HOME SCHOOLERS BEWARE! SIZZLING CHARTER SCHOOL DOCUMENTATION!

This post covers documentation regarding history of charter school implementation out of Minnesota in the early 1990s. This piece of documentation includes information compiled concerning: Skinnerian mastery learning, workforce training, Russian charter schools, the nest of Left and Right change agents pushing charters, Common Core, community education, Center for Economic Development, South Shore Charter Schools which requires home school reporting, every neocon you every heard of involved in charter schools, Minnesota Plan, Minnesota Business Roundtable, references to President Reagan, Schlafly, Jeanne Allen, Heritage, Garvey, Benjamin Bloom, Sizer, Goodlad and more!

The documentation can be found in a 78-page booklet which had accompanied a 1995 video out of Canada, titled “Failing Grades 1996” and which begins with a letter to the late Bettye Lewis, Michigan researcher: Download it HERE.

While speaking in Minnesota in the early 1990s I was invited to participate in a TV interview with Minnesota’s new Superintendent of Instruction. When I asked him how Minnesota’s State Department of Education, created by the Minnesota Legislature, could partner with the “private/corporate” Minnesota Business Roundtable, a partnership which resulted in the “Minnesota Plan” (covered in this blog post), he replied with a blank stare. I truly believe he, being new to the job, may not have known that such an unconstitutional activity had occurred! Or did he?

On page 17 of the “Failing Grades 1996” report, this paragraph comes from “The Minnesota Plan”:

“Measured against these future needs,the preparation of today’s students is sadly, inadequate in at least two ways. First, there is a persistent problem of iliteracy. Graduating seniors barely able to read, let alone calculate percentages, are swelling the numbers of functionally illiterate adults in U.S. society. Second,most American students, at all levels of achievement, are not learning deeply and not learning to reason, to apply general knowledge to particular circumstances, and to think creatively–though these are precisely the skills that will be needed for a full and productive life in the 21st century.

The challenge, in short, is not simply to prevent erosion of the present level of education, but to move to a new plateau of learning – one in which more students learn more, learn in depth, and learn how, to learn.”

For more information, see two previous blog posts: “Critical Thinking: It’s Not What You Think” and “Tools of the Mind“.

Homeschoolers were included in this Charter School experiment, page 53 of the “Failing Grades 1996” report regarding the South Shore Charter School:

Homeschooler requirements in South Shore Charter School: “For our home schoolers, while most of their work is via mail, telephone and electronic mail, we require each of them and one of their parents to visit the charter school two times a year for a 3-day face to face exhibit of mastery.”