Make no mistake, Minnesota has some awesome high schools producing state, national, and even world leaders. The yearly U.S. News rankings of America's top High schools are out. The usual suspects top the list, along with a few surprises.
Minneapolis Southwest is the top High School in Minnesota and in the top 200 nationwide, out of tens of thousands of high schools. Pretty impressive. A funny thing happens though, when you use subsets of test scores for judging schools, and in essence their teachers. You see, the number 1 high school in the state has been labeled a failure for at least six straight years. Tests are wonderful for guiding day to day instruction, and improving teaching, and focusing efforts, but used to make high stakes decisions about closing schools?
Luckily for them, Southwest does not receive Federal Title 1 Funds. If they did, they would have been closed down four years ago! I will say that again for emphasis. If the #1 High School in Minnesota just had a few more poor kids, they would have shut it down years ago.
Saint Paul Central is another great, urban school. It is ranked fifth in the state. Test scores tells us that the fifth best school in Minnesota has been a failure for at least six years. Again, there are not enough poor kids at Central, otherwise they would have been shut down. St. Louis Park, Eastview in Apple Valley, TrekNorth in Bemidji, and Eagan are all also massive failures based on test scores, but top ten. All in all, more than half of the top ten are made up of NCLB failures.
The only Title 1 School in the top ten is TrekNorth in Bemidji. They have a large poor, and Native American population. They are an amazing school. Because of our obsession with test scores they are on the verge of being shut down. Luckily for most of the top ten, they will never be punished. Their kids will not be disrupted. Their staff will not be fired en masse. If you have enough poor kids though, you can be top ten and shut down.Please tell me the general public can see the insanity of this obsession with test scores? Please tell me you understand that the teachers of Southwest are just as big of heroes as at Edina? Please tell me you don't think the staff at our #1 school should be fired en masse like they do to Title 1 schools.
As I noted just after redistricting, Rep. John Kline (R-MN) is in trouble. His strongly Republican district got a whole lot bluer. Up until now, he held a safe seat -- his stances and voting record were ignored as we DFLers couldn't mount a decent campaign and attract the attention of national Dems.
But regular readers of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wouldn't know this.
The positions Kline takes matter and the national Dems are paying attention. His past votes matter now, too. I think moderate to liberal voters in the district will care that he's repeatedly taken positions and made votes that hurt students. And now the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting his race:
The national campaign arm of Democrats in the U.S. House has officially put Republican U.S. Rep. John Kline's 2nd District seat in its sights. It has put his DFL opponent former state Rep. Mike Obermuller on the group's "Red to Blue" list of possible districts to add to the Democratic column.
"[Obermuller] is going to have our full support," said Robby Mook, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "We are already investing in a ground game there to help make sure we have the infrastructure to turn out the vote."
(MPR)
So now that Mike Obermueller is our endorsed candidate, the DCCC has him on their radar and Obermueller has pledged to raise $1 million, we can make a race of this.
This is great news for DFLers in the southern suburbs.
But if you're a "journalist" with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, its a proxy war. This is the kind of meaningless analysis we'd expect from the Strib. The fact that the GOP and Dems are battling over student loans is beside the point in terms of John Kline. If his district had remained as conservative as it was before redistricting, Corey Mitchell wouldn't be writing this story.
As chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., has challenged President Obama's policies at every turn, on issues from the No Child Left Behind Act to labor laws.
But it's his stance on interest rates on Stafford Loans for college students, which will double to 6.8 percent on July 1 if Congress doesn't act, that has sparked a national debate that's reverberating through Minnesota weeks later.
An issue that lingered for months with little attention, the student loan debate has now become a proxy war for the November elections: pitting student loans against other priorities such as oil companies, small business or the president's health care law.
But Strib readers wouldn't know this because they don't cover Kline very often. And when they do, they often miss the real story. Like why student loan rates and John Kline are now an important story in Minnesota.
