Minnesota Taxpayer’s League President Phil Krinkie, also known as “Dr. No Heart and No Brain”, made some pretty controversial comments at a recent educational conference.
Among the ideas he discussed, was high school class sizes of 100, 200 or more. It would make them similar to college and would remove special needs students from the regular school system.
“There are hundreds, thousands of children in our public schools today that we are babysitting, we are warehousing them,” said Krinkie.
Krinkie would move high need children to special schools.
“Let’s not forget the purpose of the K through 12 system: to benefit the majority of the children in terms of their educational progress,” Krinkie said.
You know, Phil Krinkie is right. Our should strive to benefit only the majority of students. Given that premise, I have a great new school financing plan. We’ll identify the smartest 55% of students in our public high schools (using standardized tests of course, everyone LOVES standardized tests) and then ship off the other 45% to government run factories where they can make furniture and licence plates. We’ll use the money from the factories to fund our schools (which will require significantly less funding now that 45% of the students are not attending anymore).
Think of how much we could cut taxes! In fact, if we follow Krinkie’s advice and make the average class size something in the neighborhood of 100-200, we would save so much on teacher salaries that we might even make a profit off the whole system.
Imagine a school that currently has 1000 students and 30 kids to a class. Lets assume that each teacher makes $40,000 a year (just for the sake of argument). That works out to over $1.3 million in teacher salaries. What a waste. If we employ the Krinkie plan, the school now only has 550 students and 5 teachers, bringing the cost down to $200,000 a year. If we further assume that each kid in the factory can make 4 licence plates a day (if 4 seems low to you, remember, these kids aren’t that bright, thats why they are in the factories in the first place) and that each licence plate generates a profit of $5. Those kids would be generating $9000 a day, which would pay for their school’s annual budget in just 23 days. Brilliant!
But seriously folks, Krinkie’s remarks prove two things (both of which many of us have known for a long time)
1) Phil Krinkie is crazy.
2) The Taxpayers League advocates a positively un-Minnesotan agenda which seeks to undermine the very things that have made Minnesota a great place to live and raise a family.
Now back to my 20 page legal memo due tomorrow…
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Its amazing how indefensible that ideology gets when you don’t have someone with Bush/Pawlenty grade spin skills.
It’s also amazing how similar the whacked-out pseudo-conservatism of Colbert is to the real desire of the conservative movement.
It reminds me of “The Yes Men” http://www.theyesmen.org/.
Whether the pranksters are joking about converting the dead into oil or announcing that the WTO is proposing slavery in Africa, there antics are eerily close to the reality that the likes of Krinkie, Strom, Norquist, and others would like to create.
Zack,
I have to say that people who rate the quality of their lives upon the amount of money government spends need a better measuring stick. You rail against standardized tests, yet you took at least two - one to get into college and one to get into law school. You’ll take another standardized test too when you take the bar exam. It’s funny that the left is so in favor of just giving more money to education, whatever that means, but oppose any measures of how or if the money works. If you want a real solution to fixing education, let’s get rid of Education Minnesota and its lobbyists who year after year put double and triple the amount of money in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools at the expense of the rest of the state. If there was a level playing field among all schools in the state, education would improve overnight.
Chris, I missed the part where Zack said that the standardized tests he had to take for college and law school were good. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, 1/2 the the Bar Exam in MN is essay…
But this detracts from the real point: standardized testing only provides a very limited measure of learning, and frequently best measures test-taking skills. Add in the fact that teachers whose jobs are tied to test scores will teach to the test, rather than teach the subject matter or towards their students’ needs and you start to see the limits of standardized testing. But the mood is to go to testing because it’s another one of the cheap and simple solutions to complex problems favored by fools like Krinkie. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really solve the problem.
Someone also needs to tell ol’ “Dr. No” that the big-section classes in college are frequently the ones the students learn the least from and provide the most frustrating educational experiences. If that’s his damn plan, why not just elminate teachers all over the state? Hell, you could just have one set prepared videotaped lectures and everyone could just sit in front of tvs and email questions in. Hell, why not outsource the answers to India! man, that’ll save money.
Of course, we’ll get stupider and more useless as a society, but who cares as long as you can cut taxes?
I do think it’s especially amusing that Krinkie talks about “warehousing” students, yet wants to go to class sizes that will only fit in a warehouse. Maybe I read that wrong. Maybe he’s really a big proponent of the “babysitting and warehousing” model!
Of course, we’ll get stupider and more useless as a society, but who cares as long as you can cut taxes?
By this post and the entire story hype, I would say it has already happened.
Education spending is out of control and because Education MN is a major part of the DFL, you will never hear them ask for some spending resposibility.
The hype you place on this Zach just takes away any credibility to your argument.
(looking left…looking right) Anyone here notice that our Democrat Secretary of State’s pelt is headed for MDE’s trophy case?
Not even Karl himself could bail Ritchie out of this one. The only question remaining is how many other moonbats are going to fall with him?
Oh yeah…we’re loving it baby!
Krinkie’s position is just that - his. He speaks for us Independent Republicans about as well as Dennis “The Menace” Kucinich speaks for a rational democrat.
DantheMan,
The “Independent Republicans” no longer exists. Both literally and metaphorically.
Its more like up the ass thinking, not out of the box!! In my opinion he is an ignorant fool who could have bennifitted more from special education classes than regular ones.
Chris -
I’ve taken far more than two standardized tests in my life, and I did pretty damn well on all of them. But they are garbage. In each case I know of people smarter than me who got lower scores than I did. Standard tests do not measure your intelligence, they measure your ability to take standardized tests. Tell me Chris, after the Bar Exam, when was the last time you had to take a standardized test in your professional career?
Ah, but we IR’s do exist. They can dissolve the party but they can’t dissolve the beliefs. We’re still here, voting Republican 75% of the time but crossing over to the other side when it it practical and warranted.
Zack,
When you pass the bar, you don’t have to take another test, standardized or not. Whether you like it or not, standardized tests are a good measuring stick - from the Iowa Basic Skills to the SATs to the LSATs. You are right that they should not be the only measurement. But our schools do need to be measured for how they are serving our children.
Josh,
I am keenly aware that 1/2 of the bar exam is essay as I sat through both days of the exam. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that the Multistate portion of the bar exam doesn’t count for anything.
mentally handicapped kids have no place in mainstream class rooms..they are disruptive to the rest of the class,,and generally they get NO benefit from regular school… a total waste of money and time… krinkie is regarded as a moderate…is there any one not a DFLiar you do not think is crazy?
John -
Even Phil Krinkie would not call himself a moderate.
Chris -
Standardized tests are a tool. Relying on them as much as some people want to would be like trying to build a house with only a hammer. You could do it, but you end up with a pretty shitty house.
Zack,
Tell that to all of the top law schools in the U.S. which will not admit students who have an LSAT score under a certain number.
Chris -
I am studying at the University of Virginia right now (#10 in the country), the next time I see the Dean, I will tell him that.
Zack,
You might run into my cousin while you’re there. If you think UVA admits students with marginal LSAT scores over students with high LSAT scores you’re crazy.
Chris — You’re talking about standardized tests that are largely optional. No one has to go to law school or take the bar exam (something some of us find out too late).
Realistically, what has the LSAT or the bar exam to do with anything you’ve ever done as a member of the bar? I think if most legal educators and bar admissions officials were completely candid about the process, they would admit that neither test has anything to do with anything. It’s just an easy way of deciding who gets in and who is left out.