Also in the Star Tribune, Libor Jany writes: “Helen Washington told her grandson over and over to stop putting his cup of tea on her furniture. After he kept doing it anyway, the 75-year-old shot him, Hennepin County prosecutors allege. When police arrived, the victim was waiting for them in the front yard of the residence in the 5800 block of Camden Avenue N. in Brooklyn Center with a gunshot wound to the right thigh, a criminal complaint said. … Washington, 75, now faces charges of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, a felony.

Says Dave Orrick of the PiPress on the Ellison divorce files: “You can judge for yourselves…but there’s nothing implicating Keith Ellison of anything salacious. Nothing like that at all in the public records. … the records lay bare features of the demise of the 25-year marriage between the two elected officials. Kim Ellison serves on the Minneapolis Board of Education. The records date back to when the couple legally separated in 2011, when two of their four children were minors. As the Ellisons feared, some of the documents now public do contain details that appear to be tied to what Kim Ellison described Tuesday as depression following her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. As many who have been party to a divorce can attest, they’re often messy. And the Ellisons’ was, too.”

In the Pioneer Press, Mara H. Gottfried reports: “A hail of bullets injured two men and pierced the wall of a St. Paul home on Tuesday afternoon, according to police. A 19-year-old was shot in the lower back in the Frogtown area and needed surgery … Soon after, an 18-year-old arrived at Regions Hospital with a gunshot wound to his hand. Both men are expected to recover …. Police were called to the area of Sherburne Avenue and Kent Street at about 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday. …More than 20 shots had been fired, according to Linders.”

For The Hill, John Bowden writes, “Two Republicans in Minnesota said they have been physically attacked in the past few days by assailants who were angry about their politics. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that state Rep. Sarah Anderson (R) was attacked Sunday by an unidentified male who she says she confronted after finding him kicking down several of her yard signs. … Another Republican, Minnesota House District 15b candidate Shane Mekeland, told the Star Tribune he was attacked Friday during a campaign event at a bar by a ‘much bigger person’ who left him with a concussion.”

[cms_ad:x100]An AP story says, “The Minnesota Supreme Court has dismissed a U.S. Senate candidate’s petition to change his political party affiliation on the Nov. 6 ballot. Twin Cities businessman Jerry Trooien is running for the seat once held by former Sen. Al Franken. Trooien initially listed his party as ‘unaffiliated’ but wants to be listed as ‘independent.’ The Supreme Court dismissed his petition Wednesday, saying Trooien knew on Aug. 30 that he could list his party as independent. But he waited four weeks before filing a request for the change.”

Another AP story adds this on the missing Wisconsin teenager. “Authorities say a missing Wisconsin girl’s parents were shot to death and that they believe she was in the home at the time. Police have been searching for 13-year-old Jayme Closs since early Monday, when deputies responding to a 911 call from her home in Barron found her parents, James and Denise Closs, dead in the house. Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said at a news conference Wednesday that autopsies confirmed the couple was shot. He says there was no gun at the scene and that evidence from the scene and from the 911 call indicate that Jayme Closs was in the house.”

For a new generation of political activists who came of age after the 1990s, the term “progressive Republican” must sound like an oxymoron. But this now extinct strain of Republicanism did, in fact, represent the mainstream of Minnesota’s GOP at an earlier time. A new book by Dave Durenberger with Lori Sturdevant, “When Republicans Were Progressive,” recounts the rise and fall of a political movement in Minnesota that eventually succumbed to the onslaught of the far right.

Durenberger, a former U.S. senator, traces the origins of his party’s progressive tilt back to the election of Harold Stassen as Minnesota’s governor in 1938. Known as the boy governor, Stassen took office when he was only 31. The charismatic young Republican ended eight years of the left-leaning Farmer Labor party’s hold on the state’s highest office. But Durenberger tells us that Stassen did not intend to reverse the Farmer Labor party’s expansionist policies, aligned with the Roosevelt administration’ New Deal. Instead, Stassen implied that he would achieve many of the Farmer Laborites’ aims but do so more efficiently and with more transparency.

Stassen’s landslide victory in 1938 initiated a period of progressive Republican ascendancy in Minnesota extending well into the postwar era. During the next three decades, Republicans in the mold of Stassen occupied the governor’s office for all but eight of those years. After Stassen, notable progressive Republican governors included Luther Youngdahl, who oversaw the reform of the state’s mental institutions, and Elmer L. Andersen, who actively supported the passage of Minnesota’s landmark fair housing act.

‘For effective government’

Durenberger clearly views himself within the Stassen progressive tradition. That tradition, he explains, “stood not for big or small government but for effective government. It prized government not for its own sake but as a practical tool for creating the conditions that allowed its citizens to thrive. … It nurtured a sense of responsibility for the common good in both citizens and elected officials. It provided keen competition for other political parties while respecting its rivals’ contribution to the whole. It held that working across the aisle as well as across the country was a mark of strength, not weakness or disloyalty.”

[cms_ad:x100]Durenberger got his start in politics as an aide to Harold LeVander, a Stassen Republican who was elected governor in 1966. LeVander has been Stassen’s partner in a South St. Paul law firm. Later, the future Republican governor would offer Durenberger a job in the firm as a young associate when Durenberger graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1959.

After working as an attorney and a Republican activist for more than 20 years, Durenberger got his chance to face the voters for the first time in 1978, That year, he had initially intended to run for governor, but soon discovered that Minnesota’s First District congressman, Al Quie, also had his eye on the job. When Quie was able to attract more support for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Durenberger switched to the ballot slot for the two-year Senate term left vacant by the death of Hubert Humphrey earlier in the year.

