Minnesota ranks 7th in the country for Pre-K-12 education. Our strengths in Pre-K-12 education come from our achievement in math (3rd) and reading (6th) as well as the quality of state-run Pre-K (6th). A strong education is linked to a strong and skilled workforce which is linked to a strong economy. I am an elementary public school teacher in a high achieving district and I think personal experience is important. So, in portions of this blog post, I will be sharing some of my own experience.
In the education world, a lot of weight and attention is given to educational researcher John Hattie. He synthesizes education research from around the world to determine effect size on student achievement. So, what matters according to research when it comes to a successful education? You can see the full list of how over 250 influences rank here. But, the number 1 factor related to student achievement is collective teacher efficacy.
Teachers
In politics and society as a whole, there seem to be two predominant views of teachers and public education. Which viewpoint you hold tends to dictate how you approach public education. The first is that teachers are trusted professionals with specific training and skills. They know how to impact the lives of young people in a positive manner which sets them up for on-going success. They work hard for the benefit of their students. Low achievement is a result of poverty and factors outside of school. The second is that anyone can be a teacher, with or without proper licensing, and while there are some good teachers, many public education teachers are ineffective. Low achievement is a result solely of these ineffective teachers that are unfairly protected by teacher tenure and teachers unions.
Let’s talk about teacher unions a bit. Teacher unions and collective bargaining are essential to fair teacher pay, workplace protections, and collective teacher efficacy which is the number one factor in student achievement. The word “collective” cannot be overlooked. Teachers should not be working in isolation competing against each other. They must be working together to impact student achievement. In our district, we have a saying. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Teacher unions are groups of teachers working together. How one sees teacher unions generally goes back to how one sees teachers. Are they trusted professionals working for the good of our students or complacent, ineffective freeloaders just showing up and collecting a paycheck?
One of the most contested teacher protections is tenure. In 1886, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a pre-college teacher tenure law. Prior to this, teachers were often fired for non-work related issues. Calls for teacher protections coincided with the labor movement and women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th century. The National Education Association advocated for public school teacher tenure to protect against gender and race discrimination, favoritism, and to protect political affiliation.
After the Great Depression, teacher unions began to negotiate for these protections. By 1940, 70% of K-12 teachers had such protections. By the 1950’s, it was over 80%. 1983 was a turning point for teacher tenure under the Ronald Reagan administration. Since then, many efforts have been made to reform or eliminate teacher tenure.
So, how does my personal experience inform my perspective? In my first three years of teaching I was on a probationary contract, and I could be terminated for any reason. Teachers are closely monitored and observed (including 3 formal administrative observations each year) during those first three years. Those who do not cut it, are terminated. In my ten years of teaching, I have seen many teachers terminated in their first 3 years. In my fourth year, I was granted a continuing contract which protects me from being fired for personal or political reasons and prevents me from being terminated to hire new, less expensive teachers. I can still be terminated for poor performance and this does happen. I absolutely fear losing my job. I also know of one teacher that was terminated with a continuing contract. However, for the most part, I have not seen any teacher granted a continuing contract that should not be in the profession or who has become complacent which is why this doesn’t happen very often. Teachers work hard and are passionate about what they do and highly skilled. You can’t sustain the job otherwise.
What about teacher pay? I know not all teachers will agree with me, but I believe I am paid fairly and that the current pay system is fair, equitable, and predictable. It’s a publicly funded profession. Schools don’t have endless amounts of money with which to offer raises to some teachers and not others. And, in my experience, there are no teachers I know who should get paid more or less than their colleagues. My base pay is based on my years of experience and level of education. Each year, a portion of my pay (a couple thousand dollars) is withheld until the end of the year when I have met all of the accountability requirements. This insures both fairness and accountability. There are no wage gaps in teaching. I get paid the same as anyone with my experience and education. There are no bonuses. However, if teachers do not meet all of the accountability requirements throughout the year, they do not get their full pay. And yes, this does happen. I personally know at least one colleague this has happened to. But again, I work in a high achieving district with high teacher efficacy, so I don’t personally know of it happening that often and it shouldn’t happen that often.
