Readers Write: Student test scores, politics, abortion

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Sigh. Here we go again. The story about student test scores in Minnesota (”Gaps remain in Minnesota test scores,” Aug. 30) is disappointing, not because scores remain stuck around the 50% level, but because people keep thinking these one-day snapshots are a good indicator of how students are doing. They’re not.

Do we have more kids who struggle with reading and math since the COVID lockdowns? Yes. Do we have the resources to help these kids? No. Especially in rural Minnesota, schools struggle to both find and fund interventionists to help kids who have fallen behind.

As students get older, they don’t care much for yet another test. I had a student finish their reading test of over 50 questions in eight minutes last year. But sure, go ahead and judge schools. Anxiety plays a role, and students who have shown me every day that they are capable readers sometimes fail the test, in part because they are so nervous about a test that doesn’t impact their future at all.

The new push for literacy changes will help, no doubt. So maybe we should push the pause button on testing until all those pieces are in place. Why spend millions of dollars and waste class time on tests when we know what the results will look like? Let’s use that time and money to help our students instead.

Mark Domeier, Ellendale, Minn.

The writer is an English teacher.

To the Republican Assistant Senate Minority Leader Julia Coleman (”If they win, we lose: American unity must outperform this November,” Strib Voices, Aug. 28): While your commentary was about U.S. politics, look for change in your own house.

If you want to begin to remove divisiveness in Minnesota, look no farther than our state Legislature and the end-of-session politics this year. State Republicans (House and Senate) essentially went home and refused to even look at any legislation up for passage for the last month of the legislative session. To do so might make the majority look good for things that got done. So a much-needed bonding bill that included funding in outstate was not even brought to a floor vote.

Tell your state House partners to stop playing politics and work for the betterment of the whole state, not just their financial supporters.

Robert H. Nelson, Cambridge

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Always good to see retired commentary editor and columnist D.J. Tice back in the paper (”Voting for gridlock might be the most rational thing you do,” Strib Voices, Aug. 27). But whether or not voting for gridlock is a good idea, I have to take issue with the implicit premise — that Donald Trump’s “viciousness” and Kamala Harris’ “vacuousness” portend equally bad governance.

A tornado and a gust of wind do not pose the same level of threat. One may be lethal; the other pushes you backward or forward, depending on which way you’re inclined to lean.

The best predictor of behavior is past behavior. Despite Trump and his congressional shills recasting Jan. 6 in pastels and mood music, we saw with our own eyes lawless marauders storming the Capitol at Trump’s behest. If returned to power, he’ll never let go. Especially armed with a conservative Supreme Court’s get-out-of-jail-free card, Trump is an existential threat to our democratic way of life.

And Trump has already told us that on Day One he’ll be a dictator and will remove obstacles to burning fossil fuels. “Drill, baby, drill” were his exact words. The richest country on Earth doubling down on fossil fuels will slam the door on our planet’s narrow opportunity to mitigate climate change.

Tice also refers to our “dysfunctional parties” with equal disparagement. Enough with the false equivalences by high-minded conservatives still seeing politics through Republican-colored glasses. The Grand Old Party is gone. If there was any doubt, the Republican National Convention demonstrated with Trumpian pageantry that this is now the Trump Party, with leaders of the old party scarce.

The Trump Party is simply a vehicle for its corrupt standard-bearer and his values-less sycophants to maximize power and profit — democracy and climate be damned. In comparison, the future offered by a Harris-Walz administration seems much less onerous, and even hopeful.

Rich Cowles, Eagan

If Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life begins to use “compassion” in their anti-abortion movement it would be very good news for everyone concerned (”Making abortion ‘unthinkable,’” Aug. 27). Many years ago my wife worked in the grant department for Planned Parenthood on Ford Parkway, near our home in the Highland Village area of St. Paul. She was there for more than two years until we — her family — begged her to get a safer job.

Each morning my wife was verbally and loudly harassed by folks picketing, and every night again as she left work. Sometimes, I picked her up in the alley on my way home to avoid the protesters out front. If patients parked on Ford Parkway, protesters invaded their personal space immediately and kept at them until the patients made it to the “safe zone” in front of the clinic. They carried horrific posters of what they said were dead fetuses “ripped” from the womb.

When the anti-abortion movement began killing doctors, setting clinics on fire and finally shooting two administrative workers at their desks, I pleaded again with my wife to leave, and she did.

Words matter, as we have all learned too well in this country since 2016. Words can lead to violence and death — the deaths of real humans who are alive and have lives and jobs and children. So, kudos to MCCL if it will change its focus going forward. If its members stop shouting, they might be able to hear about the people who are served by places like Planned Parenthood.

Jerry Carroll, Roseville

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I was pleasantly shocked to see the article “Making abortion ‘unthinkable’” (Aug. 27) featured on the front page! I thought the article was fair and balanced, and it brought to light many misconceptions about both sides of this issue.

Being a left-wing pro-lifer, I have found that choosing violent options tends to be easier in the short run but that they have disastrous effects in the long run. Take war, for example — how many wars lead to any kind of meaningful solutions? I’m going to go out on a limb here: I firmly believe that if Roe v. Wade had never been passed in the first place, today we would have a far better selection of safe, effective and affordable contraceptives from which to choose.

I wish the young people in the MCCL summer camp all the best in their positive, life-affirming efforts.

Kay Kemper, Crystal

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Unfortunately abortion was considered in a vacuum in “Making abortion ‘unthinkable,’” like deciding to alter one leg of a four-legged table. Abortion is part of a very complex system — maternal prenatal care; birth procedure; mothers’ mental health care; possible fetal defects; pregnancy complications; medical care during pregnancy, after birth and through adulthood; physical and mental abuse; poverty; education; single-parent situations and more. It would be more productive to broaden the discussion than to pull a single topic out of this complex web.

Glenn Keitel, Wayzata