State Representative Mindy Greiling shared some key points in the New Minnesota Miracle draft bill:
- Increases basic formula allowance from $5,124 per pupil to $7,500.
- Fully funds the state’s share of special education.
- Provides all day kindergarten for everybody on a voluntary basis.
- Has built-in inflation adjustment.
- Expands funding for compensatory aid and Limited English Proficiency.
- Creates Innovation Revenue, 5 percent of the basic revenue.
- Uses state aid to offset $500 per pupil of each district’s referendum revenue.
- Authorizes school boards to levy to pay for deferred maintenance.
Angie Eilers observed that data shows that when Minnesota invests in education it correlates with higher incomes. Data further shows that students of color are less likely to have post-secondary degrees than white students, and the state’s students are increasingly diverse. If nothing changes, a shrinking percentage of Minnesota’s workforce will have a post-secondary education. Growth & Justice’s singular education target is: By 2020, to increase student’s post-secondary graduation rates by 50 percent.
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Rep. Mindy Greiling
The New Minnesota Miracle
Greiling drafted an education finance reform bill last spring: HF 4178, based on work by P.S. Minnesota and a bipartisan Senate-House Education Finance Reform Task Force. The bill’s goal is adequate funding for all students, equity in funding among districts and a simplified formula. (For instance, all students are counted as 1.0, there are not different weightings given to high school students.) The plan would cost an additional $2.5 billion per year (including property tax relief of $600 million.) Given the state’s deficit, the plan would be phased in.
Some key points include:
• Increases basic formula allowance from $5,124 per pupil to $7,500.
• Fully funds the state’s share of special education.
• Provides all day kindergarten for everybody on a voluntary basis.
• Has built-in inflation adjustment.
• Expands funding for compensatory aid and Limited English Proficiency.
• Creates Innovation Revenue, 5 percent of the basic revenue.
• Uses state aid to offset $500 per pupil of each district’s referendum revenue.
• Authorizes school boards to levy to pay for deferred maintenance.
On the political side, Q Comp, a program that tries to reward high quality teaching, is not in the bill. Greiling supports Q Comp, a Pawlenty initiative. Pawlenty is not on board with the bill, and Q Comp is a bargaining chip for future negotiations. (The added cost is $260 per student.)
The New Minnesota Miracle was not in competition with the Growth & Justice package, but the two proposals complemented each other.
Most of her comments are captured in the power point.
Angie Eilers
Growth & Justice: Smart Investments
Data shows that when Minnesota invests in education it correlates with higher incomes. Data further shows that students of color are less likely to have post-secondary degrees than white students, and the state’s students are increasingly diverse. If nothing changes, a shrinking percentage of Minnesota’s workforce will have a post-secondary education. Growth & Justice’s singular education target is: By 2020, to increase student’s post-secondary graduation rates by 50 percent.
Growth and Justice has commissioned some the country’s top scholars to review what investments and programs are most effective to boost academic achievement. (See: http://www.growthandjustice.org/Education_Research3.html ) It proposes a comprehensive investment—$1 billion in new spending from birth to college—on both education and child and youth development. The elements include: a nurse home-visiting program for the youngest children, expanded access to quality childcare, an emphasis on rigorous college prep coursework in school, out-of-school supports such as tutoring and mentoring and an increase in post-secondary need-based aid. Funding comes from a “fair share” tax program, an increase of a penny on the dollar for high-income residents.
The Growth & Justice plan has spending targets in specific areas, included in the power point. See: http://www.schoolsforequity.org/pdf/SIMS_Eilers.pdf
Minnesota ranks 27th in prenatal care access, one of our biggest, costliest mistakes. More than 40 percent of the $1 billion package of new investment is focused on the birth-3rd grade years. The Growth & Justice plan includes $255 million on 4th-12th grade school improvements. Those could be funded through the New Minnesota Miracle’s Innovation Fund proposal. Minnesota has the worst student-to-counselor ratio in the country: 792 kids to one counselor compared to the national average of 450 to one. A small piece of the plan includes $10 million for more counselors.
Q&A: The Q&A that followed the presentations returned to previous topics of the Achievement Gap Committee, such as the importance of teacher quality and the role of education reform. One participant said the proposals Greiling and Eilers made suggested incremental funding changes while the school system needed more structural reforms. He said other programs (e.g. Amistad and Achievement First) had improved student achievement without increased costs. Greiling said: “I think what you are asking for is something that will be done in the next legislative session because of the $6 billion budget deficit. … What you are calling for I think everyone will be looking at—how to do things differently.”
