Exclusionary. First a look at what unequivocally is a private Catholic thing described so via eight hundred separate ways and words. Exclusionary and doctrinaire. Leaving all other children behind, and additionally able to cherry-pick even among Catholic applicants. The National Catholic Register has authored a focus item featuring Birk's school founding;
December 31, 2019 -
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Not everyone who goes to high school will go to college, the founders of a new Minnesota high school say, but everyone should be prepared for leadership, service, and virtuous lives.
Preparation for a good life, no matter what comes after graduation, is the goal of Unity High School, set to open this fall in Burnsville, Minnesota.
Matt Birk, a retired football player who played with the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens, and Tom Bengtson, the owner of a small publishing company, are the founders of the school.
“At Unity, we are sure a lot of kids will go into college, some will go into the workforce, some will go into the military, some will discern religious vocations, and we think there is equal dignity in all of those things,” Birk told CNA.
“We are college prep but we are not only college prep. Not everybody is a candidate for college, people choose different paths and we believe that there is equal dignity in any of these paths. We are happy to prepare kids for post high school life regardless of what it looks like,” Bengtson added.
Birk has been involved with education programs in underprivileged communities since 2002, when he was playing professional football. As a father of eight, he said he knows that not all kids thrive in a competitive academic environment, noting that a “high-stakes” test-taking culture is not for everyone.
“If you look back at the genesis of the American education system, I think the original charter says the goal of education is to teach knowledge and develop character. As the U.S. keeps falling on the global list of test scores, we just keep focusing more and more on the testing,” he said.
“Character has been pushed out of mainstream education because it is all about the test now,” he added.
Birk said that because public school funding is tied to test scores, education models focus on test-taking skills, instead of adapting to the needs of each learner.
Birk added that while not every student will go on to college, every person can be formed for success.
“If we are only doing it to show how well we can take a test, what’s the point?” he asked.
“If you go to an Ivy League schools [sic] is that a guarantee to a great life? No, no it’s not. I would say the most important thing to me … is that they would have a firm foundation in their Catholic faith, that would be number one, and then, number two, I would say to be equipped with some skills to be able to help them with whatever path they choose.”
Birk added that digital technology has been detrimental to some areas of ingenuity - communication, teamwork, and social and emotional intelligence. As a result of increased technology and media influence, he said students are suffering more narcissism and depression, while developing less empathy and abilities to handle anxiety.
Unity aims to address these issues as it grows. The Fall 2019 semester was the inaugural semester for the school, which is located at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Burnsville. To start out, the school will only teach high school freshmen, but it plans to add a new grade each year, until the first incoming class graduate as seniors.
The school's leaders acknowledged that it is starting small, and said they hope to discuss recognition from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis down the road.
Unity will focus on practical opportunities for students to develop skills in academics, character, leadership, and service.
Birk said the school will “be vigorously Catholic,” including opportunities for students to engage with an instructor who can foster “interior life and their personal relationship with Jesus.”
The former NFL center's own faith is central to his life, he said. He is especially active in pro-life work. In 2013, after Birk's team won Super Bowl XLVII, he declined to attend a reception at the Obama White House.
“I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, 'God bless Planned Parenthood.' Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year. I am Catholic, I am active in the pro-life movement and I just felt like I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't endorse that in any way,” Birk said.
He said he hopes Unity High School will form students who are committed to faithful Catholicism.
“We really want the faith to be alive, to really be a part of the kids’ lives, not just taking a religion class,” said Birk.
Citing the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, Birk said the Catholic faith has a great framework for building character. To foster character development, students will be involved with regular service projects, like monthly outings to nursing homes, where the teens can get to know the people they are serving.
A major component of the school will be its “Real World Wednesdays.” On those days, the students will take “life skills” classes and character development, including opportunities to listen to guest speakers and attend field trips and service projects.
The teens will learn entrepreneurship, leadership, interview techniques, resumes, and financial literacy skills. The students will also be exposed to trades, through courses and workshops in auto maintenance, metal or wood shop, or home economics.
The school will also partner with an organization called Pursuit Academy, which teaches ethical enterprise, encouraging students to become entrepreneurs, to plan and manage their future goals, and to be leaders in their communities. Among other things, the teens will learn about engaging with peer pressure, managing risk, and public speaking.
Birk said a focus of the “Real World Wednesdays” will be developing what he calls “the-other-people-matter” mindset.
By identifying the good in themselves and in other people, students will establish better relationships in the community and a better relationship with God, he said.
Developing leadership skills and character “might not necessarily help them get an A on a test or score higher on their SAT, but they are going to be equipped with skills that they can use in their lives, whether it is in the careers or their marriages or as parents or as communities [sic] members.”
“Let’s get them some of that stuff,” he added.
In light of the school’s emphasis on both academic and practical skills, Unity has chosen two patron saints: John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. These saints are not only modern figures for students to model after but fantastic examples of the school’s goals, Bengtson said.
“John Paul II had all this rich philosophy of the dignity of the human person, which we will be teaching at Unity High School, including Theology of the Body,” Bengtson said.
