Testimony on the MN House Education Spending Bill

This is the written testimony prepared for the MN House Education Finance Committee’s consideration of the omnibus education finance bill (HF 934 – Audio of what was actually presented is available here by following the link for the March 21st hearing beginning at 6:37:35).

Good evening Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.  My name is Karen Effrem, and I am here on behalf of Education Liberty Watch.

We want to thank and commend you for your efforts to do a very difficult job given the fiscal crisis this state and our nation are facing.  There are some good reforms in here.  Those include Rep. Bills’  early graduation scholarship bill and Rep. Erickson’s mandate relief bill, particularly the mandate on school psychologists and social workers as well as the requirement for legislative approval of the new standards. Given what came out with the draft social studies standards, that is very important. We also appreciate the language to remove the negotiation deadline, and the teacher evaluation, and given that salaries and benefits are the biggest cost drivers of public education, we also appreciate the other reforms that you are considering in that direction.  We also appreciate the intent of Rep. Woodard’s bill to help children trapped in under performing schools.  Finally, we appreciate that there is no new funding for all-day kindergarten when the research that I have seen shows no improvement in the achievement gap and longer term problems with math and behavioral issues in the fifth grade in students that had all day kindergarten versus those that had the traditional half-day program.

Unfortunately, we need to mention several areas of grave concern:

1.       The overall levels of spending in this bill are way too high.  According to data presented at a congressional hearing, the federal taxpayers have spent 2 trillion dollars over the last 30 years with a huge increase in spending over the last 10 or so that has yielded flat or declining achievement scores and no real change in the achievement gap.  State spending has skyrocketed as well.  The private economy has taken huge losses in salaries and benefits as well as home and portfolio values.  Individuals and businesses have had to make very significant cuts in their own budgets.  There is no reason that government, including K-12 education that encompasses 40% of the budget, should not have to do the same, especially given that achievement results are so stagnant to poor. There was a Gallup poll just released today showing that spending and the economy is the number one issue in the minds of voters.

2.       The House position on early childhood spending is terribly disappointing.  By my calculations, the governor’s recommendation is a 9.4% increase over current spending.  The forecast is a 12.1% increase over current spending and the House position is 13.2% over current spending.  Given the research that shows that early childhood programs do not help reading achievement by the fourth grade in states that have high quality universal preschool and actually have declines in reading scores and that there are at least 8 national studies that show emotional harm of children in preschool, this is absolutely the wrong direction.  I will give you this information again if you want it. Also, Minnesota is ranked 2^nd in the nation based on state resources spent on early childhood and 3^rd in the nation based on all resources spent on pre-K.  We do not need to be expanding the system.

a.       Given the national studies showing fade out of Head Start by 1^st grade, harm to the math skills of three year olds and evidence of fraud, at least some if not all of the state funding for Head Start should be cut.

b.      Given the validity problems and the use of the kindergarten readiness assessment by proponents to in the words of former commissioner Seagren “scare the public and brand children as failures before the age of 5 [doing] a disservice to families and to the good work of those in the field of school readiness” there should be a significant reduction in the funding for this assessment as well.

c.       The $100,000 of the Educate Parents Partnership should be cut as we do not need to be spending tax dollars having the government tell parents how to be parents.

d.      We continue to have grave concerns about the expansion of the Parent Aware quality rating system. We believe that even in its current form it has significant jurisdictional problems because it is assuming control over licensed home child care providers and this bill has not been vetted before either of the HHS committees.  It will not provide the accountability that is sought because both MELF’s and national evaluators admit that no one knows if QRSs improve program quality and child outcomes, they are not popular with either child care home programs or parents as the sign-up rate is very low, it is burdensome on small business during a recession, it sets up a statewide bureaucracy and turns childcare providers into pre -K teachers and assessors using standards and assessments of high subjectivity and dubious validity including the assessment I just described.

Other Suggestions or Concerns

In the area of AP/IB, we believe that more should be allocated to the AP program given that that is less expensive, locally controlled, comports much better with Minnesota’s  academic standards, and is less controversial.

In general we support more allocation of resources toward reading and strongly support Senator Hann’s bill to use compensatory aid and or integration revenue, for scholarships for poor children for reading remediation and  or to transfer to better schools that emphasize reading .  This is especially true given that The President’s Commission on Special Education found that 90% of children designated as needing special education  had high incident, but subjective designations such as ADHD or learning disabilities, and that 80-90% of those were due to reading problems.

With regard to school choice, we much prefer Senator Senjum’s tax credit bill because there are no mandates on the private schools or preschools. However, although we support the concept of vouchers, if the scholarship bill proceeds, we much prefer the Senate version of it because of the mandates on the private schools that are currently present in this bill.

We need to get out of NCLB which will decrease our spending to comply with mandates.

Please realize the depth of the fiscal crisis that Minnesota is suffering.  These are good efforts at reform, but you all really need to take more heed of the message of the last election.  There needs to be more spending cuts and you need to stop expanding government, especially in the area of early childhood.   Thank you.