There are conservatives and liberals on both sides of the Page Amendment — the plan to change the state constitution to make education a “fundamental right” of all children in Minnesota.
But it turns out the conservatives and liberals who oppose the idea are more powerful in the state Legislature than the conservatives and liberals who favor it. Neither the conservative chair of the Senate Education Committee nor the liberal chair of the House Education Policy Committee plan to hear the amendment this session.
It appears that the book has been closed on the Page Amendment.
Constitutional amendments are not subject to the Legislature’s self-imposed deadlines for action on bills, but House Education Policy Committee Chair Ruth Richardson, DFL-Mendota Heights, said the measure will not come to a vote and therefore has no chance of being on the November ballot.
The committee held an informational hearing last year and the bill is active this session, but it won’t be heard again this session.
[image_caption]State Sen. Michelle Benson[/image_caption]
“He is a friend and we are in conversations,” Benson said of Chamberlain and the chances for getting the measure heard.
One thing that could appeal to Chamberlain is language Benson wants added on parental rights, which would say: “The duty of the state established in this section does not infringe on the right of a parent to choose for their child a private, religious or home school as an alternative to public education.”
Among DFL sponsors are many legislators who are members of the POCI (People of Color and Indigenous) Caucus. The prime sponsor in the House is Rep. Hodan Hassan, DFL-Minneapolis, who said the amendment would be another tool to help address racial disparities. She did not respond to requests to comment on the apparent death of the amendment.
[image_caption]State Rep. Hodan Hassan[/image_caption]
“If the House says absolutely not, I don’t know that there’s a path,” for the legislation, Benson said.
Like Richardson, Chamberlain opposes the amendment, though from a very different political perspective. Chamberlain, a conservative who is no friend of Education Minnesota, opposes the measure because he thinks it will lead to lengthy litigation that could end in the state Supreme Court ordering the Legislature to increase funding.
Named for former state Supreme Court Justice Alan Page and championed by Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari, the constitutional amendment seeks to replace the current education clause that calls for a “uniform system of public schools” with language that would establish an”equal right to quality public education.”
Kashkari and Page have said they came to the amendment after discussing the gap between the educational achievement of white students and students of color. The proposed amendment also makes education “a paramount duty of the state to ensure quality public schools that fulfill this fundamental right.”
The language is in other states’ constitutions and has been used in litigation to win substantial increases in school funding, including for teacher salaries. But Education Minnesota opposes the change, arguing that certain language in the amendment — “as measured against uniform achievement standards” — could enshrine standardized testing in the constitution.
The current constitutional clause also requires the Minnesota Legislature to provide enough money for a “thorough and efficient system of public schools,” and while the proposed “paramount duty” language might require similar funding, it could also require litigation and new court decisions.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]Kashkari and Page have said they came to the amendment after discussing the gap between the educational achievement of white students and students of color.[/image_caption]
In fact, despite having a large team of lobbyists and bipartisan sponsorship, the backers of the amendment have gained no traction at the state Capitol. “It is unfortunate to watch the Legislature continue to cater to special interests over the urgent needs of students and parents, particularly those students who still suffer from some of the worst education gaps in the United States,” said a spokesperson for Our Children MN, the organization created by Page and Kashkari and others to push the measure.
“We continue to pursue various paths in both the House and the Senate because three-fourths of Minnesotans support passage of the Page Amendment across wide bipartisan margins and the voters should have a say in November.”
There can be no wiggle room that may allow the governments control of trickle-down, union education to be possibly diminished says the group that owns the DFL.
Before you can fix a problem, you have to acknowledge you have a problem. Way too many, on both sides of the isle, still cling to Minnesota (the USA in general) having a great public school system. That is not the case! Minnesota is middle of the pack in education and America is falling like a stone worldwide.
It simply comes down to Teachers Union and tax dollars. If you allow the money to follow the child to whatever school best fits that particular child, they lose the monopoly on the your tax dollars. Sadly, most who oppose this amendment are more worried about money and power than educating our children.
This is where you get the pro public school folks screaming for more tax dollars. Minneapolis public schools are north of 26k per student, per year, with terrible results…. No more pleading for more money please. The money goes to administration and benefits not the students anyways!
Unfortunately, you are advocating public support of religious education, which violates the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
“The amendment would make it the “paramount duty” of the state to provide all children in Minnesota with a quality public education.” As I’ve said before in this space, how do you define “quality?”
If you don’t define it, you can’t measure it, and if you can’t measure it, you can’t show whether or not it exists. That leaves too much of an opportunity for special interests to manipulate it.
Pass school vouchers now. Then let the market decide when parents vote with their child’s enrollment.
Vouchers will only make private schools more expensive for those who make the choice to send their kids to private schools. I like the fact private schools do not have to answer to the MN Department of Ed. Vouchers would probably change that.
For the most part the education your kid receives is up to you as a parent. The schools that perform best are in the affluent suburbs, or are private. There are exceptions, but not many.
This group has a curiously large and well-funded team of lobbyists. They do not have a significant and broad-based constituency across the state and do a terrible job explaining the details outside of flights of fancy. they present this in very simplistic terms, and the people that know more about how public education has to function (you know, because of pesky little things like federal law, state law, the state constitution (which they very blithely want to change), and contracts that have been negotiated and signed in good faith as well as what the basic costs and challenges of providing public education are) know that this is a clown car filled with some naïve people who want to help but don’t know anything about the details, combined with a lot of people who want to wreck public education in its entirety, and some egomaniacs who are so convinced of their own brilliance and rectitude that they’ve decided they just know better than everyone else.