“Then you got someone like Mother Teresa who took that theology and put it into practice - reached out to the poorest of the poor and saw dignity in folks who were in extremely dire circumstances.”
“In my mind, I seem [sic] them as both the hands and the heart at work together,” he added.
Bengtson said the school is convenient financially and geographically. Tuition will be $6,500 for the first year, which is half or even a third of the prices at other Catholic schools, Bengtson said. He also said the school will fill a neighborhood need in the southern metro area of the Twin Cities.
“It’s a large geographic area with 10 Catholic grade schools, through eighth grade, who collectively are graduating 300 students per year. Most of those students will go into public schools,” he said.
“About 75 students will stay in the Catholic school system and they have to travel quite a distance to Catholic high school.”
The lower price does mean there will be tradeoffs, Bengtson said, noting that the school will have to improvise for a gymnasium, science lab, and auditorium at first. However, the school will have a thoroughly Catholic culture, he said, with Mass three times a week and a holy hour once a week, which is not offered at all Catholic schools.
Birk expressed enthusiasm for the new venture.
“We are still very much like a typical school in a lot of ways, but we are tweaking the model. I don’t know where this goes, but hopefully it will show people that there is a better way to do it.”
[italics added] Clearly Catholic. Muslims and atheists need not apply. Yet, first a hat tip. Birk is quite correct that "teaching to the test" is a route to doom; and that standardized tests, when critically considered, prove nothing but are convenient for lazy media published crying-pieces because they have Quantization; i.e., actual numbers outputted from which the crying towel of "scores are falling" can be easily churned out and fear mongered to the public Chicken Little style, the sky falling.
Nobody has any sound proof that high individual standardized test scores correlate with anything of value, especially with fiscal success and/or happiness into and throughout adult life. The link simply is not there. Many universities realize this and discount test scores among factors used in gleaning accepted students from among applicants.
The Birk school as above analyzed shares similarities to the Jesuit Christo Rey school experiment which as it is set up can succeed but would fail totally as unable to scale to the size and variety of the largest of Minnesota's diverse school districts.
Being able to show, at least for Christo Rey, a hundred percent of graduates going on to higher education is laudable, but, again, cherry picking a student body where super motivated parents are essential is a specialized thing which cannot be extrapolated outside of its narrowed context.
Great, but exclusionary and of a scale that proves nothing except that in specialized settings results can be reached and touted as superior to the norm of public schools serving everybody, and by law leaving no child behind including special cases which require greater funding and teacher time investment to move the needle.
And yes, it is fair to say diminished testing score importance can be a talking point for a venture where test scores are below some measure of "normally expected," but there is no sign Birk's school needs to hide behind any such fig leaf or is so hiding. Birk simply deserves the hat-tip for recognition of the limitations of standardized testing to prove anything. Kudos for that. Moving on -
It looks as if Birk and his school venture partner have put together a tight and thought out small, quality, Catholic high school.
The question is who should be paying for it.
The Republican ticket for Governer, Birk and Jensen, have put together an "education policy" thing which Jensen published upon his campaign website -
https://drscottjensen.com/edu/
Of interest, our avid pro-Republican blogging friend Gary in St. Cloud has published about the Jensen-Birk proposal:
This week at the State Fair, Scott Jensen and Matt Birk unveiled their 10-point education plan. Included in their 10-point plan is "a Minnesota Parents’ Bill of Rights."
In describing their Parents' Bill of Rights, the Jensen-Birk team wrote "Parental involvement and their right to know curriculum is fundamental to accountability and engagement for student success. We will establish a transparent portal system for parents to review curriculum, literature and books used in school districts and classrooms across Minnesota, ensure parents have a mechanism to voice concerns and give feedback to their local school board regarding education policies, curriculum and instructional plans and practices. We will provide greater transparency and information about academic performance by bringing back school-based report cards, connect data systems across secondary, postsecondary and workforce - to track progress and outcomes of services and programs."
Predictably, the DFL offered its criticism of the Jensen-Birk plan. "A spokesman for Democratic incumbent Tim Walz calls Jensen's plan 'radical' and 'extreme.'" Considering the fact that the DFL is owned by the Education Minnesota cartel that squashes competition and prohibits excellence, the DFL's statement isn't surprising.
It's just disappointing that a political party in the 21st Century would state with such obedience that they're opposed to transparency and parental involvement.
Here's another important feature of the Jensen-Birk Plan:
Make Minnesota Schools Safer
[... words]
Keep Politics and Divisive Curriculums Out of the Classroom
[... dissing Critical Race Theory plus other words]
Only the DFL would think that greater transparency, greater parental involvement, increased classroom safety and a focus on shrinking the achievement gap is radical and extreme. Most Minnesota parents would think that's their expectation.
It's time to abandon the status quo ship that the Walz-Flanagan-DFL ticket is offering. It's time for a change.
