Designing a Constitutionally Adequate Public Education? (Money and Education Part 3)

 JVonKorff has been writing in the last two posts to debunk the claim that more money is not needed to provide an adequate education for the students that our current public education system is leaving behind.   In a later post, we're going to tackle that issue by trying to envision an actual Minnesota public school that is equipped to provide students of color, lower income students, English language learners and  students with dyslexia with an education that meets state constitutional standards.   How should it be staffed; how should it be led; how many instructional days and instructional hours must it deliver.   How should it train its staff to deliver the required curriculum?  How much observation and supervision does it need?  Then we'll ask how much it would cost to buy such a program capable of delivering an adequate education to those students.   In doing so, we'll draw from scholarship and from successful examples in actual practice. 

But before we do that, it may be useful to ask what we already know about whether more money is required to produce an adequate education for the students Minnesota now leaves behind.     

(1) In a previous post in this series, I pointed out that the Century Foundation's recent report, estimated that Minneapolis needed about $21,000 per student to provide an education to achieve "national average outcomes" in math and reading for its students.  

(2) Also in a prior post, we pointed out that the Brooke East Boston charter school is delivering an outstanding education for traditionally undeserved students, but at a price above $20,000 per student.  Maybe you think they are wasting money, but then how about showing us a school that is doing this for less? 

(3)  In that regard, take a look at Minnesota public schools who serve students of color, lower income students, English language learners and students with dyslexia:  Which one do you hold up as an example is providing a constitutionally adequate education, one that meets state standards?  

(4) Or, take a look at the numerous initiatives launched in Minnesota.  Which one has been fully funded?    Which one has succeeded? 

Maybe its time that we ask experienced educators to devise a program that would deliver that adequate education to the students Minnesota currently leaves behind, and then determine what it would cost to provide that education and what legislative changes would be required to do it.  That, in fact is about the only thing that Minnesota has never tried:  How about designing a program that can actually work with no straight jackets: if we wanted to build a nuclear submarine, we wouldn't start out by pulling a budget number our of our ear and then order a factory to build it for the price we named, because it was convenient.    No, we'd hire some engineers and other experts; we'd make them  design the submarine and then we'd carefully calculate the cost of the build.  What makes us think that we can accomplish the delivery of an adequate education by ignoring design and the cost of that design. 

JvonKorff on Education is convinced that only a design-cost-and-build method will break Minnesota out of its straitjacket of educational failure.   If we want to accomplish something grand, we must "Begin with the End in Mind."  In Minnesota, the end is defined in law, including the Worlds Best Workforce statute, the LEAPS law,  the Dyslexia law,  the Special Education law, and the rigorous core subjects law, among others. Our Supreme Court has defined a constitutionally adequate education as an education that meets all state legal standards.  If we want to determine how much it will cost to comply with those laws, and to deliver what they require to the students we now leave behind, it is imperative that we first ask, what are the design components of a school that actually meets those standard for students of color, lower income students, and English language learners and the others we are leaving behind.

But in Minnesota, neither the legislature nor the Department of Education have actually tried to determine the cost of delivering the state requires adequate education. For example, for over a decade, the law has required each school district to develop a plan to comply with the Worlds Best Workforce statute, that is, a plan to reach the WBWF goals:  (1) All children are ready for school (2) All third-graders can read at grade level (3) All racial and economic achievement gaps between students are closed. (4) All students are ready for career and college. (5) All students graduate from high school. 

But a decade after passage of the World's Best Workforce law, Minnesota has utterly failed to make acceptable progress on these objectives, and surely part of the problem is that the paper plans  don't even require districts to report what it would take to actually meet these objectives.   The plans aren't real plans in Minnesota: they are check the box plans, accepted by MDE and posted on school websites as aspirational fictions:.    

As stated above, in subsequent posts Jvonkorff on Education is going to describe the components of a program that would actually deliver a constitutionally adequate education.   But this post argues that twenty years of Minnesota's consistent failure to deliver an adequate education to students of color, English language learners, lower income students, and students with dyslexia constitute a powerful argument that we need to do something different.   We need to design a school that will work: we need to cost out what it would take to operate that school, and then we need to  appropriate resources to districts serving those students if they are willing to use the extra money by implementing a proven design.   Here are some of our talking points!

•  Decades without Progress.  For decades Minnesota has been trying to close the opportunity/achievement gap without success.  In his 2003 State of the State Speech,  Governor Pawlenty Governor Tim Pawlenty  warned  “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.”  Despite that acknowledgment, no past or present Governor can truthfully argue that Minnesota has implemented the  systemic reforms needed to address the crisis identified in 2003 by Governor Pawlenty'.  That is a powerful argument that we should re-evaluate every aspect of what Minnesota is doing. 
  
  
• Task Force Recommendations.  In 2003, Governor Pawlenty commissioned a Blue Ribbon Task Force to identify what Minnesota must do to stop "leaving too many children behind."  The Task Force is the only state sponsored report that was allowed to report on the amount of revenue that would be required for those purposes. The Task force reported that the State must provide districts with  a "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."
  
  Governor Pawlenty cancelled the work of the task force before it completed its work to report the "full dollar cost" of delivering state specified academic standards."  Since the warning that Minnesota must provide the full dollar cost of meeting state specified academic standards, Minnesota has failed to deliver those specified standards.  That too is a powerful argument that the reason is that failure to implement the Task Force recommendations has prevented the delivery of those standards.
  
  
• The Pawlenty Task Force's work was subsequently finished  by nationally recognized education costing experts. Those experts  estimated that for the districts with the highest needs the full dollar per student cost "to achieve state specified academic standards" would exceed $23,000 (in 2005 dollars.)  Since Governor Pawlenty halted the Task Force's work, no governor and no legislature has ever conducted a comprehensive study of the revenue and reforms required to deliver an adequate education to the students Minnesota is currently leaving behind. 
     

Its now 17 years since the Pawlenty school financing task force warned that Minnesota must change its funding system "to pay the full dollar cost of meeting state academic standards." The report continued:

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).

Its time to try something different:  bring some experts together who have actually worked in schools that provide an adequate education to the students Minnesota is now failing.  Ask them what a successful school requires?  Then reform the system so that we provide enough money for successful schools, but, by golly, require those schools to implement a system based on what has been proven to work.