I look forward to a larger, brighter spotlight focused on Rep. Kline. It'll be good to watch him squirm and then run for cover like a bug.
"The American people should never have to choose between their health and their education. Today House Republicans told women they can't have preventive breast and cervical exams, and told children they can't have regular check-ups or immunizations, if we are going to have fair student loan rates.
"If Republicans were serious about protecting the middle class they would reinforce the importance of higher education, which is one of the surest vehicles to economic opportunity. Instead they want to sacrifice crucial health care services for women and children.
"According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, total outstanding student loan debt rose to more than $1 trillion last year, making it higher than credit card debt. Minnesota's Office of Higher Education reports that cost of attending one of the state's public four-year institutions is $18,454, slightly higher than the national average at $18,205. And, the average Minnesota college student has $29,000 in loan debt.
"I cannot support a policy that sets one group of working Americans against another while wealthy individuals and corporations continue to reap the best this country has to offer. We can keep college within reach of middle-class Americans without sacrificing fairness."
(from email press release)
Don't be fooled though, he and the Republicans won't be negotiating in good faith.
Rep. John Kline (R-MN) was opposed to keeping the costs of student loans low. He cited concerns about increasing the debt. This is quite hypocritical considering Republicans spent money like drunken Marines on leave during the Bush era.
U.S. Rep. John Kline will back Republican-sponsored legislation to keep interest on federal subsidized Stafford Loans from doubling this summer.
U.S. House members could vote on the Interest Rate Reduction Act -- which would cap the interest rates at 3.4 percent for the next year -- as early as Friday, Speaker John Boehner said in a news conference Wednesday.
Supporting the bill would represent an about-face for Kline, who had denounced the push by Democrats to keep the interest rates intact for another year, criticizing the effort as a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
"No one wants to see interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans double in a few short months," Kline said in a statement released Wednesday.
Boehner's plan is very cynical and Kline, the loyal toady, will go along with it. Boehner's cynical ploy is to make sure his bill fails because of the poison pills he inserts in it while attempting to blame Democrats for his intransigence.
First it was Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty refusing to sign any bill that adequately funded education in Minnesota. Now its the Republican-controlled legislature. They went so far last session as to steal the money they'd already promised, but they renamed the theft a "shift."
The bottom line is our education system has been slashed year after year. Its like a diet plan that has resulted in limb amputations.
We see the effects of the chronic underfunding of our education system each election year. School districts put levies on the ballot not to pay for a new facilities but to cover basic operating costs. The Duluth School Board wants to keep classroom sizes down so their kids get a better education.
The Duluth School Board will move ahead with plans to ask taxpayers for more money for classroom operations next fall.
...
Superintendent Bill Gronseth said 85 percent of Minnesota school districts have declining enrollment, and this year's $50 per pupil increase from the state was mostly canceled by the expiration of a $39 state levy to taxpayers.
(Duluth News Tribune)
Rep. John Kline (R-MN) once again opposes a plan which would keep loan costs down for college students. As Chair of the House Education Committee, he is no friend of students. Public Enemy Number One might be a better title.
U.S. Rep. John Kline, who heads the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and is the House's point man on education issues, is among the Republicans in Congress reluctant to extend the current rates, a move that would cost about $6 billion per year in additional subsidies, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.
"We must now choose between allowing interest rates to rise or piling billions of dollars on the back of taxpayers," Kline said in a statement.
After years of approving budgets that spent like drunken Marine on leave (or secret service agents in Cartegna), Kline is suddently concerned about a $6 billion increase that will affect everyone seeking higher education. This is in the vicinity of 0.17% of overall federal budget.
Kline has no problem spending $700 billion on defense. He has no problem spending $3 billion on a jet engine project the Pentagon doesn't even want. Yet spending the equivalent of 0.8% of the defense budget to reduce the debt our kids have upon graduation is the line he draws in the sand.