The ‘Minnesota Massacre’

In November, Durenberger and his running mates, Quie and Rudy Boschwitz, won all three of the state’s top political jobs, defeating their DFL opponents in an election that came to be known as the Minnesota Massacre. The LeVander protégé went on to serve three terms in the U.S. Senate, where he made a name for himself as the Republican’s leading authority on health care policy. But his last years in office were tarnished by ethics violation charges that later resulted in a disciplinary action by the full Senate.

When Durenberger took his seat in the Senate after the 1978 election, the political foundation for Minnesota’s progressive Republican movement was already beginning to crack. The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy contributed, in large part, to that fissure. Ironically, the Roe decision was issued by Justice Harry Blackman with the support of Chief Justice Warren Burger. Known as the “Minnesota Twins,” Burger and Blackman had grown up together in St. Paul. Both had ties to the Stassen wing of the Republican Party.

Durenberger, himself an abortion opponent, observed that Blackman’s ruling  “ruptured a political hornet’s nest. The resulting furor would last for decades and would reshape both major parties in Minnesota.” Before Roe, the DFL had a major anti-abortion faction, while Minnesota Republicans included a significant group of pro-choice supporters. But soon advocates on both sides of this very divisive issue would sort themselves according to their party identity. The anti-abortion faction, virtually en masse, left the DFL and become Republicans. At the same time, pro-choice Republicans found they were not welcome in their party. Many of them gravitated to the DFL.

One last hurrah

Progressive Republicanism did have one last hurrah in Minnesota when Arne Carlson was elected governor in 1990. But in some ways Carlson was an accidental governor, moving up to the state’s top political job only because the Republican Party’s more conservative gubernatorial nominee dropped out of the general election race at the last minute because of a scandal.

By now, a new faction was gaining ascendancy in Minnesota’s Republican Party, according to Durenberger. “They were antiestablishment people with views on a number of issues that ran counter to the thinking that characterized the Stassen line. Many mistrusted and rejected public education. They were skeptical about science and hostile towards the teaching of evolution. They saw the women’s movement as a threat to traditional family values. The budding gay rights movement was sinful in their eyes.”

Taking advantage of Minnesota’s arcane precinct caucus system, right-leaning activists, many of whom considered themselves evangelical Christians, moved into positions of influence in the Republican party organization, displacing more mainstream party members who were part of the Stassen line.

During his 1988 re-election campaign, Durenberger was able to keep the right-wingers in his Minnesota Republican party at bay, in part because of his firm opposition to legalized abortion, but he would soon but heads with an emerging congressional faction led by the wily Newt Gingrich, then the House Minority Leader. Gingrich promoted a strategy of obstructionism, whose overriding aim was to deny Bill Clinton a second presidential term in 1996. Durenberger, who had hoped to broker a compromise over health care, found himself boxed in by Republican congressional leaders who refused to abandon their obstructionism and a Clinton administration that resisted efforts to make its health care plan, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, more acceptable to Republicans.

State Republicans remove ‘Independent’

Frustrated by his party’s rightward move and beset with ethics problems, Durenberger decided to give up his Senate seat in 1994. The next year, when he was out of office, the Minnesota GOP made a symbolic move that distressed the now- former U.S. senator. Following the Watergate debacle, the state Republican organization had added the term “Independent” to its name, making it the Minnesota Independent Republican Party. Durenberger welcomed the name change because it signaled the party’s effort to move closer to the center of the political spectrum. But party leaders dropped the term “Independent” in 1995, signaling that they were now part of the national right wing Republican mainstream. Durenberger regretted the name change.

“In Minnesota, Republicans no longer saw an advantage in standing apart from the nation,” he noted. “They no longer sought to appeal to independents with a label that implied a philosophy only slightly right of the nation’s ideological center and signaled a willingness to be creative in solving problems.”

[cms_ad:x101]Out of office now for 25 years, Durenberger continues to be distressed by what he sees as the extreme polarization of the American politics that has only intensified with the election of Donald Trump. Durenberger says he is still a Republican because he is “loath to disavow a lifetime of affiliation.” Moreover, he believes that he is upholding conservative principles when he promotes “market rate approaches for delivering needed public services.” But the former Republican senator acknowledges that more often than not he is voting for Democrats — particularly at the federal level. He even discloses that he went as far as to display a Hillary Clinton lawn sign in his yard in 2016.

Durenberger does not want to end his book on a negative note, so his final chapter, “Reviving the Center,” looks ahead optimistically to a post-Trump world. “In a perverse way, Trump’s presidency could produce a backlash so intense that Americans are newly motivated to work for ‘a more perfect union,’ ” he writes.

“When Republicans Were Progressive” went to press before the recent battle over the Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination came to a head. That battle only served to further shrink any remaining middle ground in Washington.

Durenberger may sound a note of hope about the future, but this country appears to be headed toward an even deeper blue and red divide on Election Day, Nov 6. Durenberger and others like him may face insurmountable obstacles – at least in the foreseeable future — as they attempt to revive the center in American political life..

The approval ratings of President Donald Trump are better than they have been for a long time.

They are still bad. They are still under water (meaning more disapprovers than approvers). But his current bad disapproval number, according to the average of many polls maintained and calculated by HuffPost, stands at an average of 51.2 percent.

Obviously, that’s still above 50 percent. Obviously his approval number (per the Huff Post average) is lower and substantially lower (44.1 percent) than his disapproval number. So don’t uncork the champagne yet, oh ye Trump approvers. You are still outnumbered and by seven percentage points, which is more than a little.

Still, I force myself to repeat, Trump’s current disapproval number is the lowest it has been since March of 2017, two months into his presidency and his approval number is the highest since about the same time.

