In the 2023 legislative session, Governor Walz and DFL leadership actively resisted efforts to examine whether Minnesota's K-12 education budget was sufficient to provide an adequate education for students of color, lower income students and English language learners. Walz's leadership team incorrectly described the Governor's 2023 education budget as creating a “Minnesota Miracle 2.0,” referencing the sweeping 1971 education finance reforms. According to the Minnesota Reformer, at the ceremonial signing, Walz said that if the budget truly served as a “Minnesota Miracle 2.0,” it would be because “we’re leaving no one behind,” contending that the investment aimed to be broad and significant in impact. In materials tied to his overall 2023 budget rollout (the One Minnesota Budget), Walz’s office described the proposals — including the education funding increases — as the largest investment in public education in state history and part of his effort to make Minnesota “the best state in the country for kids to grow up.”
Objectively, both the Governor's 2023 and the 2025 education bills were grossly inadequate to be described as transformational. Both failed to install much needed accountability; both failed to implement adequate centralized supports; and both failed to include funding necessary to pay transformational change necessary to close Minnesota's opportunity and achievement gaps. Test scores certainly are not the sole measure necessary to judge success of the Walz budgets, but they
provide an important objective window on its impact on literacy. By one measure, the 2025 reading racial and economic proficiency gaps in the St. Paul district are nearly 50 percentage points. The corresponding gap
in Minneapolis is nearly 57 percentage points. Although we have no 2025 data, the percentage of St. Paul white
high school graduates who earn a full year of post secondary credits within two
years of graduation is almost twice the
percentage of black high school graduates earning those credits. (33% versus
59%)/
To elaborate, in St. Paul, reading proficiency scores for low income students and students of color dropped significantly during the pandemic. And as of 2025, those scores have not recovered nor have they even increased. In 2020 only 21 percent of Black Non-ELL students scored proficient on the MCA-III, and there has been no improvement from 2020 to 2025. Similarly, St. Paul reading proficiency scores for all low-income students (free and reduced lunch) have hovered between 20 and 22 percent during 2020-2025. During this same period 2020 to 2025, white MCA-III proficiency has inched up from 67 percent to 69.4 percent. The St. Paul MCA-III literacy achievement gap measured in this way is nearly 50 percentage points.
In Minneapolis in 2020 only 20 percent of Black Non ELL students scored proficient in reading on the MCA-III, and dropped to
17.8 percent in 2025. Similarly, reading proficiency scores for all low-income
students (free and reduced lunch) have dropped from 19.9 percent in 2020 to
17.2 percent in 2025. During this same
period 2020 to 2025, white MCA-III proficiency has hovered from 71 to 74
percent. The Minneapolis literacy MCA-III achievement gap measured in this way is nearly 57
percentage points.
The statistics are telling us that we need to do something bold: implement the things that actually work, and pay for them with targeted restricted funding.
Time for Truly Bold Action
It's time to do something now, in 2026, to address the literacy gap in Minnesota with actions not words. We can't solve the problem by giving impressive labels to mediocrity. The 2023 education budget was not the Minnesota Miracle 2.0. . In April of 2025, the Strib reported that metropolitan area school districts faced a $280 million budget hole leading to staffing cuts, program cuts and operating deficits. The Due North concept has not achieved results. Now, bold action doesn't mean more charter schools, vouchers, firing teachers, or education tax credits. None of those ideas accountably lead to schools that deliver programs that work. Bold action means carefully identifying what works for the students Minnesota leaves behind. It means providing enough funding to implement those strategies. And, it means requiring districts to use new funding to implement those strategies.
Closing large literacy gaps requires sustained investments in hiring highly trained teachers to provide targeted instruction to children who need it in the early‑grades, and that costs money. It requires deploying reading specialists and interventionists strategically and systematically so that every child who is struggling, every child with dyslexia, receives additional targeted support, and that costs money. It requires implementation of high‑quality curriculum and professional development aligned to the Science of Reading, and significantly more learning time for the students who are behind, and that costs money. It requires additional planning time; additional supervisory observation and that costs money.
Targeted Funding and Accountability
Admittedly, Minnesota's education funding system is not designed to fund what works accountably. Legislators are under extreme pressure to provide just enough additional funding to provide compensation increases for existing staff to keep on doing what they have been doing, with an inflationary increases. This pressure is designed to make sure that almost every dollar in the education appropriation is unrestricted and available for contract settlements and not for expanded learning time, additional staff development, and all the rest. Under this system, the legislature provides just enough funding to settle contracts, and virtually no targeted funding to implement the above described supports: high quality tutors, increases in high-quality early childhood education, additional extended learning time for students who need it, quality supervision, and professional development. In order to add these needed improvements, under the current system, the District leadership has to take money off the table that staff believes was really allocated for improved compensation.
What if Minnesota provided targeted funding for extra learning time for students who are behind, delivered immediately when they get behind, on top of the money necessary to pay staff well? Imagine if the state provided $3000 per eligible student to provide targeted accelerated learning opportunities, during extended learning blocks, during school vacations, in the weeks before school begins, or in a summer block? What if the state provided significant targeted funding for those students completely off the table, with a no supplanting requirement, to be used entirely for new and expanded programs not traditionally offered by the school district?
This the fourth year in Governor Walz's second term. While his heart is apparently in the right place, the book on his administration will disclose no significant improvement Minnesota's most pressing educational problems. If he were to deliver a bold, exciting, transformational agenda in his 2026 State of the State address, he could rewrite the history of his administration.
