The Deets

The StarTribune published the 2008 Minnesota School Test Scores on their site last week, but it wasn’t in a format I found particularly valuable. Rather than alphabetical by school, hot about being able to sort by performance?

So I put that together in a spreadsheet, which can be found below, or at this link. Note that there are 4 tabs. The first combines all metro schools (Public, Private, and Charter). The other three provide the stats by type of corporation (not sure that’s the right term for it).

The results are currently sorted by math proficiency percentage. Controls to scroll left/right can be found at the bottom of the chart.

A few observations:

1. Edina was the top public school.

2. However, Katherine Kersten’s favorite charter school to hate ranked higher: Tarek Ibn Ziyad, Inver Grove Heights.

3. Delano ranked 4th among publics, which came as a surprise to me since I associate Delano with KQ’s Terri Traen.

4. I’m surprised how many students in Stillwater are enrolled in charter or private schools considering how good the public school is. Of course, privates and charters do well too.

5. Privates beat publics, but publics beat charters. I imagine that the students who end up in private schools come from above average families motivation-wise. But what’s the deal with charters (on average) underperforming publics?

My flight from Toronto yesterday afternoon approached MSP over Stillwater, along I-694 to Maple Grove, then made a U-Turn taking things toward the airport from the West starting around Wayzata.

While heading East, I grabbed shots of three high schools and their athletic fields:

Hopkins:

I count 8 tennis courts, eight baseball/softball diamonds, a hockey arena, a football stadium, a football practice field made of turf grass, etc.

St. Louis Park (Flory, is your new house in this photo?):

Washburn:

It’s interesting to see how the acreage gets progressively smaller as I moved into the city from a 2nd and 1st ring suburb. What’s funny is that while Hopkins dwarfs Washburn for field sizes, it’s nothing compared to what Eden Prairie or Chaska have to offer.

Looks like Mrs. Perfect’s been busy reporting on all the dangers we face in the world today. Last time, it was the dangers caused by women holding positions of power in the Catholic church, which is someone ironic coming from a woman in some sort of a non-official role associated with the church.

Now we hearing from Mrs. Perfect (seriously, that’s her real name) about the dangers our children our face when educated by a gay teacher who happens to read a story about a child with two mommies like Mary Cheney’s child will have. Apparently, the teacher mentioned that he plans to adopt a child. Imagine the . . . um . . . horror?

I figure you probably think I’m making this up, so head on over to mfc.org to see the story. Here’s a link to it, but it looks out of context with no navigation when linked to directly because their web site was probably built by someone who went to a school that didn’t have science, and computer science was close enough to be considered dangerous.

Back to the story: It’s stuff like this that makes me understand why such a large percentage of home schooled children are indeed home schooled. There is simply no way parents who are offended by something so mundane could make it through a school year. If parents think there children are being harmed by hearing reality based stories read by teachers, or personal stories about adoption, they’re going to need to shelter their children.

Both parties win through homeschooling. Schools can get back to educating children rather than dealing with irrational controversies, and parents who will never be satisfied with schools that focus on educating their children the only way they see fit.