Minnesota Is Failing Its Most Vulnerable Students — And Has Been for Twenty Years
An eight-part series on what the research says, what other states have done, and what Minnesota must do now.
Over the past two decades, Minnesota has been warned — repeatedly, by governors, legislators, federal economists, university researchers, and its own auditors — that its public school finance system is failing the students who need it most. Students of color, students from low-income families, English Learners, and students with disabilities are being systematically underfunded. The achievement gap is wide, persistent, and in many respects growing.
And yet, despite report after report, task force after task force, the structural problems remain unaddressed.
In 2025, the Minnesota Department of Education convened a new Task Force on K–12 Education Finance. This post is drawn from the Task Force's Research Appendix — a comprehensive review of twenty years of evidence on Minnesota's achievement gap, what other states have done to address funding adequacy, what the research says about money and outcomes, and what a genuine accountability system looks like.
This blog series draws on that research to make the case — in plain language — for the reforms Minnesota needs. It is written not just for policymakers and educators, but for any Minnesotan who cares about whether our public schools are delivering on their promise.
Why This Matters — and Why It Hasn't Been Fixed
Minnesota has a deserved reputation as one of the country's better-educated states. Average test scores are high. Graduation rates are solid. But those averages mask a deeply troubling reality: Minnesota also has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation between white students and students of color, between affluent students and students living in poverty.
This is not a new problem. It has been documented since at least the early 2000s. What is remarkable — and troubling — is how little progress has been made despite so many well-intentioned efforts.
"Over the past 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%."
— Minnesota School Finance Working Group, 2020
The reasons for this failure are structural, not personal. Minnesota's school finance system was not designed to deliver proficiency-level education to all students regardless of background. It was built for a different era — one in which schools were expected to provide instruction, not guarantee learning. When Minnesota (and the country) shifted to outcome-based, proficiency-focused standards beginning in the 1980s, the cost of education for disadvantaged students rose dramatically. The funding system never caught up.
What This Series Will Cover
Over eight posts, this series walks through the five reforms the research points to as necessary and sufficient to finally close Minnesota's achievement gap. Each post corresponds to a section of the research memo prepared for the Task Force:
The Eight Posts in This Series
- Post 1 (this post): Series introduction — the problem, why it persists, and what we'll cover.
- Post 2: Twenty years of unheeded warnings — the reports, the data, and the pattern of inaction.
- Post 3: The case for adequate, cost-based funding — why the current formula doesn't work and what a real adequacy study would reveal.
- Post 4: Funding students, not just schools — why per-pupil funding must be weighted to reflect the real cost of educating each child.
- Post 5: Evidence-based practices — what works, and why money alone isn't enough without guardrails on how it's spent.
- Post 6: The accountability gap — why local control has not produced systemic improvement and what a real accountability system looks like.
- Post 7: Continuous improvement — how states like Wyoming and Maryland build recalibration into their finance systems.
- Post 8: What Minnesota must do now — the six immediate legislative priorities that would put the state on a new path.
A Word About the Research
This series is grounded in the Research Appendix drafted for the 2025 MDE Task Force, drawing on peer-reviewed academic research, state-commissioned adequacy studies from across the country, federal reserve analyses, legislative auditor reports, and the work of leading school finance scholars including Dr. Bruce Baker of Rutgers University and Dr. Allan Odden of the University of Wisconsin.
I have tried to make this accessible to general readers without sacrificing accuracy. Where I cite studies, they are real. Where I draw conclusions, I try to be clear that they are my own read of what the evidence requires.
Minnesota has the knowledge. It has the research. What it has lacked is the political will to act. My hope is that this series contributes, in some small way, to building the public understanding that makes action possible.