[cms_ad:x100]I say this with a weird sense of pride, in myself, because, unlike the current incumbent, I believe in dealing honestly with facts, even when they are not what I might wish they were.

I am not a huge admirer (nor approver) of Trump for many reasons, including his lying, his egotism, his ignorance, his pettiness, his policies, his hypocrisy, his lack of class or grace, his cruelty toward the less fortunate and, I guess I don’t have to go on but, at the moment, I can’t think of anything much about him that I do admire. And I struggle a bit to understand certain things, including the durability of his appeal to more than 30 percent and – at the moment, according to the HuffPost average — more than 40 percent of Americans of voting age.

Thanks to my current wonderful MinnPost gig (thank you MinnPost readers and members), I am allowed to express my opinions (as I guess I just did above). But I spent most of my adult life as a reporter, and I retain a certain reverence for facts, even for facts that I wish were not facts, such as the fact that Trump’s approval  numbers have been improving recently and are now the best they have been for a year and a half.

So, when I started this little occasional Trump-approval-watch series, I committed to report the numbers honestly, even when I find them a bit strange. There are others who maintain similar averages to HuffPost, and they generally agree within a small range, but my practice has been to rely on HuffPost and to add into each update the weekly Gallup number, because of esteem for Gallup’s long history in the polling game.

So I will add that as of Monday, when Gallup posted its most recent Trump approval number, they found a significant bump up for Trump’s approval number over the past two weekly samples, and he now stands at 51 percent disapproval/44 percent approval, substantially the same as HuffPost.

The full Gallup chart of Trump’s weekly approval ups and downs since the week after his inauguration is viewable here.

This story about college costs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. 

By most measures, Aboubacar Konate was an outstanding candidate for college.

Konate graduated second in his class from The English High School in Boston with a 4.5 grade-point average. He was on the student council and debate team, took Advanced Placement classes in history and chemistry, speaks four languages, worked a corporate internship and played three sports: soccer, basketball and track.

He did everything he thought was needed to become the first in his family to go to college: worked hard and proved that he was smart enough to make it.

[cms_ad:x100]“I went through all the hoops, the struggles, the obstacles,” Konate said. “College was my dream and my goal.”

But the aspiring engineer fell short on one other measure: having the money to pay.

His father didn’t make enough to save for tuition; if there was anything left after covering rent and food for Konate and his two younger sisters, his father used it to support their grandparents. And while Konate won a substantial scholarship from a foundation run by onetime Boston Red Sox player Adrian González and his wife, he still fell far short of what the private universities he’d dreamed of attending expected him to pay.

The best deal he could get was from a private engineering college that offered Konate little to no financial aid, despite his high school record and economic situation; he would still owe more than $30,000 a year, even after subtracting his González scholarship.

He couldn’t afford it

“I lost all hope,” Konate said. “My family does not have money like that.”

Instead, he enrolled in a less expensive public university. When students do this, studies show, it often leads to lower post-graduate salaries or a higher likelihood of dropping out, reinforcing a cycle of income inequality.

An increasing number of American families are finding themselves in the same situation, according to federal data analyzed by The Hechinger Report in collaboration with the Education Writers Association, or EWA.

For them, after years of escalating college costs and stagnant earnings, the higher educations they desire for their children are conclusively, decisively and categorically out of reach.

“We’ve become numb to the problem of college costs. But this can be a bit of a wakeup call for people,” said Julie Margetta Morgan, a fellow at the liberal think tank the Roosevelt Institute, which focuses on economic policy.

The message: “There’s a giant pool of hardworking students out there who are doing everything right from an academic perspective, the exact story you’d want to see in terms of dreaming big. And many of these students are priced out,” said Mark Huelsman, who studies education trends as a senior analyst at the left-leaning policy organization Dēmos. “It’s heartbreaking.”

[cms_ad:x101]It’s also simple math: The net prices charged by some private colleges and universities — the actual cost, after grants and discounts — are now significantly higher than some families’ entire annual incomes, the analysis, of U.S. Department of Education data, shows.

There’s some good news in the numbers: The average net price has stayed fairly flat for a decade now, at both public and private institutions, for families earning between $30,000 and $48,000. It’s even dropped slightly at private colleges and universities for families that make $48,000 or more, as those schools dole out more financial aid to fill seats in the sixth year of an enrollment decline.

But for families at the bottom of the income scale, earning $30,000 or less, the cost of college continues its relentless rise, with their average net price, after discounts and financial aid, reaching nearly $20,000 a year at private, and some public, universities and colleges. The figures are for 2015-16, the most recent year for which they are available.

And those are just the averages. Some private colleges charged a net price of as much as nearly $42,400 a year for families with annual incomes of $30,000 or less.

One school, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, charged a net price of nearly $50,000 for students from families earning $30,000 or less; another, the California Institute of the Arts, nearly $48,000.

The same institutions are equally pricey for middle-income families, costing up to more than $43,700 for those making $30,000 to $48,000 and nearly $50,000 for families that earn $48,000 to $75,000 a year, after scholarships and grants.

The data are available in the updated Tuition Tracker, a tool produced by The Hechinger Report and EWA for students and their families considering college. The website discloses the net price based on a user’s family income, and other essential information, by institution.

“It is completely infeasible to think that families can dedicate even half to three quarters of their income to put their kid through college,” never mind their entire incomes or more, said Debbie Cochrane, vice president of The Institute for College Access and Success, which tracks the debt to which many students turn to fill the gap.

The highest-income families pay, on average, 15 percent of their earnings for college, according to earlier research by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, or IHEP, while low- and moderate-income families are expected to finance an amount equivalent to 100 percent of what they make in a year. By that calculation, half of 2,000 institutions analyzed by IHEP were affordable only to the wealthiest students — those with annual family incomes of $160,000 or more — and one-third only to students from families that made at least $100,000 a year.

