Must Read: Kersten Expose on Coming Chaos in MN Classrooms

American Experiment’s Katherine Kersten warns in today’s Star Tribune of a secret war on teachers and school discipline being funded by taxpayers and directed by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

Brace yourself, parents of Minnesota. Here’s what’s coming soon to a school near you: increased violence, brazen challenges to teachers’ authority and a chaotic environment where learning is an uphill battle. Teachers who try to exert control will find their hands tied, and some kids — no longer accountable for their behavior — will feel free to provoke mischief and mayhem.

If this happens at your school, you’ll be able to thank the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR). In fall 2017, the department sent letters to 43 school districts and charter schools across the state, announcing that the schools are under investigation because their student discipline records suggest that black and Native American students are disciplined at a rate that exceeds their proportion of the student population.

As Kersten reports, parents can’t even find out if their school district and kids’ classrooms are among those targeted by the Dayton administration in the first round of politically correct crackdowns on traditional school disciplinary procedures.

MDHR has declined to make public either the letters or the identity of the districts targeted, citing ongoing investigations. But Human Rights Commissioner Kevin Lindsey provided troubling details in a recent interview with MinnPost.

Here, in essence, is MDHR’s position: The primary cause of racial discipline gaps in schools is racist teachers and discipline policies, not differing rates of student misconduct. Schools must move to end these statistical group disparities. If administrators don’t agree to change their practices in ways that reduce black and Native American discipline rates, according to MinnPost, “Lindsey says the state will initiate litigation.”

The state’s template appears to be the St. Paul Public Schools’ dismal attempt to define down disciplinary actions, resulting in violence against staff and students. All without parents even knowing about it.

Today, MDHR seems intent on duplicating this failed social experiment throughout Minnesota. The department — whose use of state law for this purpose appears virtually unprecedented — is probably doing so because the federal government seems poised to back off on enforcing Obama-era race-based discipline “guidance.”

In its campaign to transform Minnesota schools, MDHR is operating under a shroud of secrecy. Reportedly, officials in the 43 targeted districts and charters have not informed parents that their schools are under investigation, most likely because MDHR has threatened to initiate legal action against them unless they cooperate and because they fear adverse publicity.

As a result, the parents and communities affected will have no chance to examine the data that allegedly expose their teachers as racists, or to influence the radical new approach to discipline that MDHR is foisting on their children’s classrooms.

You can read Kersten’s column in its entirety here.