Why Obama is speaking directly to schoolchildren on September 8

The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next generation.

—Abraham Lincoln (attributed)

Diffusion of authority among tens of thousands of school districts is a safeguard against centralized control and abuse of the educational system that must be maintained.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1955

President Obama will address the nation's schoolchildren directly in their classrooms on Tuesday. More than just a speech, the event will be broadcast on C-SPAN, streamed from the Internet, and be accompanied by downloadable "classroom engagement resources," with thought-provoking content like this:

As the president speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note‐taking graphic organizer such as a “cluster web;” or, students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children could draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

• What is the president trying to tell me?


• What is the president asking me to do?


• What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?

Why does the Left in America insist on ever more centralized control of the schools and oppose charter and homeschools, taking control away from parents and local communities?

When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.

—Adolf Hilter

Take away a people's heritage and they are easily persuaded.

Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

—Vladimir Lenin (attributed)

Under federal control of education and soon health care, all that's left for us parents is "breed 'em and feed 'em." The government will take care of the rest, from cradle to grave.

Senate DFL moves to kill charter schools

Over Republican minority objections, the Minnesota Senate Education Subcommittee on Charter Schools yesterday perverted Governor Pawlenty's charter school bill (S.F. 867) with several amendments that would strangle Minnesota's successful charter school movement. The bill passed out of the subcommittee and will be heard by the full Senate Education Committee.

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Subcommittee Chair Kathy Saltzman (DFL-Woodbury) offered the bulk of the amendments. According to the Minnesota Senate Briefly Daily Coverage and Jon Bacal of Minnesotans Against Banning New Public Schools, some of the stronger measures in the bill:

• Would cap the number of charter schools statewide at the current number (160) until at least the fall of 2011. If passed into law, Minnesota would also lose $15 million or more annually in federal charter start-up funds.
• Reinstates the ban on locating or relocating charter schools within one mile of a closed district property or within a consolidated school district, the identical provisions that were rejected in the House committee on Tuesday.
• Would prohibit nonpublic sectarian or religious institutions from sponsoring charter schools. Since three of the top charter school sponsors fall into this category, the seventeen schools they sponsor would be forced to close if they could not find other sponsors.

Apparently Sen. Saltzman came to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Republcans Sen. David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) and Sen. Gen Olson (R-Minnestrista) tried to delete the first two provisions, but were defeated on voice votes.

Watch this blog, or the Facebook page of Minnesotans Against Banning New Public Schools for updates.

Beacon Academy "bursting at the seams"

Beacon Academy, a Core Knowledge-based charter school, has outgrown its current building in Plymouth. I have been following the creation and evolution of this charter school since it was just an idea. Hearing about Beacon's growing pains and then growing successes from Beacon's director (and my friend), Jordan Ford, has been heartening.

As reported by the Sun Newspapers ("Beacon Academy interested in leasing Pilgrim Lane in Plymouth," February 12, 2009), Beacon is interested in leasing (or buying) Pilgrim Lane Elementary, one of three Robbinsdale District 281 buildings scheduled to close at the end of the school year due to excess capacity:

Tamara Harken of Crystal, chair of the Beacon Academy board of directors, sent a letter to District 281 Board Chair Tom Walsh on Jan. 9, expressing her school's interest in leasing Pilgrim Lane beginning this fall.

"Our five-year plan to mature into a K-8 school has come to fruition, and we are currently searching for a location to house our 2009-2010 student body of 400 children," Harken's letter stated.

"It's nice to be bursting at the seams versus dealing with declining enrollment," said Ford.

The Sun Sailor reported that "District 281's policy until 2007 was not to rent or sell its surplus buildings to other schools that potentially would compete for the district's students."

The attitude that puts protecting one's turf ahead of serving the families of our community could be one reason that enrollment in some school districts is declining, while enrollment in charter schools like Beacon Academy is rising. Public school districts should not be afraid of school choice. In Sweden, public education funding follows the child, with the support of even the Swedish Teachers Union:

Sweden's school choice system was introduced in 1992. It is based on a virtual "voucher" which is equivalent in value to the average cost of educating a child in the local state school.

Parents can use this "voucher" to "buy" a place at the school of their choice. The idea is that funding follows the pupil and, in this way, the state supports the schools that are most popular with parents.

—"Swedish parents enjoy school choice," BBC.com

Beacon Academy's success glossed over

If you were looking for mention of the Beacon Academy charter school of Plymouth, Minnesota on a recent KSTP-TV "5 Eyewitness News Investigates" segment about charter schools, and if you blinked, you may have missed it.

