By: Elizabeth Hanke

I’d like to extend my gratitude to Holly Marie Moore for capturing my stance on several important educational issues. You can read her full article, “Candidate Elizabeth Hanke Wants to Drive Student Rigor.“

Here are some of my favorite quotes from her article:

“Having kids in the district and exchange students and an exchange teacher for over the last decade, I just saw academic rigor begin to decline,” she said.

“And even before COVID, which was a concern, and then I think all of us as we moved online just kind of lost that capacity for, I don’t know if it’s for rigor… although we’ve regained some of it, we just haven’t regained to where we were a decade ago.”

. . .

“What they (teachers) wanted to see… was more remedial services, because when we place kids who are struggling readers into regular classes, they tend to misbehave because they’re not able to keep up with the work. Not only is that not fair to those students, but it also brings down the rigor for all the rest of the students in the class,” she said.

Hanke said the Science of Reading curriculum passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2023 was a move in the right direction.

“Going back to phonics-based reading was the way to go,” she said. “So, hopefully in the future we do see some additional improvements in reading since they did pass that legislation.”

. . .

“I do want to stipulate that through the process, I did ask for another perspective to be added, and that was denied,” she said.

“This was a sophomore class, and so what was being taught was that if you believe that we are all one human race… if you believe that all lives matter, this is a form of covert white supremacy is the curriculum that was being taught.”

Hanke, who does not have students in the class, said last summer that she became aware of the curriculum when students in the class recorded video of the lesson and showed it to their parents, who then sent it to her. Hanke is a frequent school board meeting attendee.

“The students and their parents were too afraid to go through with the process,” she said this week. “I think it’s a shame that our students and their parents don’t feel safe enough to advocate for themselves.”