Shot in the Dark

Focus

Education Minnesota has released its legislative priorities.

And it’s focused on students like a dog chasing a squirrel:

Minnesota’s teachers’ union Education Minnesota recently posted its 2020 resolutions, laying out its three priorities for the new year:

1. Get out 100% of the educator vote
2. Take back the state Senate
3. Win full funding for Minnesota students

OK, I lied. Their resolutions are all about browbeating teachers and holding the taxpayer completely hostage.

Could there be a more Orwellian sentence than “win full funding for MInnesota students?”

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Mitch Berg

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28 responses to “Focus”

  1. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Education Minnesota has released its legislative priorities.

    MO MONEY.

  2. TKS Avatar
    TKS

    I’m still waiting for the amount that equals “full funding.”

  3. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    When I hear questions about education funding, I whip out that graph showing education funding for the last 50 years. Forty-five degrees upwards. Using constant dollars. I can’t remember where I have one right now. I think the Powerline boys recently used it.

    The Education Establishment wastes money in ways the Pentagon can only dream about. And the supposed product, educated children, is worse now than when I was young (and *we* were more poorly educated than our parents).

  4. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    I’m still waiting for the amount that equals “full funding.”

    Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Bernie Sanders and AOC have pretty much described what that is.

    Just waiting for the merger of Education Minnesota and Amazon for the complete take-over. Who knows? It probably already happened.

  5. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Full funding will occur when every student is assigned their own, personal Diversity and Outreach Coordinator; Mental Health Monitor; Micro-aggression and Personal Pronoun Guardian; and Nutrition, Wellness and Sexuality Counselor. A 4:1 staff to student ratio is considered optimal. All the studies say so.

  6. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    “Full funding” is when you keep offering them more money until they say, “Urp. No thanks, I’m full.”

  7. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I seem to recall a second graph which showed just how much of education funding is spent on administrators and, secondarily, teacher benefits. But mostly administrators.

    Man, just think… one could get an education back in 1900 in a one room school-house with a single (female) teacher handling multiple grades at one time that is at least as good as what passes for education today.

  8. MtkaMoose Avatar
    MtkaMoose

    Joe Doakes – starting at their exit from the birth canal! That one study with 25 or so kids said so!

  9. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    jdm, one-room school houses were superior to the modern system in important ways.

    – By sitting in the same room with the “older” class, the more adept students could “move ahead” in their learning.

    – By being in the same room as the “younger” student, those who were behind could pick up concepts that they missed.

    – But most importantly, to handle the larger and more (intellectually) diverse classroom, teachers relied on students to help each other. This had a two-fold benefit. Not only did the student get one on one help, but there is no better way to learn a subject thoroughly, than to teach it.

    Modern teaching is built on an industrial approach that was all the rage in the industrial age – but is ineffective now.

  10. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    jdm;

    “Man, just think… one could get an education back in 1900 in a one room school-house with a single (female) teacher handling multiple grades at one time that is at least as good as what passes for education today.”

    I would say that they had a better education, overall. They were taught true history, an day’s work for a day’s pay, America is the greatest country in the world, there will be winners and losers and they get out of life what they put into it. Kids graduating back then would be mortified to take a government handout, as today’s entitled, coddled, snowflakes.

  11. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    I have an idea.

    Teachers say they need better pay and I believe them. I say pay each teacher $200,000 a year and reduce class size to 10.

    Seriously. It can and should be done.

    It costs $20,000/year to educate a kid in the Twin Cites…..sooooooo, each teacher gets 10 kids and all funds allocated to them, ie $200,000.

    For that, the teacher is expected to provide a classroom, (a room in their home or a rented office would do nicely), feed the kids lunch and provide transportation.

    How that is done is up to the teacher.

    Teachers would be allowed to recruit students, expel them and discipline them as needed. The laws would be changed to address liability and enforcement of discipline.

    Any parent who was unsatisfied would be free to find another teacher at any time.

    I would imagine that student performance would skyrocket ……among most – but then in the Macalester/Groveland area of Saint Paul, students would learn nothing of reading or math – and instead become scholars of racial and economic justice – more power to them.

    The other kids will get the jobs.

  12. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Jeebus, Greg, that’s brilliant.

  13. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    And oh, did I forget to mention, at $200,000/year teaching would start attracting quality people.

    “Gosh, I trained as an electrical engineer, but you really can’t make what a teacher makes doing that, besides, I actually like kids.”

    I mean, these days the purpose of education schools is to separate the wheat from the chaff – by throwing away the wheat.

  14. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Greg for the win!