Here's the full plan: [Gary then embeds and links to a Birk-Jensen video, also appearing on YouTube. UPDATE: This "full plan" video dodges the fact that Birk founded an exclusionary Catholic school, as he touted in the quoted interview with the Catholic news outlet; and they say zippo about their intent to inflict vouchers on Minnesotans, steathily, calling it something else besides "vouchers." Candor? Birk starts the presentation with fear mongering about test scores, despite what he told his Catholic interviewer. Candor counts. Why do they hide stuff under a hat? FURTHER: Candor seems to require that sounding loudly about "school choice" suggests it only fair to admit that private schools choose (often without transparency). A parent might say Neato, I can get a voucher, if available, and send my children to a school of my choice. Perhaps, if that school chooses to admit the children, vs. other applicants. Voucher advocates should acknowledge and remember a little about some ugly private school history.]
The point of that extensive quote of the tout piece is that it is packaged in standard Republican-speak seemingly aimed at thorough coverage, even if provocatively worded.
What friend Gary dodges, this part of his candidates' plan, quoted from the Jensen candidacy website, which admittedly is in double-speak -
Implement a Bold Plan for School Quality Choices for Students and Parents
Minority students suffer more under the status quo than any demographic group under Tim Walz. Minnesota has one of the worst racial disparities for student achievement in the United States, with no leadership to improve. We will level the playing field by providing low and middle income families and students scholarships or an Education Savings Account (ESA) to attend a school of their choice. We will redesign very low performing schools, whether in the Minneapolis Public Schools or elsewhere, creating a new governance structure by converting schools to charters, self-governed schools, nonpublic schools or other models for low-performing schools in their respective district. We will update existing choice programs – Post Secondary Enrollment Options, Open Enrollment, Charter Schools, and Online Learning - to ensure that families and students have flexibility to access to programs. We will expand PSEO into the trades and agribusinesses.
Astute readers might already see that this "Education Savings Account (ESA)" is a tarted up way of saying, "Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers." where "choice" here is somehow not as evil as "choice" within the area of women's health and family planning.
Yes. Semi-transparent Gile in saying Vouchers for Birk's Catholic High School are an aim of the ticket. They lack the courage to say it outright, but that is what they are saying, again, tarted up to look and sound somewhat higher in aim.
Now the brother-in-law dimension. My brother-in-law, married over fifty years to my sister, during their childless mairrage, and him after her death, have gladly and consistently paid taxes for public education of the children of others. Public education, which each has steadfastly valued most highly as a sound public good and also where each benefited from in growing up. From the bedrock of their public education both went on to post baccalaureate science degrees. Public education is responsible education where voters select the governing boards of local districts, where there is no profit-taking as can happen in charter and private schools, and where children are schooled to meet the sound Minnesota Constitutional aim of Art. XIII, Sec 1:
Section 1. Uniform system of public schools.
The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.
But - neither sister nor brother-in-law ever had any keen intent to pay their money into taxes to be given accountability-free to private hands for dogma and indoctrination in ways alien to their own lives and values and viewpoints.
That's only fair. There is nothing extreme or malicious in such thinking. It is the American Way. Wave that flag. It is a flag that gets waved for a damned lot less than public schools. [UPDATE: Strib's objective report.]
Yet, using guileful indirect language, Birk and Jensen want to rob the public school fisc to divert money to private and dogmatic efforts lacking public transparency (which in some instances also are profit taking adventures), as well as aimed in ways that, bottom line, are not held by law to be a generic public good.
PUBLIC EDUCATION has responsibility and accountability to each district's elected board, hence, accountability to the voting public of each district; and not accountability to Birk's intentions, his conservative bishops, or to his Jesuit Pope who's at least been a clear cut better, wiser and more progressive than the former Pope that Birk dedicates his school to as patron saint.
You simply fail to get the accountability of public schools in privatized black hole financing situations such as flow from vouchers which Jensen and Birk foster.
In effect, don't rob already insufficiently funded public education Constitutionally aimed toward fostering enough of a thriving intelligence among the people as is needed and suitable for keeping democracy alive and thriving into the future, to instead give free taxed money to churches and their belief biases. That's wrong, stupid, and the aim of Dr. J and the football Catholic multimillionaire.
[UPDATE: The Birk-Jensen plan wrote, "Minority students suffer more
under the status quo than any demographic group under Tim Walz.
Minnesota has one of the worst racial disparities for student
achievement in the United States, with no leadership to improve. We will
level the playing field by providing low and middle income families and
students scholarships or an Education Savings Account (ESA) to attend a
school of their choice." Candor would suggest looking at actual data per that rhetoric. Wilder Research in a comprehensive study reported, historically (p.18) -
 |
| click the image to read it |
Whether the disparity is because of tuition costs or school admission choices among a range of applicants is unclear, but the disparity itself is very clear. It is anyone's guess whether vouchers would alter the ethnicity balance at all. Private schools can limit enrollment to students with existing above average test scores. Other private schools might exist for remedial work, taking reading deficiency enrollees only, with specialized teachers on board. Parental choice sounds good, but would be subject to existing parameters.]
BOTTOM LINE: As the soundest of policies -
Vote Walz. He's been there and done that. He is not blowing smoke.