SCERAC Seeks to Establish the Full Cost of an Adequate Education for Students of Color, ELL's, & Lower income Students

    This is the second in a series about the efforts of the St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council (SCERAC) to address Minnesota's failure to provide a constitutionally adequate education to students of color, lower income students, ELL's and struggling readers.  SCERAC's ultimate goal is to transform Minnesota's educational system so that it will:

• (1) fund the full dollar cost of providing an adequate education to students of color, lower income students, English language learners and children with reading challenges
• (2) require that the funds provided for that purpose are actually used to expand and add new programs and services of proven value to meet those students educational needs.   

SCERAC's end goal, of course, is to reform Minnesota's public education system, both for charters and traditional publics, so that public schools provide an adequate education to students of color, lower income students, English language learners, and and to students with dyslexia and other struggling readers--students that our state system has traditionally failed. The premise of the litigation is that Minnesota cannot achieve that objective if it fails to provide enough state funding to provide districts with what the 2004 education finance report issued under Governor Pawlenty called the "full dollar cost" of providing that adequate education, but correspondingly, the State has a duty to demand that when funds are provided, the full dollar cost is actually allocated to serve students of color, lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers by expanding the amount of services, the amount of instructional time and the quality of those services.   

    Unfortunately, neither MDE, nor the Governor, nor the legislature makes any concerted effort to determine what that full dollar cost actually is -- the actual cost of providing an adequate education to students of color, English language learners, or to any students for that matter.  The Governor's budget, and the legislature's deliberations, center on what increment should be added to the last education budget to cover cost increases in what we are doing now.  The budget doesn't identify, nor do hearings inquire into how much revenue is required to deliver the adequate education that the constitution requires.  

Imagine the chaos that would result if the Department of Transportation built highways this way, by ignoring project cost.  Suppose MnDot were asked to expand highway 94 from Minneapolis to St. Cloud by two lanes without credibly estimating the cost.   Imagine if the Republicans and the Democrats held a hearing and debated how much money to appropriate for the project, without any information on how much it will cost to build that highway so that it met all state standards!  If they guestimated the cost and the highway constructed was then an engineering failure, or if the appropriation couldn't pay for the full 70 miles, would anyone really be surprised?!

    What if delivering an adequate education requires more instructional days, and additional learning time in each instructional day?   What if it requires additional support staff, or co-teachers in the early grades  In St. Cloud one additional instructional day costs $300,000 approximately, and the district would need the concurrence of labor representatives to add that extra day.  And if asked to do so, one can hear the representatives at the table saying, "If you have $300,000 to spare, then you can afford to add that money to your compensation offer."  

    SCERAC's First Litigation Objective:  And so, one of SCERAC's first litigation objectives has been to convince the state to determine authentically -- in consultation with the district -- what the programming the St. Cloud District would require to deliver a  constitutionally adequate education (or a world-class education if you prefer) to students of color, English language learners and lower income students and students with reading challenges--and then what it would cost to deliver that expanded programming.  If the legislature has no idea what it will cost to provide an adequate education to the students Minnesota is failing, how can it possibly act to fix that problem.  For decades, the state has decried its own failure, and despite multiple reports, never has the state actually identified an actual program capable of delivering an adequate education, nor has the state identified its cost. 

The Preliminary Injunction Motion:   In SCERAC's case in District Court, it moved the court for an order to require the Governor to provide the legislature with costing information -- the "Full Dollar Cost" of an authentic program to deliver an adequate education to its students of color, English language learners, and lower income students.  This would be only a first, but necessary step towards fixing Minnesota's broken system.   The District court denied our motion and dismissed our entire case.  But the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court and ordered the District Court to consider our motion based on the existing constitutional standards established by the Supreme Court.  That decision led to formal negotiations between SCERCAC and MDE, and the informal participation of the School District. 

The Agreement.   When the Court of Appeals ordered consideration of our motion for injunctive relief, SCERAC and the Department of Education entered into an agreement that will provide the Governor and legislature with a joint report that for the first time describes a vision of what a public school district -- in this case the St. Cloud District -- would need to do to provide its students of color, English language learners, lower income students and students with reading challenges a world class education (or if you prefer, a constitutionally adequate education).   If SCERAC, MDE and the school district does this job well, Minnesotans will have for the first time a clear picture of what it will take to close Minnesota's achievement (or opportunity) gap and how much it would cost.

    This is important because none of the three major Minnesota school finance Reports issued in the last two decades provided any estimate on what it would cost to provide an adequate education to the students Minnesota is currently failing.   Minnesota has issued three major state school finance reports - 2004, 2011/2012 and 2020.  None of those reports attempted to calculate the cost of providing an adequate education to the students that Minnesota is currently failing, nor did they provide a clear vision of what the educational programs would look like.  In fact, the 2020 "80-20-10 Report" urged that the basic formula for all students be increased  as the "largest single recommendation" in the report.  

