Who says that education doesn’t occur at Minnesota’s own state-funded madrassa?  After Executive Director Azad Zaman of the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) professed ignorance at how to operate a flagpole over the five years the charter school was required to fly the American flag, KSTP noticed that an old dog can learn new tricks after all:

Since 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS investigated TIZA Academy in Inver Grove Heights on Wednesday, the school’s attorney has said several changes would be made.

The most noticeable — an American flag now flies over the school for the first time since the academy was founded in 2003.

Zaman and his attorney took pains to tell KSTP about all of the messages of hate and threats they have received since getting exposed by Katherine Kersten this week in the Star Tribune.   There is no excuse for that kind of response, and it should stop.  No one suggests that anything untoward happens at TIZA, but that the state should not directly fund religious education — and we wonder why TIZA has an apparent exception.

The flag, at least, is no longer an exception.  The increased scrutiny has proven instructive in that regard.  Zaman can now say he’s mastered the use of a rope-and-pulley system, thanks to Kersten and KSTP.