A separate Dēmos study found that, even at public universities, students from families earning $30,000 and less in 22 states face net prices of more than $10,000 a year. The net price of college is the equivalent of a third of black families’ median annual income  — and, in 26 states, more than half — and a quarter of Hispanic families’, compared to about a fifth of what white families earn. (The study was supported by the Lumina Foundation, which is also a funder of The Hechinger Report.)

Incomes likely to be lower

These students often choose cheaper community colleges and second-tier public institutions with far fewer resources to support them, and lower graduation rates. If they do succeed in finishing, their incomes are likely to be lower than if they had attended one of the elite universities or colleges they couldn’t afford.

“How affordable a college is doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for a student,” said Brendan Williams, director of knowledge at the nonprofit UAspire, which helps low-income and first-generation students navigate the route to college. “The cheapest option is not always the best option.”

This, in turn, perpetuates socioeconomic inequality, critics say; a new Federal Reserve Bank of New York report confirms the logical conclusion that students who go to less selective colleges and universities earn less than those who enroll at more selective ones.

The frustration for them is that the college they can afford is based as much on their own earnings after graduation — from which they’ll need to repay all the money they borrow — as their families’ incomes.

The maximum a first-year student can borrow with a federally subsidized loan is $5,500. That’s usually nowhere near enough to cover what many low-income students are left to pay for college, forcing them to resort to parent and private loans.

“We haven’t come up with quantitative cutoff about how much a student should borrow, because each individual student has to balance their own situation,” said Mamie Voight, vice president of policy research at IHEP. “They need to do that calculus themselves, about what they can reasonably expect to earn with a degree.”

In addition to diverting many lower-income undergraduates to poorly resourced schools, the price also forces more of them to balance work with college than their higher-income classmates, which a new study by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University finds significantly lowers their grades and prolongs the time it takes them to finish; only 22 percent of low-income students who work graduate within even six years.

Konate, who turned to UAspire for help, ended up at the public University of New Hampshire, which offered him more generous financial aid — though he was responsible for costs besides tuition, worked while in school, and still ended up with $60,000 worth of federal and private loan debt by the time he graduated last year.

“If you’re in my shoes, you can’t do anything about it but just go look for somewhere that’s more feasible for you,” Konate said.

Now a structural engineer, he mentors younger students in the same straits. “They have their hearts set on a school, but they just can’t afford it,” he said. “It worked out for me in the end, but for a lot of other students, it doesn’t, and they leave. Your dream of college fades away.”

Myiesha Robateau followed in Konate’s footsteps, graduating in the spring from Boston English. She wasn’t offered enough financial aid to go to her first choice of college, either, and instead began this fall at the public University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“It’s frustrating,” said Robateau, the first in her family to attend a four-year university. “Every student deserves to be able to go where they want.”

“The price inches up each year while family incomes for the vast majority of Americans stagnate,” said Huelsman.

This is not a secret to families with college-aged kids. Sixty-nine percent say they had eliminated a college from consideration because of the price, according to a survey by the student loan provider Sallie Mae. A record 15 percent of first-year students told another national survey, by an institute at UCLA, that they had to forgo enrolling at their top choice of college because of the cost. That’s up 60 percent since 2004.

Disclosure required

Colleges are now required to disclose their net prices and provide net price calculators from which families are supposed to be able to determine the ultimate cost based on income. But the IHEP survey found another problem: The net price calculators at 80 percent of colleges were inaccurate or out of date.

There are some caveats to the data. They cover only up until the 2015-16 academic year, and do not include students who do not receive federal financial aid, because the government can’t track them. They also don’t take into account regional variations in the cost of living.

The bottom line is that the gates of some campuses are effectively closed to growing numbers of Americans, however, regardless of their academic talents.

“There is that whole idea where if you work really hard and get good grades and do all that stuff you’re going to be able to go to college and it will be affordable,” said Williams. “And that isn’t true any more.”

This story about college costs was based on data from Tuition Tracker, a tool produced by The Hechinger Report and Education Writers Association for students and their families. The Dallas Morning News contributed. Find out how much students in different income brackets pay at any U.S. college or university.

There’s a lot of talk about preparing high schoolers to be college- and career-ready. But simply getting graduates to enroll in college isn’t enough. If those students aren’t equipped to see their postsecondary journey through to completion, they’re saddled with debt and no clear pathway to career advancement.

This is a reality faced by far too many Minnesotans, and a new program seeks to reconnect them to schools in the state.

According to 2015 state data, only 23 percent of first-time, full-time undergraduates entering a state university graduated in four years. That number increased to 47 percent for the six-year graduation rate.

The graduation outcomes are better at both the University of Minnesota and private colleges. But for Minnesota’s two-year state colleges, the three-year grad rate was at 29 percent. And the three-year grad plus transfer rate was 49 percent.

Broken down by race, completion rates illustrate some stark disparities in the Minnesota higher education landscape. While 34 percent of white students graduated within three years at Minnesota state colleges in 2015, graduation rates were much lower for every other racial and ethnic group: 19 percent for Hispanic students, 18 percent for American Indian and Asian students, 16 percent for multi-racial students, and 9 percent for black students.

[cms_ad:x100]Looking to help more students who gave college a try but eventually called it quits before attaining any sort of certification, the Minnesota State system and the state Office of Higher Education have partnered to launch MN Reconnect.

The program aims to help adult learners who have some prior credit, but no degree, to re-enroll and finish their postsecondary education. It’s currently piloting at four campuses: Inver Hills Community College, Lake Superior College, Riverland Community College and South Central College.

