High-Stakes testing officially dead — for this year

Education policy folks and Minnesota’s high school juniors can stop holding their breath about this year’s math graduation test:  with the stroke of his pen, Governor Tim Pawlenty has turned the once-high-stakes test into a dead letter.  A compromise solution was reached earlier this year by the Governor, and both houses of the state legislature, that would permit students to retake the test three times, prior to graduation.  Pass or fail, though, no-one is barred from graduation.   Legislators were concerned that, since the test results come back a few weeks into summer vacation, high school Juniors wouldn’t have much time to take remedial courses and retake the test before they have to start studying for finals, or graduate.  

According to the Strib’s Emily Johns, though, the real reason is that the test is too hard.  

Filed under: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Achievement Gap, Education, Education Policy, GRAD test, Minneapolis Public Schools, Minnesota, Testing, Tim Pawlenty

T-Paw sides with the Family Council, vetoes anti-bullying bill

 

 

Image: Wikipedia

With Saturday’s veto, Governor Pawlenty sided with conservative opponents of an anti-bullying bill meant to protect Minnesota’s K-12 students from being harassed in school for their sexual orientation, disabilities, and an array of other qualities that routinely attract teasing.  Repeating an argument used by the Minnesota Family Council, the governor wrote “the proposed legislation is duplicative of current law which directly and clearly prohibits bullying of any type against any student for any reason.”

As I highlighted in a story for the Minnesota Independent in February, the state’s current “model policy” only protects students from teasing based on race or religion, and sexual harassment.  Although it can be interpreted to include all students, many say this relies on a principal taking a stand against other forms of bullying that aren’t specifically prohibited.

“In small towns, it can all depend on one teacher or a principal who makes it their mission” to make the school welcoming, says Leigh Combs, the LGBT Kids Abuse and Prevention coordinator at Minneapolis-based Family and Children’s Service. “It’s different from town to town.”

According to the Strib, 

The bill’s author, Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the governor’s action and said he thought he had reached a compromise with Pawlenty on the language of the bill.

The “Safe Schools for All Bill” is passed the Minnesota House and Senate with large margins, so it remains a possibility that the bill’s backers will re-introduce the bill next session, and override Pawlenty’s veto.

Filed under: Minnesota, "Safe Schools for All" Bill, LGBT, Scott Dibble, Tim Pawlenty

Q Comp not expanding this year

The K-12 education policy bill that Governor Tim Pawlenty signed into law earlier this week did not include money to expand Q Comp to all of Minnesota.  The program, also known as “Quality Compensation,” is T-Paw’s pet plan that links teacher pay to a combination of their student’s performance on the MCA tests, and participation in professional development.  As a 2008 investigation from the state’s non-partisan Legislative Auditor highlighted, the program is too young to know if it actually improves teacher quality or student performance.  MPR’s Tom Webber has the story.

Filed under: Minnesota, Achievement Gap, Education, Education Policy, Education Reform, Q Comp, Teacher Quality, Tim Pawlenty

Education likely to take a hit with Accounting Shifts (Updated and Bumped)

With the desperate, impassioned efforts to override Tim Pawlenty’s vetoes essentially over, most of the high drama around this biennium’s budget is essentially over.  Like other sections of the budget, E-12 Education takes a hit through accounting shifts — where the state delays paying this year’s per-pupil funding until next year — but DFL education champ Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL – Roseville) is calling it ‘good enough’, because the core legislation does not reduce school funding.  

According to MPR’s Polinaut blog, the shift will be worth $1.775 billion, or almost 13% of the $13.7 billion appropriated by HF 2.  To fill the holes in their budgets, districts will have to borrow enough money to tide them over into the next fiscal year, when the state money will be delivered.  This, though, increases each district’s debt burden, reducing the amount of money they can spend on classrooms, busing, etc. because they will have to pay interest on the borrowed money.  In terms of immediate, local impact, this could speed up the closure of three St Paul elementary schools that were originally slated to close after the 2009-10 school year.

Update (5/19/09; 11:30am): Bill Sailsbury of the PiPress says Pawlenty may delay repaying the nearly-$1.8 billion in shifts until the 2012-13 biennium.  Wow!  That’s gonna smart.  Particularly because he’s been so resistant to raising additional revenue, instead of hoping that the economy will quickly recover, and revenues will rise to provide education funding for that biennium AND money to pay back the shifts.  

