<p>Oh, please! Hawkette’s “play for PA scores” comment is as absurdly and breathlessly over-the-top as the bizarre polemic against the University of Minnesota’s Ed School by the cranky right-wing columnist whom hawkette so misleadingly quotes. </p>
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<p>Problem is, no one at the University of Minnesota ever said that or anything like it. That’s the political spin placed by a newspaper columnist on an internal discussion document circulating within part of the Ed School, clearly labeled “DRAFT: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. For discussion uses within the College of Education and Human Development TERI Project only,” posted on a University website with the further disclaimer that “these task group reports are not policy, but a set of working ideas brought forward by these groups for discussion.” The document in question—one of seven discussion papers on various aspects of teacher training—does not advocate “repudiating the American Dream” or teaching a “vision of America as oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist, and homophobic.” That language is entirely the characterization–or mischaracterization—of newspaper columnist Katherine Kersten. The document is clearly not the policy of, nor a recommendation by, the University of Minnesota. It contains some ideas being kicked around for discussion by a group that has no authority to speak or act on behalf of the University. To state that “the U Minnesota is recommending” these things (hawkette’s words) is at best misleading, perhaps deliberately so—and if so, just a flagrant lie.</p>
<p>Most of the discussion documents produced by the TERI project go to important but relatively uncontroversial proposals like improving special education, making teachers more aware of developments in learning psychology, better integrating technology into the classroom, and improving the teaching of English as a second language. The particular discussion document that came under attack by Kersten is trying to get at ways that teachers might become more sensitive to the rapidly growing cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity of the schools in what was until fairly recently an overwhelmingly white and predominantly German/Nordic state, and the gaps in academic performance among various groups that are now emerging in those schools. Most of the recommendations go to ways to recruit and more effectively train teachers of color. A few go to heightening the sensitivity of all teachers to cultural differences within the schools. This is bound to be controversial. Some, like Katherine Kersten, would have us wish cultural diversity away and pretend there are no culturally or socioeconomically based performance gaps. Others, like the authors of the discussion document in question, would have education schools tackle those issues head-on in teacher training programs. Kersten sees this as a political agenda, and evidence of Political Correctness. It seems to me, though, that wherever you stand on the substance of these issues, they’re important questions that need to be fully aired, not least within our colleges and universities. By trying to smack down any discussion of these topics by mischaracterizing an internal discussion document within the Ed School as some kind of subversive agenda to force Maoist political reeducation down our throats, Kersten is the one coming on like the Thought Police and trying to enforce her own version of Political Correctness in which even discussing these topics is taboo.</p>
<p>Read it for yourself, and see if you don’t agree that Kersten’s characterization is wildly over-the-top:</p>
<p>[TERI:</a> Teacher Education Redesign Initiative: Teacher Education Redesign Initiative](<a href=“http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cehd/teri/task-group-reports/]TERI:”>http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cehd/teri/task-group-reports/)</p>
<p>What any of this has to do with PA scores, I’ll never know. That’s just looney tunes. The University of Minnesota didn’t say or do anything here as an institution, except to provide a forum for people to discuss possibly controversial ideas within the walls of the institution. But after all, isn’t that one of the principal functions of a university? hawkette, your paranoia is getting the better of you.</p>