Charter Schools: Intermission
By Mitch Berg
My “The Hit Is In” series (Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV) will be returning early next week. Here’s what’s going on.
- I’m asking a number of charter schools for comments about specific allegations in the MN2020 report about their schools. The report includes an appendix listing specific “discrepancies” by school; I am going to get the details about these issues directly from severl the schools involved. I’ve already spoken with three; it’s getting interesting.
- I’m going to solicit comment about my questions, the schools’s responses, and impacts to the conclusions drawn, from MN2020.
- I’m going over the media’s coverage of this report. I plan on asking some media figures about their coverage, which I’d call “fawning” in most cases, but the National Association of Fawners were embarassed to endorse it.
More, hopefully, on Monday.
Also – MN2020 is taking some flak elsewhere from Fitzgerald’s report. Their responses, so far?
By attacking Minnesota 2020 in this fashion, Charter School Partners [the group behind the links above] is making excuses for poor performance.
We’ll be going over what “poor performance” means next week. Stay tuned.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Awesome. In the real meaning of the word, not valley-girl-speak.
Go Mitch!!!!
Can these schools apply for not-for-profit grants that could be used to pay for better accounting? Just wondering how their tax status as educational institutions might apply in that context.
Given the services supplied by volunteers, the other potential source for better accounting help that occurred to me was the AARP or other senior citizens groups where retired people with a particular expertise volunteer in their community. Would seem a likely fit, older people with kids especially.
I have heard from friends about their families rural backgrounds when they were doing family histories. Including something that seemed like a similarity to these schools; apparently in many rural areas of Minnesota (and presumably the Dakotas and other surrounding states) the schools in communities were often church based or fraternal order based, rather than what we think of as our more modern public schools. One friend described the school in their community ‘in the olden days’, in a predominantly Norwegian immigrant community, as having been taught in Norwegian up until a surprisingly recent date. It seems quite a few of the early schools were either one of the Scandinavian ethnicities, or German derived. That led me to wonder how much of a parallel there might be between those early schools and these schools, especially in terms of the rules / laws regulating them or accrediting them. Just thinking out loud….. These may not be quite so new a concept as you think!
June 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Wait a minute, a blog doing investigative reporting? And doing a better job than the MSM at checking because the MSM views the facts as “too good to check”?
No, no bias in MSM reporting. Never.
Of course, they’re getting the income they deserve based on their performance.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
DG,
They’re not a new concept. Small, community-founded schools are where the notion of “public” schools started. And it’s an inconvenient (for public school proponents) fact that the best-performing public schools in Minnesota are the few surviving one-and-two-room country schools left out in the hinterlands. By the way, consolidating schools has been a complete disaster for small towns, not just economically but educationally as well.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Mitch says:
“They’re not a new concept. ”
I hadn’t thought they were exactly new just because there was a different name slapped on them.
Still, I bet a lot of people who think the language immersion schools are a newer development would be surprised to find out how long classes in MN were taught in Norwegian instead of English for example (well into the mid 1900s in some parts). Church services were held in languages other than English as well in those areas, and multi-generational family bibles were not necessarily in English either.
I think of those little details when I see some people freak over non-English speakers now…
June 11th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Mitch, I hope MSA is on your short list of charter schools you solicited responses from.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Up in northern MN it was the opposite, your parents told you that you were not allowed to speak Finnish at school or on the playground. They realized the importance of being an American and speaking the language.
I still get a kick out of the multi-lingual signage in government buildings. Who do they think they are helping, the poor illiterate Hispanics, Hmong…
Here is a clue, just because they can speak Spanish does not mean they can read it. But the government can afford to triple the signage costs… …sooner or later those signs will be thrown in the basura.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Ah, K-Rod is a Finn. That explains the constant need to pick fights.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Wrong again Kermit. You once again use your emotions to determine an outcome instead of sticking to the facts of the matter. Go get yer shinebox, boy.
😆 lol lol lol 😆
June 11th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Oh, as a child you were taught Finnish as a second laguage. Check.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
They realized the importance of being an American and speaking the language.
Right. In a state chock full of Norwegians, they didn’t want their kids to get marginalized. Given a choice between a Norwegian and a Finn, anyone – potential employers, prospective mates, hopeful schools – all would take the Norwegian every time. Best to head for “American” and hope for the best.
Finns may be Finns, but these ones did have enough common sense to leave Finland.
June 11th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Aye, but did the Finland leave them?
June 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Yah der Kermit, take a trip up ta da Iron Range, lots of dem finns out in duh Babbit Embarrass area, ya know… I show ya da accent dey gots way up nort over a beer sometime, ya?
Finns always picking fights? Really? Maybe they should be more like the Irish or the Germans, eh? 😉