Tim Walz's failure in K-12 education is staggering

Tim Walz touts himself as a teacher. Despite that fact, math and reading proficiency scores for 4th and 8th graders have dropped significantly. Congressman Brad Finstad wrote Gov. Walz a letter expressing his disgust with Minnesota's drop in test scores. It's to be expected. According to the Alpha News article, "Finstad pointed out that Minnesota’s education system was ranked seventh in the nation in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual report in 2021. This year, Minnesota was ranked 21st in the same report, a drop of 14 spots."

The first question is simple. What changed? Did our teachers underperform? Did our students underperform? Did the curriculum change? If it did, did that cause the underperformance? The next question that must be asked is important. How do we fix the problem?

Later, Rep. Finstad wrote “Between 2019 and 2024, the share of fourth graders who weren’t proficient in reading rose seven percentage points in Minnesota compared to the national average, which was four points.”

It's important to notice that the drop happened during the pandemic, when Gov. Walz had the schools either locked or they were shuffling between closed or open part of the time.

“During that same period, the share of eighth graders not proficient in math rose 10 percentage points in Minnesota. Furthermore, in 2025, less than half of all students tested as grade-level proficient on either math or reading state tests,” he continued.

This news segment sheds some light on that subject:

In a state known for manufacturing powerhouses like 3M, Control Data, Arctic Cat, world class medical facilities like Mayo Clinic, industrial giants like Cargill and distributors like DigiiKey, how could we have dropped this far? The days of the Minnesota Miracle feel like ancient history. Here's a fair description of the 1970s Minnesota:

It is a state where a residual American secret still seems to operate. Some of the nation’s more agreeable qualities are evident there: courtesy and fairness, honesty, a capacity for innovation, hard work, intellectual adventure and responsibility. The land is large (84,068 sq. mi.), the population small (just under 4,000,000). Nature is close (20 minutes from a downtown Minneapolis office building to a country lake) and generally well protected.

That isn't the state of Minnesota today. Years ago, St. Cloud went 20+ straight years without a murdeer! Today, St. Cloud is a criminal cesspool. You can't learn if you're constantly worried about criminal illegal aliens, gangs and soft-on-crime judges give ultra-lenient sentences.

Politics is almost unnaturally clean, ”no patronage, virtually no corruption. The citizens are well educated; the high school dropout rate, 7.6%, is the nation’s lowest. Minnesotans are remarkably civil; their crime rate is the third lowest in the nation (after Iowa and Maine). By a combination of political and cultural tradition, geography and sheer luck, Minnesota nurtures an extraordinarily successful society.

That's from 1973 article. If a paper wrote that paragraph today, people would question whether they were objective or paid propagandists.

The article finishes with this paragraph:

But there is something in the verdict of Chuck Ruhr: “California is the flashy blonde you like to take out once or twice. Minnesota is the girl you want to marry.”

Today, California Illinois, Minnesota and New York are the states you're moving away from.