What the >Star Tribune< Editorial Board Will Not Tell You Concerning Al Franken's Deleterious Effect on K-12 Education

Whether out of cluelessness or collusion, the editorial board of the Star Tribune is not in a position to tell you the truth about Al Franken, that sub-species of the creature known as “progressive Democrat,” who speaks loudly and carries a small stick when it comes to improving systems of K-12 education in the United States.

 

Keeping in view that I am a leftist activist who commits my energies to the overhaul of K-12 education for sixteen to eighteen hours each day my feet hit the ground, know that I have no patience whatsoever with liberal Democrats whose political coffers are beholden to teacher union entities such as the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Education Minnesota, and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT).  Listen carefully to any Democrat politician, whether Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Dayton, Bobby Joe Champion, or Jeff Hayden, and you’ll either be subjected to verbal assemblages echoing the utterances of the NEA, Education Minnesota, or the MFT, or you’ll hear the deafening sound of silence;  Barack Obama resisted that act of puppetry, but in the end these entities undermined his own best inclinations to improve the rigor and teaching quality of K-12 education.

 

And so it goes, with derisive shibboleths such as “teaching to the test,” “all this standardized testing,” and “narrowing of the curriculum” pouring forth from putatively progressive lips that also back the step and lane system of teacher advancement, recoil from promotion and pay based on merit-earned performance, and cheer or stand on the sidelines as the Dayton administration undermines the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) and eliminates graduation standards.

 

And so it came to pass that on Saturday, April 22, 2017, the editorial board of the Star Tribune presented as its lead editorial one of those expressions of opinion with which many would ingenuously find themselves in accord.  That editorial, “Franken bill would help get Minnesotans the skills, education needed for jobs that need filling,” lauds the recent conference convened at Franken’s behest to promote collaborations that train young people for jobs requiring skill sets now in short supply but highly sought by employers.  The editorial also commends Franken’s efforts to get his Community College to Career Fund Act passed in Congress;  the bill would extend federally funded competitive grants to collaborative efforts by businesses, two year colleges, and training programs that provide registered apprenticeships, on-the-job training, and paid internships.  Franken’s legislation is touted by the editorial board for its potential to close the current skills gap between the needs of employers and the credentials of job seekers.

 

What goes unsaid are the many ways that so-called progressives undermine the genuine advancement of K-12 education by toeing the teacher union line.  Also appearing as subtext recondite to most readers, even those who fancy themselves K-12 advocates, is the reality that initiatives such as Franken’s should be unnecessary.  A skill-imparting, knowledge-intensive education of excellence delivered in grade by grade sequence would give students the academic foundation that they need for work and for life.  If K-5 and  grade 6-8 curricula were properly rigorous, then the high school years at grades 9-12 would provide many opportunities for students to take courses of the technological and skill-specific sort advocated by Franken and lauded by the editorial board of the Star Tribune.

 

An excellent education is a matter of excellent teachers imparting a knowledge-intensive curriculum in the liberal, technological, and vocational arts in grade by grade sequence to students of all demographic descriptors. 

 

An excellent teacher is a professional of deep and broad knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students.

 

Failure to define excellent education and excellent teachers, a common shortcoming for both the education establishment and would-be reformers, precludes any pursuit of excellence:   One is unlikely in the extreme to achieve a goal the nature of which goes unarticulated and ill-understood.

 

With the definitions of excellence provided, we should then be clear as to the purposes of K-12 education, which are to send students forth to lives of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.  The latter purpose gets paramount attention in the currently prevailing discussions;  the former two get short shrift, for which we pay in human lives unfolding without meaning and debased political exercises such as that to which we fell victim this past November.

 

Please, you readers of the Star Tribune, look for reality in the subtext rather than the manifest word delivered in the utterances of that publication’s editorial board and in the proclamations of Al Franken and others posing as progressives while promoting a K-12 status quo that has had decidedly unprogressive consequences for the young people I have taught and about whom I have cared deeply for over forty years.