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on October 28, 2020
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Big Enrollment Dip as Metro Parents Pull Kindergartners Out of Public Schools

Written by Tom Steward
in Education

If parents could grade Twin Cities public schools on their COVID-era teaching plans for kindergartners this fall, it’s safe to say teachers and administrators would recieve low marks indeed. The number of children whose parents have opted out of sending them to public schools has snowballed, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction in school districts’ insistence on distance learning, even for the very youngest students. The seismic shift caught the attention of the Star Tribune. Kindergarten enrollment has plunged across the Twin Cities metro, as families have sought alternatives to a first year of school spent at least partly in front of a computer screen...

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on October 27, 2020
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Research finds few links between schools and COVID-19 cases

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

While many American students have returned to in-person classroom instruction, many of their peers have not. Continued school closures have been driven by different factors—from fear that reopened schools will be coronavirus super-spreaders to opposition from teachers' unions that have slowed reopening efforts. But such trepidation over in-person K-12 schooling doesn't appear to be supported by science....

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on October 22, 2020
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Students Hold Protest to Get More Face Time with Teachers

Written by Tom Steward
in Education

Most high school student protests involve getting out of class one way or another. But several dozen Proctor students and parents recently held a protest outside two schools to point out how much all K-12 students need to get back into their classrooms in order to avoid falling further behind. The unusual protest organized by Proctor High School senior Sibley Dunbar made the pages of the Duluth News Tribune. “I have family friends who have kindergartners in the district and they’re calling their parents at work because they don’t know how to write their E’s or because they can’t figure out how...

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on October 21, 2020
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How COVID-19 upset the case against school choice

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

I have written extensively on how COVID-19 has changed the education landscape and has revealed to parents the shortcomings of a top-down education system, leading many to seek out alternative learning environments that they may not have previously been interested in or privy to before the virus hit. With support for school choice on the rise, "the anti-choice stance is less compelling than it used to be."...

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on October 13, 2020
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St. Cloud Public School Enrollment Dips as Parents Seek Alternatives

Written by Tom Steward
in Education

The statistics don't lie. A sizable number of families in the St. Cloud School District have made the decision to remove their K-12 students from the public school system this fall. The St. Cloud Times tallied up the marked decline in enrollment at the start of the school year. St. Cloud school district has about 4% fewer students in district classrooms this fall compared to last year. That's a decrease of about 375 students — for a total of about 9,250 students — in kindergarten through 12th grade and at the district's alternative sites. "A big portion of what we're seeing this year...

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on October 09, 2020
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A post-COVID agenda for Minnesota’s state government: Education

Written by Catrin Wigfall
in Education

COVID-19 has laid bare the educational disparities that continue to remain a stubborn feature of our education system. The status quo, one-size-fits-all does not fit all, and if we do not use this opportunity to focus on students instead of systems, existing achievement gaps and learning loss will continue to be exacerbated....

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