Next week, the U of MN will host Dr. Lisa Anderson-Levy—a professor at Beloit College in southern Wisconsin—to speak on the “existential threat” of whiteness to the United States....
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School aged children will be walking out of classrooms tomorrow morning all over Minnesota and the nation to “protest” in favor of new gun-control laws. My suggestion if your school is participating? Keep your children home from school. The districts will lose the per diem funding from the state for the whole day. It is the only thing that will get them to sit up and take notice from Minnesotans who do not think this is proper. #KeepYourKidHome...
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Last Thursday, the Senate's E-12 Education Policy Committee held a hearing on proposed legislation that would require public schools to strive for academic balance when teaching controversial political subjects. I wrote about the proposed legislation and the hearing here. Several students and parents in the Edina public school system testified in favor of the proposal, along with the Center's Katherine Kersten. Tim Klobuchar, an Edina High School teacher, was one of those who testified against the legislation. In his testimony on Thursday, Klobuchar talked about events at Edina High School on the day after the November 2016 election. President Trump's victory...
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Yesterday, the Minnesota Senate's E-12 Finance Committee held a three-hour hearing on proposed legislation to require academic balance in the public schools. The push for this legislation arises out of the Center's exposure of political indoctrination and bullying in the Edina school system. American Experiment's Katherine Kersten testified in favor of the legislation, along with students from Edina High School. [caption id="attachment_9617" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Kersten is second from left[/caption] What would the proposed legislation do? This is the language of the bill, SF 2487: Section 1. [120B.25] ACADEMIC BALANCE POLICY. Subdivision 1. Policy required. A school board must adopt a written academic balance policy...
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Today the Star Tribune reported that hundreds of students "walked out" of their schools to protest against guns and school shootings at the Capitol in St. Paul: The article itself repeats the "walk out" characterization, and otherwise implies that the students were at the Capitol on their own initiative: An idea that started with a little more than a dozen students ballooned into a huge crowd. Organizers of Wednesday’s protest said they turned to social media to mobilize students from different schools, urging them to wear their student colors and bring their loud voices. Similar walkouts are planned for other dates in March...
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Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of allowing public employees to legally strike, especially when union members are sitting on the school board. If strikes are illegal, as we saw in West Virginia, it does not mean that teachers cannot strike. The chances of being fired are close to zero, whether the state is right to work or not....
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Many Edina students, parents, teachers and staff have expressed their appreciation for our efforts to reform the politicized Edina school system. This email, from an Edina High School student, is typical: Mr. Hinderaker, I’m a student at Edina High School. Recently, my high school has been very divided. This may not be a new issue, but it is a constant distraction from learning. Students' views clash with the views of other students and even teachers. I believe that it’s very important to value other people’s opinions. In an education environment, I believe there should be a free-market of ideas, where people can...
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This brief Associated Press article is a classic of the genre, on an increasingly important subject: A new study highlighting wide gaps in school discipline between Minnesota's white and minority students is raising concerns among state human rights leaders. Some would say that it should be raising concerns among leaders of minority groups whose students are behaving badly, so as to incur discipline. The report released Friday found students of color were twice as likely to be suspended or expelled as their white peers, despite making up a smaller share of students. The phrase "students of color" is telling. I will try to track...
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Our exposure of left-wing indoctrination, politically-motivated bullying and declining academic performance in the Edina public schools continues to reverberate. The story has gone national, with the Weekly Standard and the Drudge Report, among others, picking up on it. Here is another indication of the broad interest that the Edina story has generated. A YouTuber named Sean Fitzerald has produced an 11-minute video on "the complete failure that is the SJW [Social Justice Warrior] take over of the Edina school district." The video is based on Katherine Kersten's work, and he quotes liberally from our reports. You can tell Fitzgerald isn't from...
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This column originally appeared in the Twin Cities Business Monthly on July 1, 1999. In Israel, according to John Lott of the University of Chicago, terrorist shootings decreased radically in the early 1970s after concealed- handgun laws were liberalized. "All of a sudden," he recounted in a Minneapolis speech last January, "elderly ladies would pull pistols out of their purses and fire at the terrorists, and the terrorists would complain that nobody had warned them." In Pearl, Mississippi not long ago, when a student started shooting, killing two other students, an assistant principal ran to his car a quarter of a mile away,...
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