Minnesota Education Mandates
Education is largely impacted by elected officials. They have a lot of power and they use it. If education is an important issue to you, it matters who you vote for very much. The legislature makes the laws which determine everything from what schools must teach and how much, how teachers are licensed, and what food services must serve. The governor either vetoes those mandates or signs them into law. Here are some specific laws you may or may not know about:
- Each year, kindergarteners must receive 425 hours of instruction. All day kindergarten must receive 850 hours of instruction. 1st-6th graders must receive 935 hours of instruction. 7th-12th graders must receive 1,020 hours of instruction. All calendars for grades 1-11 must include 165 days of instruction.
- To graduate in Minnesota, you must complete 4 credits of language arts, 3 credits of math including algebra II, and 3 credits of science including 1 biology, 1 chemistry or physics, and 1 elective.
- A district is required to reserve 2% of its revenue for staff development.
The law also requires the commissioner of education to review all mandates every four years to find which mandates fail to promote public education, are underfunded, or are duplicative and report back to the legislature. This year 17 mandates were identified. Here are some of the highlights.
Our elected officials are also the deciding factor on education funding, so once again, if education is an important issue to you, it matters who you vote for very much. According to the Minnesota Constitution, Article XIII, Section 1, “The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.”
In Minnesota, schools are funded through three primary revenue sources: income and sales taxes, property taxes, and property tax levies in districts approved by voters. Given that property taxes and levies vary by districts, not all school funding is created equal. Overall, Minnesota ranks 18th in total per pupil spending. All 6 states that rank higher than Minnesota in Pre-K-12 education have higher per pupil spending.
In May of this year, 59 out of 336 Minnesota school districts were facing budget deficits. Minneapolis is facing the largest deficit. Deficits typically translate to teacher and staff layoffs (which translates to increased class sizes), cutting programs, and deferring building maintenance. At that time, Governor Dayton proposed a one time $138 million dollar emergency funding bill. Republicans included $225 million in their tax bill, but Dayton vetoed it which means the districts did not get the money they needed. Why would he do that? It was a matter of where the bill was getting the funds. $50 million was coming from money the DNR already owed the districts but was yet unpaid from public access fees they collect on school trust lands. The rest came from freeing up regulations on how schools use their staff development and community education funds which would allow them to transfer funds from their community education funds to their general funds. So, there wasn’t actually any new money. It was just suggesting the school take from one pot and move it to the other which translates to cuts in things like staff development and community education. This is very common. Additionally, it is extremely common for schools to have money owed to them and to have those debts continuously kicked down the line to pay for other things so that schools never get the money. St. Paul District Superintendent commented on the veto of the tax bill, “For St. Paul Public Schools, it means that we are going to enact a $17.2 million budget reduction. I knew that any funding that would have come out of a bill that was signed would not have made up for that entire deficit,” he said, adding he “thought that this year would give us just a little time, a little bit of money, to restore some services and supports that our students and schools need.”
The most vulnerable students are often affected the most. Schools can’t always predict their special education costs because those costs are based on enrollment predictions that can fluctuate. There is a massive special education funding gap. What state and federal governments provide, differs greatly from what special education services students actually require.
School Choice Movement
School choice allows families to redirect public education funds to private school, charter schools, or home schools. The most common school choice programs involve scholarship tax credits which exist in many states including Minnesota. The most controversial form of school choice is the school choice voucher program. Fifteen states have voucher programs, but not Minnesota. The movement gained prominence in 1990 with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program is the largest voucher program.
Supporters of school choice say that it expands options for students with poor educational options in their neighborhood and gives parents options. They think public schools should be run like businesses subject to competition from other schools and closure if they don’t work.
Critics say that it redirects public school funds to private institutions in an effort to privatize education, therefore undermining public education. They say that schools cannot run like a business because students are not products. They say that public schools have to accept all students, but private schools don’t and public schools are hurt when their funds are diverted because the schools they are diverted from are already typically underfunded. Choice schools are not accountable to the public, oversight is often lax, and some choice schools violate separation of church and state (where tax dollars would be diverted to religious institutions through the choice program).
School Security
There is a lot of talk about school security in today’s political climate. To that, I can really just offer my own experience. At my school, all doors are locked at all times, including classroom doors. All people have to be buzzed into the front office, including staff, during the school day. We have a full time paid employee (hired within a month of Sandy Hook) whose sole job is to take ID’s, make badges for all visitors, and run background checks on volunteers. We have an armed officer walking the hallways. State law requires five lockdown drills a year.