“Through MN Reconnect, the State of Minnesota is making a critical investment in advancing our workforce. Adult learners in Minnesota now have an exciting new option to complete their education, and advance their career,” said Larry Pogemiller, Minnesota Office of Higher Education commissioner, in a press release announcing the new initiative last week.

Tapping into a critical population

Participants in the MN Reconnect program will work one-on-one with a personal adviser, assigned to help them navigate the re-enrollment process from start to finish. There are four of these “navigators” — one stationed at each pilot campus.

These positions are paid for by a $748,000 grant that Minnesota State and the state Office of Higher Education received from the Lumina Foundation, an Indianapolis-based foundation that funds higher-education initiatives nationwide. The two entities had recently participated in a workshop hosted by both Lumina and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) association, a Boulder-based national association of state higher-education government agencies, to talk about ways to better meet the needs of adult learners; they were subsequently invited to apply for funding to bring their shared vision to fruition.

This initial funding will support the new program at all four pilot campuses — selected because they’d already taken initiative to remove barriers for adult learners — throughout this year and into the following academic year. After that, Meredith Fergus, head of the MN Reconnect program with the state Office of Higher Education, says she and her colleagues in this work will look to lobby state officials for continued funding to sustain and expand the program.

“We wanted to work with colleges who had kind of started down that path that we could leverage — so they could teach us what they already knew and we could provide them with some funding that would allow them to get to the next step,” she said. “But our goal is, really, to get all colleges in Minnesota on this pathway towards serving adult learners better, especially former students. But we’re just having to start small because of the limited funding.”

Listing some of the common barriers that these four campuses have been making more of a concerted effort to address, Fergus pointed to evening financial aid office hours, on-campus child care, transportation assistance, a simple  process for acquiring credit for prior learning, and the opportunity to enroll in a year’s worth of coursework at the start of the year, so working students can better plan for child care and transportation.

She talks about how MN Reconnect has the potential to help meet both the needs of adult learners and the state’s employment needs. But she’s also focused on using this program as a way to meet the state’s educational achievement goal. In 2015, the state Legislature enacted a goal that 70 percent of Minnesotans ages 25 to 44 should have a postsecondary credential by 2025.

To get there, the state is paying greater attention to the approximately 115,000-140,000 Minnesotans in that age bracket who dropped out of college — who have some credits but no degree, no certificate, Fergus said.  

[cms_ad:x101]“We saw that as a primary population that we could tap into, to get them to come back to college, finish their program — whether it’s the one they first started, or it’s the one most applicable to their job now — and actually have a quick win on making progress towards our educational achievement goal,” she said. “Furthermore, we know that students of color are actually more likely to drop out of college than white students, and low-income students are more likely to drop out than upper-income students. So by focusing on dropouts, we can also target individuals of color, as well as low-income students, to help get them back in and get that certificate or degree, which will help them, in terms of economic outcome.”

To recruit participants for the MN Reconnect program, the state Office of Higher Education is helping all four pilot campuses market the program. Program staff are targeting adults between the ages of 25 and 44 who have been out of college for at least two years, had earned at least 15 credits, and are interested in re-enrolling to earn a certificate, diploma or associate degree through one of the four participating colleges.

Adults with prior credit but no certification who don’t fall within these parameters are still encouraged to apply and participate, Fergus says. That includes those who may have studied at a college outside of Minnesota, or outside of the Minnesota State system. It’s just that these folks won’t be receiving the direct invitations to apply that dropouts from the four participating campuses have already begun receiving.

Removing barriers

As the first to fill its new MN Reconnect navigator position, Inver Hills Community College was able to enroll its initial cohort of participants at the start of the fall semester. The campus currently has about 70 students enrolled, with more lined up to enroll in the spring semester. It’s a strong start toward hitting the 125 students-per-campus goal minimum set by the state Office of Higher Education.

Heidi Thury, the college’s on-site navigator, has been working on campus for the last seven years and is familiar with the college’s prior-existing adult learner initiatives. While she’ll spend the bulk of her time doing one-on-one advising with program participants, she’ll also be looking to enhance programs that support adult learners and address policies that continue to act as barriers for this particular student population.

For instance, she says Inver Hills Community College already has a pretty well established prior learning assessment program and College-Level Examination Program, both of which allow students an expedited pathway to earning credit for skills they have acquired in the workforce for a fraction of the cost of a regular college course. Other expedited pathways to credit — that are also less expansive and more flexible — exist as well to support adult learners on campus.

But she’d like to see more departments get involved in collaborating with the new director of prior learning assessment, to expand offerings. Likewise, she’s advocating for an expansion of evening course offerings, since many of the adult learners she’s advising are working full-time jobs.

Additionally, she’s advocating for a policy change to a process that she thinks serves as an unnecessary deterrent for many adult learners interested in re-enrolling to complete their studies: the cumbersome appeals process for prior academic suspension, which is tied to financial aid suspension.

“We forget that those feelings that come up can really create a sense of anxiety and a feeling that maybe I really don’t belong again,” she said. “In most likelihood, they will get approved. So it’s this little hoop they have to jump through. And I think it’d help their mindset if they could come in without having to think so much about it.”

He’d long toyed with the idea of going back to complete his college studies, he says. But the undertaking felt daunting. Seeing his own kids off to college, he felt the timing was finally right to take action.

“They motivated me to continue my education. And, of course, I’d like to increase my earning potential. I want to make more money and work with my head instead of my body,” he said. “But as an adult learner, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to be able to put education into my work life and still be able to be successful at both.”

