Intermission: Let's Talk about Actually Fixing our Broken System

Jvonkorff on Education has been writing about education reform for the last weeks.  Its the 15th anniversary of the Governor's Task Force report which called for major reforms in the financing and delivery of education.   After over a decade of Minnesota's failure to make meaningful inroads in the achievement gap, after stagnating proficiency results in Minnesota's urban public schools, three different constitutional suits have sought judicial relief to force change.   On these blogs, we've been advancing the idea that Minnesota must dramatically increase its funding for the students we've been leaving behind, but also that this new funding must buy big change.  

As we discuss these issues, we ought to avoid the temptation to solve this problem by figuring out who is to blame.   We are really  good in Minnesota at responding to intractable problems by trying to identify fault and cast blame   Minnesota's public education system is not working for way too many children.   We recently quoted Peter Hutchinson's description of the magnitude of the problem in Minneapolis, and its worth quoting again, because what he describes could just as well apply to all of Minnesota's achievement gap:

The facts are pretty dismal. Only about 20 percent of Minneapolis students are college- or career-ready by the end of high school, while 40 percent of students don’t graduate. Another 20 percent don’t go on to get further education that is essential for success. And of the 40 percent who do go on to college or university, nearly half have to take remedial courses when they get there. In other words, they have to take high school over again. We are failing way too many kids, some outright and as many more even when we give them a diploma.

Who or what is to blame:  unions, Republicans, Democrats, the legislature, school principals and superintendents, education schools, school boards, parents or the students themselves.  The surest way to evade the hard work necessary to make progress is to engage in a debate about fault.  The continuous progress approach begins with avoiding fault, avoiding blame, and focusing instead on what we are going to do in the future.

Our system, the one we have right now, is not working for too many kids.  When a system is failing the solution begins with developing a plan to fix that system, not with fighting about who broke it.   We have to get out of our comfort zone; we must agree that the opportunity to provide an outstanding education to the children we are now leaving behind is so great, the rewards for success so attractive, and the consequences of failure so great, that we must get behind a shared transformative vision with a reasonable prospect of success. 

In the last two decades, one and only one genuine proposal has offered the prospect of a major Minnesota transformation in our public education system.  That proposal was issued by Governor Pawlenty's school finance task force of 2004. The task force's mission was not completed, because perhaps the forces working against change were so great.  That report wasn't perfect, but it called for funding the full dollar cost of providing an education that meets all state standards, which in fact is the Supreme Court's own constitutional test. 

Our children and their parents are asking that we fix the system.  So far, Minnesota's response has been to tell our children why we can't do that. Unions, legislators, white privilege, poverty, "the system."   Our children deserve a plan, and in our democracy, it is generally the obligation of the Governor to take leadership in developing that plan.  The Governor can't fix our system by himself.  It's not the Governor's fault, and this isn't a blame casting blog post.   Our Governor needs to take a page out of Governor Pawlenty's original plan to fix the system, but he should have the courage to finish the job. 

This last legislative session represented the eighth budget in a row that failed utterly to implement the 2004 task force's recommendation, or even to attempt to place on the table the questions that it asked.  For 15 years, Minnesota has looked the other way when this question is posed: what are we going to do to fix one of the largest achievement gaps in the country?  In that sense the 2019 Governor's budget and the 2019 final budget utterly failed to exhibit the necessary leadership, vision and courage.   We are headed around the merry-go-round of mediocrity for one more biennium.  

Let's all resolve to refocus the next two years on developing a and implementing a plan that promises to transform.