News Cut: November 9, 2007 Archive

An education solution? Look East!

Posted at 10:55 AM on November 9, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

This week's school levy votes around Minnesota have reignited a debate that's been going nowhere for years: why aren't our schools better and why is it costing us so much not to be?

The post-levy rhetoric has offered few solutions, and plenty of accusations.

Perhaps the answer lies in Boston, where today a report on so-called "pilot schools," will reveal that students in these high schools perform better on tests, are suspended less frequently, attend class more often, and graduate in higher percentages than students enrolled in regular high schools, according to the Boston Globe.

Pilot schools have a governing board that pretty much decides everything about the school. The staff can override the board by a two-thirds vote on matters of staffing. The school day is longer, the school year is longer, the teacher can write the academic curriculum, and students (along with their parents) have more responsibilities. The schools are not run from the top down.

At first blush, it sounds like a charter school. But the program is set up to compete with charter schools, somewhat odd since charter schools were set up to compete with public schools.

Does it work? It's not flawless but today's report will say that students enrolled in the Boston pilot schools had a higher ninth-grade attendance, higher promotion rates to the 10th, and higher tenth-grade test scores.

Critics, and you can bet there are some, say the results are better because the pilot schools have taken the most motivated students. And in two recent cases of schools trying to convert to pilot schools, the teachers voted it down.

Is there a lesson for Minnesota here? Perhaps. There was a presentation on Tuesday night, according to the U of M's Center for School Change as part of a series looking at ideas for improving inner-city education.

Change? Sure, why not? But is it really possible to change something like the education system in Minnesota -- or anywhere else -- without blowing it up and starting over?

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Runway incursions at MSP

Posted at 1:06 PM on November 9, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

On Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its "most wanted" improvements in the transportation system. Usually, runway incursions at airports, are high on the list and this year is no exception.

Perhaps the most famous incursion was in Tenerife, when two 747s collided on the runway, killing 583 people.

In the latest report, the NTSB cites the fatigue of air traffic controllers, and uses an incident in San Francisco in May as an example. Two jets came within 35 feet of each other.

It happens more often than it should, according to the NTSB. It happens in Minneapolis.

A search of the Aviation Reporting Safety System database (a confidential reporting system in which pilots get immunity for reporting safety problems) reveals one Boeing 737 pilot who, last December, followed a controller's orders while taxiing, nearly wiped out a commuter jet. "They were so close to our jet, I could see both pairs of cockpit crew member's eyes at night," the pilot reported. "I seriously doubted their wing would clear our nose."

When the pilot reported the incident to the tower controller, "they seemed very unconcerned with our near collision. I have never been closer to an aircraft accident in my career."

NTSB member Kitty Higgins on Thursday said an accident is "inevitable." The NTSB suggested there are incidents like this in the country "every day."

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Scenes from a con job

Posted at 3:02 PM on November 9, 2007 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

So now we know. Sonia Morphew Pitt, the emerency manager for MnDOT, who didn't have the good sense to come back to Minnesota (if for nothing else, the appearance of doing her job), was running a con on the state, according to documents released with her firing today.

Pitt took off for various places without getting approval, and then billed her vacation time as working time. And, it turns out, her trips to Washington (she was shuttling between there and Boston when the bridge fell), were visits to her apparent boyfriend, Daniel M. Ferezan, the Federal Highway Administration's program manager for transportation security.

Here's the juicy stuff in two pdf files here and here.

She had chutzpah. One of her deals was to turn a 3 day conference in Washington to a roundtrip from Washington to Las Vegas for five days, all on the taxpayer dime.

She got the state to pay for a cellphone -- ostensibly because the state cellphone system had lousy reception whee she lived -- than used it 90% of the time for personal calls, mostly to her guy friend.

There's no indication at all Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau (also the commissioner of transportation) knew about the scam, but it reinforces the perception that hers is an agency running amok, especially given that there's no indication that MnDOT ever requested or suggested that the agency's emergency manager come back to Minnesota, when it first contacted her 30 minutes after the I-35W bridge dropped into the Mississippi, killing 13 people.

Although Pitt claims she was in "near constant telephone and e-mail communication with her staff" during the disaster, today's report found that she spent more time on the phone with her friend in Washington.

In fact, she sent 22 emails the night of the collapse, 18 had nothing to do with the bridge. She sent only 10 the next day (2 of which had nothing to do with the bridge). She made 21 phone calls on the first day following the bridge collapse, 19 of them went to Mr. Ferezan.

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