Once he connected with Thury, he was able to map out a pathway that actually expanded upon his initial ambitions. At Inver Hills Community College, he’ll build upon the prior credits he’d earned to earn an associate of arts and earn some professional certificates that’ll allow him to get some professional experience in the IT and computer science sector. He’ll be able to do all this while continuing to work full time by taking advantage of online and evening classes, when possible.

From there, he now plans to go for a bachelor’s degree as well, by continuing his studies at Concordia College. “It feels good to see everything on paper and be like, ‘Well, by 2020, I’m gonna be starting my bachelor’s degree,’ ” he said, adding he plans to complete that final step within 18 months.

Part of a national trend

In many aspects, Minnesota is still catching up to other states when it comes to helping adults with some college credit but no certification to complete their studies.

Andy Carlson, vice president of finance policy and member services for SHEEO, has been working closely with Minnesota on its newly launched MN Reconnect program. But he also works with other states who are making advances in this work. From his perspective, there’s been a notable shift over the last three or four years in terms of who’s interested in thinking about adult education pathways differently. With most states having adopted postsecondary educational attainment goals, it’s no longer just higher-ed insiders who are focused on this, he says, but policymakers as well.

“The high school pipeline is not growing the way it used to,” he said. “So the adult student is really critical if states want to hit those goals. And those goals tend to be tied to workforce and economic needs, so they’re pretty darn important for a state.”

Some state programs are set up to funnel adult learners into high-needs workforce areas, while others are open to all areas of study. Some programs operate statewide, while others are more limited in scope. Some are confined to community and technical college, while other have brought four-year universities into the fold. Some offer students reduced, or even free, tuition.

In Indiana, the state offers two programs geared toward breaking down barriers for adult learners. The “You Can. Go Back.” program was designed to help adult learners who had dropped out of college come back to finish their degree. This initiative supports students with a state grant, recently increased to $2,000. Additionally, state policies have been adjusted to allow for more leniency for those who have been out of school for more than two years and re-enroll under this adult program: Their prior grades are discounted.

Building on this program, the state recently launched Next Level Jobs. This program provides adult residents with an opportunity to earn a free high-demand certificate, to advance in their work sector.

“We can drive people to different places on the website in a clear and simple way,” said Teresa Lubbers, the state’s commissioner for higher education. “What we know is if it’s too complicated, you lose people at the very beginning.”

In her experience, it’s also important for states to be “pretty aggressive about using prior learning assessments” to award credit in a more affordable, expedited way for adult learners.

“I think it’s important to value the knowledge that people have gained in nontraditional educational ways,” she said.

In Mississippi, the Complete 2 Compete program launched in Aug. 2017 and is already showing some promising levels of engagement and impact. Right now the program has 13,000 applicants, says Stephanie Bullock, the program’s project coordinator with the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. To date, they’ve awarded 701 degrees to participants — many of whom didn’t actually need to invest in additional coursework to get a degree. And 860 students are currently enrolled.

Highlighting some of the elements that make this state initiative unique, Bullock points to their use of program coaches stationed at each of the 24 participating campuses, a pillar similar to the one MN Reconnect is being built around. In total, she oversees 50 of these advisers — a number that’s grown in tandem with the increase in demand.

She also points to a grade-forgiveness policy that allows students enrolling in the Complete 2 Compete program a fresh start, in terms of not having past grades calculated into their new GPA.

Additionally, the creation of a university studies degree program — specifically designed for program participants looking to attain a bachelor’s degree to advance at work, or to apply for a job that requires a degree without specialization — offers adult learners more flexible option for going back to school. Under this pathway, they can apply up to 30 hours of technical credits toward a bachelor’s degree — a significant change in the way most state public universities had dealt with technical credits.

Finally, Bullock says the program offers students access to grant funding — provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation — that they can access in $500 increments, each semester, to pay off past college debt at other Mississippi institutions that may have been preventing them from re-enrolling.

All five of the states that Carlson is currently working with through this round of Lumina grants — Minnesota, Washington, Maine, Indiana and Oklahoma — are all doing things that are “very, very different,” he says. But he believes they’re all committed to figuring out what an adult learner needs in order to succeed.

“The reality is, someone who attempted college and didn’t succeed comes with a lot of legitimate baggage from that experience, potentially,” he said. “So the worst thing a state can do is re-engage students — get them to come back and invest their resources and time — and then not succeed a second time.”

Negative attack ads are bombarding Minnesota politics. Many are of questionable accuracy. Should candidates or groups say whatever they want about an opponent, issue, or themselves and have it protected as a form of free speech? While the Supreme Court has ruled that these ads are protected by the First Amendment, a good argument can be made that there is no constitutional right to lie.

First, why so many negative attack ads in Minnesota? The simple answer is that they are effective. Minnesota elections have become competitive, and close elections often produce negative ads. These ads are able to mobilize voters, both partisan and swing, to vote against candidates, or they persuade some not to vote. In either case, these ads will continue to be used so long as voters respond to them.

But such ads, especially if untruthful, should not be given constitutional protection. Lying is wrong; even children know it. Prohibitions against lying are often legally enforced. Perjury is wrong and punishable by law. False advertising is regulated as deceptive. Lies distort the search for truth and the marketplace of ideas. In law, the adversarial system is supposed to discover the truth, but that does not mean that witnesses can lie. Courts rely on all parties playing fairly and not lying. Lies make it difficult for juries to do their job. False commercial advertising makes it difficult for consumers to make informed choices, thereby providing the classic justification for their regulation.

Personal integrity is not always enough

Ethically there should be no debate that lying is wrong in politics. One should hope as a matter of personal virtue and integrity that this would be the case. But personal integrity is not always enough. American politics is littered with records of lies and deceptions, be it Bill Clinton’s false assertions about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth distorting John Kerry’s Vietnam record, or  statements by President Donald Trump that many fact checkers find to be of questionable accuracy. Something more is needed to encourage personal integrity in politics.

