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on July 09, 2020
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Survey Says: 64% of MN parents want kids in school this fall

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) recently conducted an informal survey asking Minnesota families about their experience with distance learning and their hopes for the upcoming school year. According to the data collected from over 130,000 respondents, 64.3% are "comfortable" sending their students to school in the fall. And of those comfortable, 94.4% would prefer to send their students back full-time. But Governor Walz has appeared to suggest schools won't fully reopen this fall....

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on July 06, 2020
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School leaders call for billions more in additional education aid—are they crying wolf?

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

As we continue to wait for school reopening plans to unfold, school leaders across the country and the national teachers' union are repeating an all-to-familiar call for increased education spending, despite the billions in extra aid that has already been made available. In fact, they have even suggested they are ready to "keep schools shuttered if lawmakers don't pony up," according to Frederick Hess with the American Enterprise Institute. But many of these laments about inadequate funding were occurring even before the health care crisis hit, creating a "schools that cried wolf" narrative. ...

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on June 30, 2020
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Duluth Students Petition to Get Police Out of Schools

Written by Tom Steward
in Education

Sure it may be way out there to demand the immediate removal of the police officers assigned to Duluth schools for more than twenty years. But the students behind the movement to eliminate the district's school resource officers want the Duluth School Board to know they're in good company. After all,  the letter circulating with the online petition points out they're in lock step with two of the most liberal school districts in the nation. Our peers in Minneapolis did it. Our peers in Portland, Oregon did it. Now, it’s our turn. We want School Resource Officers (SROs) out of our schools....

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on June 29, 2020
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Years of test-score data suggest charter schools don’t harm traditional public schools

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

School choice opponents argue that school choice, such as charter schools, harm traditional public schools. Any gains made by students in charter schools, they say, comes at the expense of students left behind. But according to Marcus Winters with the Manhattan Institute, years of test-score data suggest they don't....

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on June 18, 2020
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MN Legislature is missing an opportunity to support kids

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

With the Minnesota Legislature’s special session set to adjourn tomorrow, Friday, efforts to make meaningful progress on reform proposals continue. But one proposal—Equity and Opportunity Scholarships—aimed at addressing and eliminating education inequities that plague our state has unfortunately, it appears, been tabled. Policymakers have an opportunity to address these disparities and shake up the status quo instead of simply rushing to restore it. These scholarships are a good starting point. ...

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on May 26, 2020
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Student Performance is Slipping, but Minnesotans Still Love Their Schools.

Written by Tom Mason
in Education

About the pollster: Rob Autry, founder of Meeting Street Research, is one of the nation’s leading pollsters and research strategists. Minnesotans love their system of public education, despite persuasive evidence that schools are consistently underperforming their reputation. The survey was conducted by pollster Rob Autry, president and founder of Meeting Street Research based in Charleston, South Carolina. His company completed 500 phone interviews, with a mix of cell phones (40 percent) and landline phones (60 percent), on March 5 and 7, 2020. The margin of error is ±4.38 percent. Meeting Street executed its study alongside a troubling report by American Experiment Policy...

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