Walz’s Minnesota: Almost 70 Percent of Eighth Graders Not Proficient in Math
“The information was even worse for reading, for which an inexplicably low total of 30% of eighth graders were proficient.”
I bet all of these students are well versed in the language of social justice and equity.
The Washington Examiner reports:
Nearly 70% of Minnesota eighth grade students not proficient in math under Tim Walz
The academic performance of Minnesota students has worsened since Tim Walz became governor. This sad reality has been largely ignored since Walz became the Democratic nominee for vice president.
The sons and daughters of Minnesota’s beleaguered families are forced to endure an incompetent education system as their governor prioritizes his political ambitions over the needs of the people he was elected to serve. Recent test scores showed that the overwhelming majority of students in Walz’s state are not proficient in mathematics or reading. Moreover, their proficiency levels have regressed since Walz was elected governor.
Consider the harrowing statistics.
In 2022, the most recent year in which data were available, the results of statewide assessments revealed that only 41% of fourth grade students throughout the state were proficient in math. This was a decrease from the state’s last evaluation in 2019. Even more shockingly, only 32% of Minnesota fourth graders tested proficient in reading! This, too, was a drop from 2019. Also, Minnesota’s fourth-grade reading test scores fell below the national average, according to the nation’s report card.
As governor, Walz promoted the “Due North” education plan, which focused on traditional aggrieved racial divisions and liberal ideological tenets. Walz’s education reform plan centered on “a future where every child receives a high-quality education, no matter their race or ZIP code.” Literature for this program touted the curriculum’s inclusion of “ethnic studies.” However, as test results have revealed, instead of useless left-wing indoctrination, Walz’s education curriculum should have focused on student success, academic performance, and rudimentary proficiency in math and reading — actual skills students will need to succeed in society.
Walz’s education disaster was even worse with older students.
Test results showed that in 2022, only 32% of eighth grade students in Minnesota tested proficient in math. The information was even worse for reading, for which an inexplicably low total of 30% of eighth graders were proficient. Similar to the results of fourth grade students, both of these percentages were lower than in 2019.
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Comments
So…
He’s doing a LOT better than Illinois?
How’s that for an endorsement?
How come the two debate moderators didn’t ask any questions about that subject, huh?
70%?!! That’s almost half!
Mao raised an ignorant generation of arrogant, bullying social activist thugs.
Timmie must be proud of himself..
math is not needed
as long as they know how to handle wmd
they are the leftists wet dream
Who cares if they are not proficient in math?
Math is racist!
What matters is that they be proficient in pronouns!
Education is the issue that makes it easy to abandon the Democratic Party. How can one support people who put the money of the teachers unions ahead of the education of children? Can any decent person place power and wealth of careerist democrats ahead of the future of millions of innocents of all races? To so would be, and is, truly sick.
More scandalously, fully 50% of Minnesota school students are below average.
This is a national calamity. MN is 3 points below the already low national average in 4th grade reading (32% proficient) vs. 35%). In math, MN scored
41% vs. the national average of 36%.
For MN eighth grade students, however, only 30% scored at or above proficient in reading vs. the national average of 36%.
In math, 32% of eighth graders scored proficient vs. the national average of 26%. IN all cases, these scores are abysmal for black and white students.
The last thing they need is CRT, DEI., ESJ and the rest of the woke nonsense.
Trump and Vance should take advantage of these results to reach parents nationally. It’s an issue that hasn’t come up in the debates, but is of vital importance.
We are facing this same problem in Guilford, CT, where a terminally woke superintendent is aligned with Ibram Kendi and his whole radical racist agenda. In 2021, he bought every teacher in the district a copy of Ibram Kend’s book “How To Be an Antiracist.” One fourth of our students are not proficient in reading and 36% are not proficient in math. This in an upper middle class community.
This goes all the way back to the 1920s when the progressive educators decided to substitute life skills for academics. It’s been all downhill since then (see Diane Ravitch’s “Left Back”).. The answer, particularly on the reading front, is E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge, that has achieved remarkable results in FL and many charter schools, including those in Harlem and the Bronx.
I recently read Arne Duncan’s book “How Schools Work.” On page 101, he said the following: “We don’t need rote knowledge anymore: we have the Internet and Wikipedia for that. What we need are kids who can learn anything and continue to be able to learn anything for the rest of their lives. We need kids who can think, not just recall…”
This is a statement of mind-numbing ignorance, totally at variance of decades of cognitive research. And to think he was Secretary of Education for eight years under Obama. You simply have to have a mind full of knowledge of all kinds to be a critical thinker. and, specifically, subject domain knowledge in the field for which critical thinking is required.
I first listened to school board members in Barrington, RI, where I lived in the 1990s, saying they want to focus on teaching critical thinking, not just facts. They thought they were impressing parents. The problem was that the kids didn’t have enough information in their heads to draw upon. You can’t stop the thinking process to look up things on the Internet that you should have already committed to memory. These things need to be immediately available and sifted as part of the critical thinking process. Gaining this knowledge must begin in the early grades, particularly for minority kids. But this downgrading of knowledge is what has come to us from education schools. That’s why I knew E.D. Hirsch was on to something when he published “Cultural Literacy” and started the Core Knowledge Foundation. and listened to the cognitive psychologists. Learning to become a proficient reader depends not only on decoding through phonics, but core knowledge so you know what you’re decoding. The ed school professors are out to lunch as to the findings of cognitive psychologists, which one reason why public education is in the toilet. Hirsch even mentions that when he taught a course in the education school at the U. of VA. after his book was published in 1987, students told him that their professors told them not to take his course. That speaks volumes.
Check out the following analysis of ed schools:
Asher, Lyell, Are Colleges Becoming Cults [Full Series], YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hybqg81n-M
Thanks, Bill, for all you do.