Achievement & Opportunity Gaps
One of the most startling things I learned in my Reading Comprehension Instruction class was that by age 3, students from lower income families and upper income families have a 30 million word gap. Poverty is completely linked to reduced academic achievement. If affects physical, social-emotional, and cognitive readiness for school resulting in lower performance. John Hattie identifies just 17 negative effects on student achievement out of over 250 and a family being on welfare or state aid is one of them. Education can’t solve all of those problems, but funding of early childhood education for at-risk students is an essential component of bridging the achievement and opportunity gaps.
Higher Education
Minnesota ranks 23rd for higher education. We rank 4th for the amount of education for adults over the age of 25, but 45th for amount of debt at graduation (meaning that residents of states above us have less student loan debt)! Part of this could be because we rank 38th for tuition and fees.
Here is where the candidates stand on all of these issues related to education:
Jeff Johnson (R): (Teachers) Candidate Johnson wants to get rid of teacher tenure in favor of annual performance reviews with no limit to how much of a raise teacher can get, even though he will inevitably reduce funding for public schools. (Mandates & Funding) Candidate Johnson will eliminate every state mandate and regulation in place today and create a Minnesota School Finance Commission to determine the basic dollar amount schools need per pupil. He will then sign legislation requiring schools to provide a learning environment, curriculum, and instruction with access to a broad range of ideology making it clear that public education courses are not for political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination. He says this is necessary due to students being discriminated against for challenging the left-wing ideology present in some schools. He also vows to install common sense graduation standards. (School Choice) In his first 50 days, he will bring a “parent trigger” law to Minnesota which will allow parents to petition for change in their school if it is chronically failing, transition to a charter school, or allow access to vouchers to move their child elsewhere. (School Security) He will assign legislation that allows districts to use existing funding to upgrade school security and explore the option of placing qualified armed retired police officers and veterans on school grounds. (Achievement & Opportunity Gaps) He supports the early learning scholarship program in which parents choose the best option for their child’s Pre-K education. (Higher Education) He will promote vocational and trade schools and allow private investment options for student loans.
Erin Murphy (D): (Teachers) She supports collective bargaining and high-quality teacher licensure programs. (Mandates & Funding) Candidate Murphy will re-evaluate the use of standardized tests in our schools. She says she will make sure public schools have the tools and resources they need. (Achievement & Opportunity Gaps) Candidate Murphy will invest in early learning opportunities and voluntary Pre-K for every child. She will fund full-service community schools that support students and their families inside and outside the classroom. She will ensure the teacher workforce is diverse and reflects the student population. (Higher Education) She will guarantee access to career and technical education. She wants to invest in technical programs and apprenticeships while still in high school. She supports 2 years of free higher education. She supports free-tuition to four year programs for families who make less than $150,000 a year. She wants to expand refinancing options and student loan forgiveness programs to help those who have already graduated.
Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty does not address this issue on his website. However, in 2009, when Pawlenty was governor over a third of Minnesota school districts were forced to borrow to pay their bills due to Pawlenty’s budget planning. He delayed payment of $1.2 billion to Minnesota schools to balance the state budget. This forced districts to borrow as the money promised to them wouldn’t come until the next budget which resulted in interest payments for the schools, as well.
Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz was a high school teacher for 20 years. (Teachers) He sees teachers as trusted professionals and believes they are best equipped to make the decisions that impact their classrooms and students. He believes in raising salaries. (Mandates & Funding) He will fully and equitably fund schools and avoid the budget tricks of past administrations (kicking the can down the road). He will prioritize funding coming from the state so that districts aren’t dependent on property taxes which create racial and economic disparities in education. (School Choice) He is opposed to voucher programs. (Achievement & Opportunity Gap) He wants resources and support professionals in all schools, such as counselors and nurses. He support universal Pre-K. He will recruit educators of color by offering loan forgiveness for teachers of color willing to work in high need fields. (Higher Education) He will provide 2 years free education at Minnesota state institutions for families who make less than $125,000 a year.
- The science graduation mandate was challenged as not promoting public education. It was recommended that the 3 credits required are physical science, life science, and an elective.
