Shot in the Dark

Category: School Choice

  • The Experts

    Remember learning to read? I do. We’ll come back to that. Years ago, when I was looking for alternative ways of schooling my kids, I ran across the Sudbury Schools . The Sudbury model makes kids responsible for their own education. Radically so – nobody tells them what to learn and when. Literally – there…

  • Immolation

    The late Nick Coleman used to accuse my fellow Northern Alliance bloggers and I of trying to “burn down the public schools“ for suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the teachers union and the administrative/industrial complex weren’t necessarily working in kids best interests. It’s taken 15 years – but it sounds like all the smart parents…

  • Training For Life In Any Democrat-Run City

    There was a bit of a blizzard in the Twin Cities on Monday night. Which is apparently a brand new thing to Saint Paul schools: St. Paul schoolchildren were still on buses or remained at a handful of public schools at 9 p.m. Monday, a district spokesperson said. Toya Stewart Downey did not say how many…

  • Why Johnny Can’t Read

    News Flash:  The citizens, taxpayers and parents of Osseo, MN have discovered what the parents of Saint Paul, Edina and some other Twin Cities’ area communities have found out:  focusing to exclusion on “white privilege” as the reason for the achievement gap doesn’t actually change, or even affect, the achievement gap. Unlike other Twin CIties…

  • The Machine Lives On Forever

    A friend of this blog writes…: “We’re for wealth sharing and against white supremacy – But only on our terms. Followed this link from Minnpost. How many tales of woe started with those five words? But I digress:  The biggest 2 complaints from this blogger seems to be that wealthy people are sharing their wealth to…

  • Choice For Me. Not For Thee.

    Remember when Al Franken lit into Betsy DeVos over her school choice beliefs? Some might have thought Franken opposed school choice.   He does, in fact, support school choice. For those who can afford it. …the Senator also has very little experience with public schools. According to an interview with Harvard magazine, Franken was a…

  • Bill Cooper

    Bill Cooper, former chair of the Minnesota GOP and longtime CEO at TCF Bank, passed away earlier this week  at 73. In addition to leading the MNGOP during the Carlson years, Cooper did two things that made him a hero to me. Nick-Slapped:  Back in 2005, then-Strib columnist Nick Coleman wrote a deeply dumb column wondering how…

  • Mystery!

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Why are families leaving St. Paul schools?  It’s a mystery.  Now that the staff member doing the survey has been let go, we may never find out.   Looking at the chart, there appears to be some overlap in causes since the percentages work out to 114% and even…

  • The Smart Ones

    Detroit Free Press article calls for the murder of Republicans… …for voting for school choice. What was it that Gandhi said?  First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you.  Then you win. Or, in the case of Detroit, “win”.

  • A Fire Extinguisher On The Titanic

    Mark Zuckerberg’s celebrated hundred million dollar gift to the Newark NJ schools worked about as well as any huge influx of more-mundane taxpayer cash ever did; not at all. Zuckerberg’s donation was earmarked toward merit pay, charter schools, and systemic reforms.  The charter schools worked well, but the city’s system for putting kids into charters was a goat rodeo.…

  • Un-Abeler To Compute

    I rarely if ever endorse candidates, per se.  I figure it’s not my job – who am I, after all?   I inform; you decide. But I live in Saint Paul.  The Fourth Congressional District; Senate District 65; House 65A.  I’m “represented” by Betty McCollum, Sandy Pappas and Rena Moran.   And while I do my best…

  • Warehouse: Schools And Stories

    I forget who I heard referring to the inner city as “government’s warehouse for poor people”. There are those who get hurt and bothered when I use that term, as if I’m characterizing the people. I’m not.  I’m characterizing the government. And for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of dealing with government…

  • Background Noise

    Opponents of urban charter schools – inevitably white, upper-middle-class, MPR-listening, Subaru-driving people with degrees from Macalester – have developed a habit of sniffing that urban charters are “a return to segregation”, because many charters, especially in the city, are aimed at ethnic groups. What these lilywhite guardians of “diversity”-for-its-own-sake miss is that these charters –…

