URGENT Alert!!! Stop MELF’s Legislative End Around!!

Thomas Jefferson said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Unfortunately, despite the desire to recuperate from the long and contentious legislative session, that vigilance is still needed. The big government nanny state special interests refuse to accept that the proponents bureaucratic quality rating system(QRS), that according to their own data, had only miniscule support among parents, providers and legislators. Yet, like the monster in a bad horror movie, this idea will not die.

According to columns in the Saint Cloud Times and the Star Tribune published in the last 36 hours, the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF), despite the fact that their legislative mandate has now expired, has been pushing for Governor Dayton to ignore the clear will of the legislature.and unilaterally implement the Parent Aware QRS as a statewide program.

Here is the key quote from the St. Cloud Times column of former MN state Duane Benson, executive director of MELF and former executive director of the big government leaning Minnesota Business Partnership:

“”The governor has the authority to bring Parent Aware statewide, and we believe he is committed to ensuring public funding goes to providers that deliver a high rate of return for taxpayers. Therefore, we have called on Dayton to take administrative action to make the voluntary Parent Aware Ratings a statewide option.” (Emphasis added).

Jul 25, 2011

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2011 Session Recap

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The 2011 legislative session is finally over and a new education budget has been signed into law by Governor Dayton. Here is a brief summary and recap from Education Liberty Watch’s perspective:

THE GOOD: Of course, for families’ sakes, it is very good news that there will be no tax increases. But the best news from Education Liberty Watch’s point of view is that despite tremendous pressure from the governor and the liberal big business community even until late in the evening during the special session, your actions and those of conservative legislators were able to keep the nanny state quality rating system(QRS) out of the final education bill. You and the legislative leadership of Koch and Zellers, the education committee chairs Olson, Erickson, and Garofalo, as well as individual conservative legislators like Mary Franson, Steve Drazkowski, Mark Buesgens, Glen Gruenhagen, Dave Thompson, Roger Chamberlain, Pam Wolf, and Gretchen Hoffman, among others, all deserve a huge THANK YOU. Besides saving young children from government approved indoctrinating preschool curriculum and increased regulation on private childcare and preschool, Minnesota has been spared loss of state sovereignty due to federalization of preschool by remaining ineligible for Race to the Top (RTTT). RTTT would give winning states $50-100 million dollars of one time money from our bankrupt federal government to and, besides the QRS, would have required development of longitudinal data tracking of every child from birth, indoctrination via standards (already under way thanks to the Pawlenty administration) and kindergarten readiness tests (also started over the last eight years). More details on baby RTTT will be forthcoming, but suffice it to say that it is VERY good that Minnesota will not be eligible for this.

Other good provisions that survived in the final bill are:

The strong emphasis on reading especially from kindergarten through third grade with rewards for districts that show improvement in reading. Senator Gen Olson and Rep. Pam Myrha deserve great congratulations for this.
Early graduation scholarships and early graduation for military service scholarships
Repeal of mandate that districts spend a certain amount on psychologists and social workers allowing them to decide they want to spend on their own support personnel for themselves and removing an over emphasis on mental health in the schools
Reduced mandates on home schooled students
Repeal of the January 15^th deadline and penalty requiring school districts and teachers’ unions to have reached their collective bargaining agreement

In addition, although it is regrettable that the opportunity scholarship bill that would have provided a way for poor students to escape failing public schools did not survive, Education Liberty Watch is very relieved that there is now an opportunity to redraft the bill so as not to impose the mandate of requiring the public school tests and therefore imposing the national standards on the private schools and students receiving the scholarships.

Media Appearances State Education

Jul 16, 2011

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Media Appearances

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Rebuttal to MinnPost Attacks – Your and the Republicans’ strong stand against more nanny state control of our youngest children and private childcare providers prompted MinnPost to do a series of attack pieces against Dr. Effrem and Education Liberty Watch in June. Find links to the articles and our rebuttal here.
Dr. Effrem discusses education policy including early childhood on the Late Debate with Jack Tomczak and Ben Kruse on June 20th available here .
Dr. Effrem also discusses early childhood on the Sue Jeffers show on June 25th

Dr. Effrem rebuts Rep. Branden Petersen’s more moderate (liberal) views on early childhood in a post on True North titled Do We Want Liberty or “”Efficient Government” (also archived in EdLibertyWatch.org here).

Early Education/Nanny State State Education

Jul 16, 2011

ELW

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Shutdown Deal Education Update

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As of Thursday, July 14th, a tentative framework for a budget deal to end the government shutdown imposed by Governor Dayton instead of calling a special session to deal with a temporary funding bill has been reached. Yet another $1.4 billion of spending was allowed via increased borrowing from schools ($700 million in “shifts” or accounting gimmicks) and another $700 million of borrowing of tobacco bonds in exchange for no increase in taxes.

All day Friday, the 15th, the governor’s commissioners and committee chairmen have been negotiating the details of each budget bill with a theoretical deadline imposed by Dayton of 10 PM on Friday with plans to call a special session on Monday, July 18th. As of 11 PM on Friday, the Star Tribune was reporting that there were difficulties in those detailed negotiations especially with the state government bill and that work would continue through this weekend. One of Education Liberty Watch’s sources reported that the education bill was done, but other sources even closer to the legislature had no confirmation for that report, so it is difficult to know what is going on.

During a noon hour Friday interview on Minnesota Public Radio, Governor Dayton had this exchange with the host Gary Eichton about what was in the education bill and what he was insisting on that would not be (starting at 43:25):

GE: “In terms of education policy reforms, Republicans wanted school vouchers. They talked about a bill whereby kids who couldn’t read by the end of third grade they couldn’t move forward. They wanted to do away with integration aid. Will those items be included in a final K-12 bill?”

MD: “No, and the abolishment [sic] of tenure will not be included. What will be included I think is an evaluation for teachers and for principals. I think that is something we can agree upon and some other aspects of the early childhood support which is absent in the legislative proposals and which I’ve insisted upon will be part of it..”