- Due to funding, many state level special education guidelines that go above federal guidelines were challenged in favor of just following federal guidelines. For example, Minnesota offers special education services from birth to 21 whereas the federal guideline is age 3 to age 21. Minnesota also has a number of provisions that must be included in the IEP of a student that is blind whereas the federal statute has no such requirement. The state requires a deaf and hard of hearing advisory board that is not required federally. The state requires early interventions in the classroom before an evaluation for special education is conducted. This is not a federal requirement. Minnesota requires specific case load limitations for special education teachers. Limits are not required by federal law.
- The law that requires most districts to start after Labor Day was challenged as not promoting public education.
- It was stated that 2% of revenue for staff development is not adequate.
- Allowing a student to be excused for up to 3 days to participate in activities necessary to join a branch of the military.
- Requiring substance abuse prevention curriculum for grades 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12 and requiring schools to include sexual exploitation prevention instruction in health curriculum including instruction on consent to reduce sexual assault.
- Requiring all students to screen for dyslexia between kindergarten and grade 2 as well as any student who shows symptoms from grade 2 on.
- Requiring the commissioner to administer MCA’s as late in the year as possible.
- Prohibiting school counselors from interfering with a student’s desire to enlist in the armed forces.
- Giving students privacy rights on school issued devices.
- Prohibiting schools from denying a school lunch to a student even if they have an outstanding balance.
Our elected officials are also the deciding factor on education funding, so once again, if education is an important issue to you, it matters who you vote for very much. According to the Minnesota Constitution, Article XIII, Section 1, “The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.”
In Minnesota, schools are funded through three primary revenue sources: income and sales taxes, property taxes, and property tax levies in districts approved by voters. Given that property taxes and levies vary by districts, not all school funding is created equal. Overall, Minnesota ranks 18th in total per pupil spending. All 6 states that rank higher than Minnesota in Pre-K-12 education have higher per pupil spending.
In May of this year, 59 out of 336 Minnesota school districts were facing budget deficits. Minneapolis is facing the largest deficit. Deficits typically translate to teacher and staff layoffs (which translates to increased class sizes), cutting programs, and deferring building maintenance. At that time, Governor Dayton proposed a one time $138 million dollar emergency funding bill. Republicans included $225 million in their tax bill, but Dayton vetoed it which means the districts did not get the money they needed. Why would he do that? It was a matter of where the bill was getting the funds. $50 million was coming from money the DNR already owed the districts but was yet unpaid from public access fees they collect on school trust lands. The rest came from freeing up regulations on how schools use their staff development and community education funds which would allow them to transfer funds from their community education funds to their general funds. So, there wasn’t actually any new money. It was just suggesting the school take from one pot and move it to the other which translates to cuts in things like staff development and community education. This is very common. Additionally, it is extremely common for schools to have money owed to them and to have those debts continuously kicked down the line to pay for other things so that schools never get the money. St. Paul District Superintendent commented on the veto of the tax bill, “For St. Paul Public Schools, it means that we are going to enact a $17.2 million budget reduction. I knew that any funding that would have come out of a bill that was signed would not have made up for that entire deficit,” he said, adding he “thought that this year would give us just a little time, a little bit of money, to restore some services and supports that our students and schools need.”
The most vulnerable students are often affected the most. Schools can’t always predict their special education costs because those costs are based on enrollment predictions that can fluctuate. There is a massive special education funding gap. What state and federal governments provide, differs greatly from what special education services students actually require.
School Choice Movement
School choice allows families to redirect public education funds to private school, charter schools, or home schools. The most common school choice programs involve scholarship tax credits which exist in many states including Minnesota. The most controversial form of school choice is the school choice voucher program. Fifteen states have voucher programs, but not Minnesota. The movement gained prominence in 1990 with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program is the largest voucher program.
Supporters of school choice say that it expands options for students with poor educational options in their neighborhood and gives parents options. They think public schools should be run like businesses subject to competition from other schools and closure if they don’t work.
Critics say that it redirects public school funds to private institutions in an effort to privatize education, therefore undermining public education. They say that schools cannot run like a business because students are not products. They say that public schools have to accept all students, but private schools don’t and public schools are hurt when their funds are diverted because the schools they are diverted from are already typically underfunded. Choice schools are not accountable to the public, oversight is often lax, and some choice schools violate separation of church and state (where tax dollars would be diverted to religious institutions through the choice program).