  • Dear Superintendant Silva

    To:  Valeria Silva, Superintendant, Saint Paul Public Schools From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re:  How You Can Superintendantsplain Things To Your Black Students Superintendant Silva, In the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson Grand Jury release, you tweeted: No indictment for officer Wilson!  Very sad day in America.  How do I explain this to my black…

  • Liberal Math

    A kid spends ten years in public school.  Then, less than a year as a home-school kid.  Then enrolls in a public university.  And then kills his mother and 26 other people.   Four years after ending a year of home schooling. Obviously it’s Home Schooling’s fault! Under a new law proposed this week by Connecticut Gov.…

  • De Blasio: The Left’s Id

    NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio launched his first salvo in his war on charter schools – which is, essentially, an extended payoff to the unions and the condo pinks that put him in office in the first place (occasional emphasis added by me): While running for New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio could count…

  • Charter Schools: Batten Down The Hatches

    The DFL – at the behest of the Teachers Union, of which the DFL is a partially-owned subsidiary – hates charter schools.  They provide choice to families who find themselves underserved by the public system. And if you’re a parent in the inner city, that’s pretty much you; your kids are jammed into public schools that by…

  • Project Adams

    In the book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams described a grossly-overpopulated planet dealing with its problem by radical means.  The plan involved building two spaceships to fly the population to a better world. They built the first one, and loaded up all of the – er, let’s say “less essential” populations; I forget Adams’ list,…

  • My Urban-Renewal Idea

    On a Saint Paul discussion forum, someone asked “what would you do to better the city if someone gave you a couple million dollars?” It took me about two seconds to answer; I’ve been thinking about this one for years and years. If someone gave me a couple million dollars my plan would look something…

  • Compare And Contrast

    One of the Public-Education pimps’ big chanting points is that “charter schools don’t perform as well as public school!”. And in terms of top-line statistics, there’s something to that. Many charter schools – especially ones catering to low-income, inner-city, immigrant and Native-American students – have lower standardized test scores (although as I showed several years…

  • Crocodile Tears

    Democrats and the DFL have been trying to kill off charter schools ever since the idea hatched in Minnesota in the late eighties. This effort has taken so many forms: The DFL placed bizarre restrictions on charter schools’ ability to bond for buildings, forcing them to either lease cheap commercial space or let bonds at…

  • The Imam’s Advocate: The Bad News

    I know, I know.  Separation of church and state. It’s a good thing, in the long run. The story of TIZA – the Tariq Ibn Ziyad Academy, an Islam-centered charter school that at its peak had schools in the north and south-east metro – was one that inspired passions in a lot of people. The…

  • If A Charter School Succeeds In The Forest, And Jon Tevlin Doesn’t Write About It…

    There’s a reason so many “progressives” are so very very upset that Katherine Kersten remains at the Strib writing columns. It’s because while the likes of Lori Sturdevant and Jon Tevlin can be counted on, after all the “hard-boiled reporter” BS subsides, to pretty much say “Yep, Mr. Emperor, in the opinion of this ol’-fashioned…

  • Chanting Points Memo: The Kids Are Alright (As Hostages)

    Over the weekend, the MN House GOP released its new K12 Funding bill.  Tom Scheck at MPR reports: The bill, released Saturday afternoon, makes a slight reduction in expected growth for K12 schools, but increases the amount of money in the state’s per pupil formula. “The debate in education this year isn’t going to be…

  • “Go Back To The Plantation, Your Betters Have Spoken”

    My decision over the past holiday season to put off doing my “logic for leftybloggers” series – explaining some of the basic points of a logical argument, since a so very, very infinitesimally tiny share of them can actually manage one – is looking more and more shortsighted every day. I may have to exhume…