Urgent Update on Minnesota Education Spending Bills

SUMMARY:

Although there are some good reforms in the House education finance bill (HF 934 – see below for details), because of the increased overall education spending, the expansion of early childhood spending and bad policy, and the mandates on the private schools in the school choice bill, Education Liberty Watch opposes HF 934, which will heard on the House floor TOMORROW (3/29/11). It is quite likely to be vetoed anyway and it would be very bad if some of these provisions would become the House position going into further negotiations.  We hope that all of the Republicans will join conservatives, both new and already there, in voting against this bill and instead, produce a bill that cuts real spending and decreases the size and scope of government involvement in education and families as representatives were elected to do.

If you wish to contact your representatives to make your views on this issue known, please call or email as follows:

House Speaker Kurt Zellers –

651-296-5502  rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn

House Majority Leader Matt Dean –

651-296-3018  rep.matt.dean@house.mn

To Contact Your Individual House member by phone or email, click:

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/housemembers.asp

The Senate education bill (SF 1030), although still spending way too much is far preferable from a policy perspective.  We will update you when we have information on when it will reach the Senate floor.

Introduction

The Minnesota House and Senate education committees passed their large education spending bills this last week, also called omnibus bills.  Although there are some good efforts at reform in both bills (see below), each spends too much, both overall, and especially on early childhood. Overall education spending increases by approximately one billion dollars from last biennium, and there are no cuts to anything over current spending in early childhood. This is especially concerning given the fiscal crisis that Minnesota is facing, that education consumes 40% of the Minnesota budget, that many of these programs are ineffective and sometimes harmful,  and that achievement is so stagnant or declining, especially for poor and minority children. This stagnation is despite massive increases in spending over the last 30 years at both the state and federal levels.  Yet, Dr. Karen Effrem was the only one to her knowledge of the dozens of people who testified about these bills that asked for cuts of any kind.

Even worse, the House increases early childhood spending by incentivizing poor families to put their children in preschool instead of educating them at home with early childhood scholarships and takes the ineffective and controversial Parent Aware quality rating system (QRS) statewide.  (Testimonies may be accessed here).

[Written testimony prepared for the MN House Education Finance Committee’s consideration of the omnibus education finance bill is available here (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] Continue reading »

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. Continue reading »

School Choice Testimony

3/14/11 – Dr Effrem testified before the MN House Education Finance Committee in support of the idea of school choice for K-12, but against the mandates placed on the private school in the MN House Education Finance Committee (HF 273 – Woodard) (Audio is available here by following the link for the March 14th hearing starting at 2:02:23)

3/17/11 – Dr. Effrem testified in favor of SF 388 (Nienow), because, because unlike its House counterpart (HF 273 above) it offers school choice without imposing the public school tests and standards and other mandates on the private schools.  (Audio is available here by following the link for the March 17th Education Committee hearing starting at 50:48)

Alert! New PC Social Studies Standards are a Disaster!!

America is in a time of great economic and social upheaval.  Our constitutional rights are being trampled with frightening frequency and government is encroaching into ever increasingly large areas of our lives and those of our children. There is an alarming decline in the understanding by our nation’s youth and young adults of the basic workings of our government, the foundational principles of our republic and the precepts necessary to maintain our liberties purchased and preserved at such a precious cost.

Tragically, the new draft revision of the social studies standards for Minnesota’s public school students will not help to reverse any of these damaging trends.  In fact, the draft is a giant step backwards.  Even a cursory perusal shows that the politically correct, liberal, leftist elites are having a field day.  They are not just revising and tweaking, as the less than ideal legislation passed in 2003 allowed, but this is a wholesale leftist revision that should be opposed with great vigor.

The one good thing about the draft is that it refers to America as a republic instead of a democracy, which the founders explicitly rejected.  There are large parts of the draft for high school US and world history that are still “to be developed,” so things may change, but we are not confident given what is available for review.  Here are just some of the highlights (or more accurately, lowlights) of the draft:

·        The Declaration of Independence that first listed the principles of our republic such as God given unalienable rights and self-evident truth and that served as the cornerstone inspiration for our Constitution, is only mentioned twice and then, not after the fifth grade.

Continue reading »