More details on the Q& A
Q: Rep. Kahn: An approach with more immediate economic impact would be to focus efforts on people in the workforce who have dropped out of college. They are the “lowest hanging fruit.”
Eilers: It’s not a matter of either/or, but both/and. You are talking about workforce development. I think there are workforce development dollars dedicated to that. Our rationale for keeping it from birth to 25 or 30 is that economically we know that it is more cost effective to catch students as they leave high school and keep them moving right into their post secondary years. Research shows that I they avoid taking off the year or two, they are more likely to actually finish the degree. Another approach is increasing need-based aid. There are kids who won’t go to school next semester because they can’t afford it.
Q: I am losing sleep about what is going on right now in the Phillips neighborhood. I am helping a kid with 3 Fs, a D and a C-. I want to do something about this kid. This is an emergency.
Eilers: I would like to emphasize that our children are all of our responsibilities: the business community, families that don’t have kids in the schools. It is not just principals and teachers. We are not just talking about the K-12 industry. There are community education programs and nonprofit programs and faith-based organizations. Hennepin County has done a lot of work on examining where are the kids after school and where they can be putting their county dollars, including programs such as Latinos for Academic Success, providing counseling for Latino kids and their families, monitoring the attendance and behavior and showing them study skills.
Q: You are adding $1 billion to the money already allocated to the schools. Have you looked at the entire budget and asked whether it is not just adding to incrementally? The Hope Collaborative has been inviting people to come here who have successfully changed schools, such as Amistad and Achievement First. They worked within the existing budget. They also used teachers on a selected basis, many from Teach for America, whose qualifications far exceed the qualifications of Minnesota teachers. We need to look at restructuring the schools and the budget rather than adding to it.
Rep. Greiling: I think what you are asking for is something that will be done in the next legislative session because of the $6 billion budget deficit. What you are asking for is looking at what works, and I think we are going to be doing a lot more of that. Clearly we have to look at Growth and Justice, making smart investments. What do we get return on investment for? With the $6 billion budget deficit we have, we are going to have to look at everything. What you are calling for I think everyone will be looking at, how to do things differently.
Ted Kolderie and Jay Kiedrowski e-mailed me a list of things that could be done differently in the K-12 system. I recognized two things on the list I had worked on that were ill fated. One was a bill with Sen. Pappas to have high school end at grade 10 for students ready to go on (to post secondary) and have that money be saved for the K-12 system. We didn’t get terribly far with it. Another one on the list was to transfer sports activities to the community rather than in the school budget. That was one where I do recall being roundly defeated. (Laughter)
That is the part of the deficit that we can look forward to, those kinds of discussions that we couldn’t have before. Rep. Kahn has had many suggestions about how to do things differently. Many of them would save money. We may be discussing them in a thoughtful way instead of ruling them out. It is a time of opportunity as well as a difficult time.
Q: Can you say there is a noticeable difference in the cost of educating a student who comes to school prepared versus one who is not?
Eilers: Remediation is quite expensive.
Q: (Same gentleman): Could you borrow a page from Xcel, which offers incentives for people to upgrade their furnace so it doesn’t have to roll out a new nuclear power plant? Have some kind of a rebate or incentive?
Eilers: Art Rolnick and the folks in the MELF would say that an effort is in place providing incentives to parents in the form of a scholarship, to aid them in attending quality child care setting. Their efforts are to raise millions of dollars for these scholarships …
Q: (Same gentleman): Not a scholarship, but a reduction in the taxes that the parent has to pay. Tie it in with the taxes so they can see right away the state doesn’t need to collect as much.
Eilers: One suggestion is a tax rebate for families with children.
Greiling: I will just say, a dose of reality. Even last session the tax chair would not consider any tax credits—and I suspect this year will be worse for bills that have anything to do with tax credits. People think of tax credits as kind of something you can do that doesn’t cost money. Dollar for dollar, a tax credit needs to be accounted for.
