2004 Pawlenty Task Force Calls for Full Dollar funding to Meet State Standards

The purpose of this post is to discuss the recommendations of the 2004 school finance task force commissioned by Governor Pawlenty, and describe how three governors and multiple legislatures have purposely undermined the recommendations of the task force thereby undermining efforts to close the achievement gap and in the process evading the constitutional requirement to provide enough funding for all districts and all students to meet all state standards.

"These are challenges that the state of Minnesota must address to ensure that our greatest resource – our young people – receives a quality education. This quality education for all Minnesota students must be a cornerstone for our future prosperity."   2004 School Finance Task Force Report

The task force's report  (click on the link to read) called "Inve$ting on Our Future,  Seeing a Fair, Understandable and Accountable Twenty First Century Education Finance System for Minnesota", is undoubtedly the most important document describing the reforms necessary to comply with the Supreme Court's constitutional mandate in Skeen v State. It should be required reading for anyone who is interested in what Minnesota needs to do to fix its broken dysfunctional school finance system. Surely, a number of the specific recommendations are debatable: but the basic thrust of the report is beyond reproach:  That Minnesota will not close its gaping achievement gap without providing districts with the full dollar cost of achieving state standards, and unless those funds are actually devoted to implementing strategies that actually work.

By the time that Governor Pawlenty was elected, Minnesota was well into the process of creating new rigorous proficiency based standards.  The Governor was an advocate of demanding standards, and he knew as well that Minnesota could not meet those new standards without reforming the funding system.  He also must have understood the Supreme Court's mandate.   In 1993 the Minnesota Supreme Court had issued its groundbreaking decision holding that

“there is a fundamental right under the Education Clause, to a general and uniform system of education which provides an adequate education to all students in Minnesota.”

Governor Pawlenty's former law partner O'Brien was a key player in that case.  O'Brien's signature appears on the stipulation stating that Minnesota school districts were meeting in 1990 all statutes and regulations imposing requirements on school districts.  This stipulation is the source of the Supreme Court's holding that constitution requires funding for all districts in  “an amount sufficient to generate an adequate level of education which meets all state standards.”

The Governor had in mind funding reforms to deliver the new more rigorous standards, as well as teaching reforms that ultimately became the Quality Compensation program.   In 2004, he initiated a "School Funding Task Force, chaired by the highly respected superintendent Rick Dressen.   In the area of school funding, the task force charter was to determine:

Do Minnesota’s education finance arrangements ensure resources are distributed “equitably” to students throughout the state and does Minnesota appropriately adjust state revenue allocations for legitimate cost differences between districts, including additional costs for “at-risk” students?

The report pointed out that Minnesota was failing too many students, and too many of them were lower income students and students of color:

Governor Tim Pawlenty expressed his concern in his 2003
State of the State speech when he stated, “As good as our schools have been, we are leaving too many children behind. And the sad reality is, they tend to be poor, disabled or children of color.”

The whole idea of the Task Force's effort was to develop a school finance system that would meet state standards for the children that Minnesota was leaving behind.  To do that, the funding formula would have to be "learning linked," that is adjusted to pay the full cost of delivering an adequate education to all students, not the students of privilege.  

A central thrust of the report was that Minnesota must provide adequate funding for the students we were leaving behind. The report delivered facts which sound remarkably like the circumstances we have still today in Minnesota: 

"Minnesota consistently displays among the highest levels of academic achievement in the nation. Student achievement data on the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is a measure that compares one state with another, indicates that Minnesota is well ahead of the rest of the nation. For example, in fourth and eighth grade mathematics, the achievement of Minnesota students was number one in the nation. And on the NAEP reading exam, Minnesota ranked in the top 10

"However, when data is disaggregated, a different picture appears. Education Trust is an organization that examines achievement data from the NAEP test to demonstrate the relative size of the achievement gap from state to state. Education Trust found the achievement of black students in Minnesota is nearly 3 years behind that of white students in fourth grade math. Additionally, the gap is more than 4 years for black students in eighth grade science, and states such as Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi have less of an achievement gap than Minnesota does.

"Another example is eighth grade reading where Minnesota has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation. There is a 4-year difference between the achievement of black students and white students. In other words, many eighth grade black students are starting high school reading at a level comparable to that of a white fourth grader.

Does this sound tragically familiar? 

The 2004 Commission stepped up to the plate, however.   The key recommendations of the task force in the area of school funding were as follows:

• Lower Income Students Require Increased Resources. ..."Rising numbers of lower income students requires additional educational services and additional school support services, including school readiness, health,counseling and academic advising.
• Cover Full Dollar Costs. School funding should provide an annual revenue amount sufficient to cover full dollar costs of ensuring Minnesota public school students have an opportunity to achieve state specified academic standards. These standards are connected to a comprehensive instructional program offered by schools.

• Cover Added Costs Beyond District Control. This formula should take into account the added costs included with relevant characteristics of each student (e.g., disabilities, poverty, school readiness, English language learners, and student mobility). In addition, Minnesota’s new funding formula should compensate districts for cost factors beyond their control (e.g., student population sparsity, technology access, and higher costs of living).

• Fund Early Years—Provide More Learning Time. For large proportions of students to achieve at the Minnesota academic standards level, school funding will have to be directed to provide (1) earlier-in-the life-of-a-student instruction primarily in the form of greater individualized instruction in the primary grades (kindergarten through 3rd grade) and (2)  extended school day, school year, and school career exposure to systematic instruction.

The task force -- appointed by Governor Pawlenty a Republican --called essentially for implementing the constitutional standard, that is,  enough funding to meet all state standards.   The sentence
"school funding should provide an annual revenue amount sufficient to cover full dollar costs of ensuring Minnesota public school students have an opportunity to achieve state specified academic standards" is right out of the Skeen decision, whether intentionally or not. 

Just as important, new resources would have to be deployed appropriately, the Task Force warned:

The principle of this recommended allocation model will shift education funding to a more rational, transparent, and publicly understood basis. Once instructional and operational costs are reasonably determined and sufficiently funded, local education officials have an obligation to ensure public resources are deployed efficiently and students achieve to high standards

Unfortunately, Governor Pawlenty decided to cancel the task force, for reasons best known to him.   There are powerful forces in Minnesota that don't want the constitutional standard to be met.  Some advantaged school districts fear that meeting state standards for disadvantaged students might push money away from them.  They surely raised concerns. Anti-tax forces surely played a part.  Many smaller districts outside the metro area saw school funding as a zero sum game and have historically have wanted all possible revenues to be allocated to the formula. 

And Minnesota's achievement gap continues unabated, and the failure to implement its funding recommendations is a major cause.  Those recommendations are not perfect:  we know a lot more about what works than was known in 2004.   But no Governor, Pawlenty or thereafter, has taken decisive steps to implement the constitutional standard or the recommendations of the task force.  Cynics might say that Minnesota talks about the achievement gap, but it acts to protect privilege.  When in 2011, Governor Dayton commissioned a new task force, it was prohibited from even considering the reforms proposed in 2004.  For fifteen years, the recommendations of the Task Force have been ignored. 

The Task Force issued a clear warning that unless we fix our school finance system, and assure that additional resources are actually used to address the achievement gap by implementing appropriate instructional improvements, that Minnesota would continue to waste its human resources.

These are challenges that the state of Minnesota must address to ensure that our greatest resource – our young people – receives a quality education. This quality education for all Minnesota students must be a cornerstone for our future prosperity