[Speed Gibson,
Saturday May 10, 2008 at 9:01pm]
She's Not Helping
Powerline, as further recounted on the NARN today, has taken issue with Rep. Mindy Greiling's attack piece on Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten's two columns on the state's first Islamic charter school, the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights.
I call it an attack piece because it has no other purpose. As Powerline's Scott Johnson recounts, Greiling takes no issue with any of the many facts Kersten reported, nor the testimony of the substitute teacher. On the basis of an anecdotal "I had a nice time" visit to the school, Greiling calls for the paper to fire Kersten.
This is bad enough, well over the lines of civility and professional conduct. It's actually worse than that. Greiling is, by extention, accusing the substitute teacher of lying as well, again unsubstantiated.
I'll go still further and point out that she has hurt her DFL party as well. She is carrying the P. S. Minnesota proposal to add $1.7 billion to K-12 spending in the 2009 session, another 'Minnesota Miracle'. She will need a big tax increase to do that, which in turn requires support beyond her far left base. Needlessly going out of your way to pick a pointless fight with the press without cause, nicking a civilian in the process, doesn't help.
Education Minnesota might want to consider a leadership change for its K-12 bills next year.
I call it an attack piece because it has no other purpose. As Powerline's Scott Johnson recounts, Greiling takes no issue with any of the many facts Kersten reported, nor the testimony of the substitute teacher. On the basis of an anecdotal "I had a nice time" visit to the school, Greiling calls for the paper to fire Kersten.
This is bad enough, well over the lines of civility and professional conduct. It's actually worse than that. Greiling is, by extention, accusing the substitute teacher of lying as well, again unsubstantiated.
I'll go still further and point out that she has hurt her DFL party as well. She is carrying the P. S. Minnesota proposal to add $1.7 billion to K-12 spending in the 2009 session, another 'Minnesota Miracle'. She will need a big tax increase to do that, which in turn requires support beyond her far left base. Needlessly going out of your way to pick a pointless fight with the press without cause, nicking a civilian in the process, doesn't help.
Education Minnesota might want to consider a leadership change for its K-12 bills next year.
I haven't been to the school, and I can't tell you right now that there isn't something there that some over-caffeinated, under-employed ACLU attorney might quibble with. But if we make the decision to have a charter school system, that is, a system in which the schools have a degree of autonomy, isn't that also a decision to trust the people who run them to get things, on the whole, right?
My understanding is that Katherine Kersten's original source was a rather inexperienced teacher. Am I correct in thinking that Kersten didn't visit the school herself. Mindy Greiling has been around a while and she is pretty knowledgeable about educational issues and she did actually visit the school. She didn't exactly fall off the turnip cart yesterday. I wouldn't dismiss her subjective observations out of hand, and I don't think it's a good idea to read into them things she did not say.
There is nothing unconstitutional or even wrong with a school accomodating the religious obligations of it's students. I would hope that's something everyone could agree with.