Because the DFL essentially threw their budget proposal back in the governor’s face after he vetoed it the first time, the Governor will likely make good on his threat to unilatterally unallot what spending he doesn’t like, come June 1.  Pawlenty hasn’t said he will target education for cuts, but it’s still up in the air until he makes his decisions public; furthermore, several school districts around the state are in statutory operating debt, or very near, and unallotments may sink them if they are not handled sensatively.  PIM’s Dan Feidt has Speaker Kelliher’s take on Pawlenty’s plans:

12:50 a.m. update: Speaker Kelliher talked to a former governor and “friend” about unallotment and fiscal responsibility on the way in. The unallotment statute was put in for emergencies, she says, “probably an extreme stretch” of what was intended by the statute. If a DFL governor did this kind of unallotment, there would be a similar concern. “it will be the sixth time in history… and for him, the third time using the tool.” It was his “backstop” or “walkaway point” which he was willing to use to walk away. Kelliher expects there may be people who use to try unallotment, she says.

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Budget Crisis, Education, Education Funding, Large-Scale System Change, St Paul Public Schools, Tim Pawlenty

“Safe Schools for All” heads to the Governor, passing by a wide margin

Image: Wikipedia

It’s a victory for anti-bullying advocates: the Safe Schools for All Bill passed the Minnesota House by a wide margin (95-39), after passing the Senate earlier this month. The bill creates 14 protected categories, and directs school districts to create policies that will help teachers and administrators intervene when a student is bullied for, among other things, their sexual orientation, their socioeconomic status, or a disability. Current legislation only directs schools to intervene in cases of religious, sexual, or racial harassment.

As Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent reports, the debate boiled down to an argument over whether “special categories” were needed to protect LGBT students, disabled students, or students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, offered an amendment to strike those categories from the bill. “One group does not rise above another,” he said. The amendment failed on a voice vote.

Davnie argued for the importance of the categories. “[Students] need and deserve to see themselves reflected in school policies. The child hears, ‘if somebody is bothering me, the adults in the school will help me,’” he said.

Rep. Rob Eastlund, R-Isanti, said, “there’s a politically motivated effort because passing legislation feels good. We don’t need to list out a long list of special interest groups.”

In recent days, other conservatives have railed against the bill, saying it “promotes homosexual behavior.”

Filed under: Minnesota, "Safe Schools for All" Bill, Education, LGBT, Minnesota

Conference Committees and Education Funding — Why I love MN Budget Bites

They sit in conference committees so we don’t have to.  I admit, I’m a bit of a wonk (My weekend reading will be pouring over a big chunk of data from Minneapolis Public Schools that accompanied the administration’s original proposal), but even I try to avoid legislative sessions like the plague.  Fortunately, there’s Minnesota Budget Bites, who’ve got a very readable rundown on the three competing E-12 budget proposals from the House, Senate, and Governor Tim Pawlenty, that are being hashed out in conference committee this week and next.   Some highlights:

• Use of federal stimulus dollars
• Dollar figures for several reform innitiatives, including the House’s New Minnesota Miracle ($0 — they just want to put the funding formula into law, so it can slowly be phased in from 2014 on), and T-Paw’s expansion of the Q-Comp pay-for-performance program and financial rewards for districts that raise students’ test scores ($91 million for the latter, an unnamed combo of state and increased local contributions for the former)
• Local property tax relief 

Filed under: Minnesota, Budget Crisis, Education, Education Funding, Education Reform, Mindy Greiling, Minnesota, Q Comp, Stimulating Stimuli, Tim Pawlenty

An update on Tuesday’s Minneapolis Board of Education Meeting

Dylan Thomas, schools reporter at the Southwest Journal, has a Southwest-specific recap of Tuesday night’s discusion that led to Superintendent Green temporarilly pulling his restructuring proposal from considderation by the Board.  Also, Steve Kotvis, a parent activist from Southwest Minneapolis, was at the meeting taking notes, and pointed me to his summary in the MPS Parents’ Forum.  His notes, after the jump.  (To pay the bills, I have a night job that required me to miss Tuesday night’s Board meeting).

