Five weeks from the election, Minnesota’s three-way gubernatorial race must be tight — or the candidates are terrified of the size of the budget crisis one of them will inherit. How else to explain the middling performances at last night’s education-focused debate?
Republican Tom Emmer refused to be knocked very far off the topic of taxes, but Independence Party candidate Tom Horner and DFLer Mark Dayton clearly demonstrated deep understandings of the education policy issues of the day.
Still, despite the best efforts of moderator Cathy Wurzer and questions submitted by the Who’s-Who-in-education audience looking on in the studio at Twin Cities Public Television, the three major party candidates delivered little in the way of depth and nothing approaching bold.
Sponsored by the Minneapolis Foundation (sponsor of the long-running Minnesota Meeting initiative), the Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi Foundation for Children and the Itasca Project, the debate comes at a time when school districts are under pressure to simultaneously get in line with stepped-up reforms and contend with unprecedented cuts in state funding.
They got lots of sympathy from the men on the dais, who have clearly toured more schools in the last year than U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, but they offered few concrete solutions.
Tom Madden, chair of the Minneapolis School Board, beat a hasty, dejected retreat after the cameras stopped rolling. “The question is who’s telling the truth,” he said. “It’s just going to be more of the same — shifts, cuts.”
Indeed money — or the lack thereof — was a running refrain throughout the hour-long conversation, with Emmer insisting that state government needs to get smaller, Dayton hammering on the classroom-level resource crunch and Horner suggesting that smarter spending was the ticket.
Asked about the racial and economic disparities in test scores, Emmer suggested that $700 million budgeted for closing the achievement gap in the current biennium might be put to better use. One possibility was shifting some of it to early childhood education, he said.
Horner leapt on this, noting that twice in the last two legislative sessions, Emmer voted against bills that funded early childhood education.
Emmer’s retort: The bills in question were omnibus measures containing other items, and it was unfair of Horner to impeach him using an unrepresentative “snapshot.” “When I vote on something like that, it’s very difficult,” Emmer replied. “The message we are sending is that government has to live within its means.”
“A six-year record isn’t a snapshot, it’s a motion picture,” Horner countered, insisting that one of the measures was in fact specific to early childhood education. Making sure kids are ready for kindergarten would prevent the first fissures from developing into an achievement gap, he said: “So I put new money” — $120 million — “into my budget for pre-K.”
Wurzer pressed the other two to say how much they would commit to early childhood education, but both refused.
“I think that would be disrespectful to the process,” said Emmer. “We have to spend within what we have.”
Dayton’s demurral was more unexpected in light of the fact that he recently released an education platform with detailed expenditures. “I won’t put a price tag on it,” he said, explaining that he would first ask early-childhood education experts how much funding was warranted.
So, Wurzer asked, would Dayton support a constitutional amendment funding early childhood ed, as his former DFL rival Margaret Anderson Kelliher had said she would have?
“Forty years ago, the Minnesota Supreme Court said we couldn’t fund schools the way we do now, through property taxes,” Dayton replied. “They said that’s inherently unequal.”
The three were at their most impassioned taking shots at one another. Dayton’s proposed budget drew fire because it still sports a $890 million shortfall. Both he and Horner said they saw no immediate way to repay the funding shifts and delays Gov. Tim Pawlenty has used to balance the state budget.
Both Horner and Dayton took Emmer to task for new ads promising to “hold education harmless,” noting that his formula would in fact constitute another hit to schools. Because some 20,000 new students will enter Minnesota schools in the next two years, flat funding would mean less money per pupil, they noted.
The one ideological surprise of the night: Emmer would not eliminate teacher tenure outright. Instead, he would try to institute a five-year review process. Horner would eliminate the seniority system altogether, while Education Minnesota-endorsed Dayton would retain it but make it easier to fire bad teachers.
The debate is available online and will be rebroadcast on TPT’s Minnesota Channel; check here for times.
Cathy Wurzer is a fine journalist.
But if these three candidates are not focused on the elephant in the room – the huge state budget deficit, in a state that insist constitutionally that it be balanced every 2 years – that elephant will consume which ever’s administration takes office after the election anyway.
I just hope all three see the wisdom of taking care of education, transportation, criminal justice and health care before they start kicking in tax money for private football teams who want a fancy new palace to play in
A correction to the article — I do not support eliminating the seniority system, nor did I advocate it at the forum. What I consistently have said is that we need changes to the system, including the approach I cited directly of allowing school districts some flexibility through waivers (exempting an agreed-upon number of teaching slots allowing districts to hold on to good young teachers and innovative programs). I would like Education Minnesota to be a partner in defining a fair approach, but if the union won’t participate, we will have to put the needs of students first and go around the union. Similarly, while I think the QComp teacher performance pay program needs re-vamping, there are good programs that incorporate QComp. Wayzata, for example, working with union members, uses QComp to advance teacher development. Again, working with Education Minnesota is ideal. Achieving necessary outcomes, though, is the priority.
Glad to hear that achieving necessary outcomes is the priority for Mr. Horner. That should be the priority.
On Thursday Ms. Hawkins wrote that the Mpls supt proposed lowering expectations and when challenged, “Johnson cried her way through an emotional, remorseful reply…”
We need leaders who have high expectations and know what can be done to reach them. All over the nation there are district and charter public schools that have virtually closed or completely eliminated achievement gaps. We need leaders who know about, and will use those lessons.