  15. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    My grandfather was educated through 8th grade in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Missouri where the “schoolmarm” rode a mule to work and the boys chopped wood and kindling for the big cast iron stove that heated the place. The teacher also appreciated the gifts of squirrels and rabbits the boys shot on their own way to school. That class produced one doctor, two engineers and an author/historian, as well as several successful businessmen. (Some things never change; the teacher threatened to get on her mule and ride out of the country if the community couldn’t come up with an additional $1 a month in salary. They paid.)

  16. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Great story, Night Writer 🙂 🙂 🙂

  17. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    It has long been my opinion that if the average American knew what public school “educators” really believe their mission to be, they would be appalled. They speak in a jargon that is peculiar to educators, and is very far removed from common sense. You may believe that the purpose of a public school education is to give a child the skills they need to become a well-adjusted, independent, productive citizen. The education establishment believes that the well-adjusted, independent, productive citizens are the source of all the world’s evil (aka “injustice”).

  18. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    If one doubts what the old one room schoolhouse could do, just read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. The games the kids did to show their parents and the town what they were learning are quite impressive. Even with our technological society today, I can imagine it working really, really well.

    And as others have noted, there are strong reasons it’s not done today; it does not empower the bureaucracy that the NEA and AFT desire. To draw you a picture, my great aunt was a county/regional supervisor of country schools, acting more or less as a “principal teacher.” Now mind you, this does not mean “principal” in the modern sense. What it meant was that she would visit classrooms while the teachers were teaching, watch what was going on, and give feedback to the teachers.

    So you had tiny little schools–my mother was valedictorian in a graduating class of about 60 in a unified high school covering half her county–with very little capital infrastructure. No vice principals, no guidance counselors, no nothing. When I priced out that such buildings would cost–a couple thousand square feet with one or two teachers–yes, it’s a lot cheaper, even at today’s wages, than the current model.

    Doesn’t leave a lot of room for NEA dues, that’s for sure.

  19. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Had some time to look and found this nice chart (scroll down a bit), for spending up until 2012 or so. It includes spending vs test scores. I’m pretty sure the spending trend upward hasn’t changed nor that test scores have improved.

  20. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    From the POV of public school teachers and administrators, they are winning. Their stewardship of public education has resulted in success after success. Funding is way up, they are for more independent of the demands of parents and politicians than they used to be, and the money they spend is divorced from providing the results parents and politicians want to see. As our schools have turned out young adults less prepared to participate in the work force or move on to higher education, they perceive themselves as doing their jobs BETTER than before, not worse.
    And don’t kid yourself that if you send your kid to private school, he or she is learning in a less faddish environment than public school kids. Private schools take their cues from the PS system, and administrators move back and forth between them.

  21. Swiftee Pinochet Avatar
    Swiftee Pinochet

    Several years ago, during a town hall in SP, the foul mouthed Sandy Pappas courageously demanded full funding for public schools “for the children”. I managed to get the mic long enough to remind her that in addition to the billions received from the state, SPPS had passed tens of millions in excess levy every year for the past 10 years. “As a SP taxpayer, I ask; how much is enough? What will it take to get 90% of public school kids literate and capable of doing simple math?”

    She gaslighted, saying it was hard to quantify the number, I compromised “It’s a public function. No one expects precision, but we hear that lament all the time from Democrats, so it’s reasonable to say I’d like an answer; give or take a billion or so, how much?”

    They turned the mic off.

    One of my happiest days was the day I no longer contributed one green dollar to MN in general, and the Twin cities in particular. Minnesota is just as infected with degenerate leftists, per capita, as California.

  22. Swiftee Pinochet Avatar
    Swiftee Pinochet

    LMAO!!

    Right on time, the Strib sounds the alarm:

    “Minnesota teachers union opposes constitutional amendment to address achievement gap”

    “Codify achievement? Demand measurable results? Oh, hell no!”

    Hahahahahahahahahahaha
    Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!

  23. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Sandy Pappas

    I couldn’t think of a better example of the failure of the Minnesota educational system.

  24. Swiftee Pinochet Avatar
    Swiftee Pinochet

    She was a true degenerate, Gregg. But ol’ foul mouth was a lot smarter than Betty(!) McCollum.

    The standards for elected degenerates have taken a noticeable downturn.

  25. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Betty McCollum must be reminded to breathe several times a minute.

  26. Swiftee Pinochet Avatar
    Swiftee Pinochet

    @Greg lol

  27. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Betty McCollum must be reminded to breathe several times a minute.

    Her staff has rigged a screen-saver on her office computer that flashes a picture of Trump every 20 seconds to stimulate heart and respiration. This frees them up to work on finding other opportunities in “public service” for when she ultimately implodes.

  28. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I know everyone’s moved on and all, but I’d like to add, for nothing other than the sake of completion, that Betty McCollum may actually have a rival in stupidity. Now it may be that Ms McCollum can’t actually figure out how to use a microphone, but at least she has, so far, kept her mouth shut.

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