Filed under: Minneapolis, Minnesota, Education, Minneapolis Public Schools, Restructuring, Steve Kotvis

St Paul Public Schools are Downsizing, too! (Updated)

Some innitial thoughts on the St Paul Public Schools’ new downsizing plan (pdf) to be presented at tonight’s school board meeting.  Background available here and here.

1) Similar to Minneapolis’ downsizing plan, this sticks a lot of the richer white neighborhoods off in their own quadrant. both the Mac-Groveland and Highland Park neighborhoods are in the same region.  Both are very white, and median family income is in the $69-79,000 range.  Will this impact district politics by focusing privileged voices around a few schools?

2) This may do an even worse job of solving structural budget issues than the Minneapolis Public Schools plan did.   I can’t find a good breakdown of the SPPS deficit on their website right now, but the total savings listed in the PowerPoint is only $2.2 million from the busing reductions and $2.4 million from closing three elementary schools, folding Humboldt Jr. High into the Sr. High, and rep-purposing one closed elementary building, possibly for administrative space.  That’s a long way from the district’s $25 million shortfall from Fiscal Year 2008-2009 to FY ’09-10.  (By way of comparison: around $9 million of Minneapolis schools’ $28 million budget shortfall is caused by declining enrollment)

3) I’m impressed by the relative openness of the decision-making process: input requested, priorities formulated, and decisions based off of a ranking/grading system that’s put up in the presentation.  This is a far cry from the way Minneapolis carried out their planning — many parents I’ve spoken with complained that they couldn’t see how parents’ input had influenced the development of scenarios.

4) Why the hell did SPPS join Q-Comp?  Why did the SPPS administration propose to join the Q-Comp program? This is a program that has been losing school districts, and was recently canned as not ready to be expanded, because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it was an effective teacher-development tool.  The St Paul Federation of teachers will have to approve this aspect of the plan in the coming round of contract negotiations.

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Budget Crisis, Education, Education Funding, Minnesota, Q Comp, St Paul Public Schools

Budget Battles: the local angle

Lisa Yarost/Flickr

Only in financial times like these can you hear things in school board meetings that make your blood run cold, or at least a bit nippy.  Like an additional $10 million in cuts to the school budget, on top of a $25 million shortfall.  

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Budget Crisis, Education, Education Funding, Minnesota, St Paul

Thursday’s Schools Roundup – Anti-bullying legislation / Loopholes and fuzzy stimulus guidance / Liberian ed reform

• Another school district goes to the 4-day week to save money, without cutting staff. (Bemidji Pioneer)
• A propos of the anti-bullying before the legislature (that comes up for a vote soon), an Ohio family is suing their son’s school district for failing to stop the homophobic bullying that led their 17-year-old to shoot himself in the head in 2006.  The family is seeking to force the district to institute an anti-bullying program.  (Minnesota Independent)  Via TowleRoad comes the story of a sixth-grader in Springfield, MA, who hung himself after school officials failed to address the bullying or its emotional impact. (Springfield Republican)  
• St Paul Public School students have won their fight to ban candy cigarettes, saying they promotes youth smoking.  (Star-Tribune)
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar is holding hearings around the state about NCLB reform (see the bottom of the page).
• As the announcement of this year’s Broad Prize winner draws near, the folks at Change.org remind us of the prestigious education prize’s sordid history.  (Change.org)
• An editorial in today’s NY Times accuses the federal government of leaving too many loopholes in the education portion of the stimulus package, and the Fordham Foundation’s education blog reviews the extremely fuzzy metrics governing how states can spend this money. (NY Times / Flypaper / Ed.gov)
• From Minnesota’s own Liberian Journal, a neat (but short) essay on the reforms needed in war-torn Liberia’s education system.

Today’s recipe: vegan Carrot-Parsnip Soup (Poor Girl Gourmet).  I hope the next time I make this, I don’t get almost-struck by lightening like that!

Filed under: Minnesota, National, St Paul, "Safe Schools for All" Bill, Education, Education Funding, Education Reform, LGBT, Minnesota, News, St Paul Public Schools, Stimulating Stimuli