Comment: Pam Costain, MPS School Board member. It is not an either/or (on school reform or more money). We need reform of our district and other districts. We need a reform of education at the state and accountability. But what is real exciting to me is on the investment side we are beginning to develop a common language. The fact that P.S. Minnesota says the same thing as Growth & Justice says the same thing as Ready 4 K—this is really big folks. This means we are all not saying our particular thing. We are developing a consensus and a language and a framework that talks back to people who have been defining the terms of the debate. I want to applaud all of us, and all of the groups that have worked a really long time to do this consensus-building work. I also sit on the Youth Coordinating Board. It is using the same language now. The Strategic Plan in the Minneapolis Public Schools is using the same language. This is very, very important for moving a public policy agenda forward. We can’t discount what it will mean for us to be unified around the message.
Q: There is one skill missing in it that I am concerned about, especially by 2020. In an increasingly global economy, I am concerned about the ability to speak other languages. Nothing says all of our children will be able to communicate at an 8th grade level in another language by the time they graduate from high school. It shows chauvinism that we just need to learn English.
Greiling: I agree. I just got an award from the Paul Simon group that furthers the cause of world languages. We did work to get a world language coordinator in the Minnesota Department of Education who surveyed the curriculum deficits all around the state. There are three pilots, including Native American and Mandarin Chinese. That was all we could get through last year. It is something that the world language teachers have been working on for years. The New Minnesota Miracle isn’t as specific on curriculum areas as it is about adequate, equitable funding
Eilers: It doesn’t have to cost more money. My children started kindergarten in a Spanish immersion school. It is just another way to teach. Successful models are out there demonstrating this is possible without an additional penny.
Q: Peter Hutchinson from Bush Foundation said the biggest impact in the classroom is the quality of the teacher. Last month we heard from Teach for America. I am listening to what you are saying. I don’t hear where the emphasis is going, whether we will cut down the size of our schools of education and raise the quality to attract the better candidates?
Eilers: We all want quality adults, from the nurse practitioner who deals with the child from birth, to the childcare provider and preschool teacher to the college professor. We want a quality adult in front of all of our children. It doesn’t have to cost more money. What we are talking about is reforming the way we train, reforming the way the curriculum and the requirements and the degree-granting institutions produce teachers. There is room for reform in higher education. It is not necessarily a call for adding more money. It is just a matter of insisting on quality adults for all of our kids at all times.
Greiling: I am a supporter of the Q Comp, the valuation and professionalization of teaching. Right now there are just a few districts that are able to participate because of funding availability and the process. Most of the districts taking advantage of it are metro districts. (Note: Q Comp is a Gov. Pawlenty initiative, an effort to reward quality teaching. It is not currently in Greiling’s bill. It is being held out as a bargaining chip with the governor.)
The policy committee I also sit on has worked on a lot of initiatives on quality teaching.
Q: Both Peter Hutchinson and Matt Kramer said the No Child Left Behind measures of Adequate Yearly Progress don’t make sense and a better measure would be how much progress an individual student makes in a year. Is the state able to look at alternative measures, given the NCLB law?
Greiling: Hopefully with the incoming president, I am expecting some of that will be changed and we will have the option to have value-added growth at the state level. Even if the federal government didn’t change, we still could do it. We had it in our student report card last year that the governor vetoed. We had the value added growth and the other measures we would like to base the innovation revenue on, so we are not just evaluating with one test. We will continue working on that. We have a tentative agreement on value added growth with the Department of Education and the legislators on the education policy committees. They are not agreed on every little detail. That should be coming. That should make it much easier to have authentic measurement. If we are going to have accountability and finances following that, we have to be measuring better than we do.
Q: Bob Wedl Looking at the innovation grants, what kind of innovation do you think would be good to have our districts pursuing at this time.
Greiling: That is my favorite part of the bill. For me the sky is the limit for innovation. Growth & Justice is talking about innovations that have been researched and definitely work—and with money short, why would you try innovations other than those that have been shown to work? Others have said “why would you limit it to things that have been researched when there are so many good things that haven’t been researched that could be promising practices?” I relate to that argument as well. I think if the deficit is going to be there, it’s maybe a good thing that it is as big as it is, because it gives us a chance to be really bold with the innovations that we are going to look at.
I have always supported the choice options, charters, and post secondary enrollment options. I am very interested in on-line learning. … I am sure people have different opinions. I would encourage people with innovations to get them to us. This is the year we will get to look at those kinds of things.
Comment: Rep. Kahn: Looking at STEM education: science, technology, engineering and mathematics, there is the deficit of women in that field and the deficit of girls as they go through the academic system.
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