Category: Big Education
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The Higher Education Butane Balloon
Students at the University of Wisconson’s Stout Campus must prove they’ve absorbed the PC narrative to Big Brother’s satisfaction before being granted a diploma: In order to fulfill the requirement, students must complete at least six credits from a list of approved courses that address at least two out of four categories: Global Self-Awareness, Global…
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Why Johnny Can’t Read
According to a series of articles by the American Economic Association, it’s because collective bargaining causes epic misallocation of resources, talent and time in education. Much to read, and you need to be a member to see most of it.
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Rebooting Berkeley
This email was circulated at Berkeley earlier this week, according to an acquaintance of mine: “Dear Students, Faculty and Staff, This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even…
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Social Inflation
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: This article says America is great because we had high school for everybody, which gave us the educated workforce required to succeed during the growth of businesses as banking, retail and manufacturing. Wait, what? Everybody had to go to high school so they could work as bankers and shop…
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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…
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Killing In The Crib
Teachers unions hate charter schools, and are trying (via their wholly-owned Democrat legislative caucuses) to strangle them in the crib, using absurd, pointillistic regulation to try to do what the market won’t – for example, denying funding to schools that don’t hit racial, income, and special ed goals. It’s called “anti-creaming” – as in “charter…
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A Modest Question
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Everyone wants our children to be educated so they can achieve The American Dream. But even in school districts run by Black administrators, Black students do poorly on reading and math tests. According to the article, that’s because Black students lack White Privilege which consists of parental supervision, respect…
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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…
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Royalty Doesn’t Need Feedback
The Saint Paul Public Schools are discontinuing TV broadcasts of the “public feedback” segment of school board meetings. Let’s make sure we’re clear on what we’re talking about here; the public feedback part of the meeting is about half an hour, starting at 5:30 (which is a brutally difficult time to make, for people who…
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Governor Dayton’s Priorities
Governor Flint-Smith Dayton is threatening to veto the budget deal over the lower level of funding promised for pre-kindergarten. I’m not sure that our legislature – much less our governor – is smart enough to fight the battle based on something like “what’s best for children”… …but in case any legislators are focused on that,…
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Psychological Warfare
I got this letter from a left-wing PR group yesterday, asking people to come out to protest against “conversion therapy” – the controversial practice of trying to “convert” gay kids to being straight – and, I suspect, ban the practice: Dear Rudolph, OutFront Minnesota’s Lobby Day is this Thursday…Contact your legislators right now and tell…
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My Question
Who in the flaming hootie-hoo are the other 32%?
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The Empire Strikes Back
The educational establishment is calling in its markers with the mainstream media, and beating the drums against charter schools in particular, and school choice in general. Of course, it’s the same set of out of context factoids they trot out every 2-3 years. Finances: Some charter schools have a hard time making a financial go of…
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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 –…
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Paper
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Liberals exclaim that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree proves he lacks knowledge. I knew a guy who was frighteningly well educated. He could tell you why it rained, when it was going to rain, what made it rain . . . he just didn’t have…
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Bubble Talk
I’ve made these two points before, somewhere in the blog’s past 13 or so years – maybe several times. But I think there’s a fresh-ish point here, so bear with me. Background: Two of the luckiest breaks of my life were: In 1980, at the beginning of my senior year of high school, a couple…
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Meet The Old Boss, Same As The New Boss, Same As The Last Boss…
Minneapolis School superintendant Bernardeia Johnson resigned her office yesterday. Johnson was also recently thrust into a dicey position by incendiary news stories and a legislative probe into a questionable $405,000 no-bid contract awarded to Community Standards Initiative (CSI), a politically connected group run by community activists Al Flowers and Clarence Hightower. For months, groups in…