Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 6-8 pm, Minneapolis
Minnesota Pipeline Alert: Educating all of our children equally
Mobilizing Our Communities to Support Legislation for Early Childhood Funding and Desegregated Schools

A complete listing of Events is always available at our website.

In this issue

What is Happening at the Capitol?
The February budget forecast was released on Tuesday, March 3. Our state deficit grew by $1.6 billion. Using the Federal Stimulus package helps our spending deficit stay around $4.6 billion, but it's pretty obvious that we can't continue the way we have been these last years in Minnesota.

The House this week took up charter school legislation, the governor's education budget, seat belts on "motor coach" style buses, raising the compulsory age for school attendance to 18, and bills for early childhood literacy, while the Senate has been struggling with the very difficult issues of testing.

Minnesota began charter school legislation in the nation in 1991. The recent audit of charter schools in Minnesota by the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) prompted many of the provisions in this large and far reaching bill HF 935. Its journey on to passage continues next week in House K-12 Education Finance.

Heard in House K-12 Education Finance this week was the Governor's budget with payment shifts of $1.13 billion and an addition of $156 million. The $156 million is to be used for the programs he proposes to increase teacher recruitment and teacher/principal effectiveness, improve teacher preparedness with changes to Minnesota colleges of teacher education, provide funding that averages $50 per pupil using a student "pay for progress" method, increase funding to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) for test development, cut other funds for them, require binding arbitration for teachers, change the status of the Perpich Arts High Schools to a charter, implement "Summers of Success" for 8th graders not successful with math, and require online learning experiences for all students. Many of these proposals will be debated throughout the session. Many of the proposals represent major policy shifts.

The Senate is taking up the very thorny issue of testing and assessments. The discussions are around summative and formative testing and the requirement that a student successfully complete one test to graduate. Formative tests (like NWEA) give teachers, students and parents diagnostic information in a timely manner to intervene and help a student progress. Summative tests (like MCA's) have a different reason for being; one of their main purposes is for the state to comply with NCLB requirements.

With the push for "college and career readiness" coming head to head with "testing fatigue," it is a constant source of conversation how testing can be useful, yet the number of tests reduced. This is a struggle. Current law requires that every high school junior pass the GRAD in order to graduate, yet the number who will pass it appears very low. The 2003 change in academic standards and a very high bar, especially in math, for the GRAD seem to affect the passage rate. A very interesting question and response came when Vice Chair Sen. Wiger asked testifier Kent Pekel, from Ramp Up to Readiness, if "a student's graduation should be linked to one test," Mr. Pekel's immediate response was "Linked, but not solely dependent on."

The current discussion is around using End of Course (EOC) exams rather than one GRAD given in a student's junior year when there is little time to remediate. It seems reasonable that a student who takes an EOC exam will have just completed the material and if (s)he does not pass will have the time to re-learn and re-take the exam. However, in Senate testimony from Dr. Rick Spicuzza, a highly regarded assessment expert, he cautioned the committee that moving to an EOC exam makes it impossible to continue using the state growth model just implemented by the MDE in December. A note: The Governor's proposed student "pay for progress" model for funding schools is based on use of that growth model.

You can get more familiar with the graduation requirements at our website, and thanks to our friends at Schools for Equity in Education, a pdf of the MDE Power Point presentation "Statewide Assessment" is available at their website.

In this issue

Bills to Watch
HF 322 (Nornes-R-Fergus Falls)  SF 314 (Skogen-DFL-Hewitt)
These companion bills increase the number of voter signatures required to revoke an operating referendum for education funding. This issue was brought to this level from the situation in Frazee-Vergas: after five years of trying to pass an operating levy they succeeded in the fall of 2007; almost immediately after that success, using current law, a group of dissenters collected the required number of signatures on a petition to place the referendum BACK on the ballot to be revoked or reduced.

This legislation calls for an increase in the number of signatures needed on a petition to take this action. As difficult a task as passing a levy is for parents, imagine getting one passed and then having to start all over again. We are watching this bill with great interest.