I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Jan. 27, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
Minnesota public schools received another report card a week ago that is unfavorable, but Rollie Morud, superintendent of Bemidji schools, said the report was not a surprise and that school officials are well aware of the system's inadequacies.
The report -- released by the newspaper Education Week -- shows the state's public education system to be above average in four measurements of educational quality, average in two and below average in one. The state received an incomplete in standards and assessments.
The state ranked above average in the quality of teachers and in the adequacy of resources allotted to education, as well as fourth-grade reading achievement and eighth-grade math achievement. It received a below average, D-plus grade, in a category called "school climate," which takes into account such factors as class size, school safety and discipline.
Even though the magazine did not cumulate a composite score, according to the report's editor, Ronald Wolk, Minnesota would rank somewhere in the middle.
The magazine's top 12 scoring states were Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, New York and Connecticut.
The report card, released six months after a mixed review of the state's education system from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning caused a commotion with state school officials, stated much the same results as the local, state review did.
"It's very comparable to the results that we have reported," said Children, Families and Learning Commissioner Bob Wedl, in an interview Wednesday. "Minnesota is in the middle of the pack in reading and in math. There really weren't any surprises."
Wedl said the nation as a whole did not do well in the report, but what is important is the state uses the report as a building block.
"All of these studies are interesting, but what's important is how the parents fell when they send their kids out to the bus in the morning," he said. "But this gives us some insights into areas where we ought to pay attention, and that's of great importance to us."
Morud, who worked for many years in North Dakota's educational system, said that Minnesota wears its teachers out with all the training, committees, goals and curriculum assessments it plans and does. Whereas, North Dakota waits and watches to see what works well in Minnesota and then implements it into their system.
"In Minnesota, when the teacher steps in front of the class, they are tired. In North Dakota, when the teacher steps in front of a class, they are full of energy," he said. "We keep creating ways to keep teachers away from kids, and at the same time, I can't argue with wanting to implement standards."
Education Week is the nation's weekly K-12 newspaper. The report conducted in collaboration with the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, incorporated thousands of pages of data, hundreds of interviews with educators and 15 years of reporting from the newspaper's archive.
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