That's because the story focused on various charter schools that are violating Minnesota law, and on calls to overhaul those laws, so the story mentions Beacon Academy by contrast as a success story. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, their teachers are 100% licensed and 100% Highly Qualified per federal standards. They're playing by the rules, and must be doing something right, if the portable classrooms and waiting list are any indication.

Beacon Academy is a fast-growing, K-8 charter school, opened in 2004, with a current enrollment of about 400, with two sections per grade. Beacon Academy is based on the Core Knowledge Sequence and Saxon Math. Beacon's sponsor is Friends of Ascension, which sponsors over a dozen charter schools in the Twin Cities area.

Beacon provides a traditional math alternative to the integrated math delivered by local public school districts (Wayzata Central Middle School was a field test site for Connected Mathematics 2). Its Core Knowledge Sequence is a knowledge-based alternative to public school curricula that still contain remnants of the process-based, "fuzzy" Profile of Learning state standards that were repealed in 2003.

In short, Beacon strives to provide the kind of private school, classical education promoted on this blog, but at public school prices (that is, no tuition — charter schools are public schools).

Beacon Preparatory School, the grades 9-12 charter school I reported on a couple of years ago that was related to Beacon Academy, is now connected with Seven Hills Classical Academy charter school in Bloomington.

Beacon Academy's director, Jordan Ford, is a friend of mine. He has extensive experience as a public school teacher and curriculum director, and as a private school principal. Ford has the heart for kids and learning that you would want in your child's or grandchild's principal. Beacon's detailed 2007 state report card is available on the Minnesota Department of Education web site.

John McCain on school choice

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I’m President, they will.

—John McCain, acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for President, September 4, 2008

Newspapers acknowledge school choice

The Star Tribune brightened my day with an editorial ("Charter school cap is unwarranted") endorsing charter schools, and by extension, school choice. "The door should remain open to create innovative schools for Minnesota students," said the Star Tribune.

Charter schools do not represent the ultimate in local control. They are taxpayer-funded, government-controlled public schools. They are subject to the same alphabet soup of state and federal mandates, from the MCA-IIs to IDEA to NCLB. Private schools and homeschools still provide the most direct control to parents over their children's school curriculum and environment.

Yet, as the Strib points out, "...charters are just part of the menu of educational choices. Out of 800,000 public school students, more than 100,000 attend some type of alternative, contract or charter program — all under the public school umbrella."

(The Strib doesn't mention that Minnesota's 2004-2005 private school enrollment, according to the Minnesota Department of Education, was 86,914, and homeschool enrollment for the same period was 17,135.)

The weekly Sun Newspapers recently ran an ambitious, multi-part feature on school choice that featured public, private, charter, and even home schools. Minnesota parents should take advantage of this state's school choice options. Not all states enjoy the same freedom to choose the best school for their child's needs.

Pawlenty, community look to KIPP to bridge achievement gap

The achievement gap is like the weather: everyone talks about it, but everyone has seemingly been powerless to do anything about it, until now.

In a collaborative effort between community organizations, big business, and his administration, Governor Tim Pawlenty announced in a press release that they will try to bridge the Twin Cities public school achievement gap with KIPP. By bringing KIPP to Minnesota, Pawlenty is making good on his promise in his 2006 state of the state address, in which he said:

Success for Minnesota in a global economy also demands that we develop the potential of all our citizens. Disparities in graduation rates and academic performance between white students and students of color continue to be a moral, social, and economic crisis.

I've proposed school choice as an alternative for poor, failing or disabled children. The legislature should pass school choice as an alternative for at least our most disadvantaged students.

In the meantime, we should pursue other new and innovative approaches that produce results, such as the The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP schools.

These are rigorous, public, college prep schools where disadvantaged students develop the knowledge, skills and character needed to succeed in top quality high schools, colleges and the competitive world beyond.

I'm directing our Department of Education to seek out and authorize KIPP charter schools in Minnesota, focusing on areas where our needs are the greatest.

The group that is bringing KIPP to Minnesota is a broad-based coalition of community groups, educators, and business: Somali Action Alliance; William A. Cooper, TCF Financial and chater school sponosor Friends of Ascension; DFL primary candidate for Congress Ember Reichgott Junge; Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs; Black Alliance for Educational Options; and the Minnesota Department of Education, among others.

The KIPP approach incorporates high expectations and "quantity time" for students. The school day is long, 7:30 am to 5:00 pm weekdays, plus every other Saturday and three weeks in the summer. (Somewhere, controversial former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Thandiwe Peebles must be smiling.) Parents, taxpayers, and the community will be looking to KIPP to repeat its past successes here in the Twin Cities.