    To its credit, the 2020 Report correctly acknowledges that new funding is critically important: "There’s an old saying," it points out

“You get what you pay for.” Minnesota is paying less today for education than in the 20th century as a percentage of our personal income and getting–at best–uneven results 20 years into the 21st century...Over the same 20 years, educational outcomes measured by state accountability tests have stagnated with a large, persistent achievement gap while the percentage of children of color has more than doubled from 16% to 34%.

     Of course, all school districts deserve appropriate funding.   All children are important.  There is no legitimate objection to raising the funding for all students and all districts, but the constitutional problem in Minnesota is its failure to provide an adequate education to students of color, lower income students, English language learners and to struggling readers.   It follows that the number-one constitutional responsibility of the Governor and his constitutional officers, is to provide the legislature with a clear description of what it will take to serve these students, not merely to help all students receive an incrementally better education, but rather to assure that all students receive an education that is constitutionally adequate, one that meets all state learning standards.  And then of course, it is the legislature's duty under the Skeen decision to provide districts with those funds. 

    Importance of the new Report. The MDE-SCERAC-742 report that is underway, involving representatives of the school district, SCERAC, and the Minnesota Department of Education could potentially change the dialog at the legislature, and hopefully change the education dialog in public forums.  "Begin with the End in Mind," Steven Covey preaches.  If the end is providing all students with an adequate education, then beginning with the end in mind requires understanding the elements necessary to provide that adequate education, and calculating the funding and other resources required to deliver those elements.   

SCERAC Interested in Dialog:  For this reason, the SCERAC folks are interested in learning from others in Minnesota and elsewhere as to what should go into that report.   What would it look like for a district that was properly funded to deliver an adequate education to students of color, lower income students,  and English language learners?   It is surely not one thing:  more teachers of color, culturally responsive teaching, professional development, disciplinary reforms, none of these alone will be enough.  The exceptionally successful schools typically report that they deliver many more instructional days than most Minnesota public schools; they typically deliver more instructional hours per day; they invest more time and thought into authentic professional development; and they tend to be way more agile in changing what they do when what they are doing is not working. Many have smaller class sizes, and many have just-in-time strategies to assure that when students don't understand their lessons, something is done right away.  If we want finally to stop merely celebrating our status as a huge achievement gap state, and instead implement strategies that work, we will need to adopt strategies that work and fund those that cost more.  

SCERAC hopes that the work it is doing with MDE this year will make a contribution to an effort to advocate for a bold plan that can begin to make a real difference for Minnesota students of color, lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers. 

   Since 2019, the St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council (SCERAC) has been engaged in a litigation with the Minnesota Department of Education to make Minnesota's constitutional right to an adequate education a reality for students of color, lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers.   Minnesota has a robust education clause, and our state Supreme Court authored one of the strongest constitutional decisions in the country, declaring that the constitution establishes a fundamental right, enforceable in the courts, commanding that the state must provide school districts with enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.   This post begins a progress report on SCERAC's objectives and recent developments in the litigation. 

We posted on this topic in an earlier article"Fighting to Enforce the Skeen Decision."  At the time of our last post, however, a judge in Stearns County District Court had dismissed SCERAC's constitutional suit, and the organization had appealed that dismissal to the Court of Appeals.  Since we last posted,  the Court of Appeals reinstated the SCERAC litigation, and the Minnesota Department of Education and SCERAC entered into negotiations

SCERAC is a coalition of educators, parents, present and former school board members, childrens' advocates and students who are disappointed with the state's failure to meet the plain requirements of the Supreme Court's Skeen decision.  The 2004 education task force appointed by Governor Pawlenty warned:

    “The task force believes Minnesota must actively pursue a new system for funding our public schools. We cannot delay"....The funding 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)" and "cover full dollar costs of ensuring Minnesota public school students have an opportunity to achieve state specified academic standards

The 2012 education finance report commissioned by Governor Dayton highlighted the failure of Minnesota to make progress for students of color, English language learners and lower income students:

“Minnesota’s achievements show white students performing at the very top, as indicated by measures such as ACT and NAEP, while students of color perform among the worst in the country. There are wide gaps in reading and math proficiency by race and by economic status. Little progress was made in closing these achievement gaps between 2006 and 2010”

Eight years later, the Walz administration acknowledged again a further eight years of Minnesota's persistent lack of progress.  The 11.05.20  Report of the School Finance Working Group exclaimed:

“Minnesota has some of the worst racial achievement and opportunity gaps in the country. The graduation rate gap between white students and Black students in Minnesota is higher than 20 points. The graduation rate gap between white students and Hispanic students in Minnesota is higher than 20 points. Minnesota has the second highest post-secondary attainment gap between white and Black residents, ages 25 to 64. Minnesota has the eighth highest post-secondary attainment gap between white and Hispanic residents, ages 25 to 64”

A growing number of advocates have come to the "enough-is-enough" state: Tired of finance reports that decry persistent failures but fail to identify, let alone, stimulate a systemic fix.  