[cms_ad:x100]This brings us to the question: Is there a First Amendment right to lie? The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011 effectively said yes in the case known as 281 Care Committee v. Arneson. The court was concerned with how such a law would chill free speech. Was the court right? There are many reasons to question its analysis.

First, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that deception lies outside of First Amendment protection. In its 1995 McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission decision, it ruled that Ohio had a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and libel in campaigns where false statements might have “serious adverse consequences.” Promoting the integrity of the electoral process was a legitimate reason to prohibit deception.

Second, lies occur, and one cannot always rely upon the marketplace of ideas to ensure that the public will be able to sort out fact from fiction. Over a quarter of the population still believes that former President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen, we never landed a person on the moon, or that George Bush and the CIA planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Many voters rely on people telling the truth

Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter point out in “What Americans Don’t Know About Politics and Why It Matters” that many voters are uninformed about politics. They rely upon political actors to tell them the truth so that they can make informed decisions. Lying prevents that. Laws prohibiting political falsehoods define outer limits on deception.

Without any limits, there are no real sanctions against lying. Some might argue that electoral defeat is the sanction, but in many cases the political process cannot be counted on to smoke out lies and punish. Moreover, once lies have been circulated, especially in a social media era, they are hard to correct, and evidence suggests deception travels more quickly and deeper than the truth.

Prohibiting lying actually enhances robust debate and democracy. Much in the same way that prosecuting perjury strengthens the adversarial process, drawing limits on deception in politics does the same. Similarly, policing deceptive commercial ads yields better consumer choices and operation of the market place.

One more reason for cynicism

Surveys indicate that a majority of Americans think quite a few politicians are crooks, and barely a quarter of the population trust the government. There are many reasons why voters have become increasingly more cynical about politics and why they distrust politicians. Perhaps public perception of increased lying in the political process is a factor.

Making it clear that the First Amendment does not protect political lies is one way to strengthen democracy and encourage better political behavior.

David Schultz is a Hamline University professor of political science and a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. His latest book is “Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter.” 

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Fertility rates have fallen significantly in the United States over the past 10 years, with the biggest declines occurring in large metropolitan areas, according to a data brief released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The average age of first-time mothers has increased during that period as well, and the rise has been greatest in large metro areas, the CDC report also shows.

The report doesn’t discuss why American women are having fewer babies and at older ages, but other research has pointed to several possible factors. These include women declining or delaying marriage, often to finish their education and establish their careers.

Teen pregnancies have also been at historic lows in recent years, including in Minnesota.

A recent New York Times survey of a nationally representative group adults aged 20 to 45 found that the top reasons for why people aren’t having as many children as previous generations have to do with wanting more leisure time and personal freedom, not having found a partner yet, and — leading the list — not being able to afford child-care costs.

[cms_ad:x100]In fact, four out of the five top reasons cited in the survey for having fewer children had to do with financial worries.

Across all areas

The total fertility rate — the estimated number of births expected from a group of 1,000 women during their lifetime — reached its most recent peak in the U.S. in 2007, the CDC report points out.

The rate has been dropping ever since — and in all areas of the country.

The CDC data also shows that as the decade progressed, the difference between the fertility rates of rural and metro areas widened.

In 2007, the total fertility rate for rural areas was 5 percent higher than that of both small/medium and large metro areas. By 2017, that gap had widened to 10 percent with small/medium metro areas and to 14 percent with large metro areas.

“The differences in total fertility rates between rural and metro areas are consistent with previous research describing differences in childbearing behaviors and a higher average number of children in rural areas compared with metro areas,” the CDC researchers write.

The decline in total fertility rates occurred among all races, but the largest drops occurred among Hispanic women. Their rates decreased 26 percent in rural areas, 29 percent in small/medium metro areas and 30 percent in large metro areas.

Older new moms

The average age at which women are having their first child has also increased in all areas of the country during the past decade. New moms in rural areas, however, still tend to be younger (by an average of about three years) then their counterparts in metro areas.

That trend  — having a first baby at a later age — occurred across all races. Black women experienced the greatest increase in average age for a first birth, however, with rises of 1.7 years in rural areas, 1.9 years in small/medium metro areas, and 2.4 years in large metro areas.

FMI: You can read the CDC data brief in full on the agency’s website.

If you’re turning 50, you might as well do it in style. Throw a party. Have a classy jazz duo – Benny Weinbeck on piano, Gordy Johnson on bass – greet people as they come through your door. Serve prime rib and ice-cream drinks. Enjoy the fact that Gov. Mark Dayton has proclaimed this your day. Entertain a crowd of 560 with a spectacle of a musical, with famous songs and fabulous dancing, a strong cast and gorgeous costumes. Then continue with a birthday bash in the Club Theatre.

That’s what Chanhassen Dinner Theatres (CDT) did, and they did it impeccably well. Opening night of “Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn” was a night to remember, with nonstop hospitality in the house and fireworks on the stage.

But before getting into “Holiday Inn,” some background.

Founded by Herbert and Carolyn Bloomberg, built in a Carver County cornfield – and “still here against all odds,” said infomercial queen Nancy Nelson during the opening remarks – CDT opened on Oct. 11, 1968, with “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Growing into a 90,000-square-foot complex with multiple stages, it has staged 237 homegrown productions and entertained more than 12.5 million people.