School Security
There is a lot of talk about school security in today’s political climate. To that, I can really just offer my own experience. At my school, all doors are locked at all times, including classroom doors. All people have to be buzzed into the front office, including staff, during the school day. We have a full time paid employee (hired within a month of Sandy Hook) whose sole job is to take ID’s, make badges for all visitors, and run background checks on volunteers. We have an armed officer walking the hallways. State law requires five lockdown drills a year.
Achievement & Opportunity Gaps
One of the most startling things I learned in my Reading Comprehension Instruction class was that by age 3, students from lower income families and upper income families have a 30 million word gap. Poverty is completely linked to reduced academic achievement. If affects physical, social-emotional, and cognitive readiness for school resulting in lower performance. John Hattie identifies just 17 negative effects on student achievement out of over 250 and a family being on welfare or state aid is one of them. Education can’t solve all of those problems, but funding of early childhood education for at-risk students is an essential component of bridging the achievement and opportunity gaps.
Higher Education
Minnesota ranks 23rd for higher education. We rank 4th for the amount of education for adults over the age of 25, but 45th for amount of debt at graduation (meaning that residents of states above us have less student loan debt)! Part of this could be because we rank 38th for tuition and fees.
Here is where the candidates stand on all of these issues related to education:
Jeff Johnson (R): (Teachers) Candidate Johnson wants to get rid of teacher tenure in favor of annual performance reviews with no limit to how much of a raise teacher can get, even though he will inevitably reduce funding for public schools. (Mandates & Funding) Candidate Johnson will eliminate every state mandate and regulation in place today and create a Minnesota School Finance Commission to determine the basic dollar amount schools need per pupil. He will then sign legislation requiring schools to provide a learning environment, curriculum, and instruction with access to a broad range of ideology making it clear that public education courses are not for political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination. He says this is necessary due to students being discriminated against for challenging the left-wing ideology present in some schools. He also vows to install common sense graduation standards. (School Choice) In his first 50 days, he will bring a “parent trigger” law to Minnesota which will allow parents to petition for change in their school if it is chronically failing, transition to a charter school, or allow access to vouchers to move their child elsewhere. (School Security) He will assign legislation that allows districts to use existing funding to upgrade school security and explore the option of placing qualified armed retired police officers and veterans on school grounds. (Achievement & Opportunity Gaps) He supports the early learning scholarship program in which parents choose the best option for their child’s Pre-K education. (Higher Education) He will promote vocational and trade schools and allow private investment options for student loans.
Erin Murphy (D): (Teachers) She supports collective bargaining and high-quality teacher licensure programs. (Mandates & Funding) Candidate Murphy will re-evaluate the use of standardized tests in our schools. She says she will make sure public schools have the tools and resources they need. (Achievement & Opportunity Gaps) Candidate Murphy will invest in early learning opportunities and voluntary Pre-K for every child. She will fund full-service community schools that support students and their families inside and outside the classroom. She will ensure the teacher workforce is diverse and reflects the student population. (Higher Education) She will guarantee access to career and technical education. She wants to invest in technical programs and apprenticeships while still in high school. She supports 2 years of free higher education. She supports free-tuition to four year programs for families who make less than $150,000 a year. She wants to expand refinancing options and student loan forgiveness programs to help those who have already graduated.
Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty does not address this issue on his website. However, in 2009, when Pawlenty was governor over a third of Minnesota school districts were forced to borrow to pay their bills due to Pawlenty’s budget planning. He delayed payment of $1.2 billion to Minnesota schools to balance the state budget. This forced districts to borrow as the money promised to them wouldn’t come until the next budget which resulted in interest payments for the schools, as well.
Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz was a high school teacher for 20 years. (Teachers) He sees teachers as trusted professionals and believes they are best equipped to make the decisions that impact their classrooms and students. He believes in raising salaries. (Mandates & Funding) He will fully and equitably fund schools and avoid the budget tricks of past administrations (kicking the can down the road). He will prioritize funding coming from the state so that districts aren’t dependent on property taxes which create racial and economic disparities in education. (School Choice) He is opposed to voucher programs. (Achievement & Opportunity Gap) He wants resources and support professionals in all schools, such as counselors and nurses. He support universal Pre-K. He will recruit educators of color by offering loan forgiveness for teachers of color willing to work in high need fields. (Higher Education) He will provide 2 years free education at Minnesota state institutions for families who make less than $125,000 a year.
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