SCERAC's ultimate goal is to use Minnesota's existing Education Clause to accomplish many of the same things advocates for the Page Amendment hope to achieve, and in fact to accomplish even more.   We know that, deep down, the leadership of the Minnesota Department of Education -- and hopefully the Governor --  recognize that Minnesota is failing to deliver on the promise of a world class education.   It's time, to implement a permanent visionary fix in Minnesota's broken school finance system, and to do that by providing both  (1) enough funding to school districts serving students of color and English language learners, (2) to really require that the additional funding actually get used to deploy expanded and improved local programs that delivers that education.  More money is not a solution unless the additional money is actually deployed for the benefit of the students we are now failing.  To this end, SCERAC advocates:

• A 2023 Authentic Education Opportunity-Gap-Closing Budget based on the identified cost of providing an adequate education: Minnesota needs an Authentic Education Budget capable of delivering a Constitutionally Adequate Education. Minnesota is currently failing to deliver a world-class education consistently to students-of-color lower income students, English language learners and struggling readers. The 2023 budget must allocate targeted additional funds that are targeted exclusively to expanding successful opportunity-gap-closing programs.
  
  
•  A 2023 Budget that Provides the “Full-Dollar Cost” of providing an Opportunity-Gap-Closing Constitutionally Adequate Education. The Governor cannot budget for, and the legislature cannot properly fund constitutionally adequate opportunity-gap-closing programs unless they are presented with accurate data on the composition of those programs and what they will actually cost.  In so doing, Minnesota would be implementing the recommendations of the 2004 Governor's Finance Task Force, that has been ignored for more than two decades
   
• Implement Skeen: Enough Funding to Afford an Adequate Education: The Minnesota Supreme Court has twice instructed the Governor and Legislature that the state has an obligation to provide districts with “enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.” Minnesota students have waited long enough for the state to fulfill this mandate. There must be a direct and mandatory connection between additional funding, the full dollar cost of providing an adequate education to students of color and English language learners and others, and the actual mandatory provision of the services for which the funding is provided.
   
• Eliminate Cross Subsidies—Dedicate Increased Funding to Programs that  Close the Opportunity Gap: An Authentic Constitutionally Adequate Education Budget must eliminate the special education and English language learner funding deficits, of course: but eliminating those deficits must be paired with funding new and expanded programs that provide that adequate education. 
  

Two Funding Tables:  Currently, almost all state funding is placed on a single table— the bargaining table.  There is a growing sense that in some urban core districts, every increased dollar received by the district is available for bargaining and that prevents increasing the programmatic package needed to serve the students that Minnesota leaves behind.  This system places the needs of students of color and English language learners and other students who are currently left behind up for negotiation at a table where those students and their families lack meaningful power.   Teachers and other staff deserve appropriate funding sufficient to satisfy their legitimate needs at bargaining. One funding table should contain adequate funding dedicated to provide for staff's well deserved compensation.   

But our current system needs a separately allocated second table:  one that provides additional funding that by law and under the constitutional mandate is allocated to funding the "full dollar cost" of providing the students that Minnesota is failing with expanded and new services.   The second table should receive substantial additional funding targeted to expand and improve programs needed for the students that Minnesota leaves behind.  

 One of the reasons (or excuses) persistently advanced by legislators for refusing to expand funding is that the belief that increased funding will simply fund the same programs, but at a higher cost.  Legislators say: "we don't have confidence that increased funding will make a difference."   To resolve this concern, the state needs to consider funding two tables: one for the existing requirements to compensate staff and the other for expanding services. This bargaining table deserves to be liberally funded so that teachers and non-licensed staff can be paid what they deserve. The second table should be for the students who Minnesota is leaving behind; money should be allocated to fund the resources and services that are required to close the opportunity gap (ie. extended learning time, authentic professional development, counseling and mental health services, and early childhood education). That additional funding should be based not on inflation or incrementalism, but rather on authentic data on what it it will take to do the job.  

In following posts, we'll describe how SCERAC is hoping to achieve this objective. 

Post 2:  SCERAC Seeks to Establish Full Cost of Education