[cms_ad:x100]It’s one of a half-dozen professional dinner theaters still standing, with table service from the start, and the largest privately owned single-unit restaurant in Minnesota. It’s also the state’s largest employer of musical theater professionals. All productions are designed and created on site by Minnesota artists, designers, actors and musicians. Many actors who have trod Chanhassen’s boards have gone on to Broadway, TV and films: Amy Adams, Laura Osnes, TR Knight, Linda Kelsey, Loni Anderson, Pat Proft, Ron Perlman.

No longer in a cornfield – the city of Chanhassen, which just observed its own 50th anniversary, has grown up around it, and Paisley Park is down the road – CDT is someplace to check out if you haven’t yet been there. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience. And the current production, “Holiday Inn,” is a musical, muscular display of its strengths.

This is a regional premiere of the show that opened on Broadway in 2016. Inspired by the 1942 Oscar-winning film starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, it’s full of great songs including “White Christmas,” “Happy Holiday,” “Blue Skies,” “Easter Parade,” “Cheek to Cheek” and “Steppin’ Out with My Baby.” The large cast is led by Michael Gruber, Ann Michels, Tony Vierling, Jessica Fredrickson and Michelle Barber.

The story is thin – mainly a frame on which to hang all the singing, dancing, costumes and scenes. After years on Broadway, Jim (Gruber) has decided to leave the bright lights behind for a peaceful life in Connecticut. His stage partners Ted (Vierling) and Lila (Fredrickson) aren’t happy about that, especially Lila, who’s Jim’s fiancée for a minute, until Ted woos her away with promises of Hollywood stardom.

Jim soon finds Connecticut too sleepy for his tastes. He meets Linda (Ann Michels), a schoolteacher who happens to be a talented singer and dancer, and Louise (Barber), a mouthy farmhand. Together they turn the farmhouse (Linda’s former home) into an inn. It will only be open on holidays from Thanksgiving to the Fourth of July – including Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter – and it will stage performances featuring Jim’s Broadway friends.

Jim and Linda fall in love. Then Ted shows up, wooing Linda with promises of Hollywood stardom. Oh, and here comes Lila. Will Jim lose the girl again? What do you think?

The story barely matters. What counts are the nonstop singing and dancing, both splendid. The leads are backed by a large ensemble cast that fills the stage with twirling, tapping, and smiles. Gowns sparkle and whirl. And there really are fireworks. In “Let’s Say It With Firecrackers,” Vierling mimes throwing flash bangs onto the stage while dancing up a storm. What masterful timing all around: from Vierling, the band and whoever flips the switch to make the lights in the stage burst into brightness.

Michael Brindisi directs. He’s only the second artistic director in CDT’s long history, after Gary Gisselman; this is Brindisi’s 30th year with the theater. Choreographer Tamara Kangas Erickson guided dozens of feet in many thousands of steps. Andy Kust leads the band; Nayna Ramey did the scenic design, which morphs seamlessly from New York to a country farmhouse with a barn that figures prominently toward the end, and a Hollywood set (an especially hilarious scene). Rich Hamson came up with the beautiful costumes. The show lasts two hours, plus there’s a 30-minute intermission, enough time for a coffin-sized slab of the Chanhassen’s chocolate cake.

Though “Holiday Inn” is perhaps best known for loosing “White Christmas” on the world, it’s not specifically a Christmas show. You can see it anytime from now through Feb. 23, 2019. There are eight shows every week. Former Star Tribune theater critic Graydon Royce plans to be in every one. A member of the ensemble cast, he plays a radio announcer, and he sings. He’s pretty good, too.

FMI and tickets ($76-91 dinner and show; special student and senior pricing); 952-934-1525. Show-only tickets are available 10 days before a performance date.

The picks

Now at the History Theatre: The Great Society. Robert Schenkkan has written two plays about LBJ: the Tony-winning “All the Way,” seen at the History Theatre this time last year, and a sequel, “The Great Society.” The original cast returns, with Pearce Bunting as LBJ, Shawn Hamilton as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Erskine Wheeler as Hubert H. Humphrey. Spanning the years 1965–68, the play schools us on our history and depicts LBJ’s fall from grace as his accomplishments – including historic legislation on health care, education and poverty – are overshadowed by Vietnam. FMI and tickets ($37-56; less for seniors, students and under 30s). Ends Oct. 28.

Saturday at Hamline: Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop 7th Annual Reading: “Beyond Bars: Voices of Incarceration.” Family members, friends, and MPWW instructors and mentors will read poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by writers incarcerated in state correctional facilities. Released MPWW alumni will read their own work. In the Klas Center, Kay Fredericks Room. 7 p.m. Free. Here’s a campus map.

Saturday and Sunday at MacPhail’s Antonello Hall: Minnesota Bach Ensemble: “Rustic and Refined.” The Bach Ensemble will open its 7th season with an old favorite, rarely heard works and special guests. Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 2 will feature the SPCO’s Lynn Erickson as trumpet soloist. The program will also include music by Fasch, Biber, Conti and Czech Baroque composer Zelenka. Artistic Director Andrew Altenbach will conduct. With Minnesota Orchestra flutist Adam Kuenzel and soprano Linh Kauffman. 3 p.m. both days. FMI and tickets ($30/$10 students).

Monday at the Chanhassen: JazzMN Orchestra: “Sinatra & Basie: Live at the Sands.” Swinging, sophisticated multi-platinum recording artist Curtis Stigers will perform with Minnesota’s premier big band as it approaches its 20th anniversary under Artistic Director Doug Snapp. Note the new location: not the Hopkins High auditorium, but Chanhassen’s main stage. This is a dinner show. FMI and tickets ($30-50). Coming up: “Jingle Bell Jazz” on Dec. 17 and JazzMN’s 20th Anniversary Celebration concert on April 8.