I actually believe that Mr. Kashkari and former Justice Page have good intentions, but this activity reminds me of the old adage: “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”
Josh, what law will be broken if the Minnesota state legislature votes to allow tax dollars to follow the child and his school of choice?
I find it interesting that the first three comments all come from people opposed to public education. “School choice” drops us back to the 19th century, as does “vouchers,” and essentially codifies the notion that a child is entitled to all the education that her parents can afford. You’ll pardon me if I think that flies in the face of both the sentiment and the wording of both the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, not to mention the Minnesota Constitution.
I’m in line with Josh Lease’s last sentence. I do believe that Mr. Kashkari and former Justice Page have the best of intentions, and I agree with their intentions and sentiment, but this proposed amendment does not represent their best work. I would add that the proposal seems to me redundant, as Article XIII, Section 1, establishes, and I quote from the Minnesota Constitution, a “Uniform system of public schools. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.”
That seems to me a pretty close approximation of the proposed amendment, though it omits the word “quality” in the context of public education, which is contained in the new proposal. I’m still waiting for a definition of the term “quality” in this context by someone very familiar with the thought and discussion surrounding the creation of the amendment.
It’s also worth pointing out two things:
First, there is no institution in the United States that is as subject to parental control and supervision as a public school district and its schools. Curriculums and materials are readily available to any parent who asks, and when I was teaching, I had an occasional parent sit-in on a couple of classes. They were convinced I was a drooling, commie pervert, poisoning their children’s minds. They left frustrated, since I made no attempt to sell their daughters into sexual bondage or undermine the principles on which the nation was founded, and I very specifically avoided any hint of profanity, though I did point out, in American History classes, that the Antebellum southern economy was based on involuntary servitude, otherwise known as slavery. This might have made a few people uncomfortable. The widely-reported “concern” by some parents over access to materials and methods – usually in social studies classes – is essentially a straw man, erected by parents (usually, but not always, from the right wing fringe) who are opposed to education, by which I mean learning new things, but are quite supportive of the notion of indoctrination, by which I mean their children being subjected to various national myths, many of them pure fiction, in which the parents themselves fervently believe.
Second, I would add that Ms. Benson’s proposed language could also be problematic in itself. As quoted, it appears that she’s advocating for directly violating the Minnesota Constitution’s prohibition on using public funds for private, religious, or home schooling. Article XIII, Section 2, says: “In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.” That’s pretty direct and to the point. My tax dollars cannot legally follow Joe Smith’s children to Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt Catholic School, or the Freedom Bible Academy, or the Word of Allah Elementary School.
“In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.”
So how do you explain the many religious schools who have participated in (and won) the State High School League athletic tournaments? Sounds like selective enforcement to me.
Private schools were only allowed to participate in the state hockey tournament starting in 1975. Not sure about other sports. I don’t think the Minnesota State High School League is an official ‘permanent’ guaranteed part of Minnesota public schools. It is an adjunct association of 433 public and 49 private schools, after the fact. I don’t think it is part of state constitutional mandates at all and therefore your argument is irrelevant.
If it makes you feel any better, I still believe those private schools should not be allowed to participate in tournaments vs public schools because of the built-in advantages many private schools have.
Kaskhari and Paige are well-intentioned, but the devil is truly in the details here. The state constitution does not benefit whenever advocates of causes of any particular stripe get too specific or aspirational towards what they wish to enshrine into the document. Leave those specifics for the legislature to hammer out, and modify if need be, over time.
Well, it is relevant when the constitution says: “In NO CASE shall ANY public money or property be appropriated or used…” when it obviously is. And 1975 was not yesterday, it was 47 years ago.
Doubling down on the:
“Two wrongs make a right”
Strategy seems a little confusing…
Always glad to help enlighten the commentariat, regardless of appreciation for that enlightenment:
About
Since 1916, the Minnesota State High School League remains rooted as a non-profit voluntary association that provides service, leadership and extra-curricular opportunities to more than 500 member schools. Through interscholastic athletic and fine arts activities, the League’s mission is to provide educational and leadership opportunities for students across its membership of public, private, online, charter and home schools.
As a non-profit organization, the League neither solicits, nor receives, state funding. The League’s primary revenue streams come from state tournament ticket sales, broadcast rights and corporate partnerships.
Dennis Tester, The Minnesota State High School League is not a governmental agency. The existing prohibition of public funds going to private or religious schools is not applicable.
The biggest problem, but there are others, with the amendment is that there is no, zero, explanation about how the amendment will actually fix the Achievement Gap which exists in every state and has existed forever. Minnesota schools actually do better at educating Black students than would be expected by the demographics of the state. Black families in Mississippi have higher incomes relative to whites than do Minnesota Black families. Fixing the Income Gap between whites and Blacks in Minnesota will do more toward fixing the education achievement gap than removing the responsibility of the state to fund public education, which is the basic action of the amendment.
Ref: https://cepa.stanford.edu/educational-opportunity-monitoring-project/achievement-gaps/race/#fourth
“Fixing the Income Gap between whites and Blacks in Minnesota will do more toward fixing the education achievement gap than removing the responsibility of the state to fund public education, which is the basic action of the amendment.”
Can you explain how this will be done? Curious.
This is very insulting to low income people, especially low income minorities. Plenty of low income parents value education and encourage them to do well in school. Conversely, I unfortunately know many higher income people who don’t instill the importance of school on their kids.
I keep wondering and I have asked this previously, just what do proponents of the Paige Amendment think the Legislature will or should do it this Amendment were approved? Can someone give me five examples? If there are concrete specific actions that they want to see happen why not just lobby the Legislature directly for those measure.
Here’s a good place to get background
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/policy/education-achievement-gaps/why-a-constitutional-amendment