an almost-stereotypical bent toward small business...
Posted by Mitch on June 18, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Here's a Shock

Isn't this what conservatives have been telling you all along?At a time when schools and teachers' unions insist that hiring good new teachers is critical to education, schools must instead choose between the connection young teachers often have with students...
Posted by Mitch on June 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (1)

Fear

Fear - Steve Gigl pointed me to this piece from "A Small Victory". On one level, it talks about the election, and her own personal journey from voting for Nader to supporting Bush. She gets some criticism, it seems, from...
Posted by Mitch on March 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Second Black President - If

Second Black President - If a Republican candidate for office had stuck his feet in his mouth the way John Kerry has this last few days - i.e., to the knees - the media would be crucifying him. First, his...
Posted by Mitch on March 10, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part IV - Teaching Tyranny

Most of the great names in the history of American democracy, philosophy and independent thought, not to mention industry, learned to read, compose and calculate in more or less the same way the farmers of De Tocqueville's observation did; any...
Posted by Mitch on March 05, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Why Schools Can't Work - Part III - The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

When De Tocqueville came to America, he noticed something astounding; the peasants could read! "Simple" farmers would spend their evenings reading by the fire, soaking up everything from the latest penny potboilers and broadsheets to the latest and greatest in...
Posted by Mitch on March 04, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part II - Siddown, Shaddap

Siddown, Shaddap While conservatives and liberals differ sharply on their views on how what an education is, it's ironic that criticizing the "Sit in your chair and learn" model of education draws virtually the same conclusion from both sides of...
Posted by Mitch on March 03, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Why Schools Can't Succeed, Part I

My father taught high school for the better part of 40 years. He was easily the best teacher I ever had in 12 year of public school and 4 more of college. Everyone should have a teacher as good as...
Posted by Mitch on March 02, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

All About Ed

All About Ed - As I mentioned last week, I have a very long screed about education in the hopper - one that is likely to get my conservative friends just as exercised as my liberal ones. Last week, I...
Posted by Mitch on March 01, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Screed Alert

Screed Alert - I have an inordinately large screed about education in the hopper. I'm trying to figure out whether to put it out next week in 2-4 parts, or just dump the whole thing on the blog this weekend...
Posted by Mitch on February 27, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Let Slip the Posts of School

Let Slip the Posts of School - Yesterday's post about David Rubenstein's op-ed in the Strib spawned a huuuuuge, somewhat dyspeptic piece on the reasons public education these days leaves me so - words fail me - depressed lately. How...
Posted by Mitch on February 24, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Problem Student

Nick Coleman knows what we need to do for public education; keep all existing, failing schools open, no matter what! I'm going to start with a bit at the end of today's column:Many thousands of children -- including three of...
Posted by Mitch on February 11, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Standard Standards

My kids - a daughter in seventh grade and a son in fifth - know who Winston Churchill was, why Richard Nixon left office, why the Cold War ended, and why Bill Clinton was impeached. They've heard of Churchill's...
Posted by Mitch on January 23, 2004 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Poor and Standards

I've been meaning to write about the endless, recursive debate about Social Studies standards - itself a byproduct of the late, great, eternal debate over the Profiles in Learning. I haven't yet. Too much going on. It's a shame, because...
Posted by Mitch on December 19, 2003 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Diversity

My kids are still six years way from thinking about college. Thankfully. Katherine Kersten isn't so lucky. She wrote this op-ed last week in the Strib:Why does this academic imbalance matter? Today, most college professors encourage their students to view...
Posted by Mitch on November 25, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Watching the Detectives - Allegations

Tom Swift is a St. Paul engineer and Republican gadfly. He's one of a small, dedicated group of fellow muckrakers who are wondering where in the hell all of the St. Paul Public School district's money goes. He went looking...
Posted by Mitch on November 21, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)

Unbelieveable

The NEA is telling teachers not to cast blame on anyone during the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. But another of the suggested NEA lesson plans — compiled together under the title "Remember September 11" and appearing on the...
Posted by Mitch on August 19, 2002 | Read Whole Post | Comments (0)