Conservative education policy devalues Minnesota

Anyone who lives in Minnesota hears outsiders say, “Cold there, isn’t it?” And, of course, it is cold. But I always enjoy saying, “Yeah, but the summers are perfect and the schools are good.”

Only, now the schools aren’t as good. They’re goodish. Better than most places, but they aren’t the best and they struggle more each year to keep up with past excellence. The reasons?
  • Unfunded mandates and ineffective testing-based assessment from the federal government.
  • State education funding that now favors districts with large property tax bases and punishes districts with low income students or large rural areas to serve.
Why would you raise kids in a state with schools on track to be worse tomorrow than they are today when it’s so very, very cold in the winter? That’s a good question that young families will be considering very deeply over the next 10 years. If young families have problems with the schools, they move. That’s why schools are the cornerstone of our economy.

On both counts, you can thank conservative education policy for missing the point. Competition is great for businesses; it spurs innovation. But schools aren’t businesses because their goal is qualitative, not quantitative. While accountability is vital, our education system must be consistently good for all students everywhere in Minnesota. What’s at stake? Well, quality of life in a cold, cold state for one. But the strength of our economy (read: businesses) is no less impacted.

What we’ve seen these past 8 years from the Bush administration and state administration of Tim Pawlenty is a serious effort to undermine the obvious fact that public education, when funded evenly and administered well, is a stinging disproof of the conservative philosophy about government. It begs the question, if schools are so important why are voters being told that tire gauges, old jokes and Paris Hilton are the most important issues?
The Minnesota Independent did a fine job of explaining how Gov. Pawlenty’s policies have negatively impacted schools and the economy in a post earlier in the week. H/T to MNPublius.

Comments

  1. I’ll bite on this one. While the article you listed has some good points, you have to keep in mind who is writing that article. One factual inaccuracy is when it says that the dot com bubble burst at the end of Ventura’s term. The bubble burst started in March 2000 which was 15 months into Ventura’s term. The tech industry was already starting to recover, if only slightly, at the end of Ventura’s term.

    While there are slight differences between the goals of businesses and schools, they are just about the same. The goals of businesses and education are both quantitative and qualitative. While businesses want to produce a lot of their product when prices are high, they had better be able to put out a “quality” product or customers will stop buying from them.

    Competition makes everybody better in the long run whether it is in education or business. In business, I always have to give my customers a product that is superior to my competition in quality and/or price. If I don’t, they will go to my competitors. In education, parents should be able to send their kids to another school if they are not learning as well as kids in another district. While I personally think giving parents vouchers to send their kids to the school of their choice is the best solution, Minnesota’s system of “open enrollment” is a good alternative. While there have been some high profile abuses of open enrollment for athletic purposes, it is a good program overall. It allows parents to send their child to the public school of their choice without having to physically move.

    I know everybody will hate me for mentioning this, but unions for teachers hurt the education of our children. I’ve never understood the logic that government employees need to be “protected” from the government. It also bugs me that a teacher that teaches Phy Ed or Music gets a similar salary to one who teaches Mathematics or Physics. Basing salaries on seniority instead of performance simply rewards bad teachers and punishes good teachers. It prevents our best and brightest from going into teaching.

    If I were in charge, teachers would get yearly reviews on their job performance just like employees in the real world do. If the teacher is doing a good job, they would get a good review and a raise. If the teacher is not doing a good job teaching, they would be removed from their position if they had these issues in the past regardless of what their union had to say. Sure, one may be removed unfairly once in a while just like employees in the real world are removed unfairly once in a while. Assuuming they are good at their job, they won’t have any trouble getting hired in a neighboring district.

    I would also start salaries significantly higher for Math and Science teachers, about the same as it is now for subjects like English and Social Studies, and lower for subjects like Phy Ed and Music. That’s not to put down Phy Ed or Music teachers or to say they can’t have the same impact on children as other teachers. If a Music or Phy Ed teacher is worth enough for the school, the principal or whoever is in charge of giving reviews can give more to keep the teacher. Just base teacher salaries on the supply and demand for their particular subject just like it is in the private sector.

    And totally unrelated to this topic, I had my friend who works for Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Arkansas look up the financials on the Hibbing supercenter. The store has about $76 million in annual revenues, which is slightly above average for supercenters. People on the Iron Range are just like anyone else when it comes to their own pocketbooks.

  2. Hi Todd —

    I can always count on you to stir the pot. ๐Ÿ™‚ Seriously, though, I appreciate your thoughts.

    I understand your point about how competition spurs improved quality. On paper, that makes a great deal of sense. What I see on the ground though is that what is called “competition” in education, be it K-12 or higher ed, is really just a battle of budgetary techniques and a Darwinistic struggle between the socioeconomic groups that populate different parts of the state. Wealthier communities (property tax wealth) beget wealthier schools which, lo and behold, are more “competetive.”

    I don’t have a specific problem with open enrollment, but school vouchers end up beginning the effect of an all-private school system. Ultimately, the students with financial ability (or, I concede, those with meritous talents) will end up over in the quality private schools and the public schools will end up for “everyone else.” Stuck with high needs students in all corners, public schools will be unable to “compete” on the same playing field as the schools that don’t have to take special needs students and can cherry-pick the population for the talented students. I agree that we need to nurture talented students, especially in the subjects you mention, but we must avoid social stratification or we’re right back to the 1920s.

    On unions, you’re punching to cougar here. Math and science are vital, but there are good arguments for all the subjects taught in public schools and we’re getting into rough territory when we say that one is worth more than the other. I think we should offer loan forgiveness and other incentives to teachers in high-impact subjects like math and science, but everyone should have the same base pay. I’ll even break with my union and say that merit pay, when applied by an agreed-upon standard, has a role, too. There again, though, we risk giving more money to those that started the race ahead of the pack.

    Union is not a dirty word, Todd. Everyone’s pay and benefits now — regardless of union status — is higher because of the work of unions. Do they need to change to modernize? Yes. But we need collective bargaining to ensure fairness in the workplace.

    Hibbing is the gold standard for super centers by everything I’ve heard. For a time, they were #1 in the whole midwest. I bet some of the expansions in the area of Target stores and the GR Supercenter are eating their numbers, but there is no doubt that people shop there in great numbers. That’s why I — unlike other liberal bloggers — suggest that unions and Wal-Mart need to find a way to co-exist, rather than calling for Wal-Mart’s destruction.

    My Sunday column is all about Wal-Mart. I’m sure you’ll love it. ๐Ÿ™‚

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