Education
May 3, 2012
I read in the Star Tribune on Tuesday that an old University of Minnesota friend, Prof. Norman Fruman, recently died of cancer in California at 88.
Apr 11, 2012
Rare is the news story about right-side-of-the-aisle attempts to improve Minnesota education which doesn’t note the agitated disapproval of Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union. Be the issue expanding educational options, alternatively licensing teachers, stressing accomplishment more and seniority less in making tough personnel decisions, or virtually any other aim other than substantially upping budgets, one can be reasonably confident that Education Minnesota will rise up so as to hunker down in opposition.
Mar 27, 2012
Mitch Pearlstein, president and founder of the Minneapolis-based Center of the American Experiment, published a book last fall that immediately lit up chat rooms and list-servs, in part because it met virtually no one’s expectations for a policy study produced by the head of a conservative think tank.
In “From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation,” Pearlstein argues that the U.S. achievement gap will not be solved by educational reforms but by policies that reduce the number of children growing up outside of the marriages of their biological parents.
Mar 20, 2012
My American Experiment colleague Kathy Kersten recently wrote a column in the Star Tribune (March 11) about a consulting firm, the Pacific Education Group, which many local school districts already have paid a lot of money to, which argues that white people are “intellectual” and “capable of quantitative thinking,” but that black and brown people are “emotional” and “interested in feelings” and communicate through “body motions” like “rolling of the eyes.”
Mar 19, 2012
In fall 2009, President Obama took the unusual step of delivering a back-to-school message to the nation's students. He described his listeners' potential to become a doctor, a teacher, a police officer, a nurse, an architect, a lawyer or a member of the military.
His punch line was: "You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers."
Mar 11, 2012
The issue of Minnesota's racial learning gap—one of the worst in the nation—is heating up at the State Capitol. It's about time. University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler has called the gap "a catastrophe coming right down the pike at us."
Feb 29, 2012
Breaking the chain between street address and the school a child attends–school choice–is not only moral, it works. Education Week recently ran a commentary from nine scholars who make that point. The nine, who include representatives from the American Enterprise Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, say that in 20 years we have learned a lot about how to design choice programs, as well as how well school choice works. The article’s title reflects its content pretty well: “What research says about school choice.”
Feb 23, 2012
Minnesotans have always taken pride in our public schools. But today, an education train wreck looms just around the corner.
Feb 23, 2012
Minnesotans have always taken pride in our public schools. But today, an education train wreck looms just around the corner.
Feb 12, 2012
Minnesota's yawning racial and ethnic academic achievement gap is among the nation's worst. In nationwide tests of fourth-grade reading, for example, our state's black and Hispanic students lag three years behind their white peers. In recent years, only Washington, D.C., has consistently had a wider gap of this kind.
