Minnesota’s collapse of K-12 educational achievement since Tim Walz’s election as governor is well documented. Once known for its relatively high educational performance, Minnesota’s shocking decline now exceeds, in some metrics, the decline of the nation as a whole.
This is happening because Tim Walz transformed the goal of education from academic achievement to transforming the students’ values, attitudes, and beliefs into the cultural Marxism worldview known as woke. It’s a new religion.
It is indoctrination but labeled as “culturally relevant” teaching. They dare to decide what is socially and emotionally relevant, and they replace justice with restorative justice. Walz embedded it in the curriculum and is filling up staff positions with teachers of like views and basically banning Christians, Jews, and Muslims who won’t acknowledge the precepts.
Tim Walz established a Diversity Council (DEI) to make it all happen.
Frontpage Magazine’s Daniel Greenfield investigated:
To implement his DEI agenda, he appointed woke members to the teacher licensing board (PELSB). His appointees revised academic social studies standards, instituted radical ethnic studies, and issued Marxist teacher licensing standards. The new teaching licensing standards require newly licensed teachers to adopt and teach the basic doctrines of the Cultural Marxist worldview in every class and school activity.
For example, the new licensing standards require teachers to teach the dogma of white supremacy, which assumes that all whites are inherently racist. It divides all people into two racial groups—whites (the oppressor class) and nonwhites (the oppressed class). White supremacy, implicit bias, and systemic racism are foundational Marxist principles, and new teachers must adopt and teach them all.
Gender BS:
Gender ideology, which pits sexual identity groups against each other, is also required. This is a key Cultural Marxist principle that must be affirmed in Minnesota schools. Walz’s Department of Human Rights requires that boys be allowed into girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms, and it requires the use of “preferred” pronouns, as gender ideology demands. Tim Walz is so deeply invested in promoting and normalizing children choosing their genders that he supported and signed legislation requiring school districts to provide tampons in all the boys’ bathrooms. “Boys menstruate, too,” students are told. (For this reason, the governor is often called “Tampon Tim.”)
The Department of Human Rights has also forced school districts to report student discipline by race and require equal outcomes (equity) in discipline. The results have been horrific chaos and violence, Greenfield writes. I remember Barack Obama and Eric Holder originally forced it.
Gov. Tim Walz signed off on a sprawling budget bill containing programs to increase the number of “diverse” teachers in schools. Yet experts are skeptical that the programs will yield positive student outcomes, characterizing the effort as an example of “race-based decision-making” that strips merit from the classroom.
The Grow Your Own Grant Program, funded by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), provides a “pathway” for adults and secondary students to obtain professional teaching licenses through scholarships and specific board-approved preparation programs.
The program offers school districts funding to have “teacher preparation programs. ” Grant recipients are required to use 80% of the funds towards scholarships to enable employees who are “of color or American Indian” to get involved in the preparation programs. These programs are aimed at individuals pursuing a teaching license.
Experts panned the initiatives as being “unconstitutional” and noted that a child’s ability to learn has nothing to do with the skin color of their teacher.
The NEA endorses Walz’s programs, and he does their bidding.
For years, the NEA has put radical politics above children.
Unfortunately, so has Tim Walz.
THE PANDEMIC
During the pandemic, Walz, in lockstep with teachers unions, kept schools closed for extended periods of time.
The actual numbers showed that 49.9% of Minnesota students reached grade-level proficiency standards in reading, only 45.5% did so in math and only 39.6% managed it in science: a more accurate description would be that well less than half of Walz’s school students are proficient.
Results from the 2024 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) released Thursday show 45.3% of tested students are proficient in math and 49.7% in reading. As the Minnesota Department of Education notes, “students who took the MCA in 2024 scored about the same percent proficient as last year.”
The Minnesota House Republican Caucus said math and reading scores have declined by 17% and 16%, respectively, during Gov. Tim Walz’s time in office.
Another dismal MCA test score report from @GovTimWalz’s education department — an astonishing 53.5% of Minnesota 3rd Graders are not reading at grade level.
Since @GovTimWalz took office:
Math scores 17%
Reading scores 16%
Science scores23%— MN House Republicans (@mnhousegop) August 29, 2024
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