Bob CollinsIn the wake of the disastrous selection of a Minneapolis school superintendent candidate whose background was researched largely by a consultant, Lynnell Mickelsen says it’s unfair to vilify the school board as particularly incompetent ‘because the Minneapolis school board has been a mostly dysfunctional form of governance for decades.’
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Education
The state’s highest court has resuscitated the case of a woman who blew the whistle on financial irregularities in Minneapolis Public Schools only to have her job eliminated.
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Maybe it’s time to add history and civics to the list of standardized testing if that’s what it takes to jam home some pretty basic knowledge about the country. Read more →
Who among us hasn’t thought that if we drove a school bus, we’d be the coolest school bus driver ever?
Sorry, but Philip Bologna, of Rochester, Minn., has that distinction. Read more →
On two fronts, and from two different political directions, the lack of education by the American voter is cited as a factor in the country’s direction today.
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Last month Austin Roberts, of Spencer, Iowa, was wrestling in a high school championship match when he collapsed. The wrestler, who hadn’t been defeated all season, died a few hours later.
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The creeping — and creepy — intrusion of business and government on people’s personal Twitter musings has taken a step forward in Wisconsin where a high school player has been suspended for using profanity in a tweet on her personal account. Read more →
Demanding that Sandy Hook parents prove their children were once alive was just too much even for Florida Atlantic University. The school fired instructor James Tracy last night. Read more →
The new year is looking pretty much like the old year in the Fargo school district where this proposed picture in the school yearbook remains an issue for some people. Read more →
Everyone’s got an opinion of teachers but in North Dakota, only one person who wasn’t already a certified teacher wanted to try being one. One. One who wasn’t qualified.
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The more pages I read in Mary Norris’ book (Mary would insist I add an ‘s’ to that, but I refuse, in deference to the Taylor sisters), the more I want to ask the people who made up all of these rules of our language one question: Who hurt you? Read more →
The biggest question in Minneapolis politics these days is ‘What didn’t the Minneapolis School Board know and when didn’t it know it?’
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Ryan Clancy got a lovely note from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in the mail today. Clancy’s business, Bounce Milwaukee, received a ‘best places to work’ award from a business publication. Read more →
It’s not this picture that has gotten Larycia Alaine Hawkins in trouble with her employer, Wheaton College in Illinois. The private liberal arts school insists it has no opinion on the hijab she’s wearing to show her solidarity with people of other faiths.
Rather, it’s these words she wrote on Facebook that the evangelical Christian school has a problem with. Read more →
In Foxboro, Mass., a school has banned this photo. What’s wrong with it? She’s obviously patriotic. She has a flag in her photo.
Look closer.
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