In 2010 he opposed President Obama's plan to reduce loan costs by having the low-interest students issue by the federal government instead of banks. Kline opposed the idea because his corporate backers would lose a cash cow.
Kline also criticized Democratic-backed legislation in 2010 that revamped loan programs for college students, shifting the responsibility for making low-rate student loans to the government. The new law ended federal subsidies that once went to private banks.
At the time, Kline said the new law replaced a "popular student loan model with yet another one-size-fits-all government bureaucracy."
So Kline voted for the Homeland Security Department, the biggest bureacracy in our history, yet a minor move to reduce student loan costs is a problem?
Last week Mitt Romney told us that it was President Obama waging the war on wisdom. His aide told us that 92.3% of all job losses were to women. Supposedly this meant, ipso facto, that Obama fired all of these women, or at least caused their firing. Like any good Republican lie, there is a kernel of truth in Romney's statistic.
Saying that a lot of women lost jobs is important. Actually analyzing where those losses came from is even more important. Forbe's Rick Ungar actually did a great job of further uncovering where these job losses came from. The job losses came from fields that Republicans don't think should be jobs anyway. Public sector jobs.
The Republicans, for once, have been very, very efficient. Killing two birds with one stone type efficient. You see, most of the job losses came from Republican states hammering teachers and state workers. The teaching field just happens to be dominated by women. Union clout stomped, and women were just a collateral bonus.
We all know women are not treated equally in the workplace. There used to be mechanisms for them to get an equal stake. Unions in the workplace and equal pay laws in the courts.
It is almost as if Republicans politicians are idiot savants. Totally dysfunctional in all aspects of life, except for a very specific realm in which they show genius. They cannot run a country or a state, but when it comes to destroying opponents they are brilliant. Heck, Governor Walker is the ultimate "Rain Man". First, he destroyed the unions, who were the only ones lobbying for professional women. Once the lobbyists were gone, he repealed the equal pay laws so they had no protection in the courts either.
In Minnesota we have the same war being waged. With a Democratic Governor they have to be more subtle, but it is a two pronged war non-the-less. They cannot completely destroy the unions, so instead they are trying to slowly chip away at union rights in female dominated professions.
I would ask anyone to take an honest look at the agenda against teachers unions, and come to a different conclusion. A collective voice for women in the workplace is being silenced. It is being silenced in the name of power and control. It is being silenced in order to maintain the current, unhealthy power structure. Please join me after the break.
Bottom line: Women vote Democratic. Women have few voices in our society. Part of the war on women is destroying those who speak for them.
Republicans once again prove they are no longer fiscally responsible.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the MNGOP's bill to borrow more money to pay back the "school shift." Last session Republicans borrowed money that they'd promised to pay our school districts to cover the deficit they'd created. This robbery via an accounting trick was euphemistically called a "school shift."
The Republicans solution was to pay the "school shift" back by taking money from the state's reserve fund. Dayton characterized their ploy as "perpetuat[ing] the terrible legislative practice of the past decade: trying to solve an immediate financial problem by substituting a larger problem, which will not be visible until later."
In vetoing the bill, Dayton noted that the problems created by the MNGOP downgraded MN's credit rating. This is from his veto letter to Top Clown Kurt Zellers (R-Maple Grove):
Last session added $1.4 billion of debt to the State's balance sheet. It was the principal reason for the subsequent downgrading of its credit rating, which increases the cost to the State of borrowing money. Now the desire to avoid public accountability for those actions motivates yet another ploy: to transfer that fiscal problem from the school districts to the state.
Top Clown Zellers appears completely blind to his fiscal responsibility. He attempts to shift the blame to Dayton and feigns concern for MN's students:
"I took Governor Dayton at his word after the November forecast when he said: 'I am hopeful, however, that continuing improvement in that forecast will permit us to accelerate our schedule for repaying our schools the money borrowed from them last summer.' The forecast did improve. We can accelerate repaying schools and sent him the bill, which had bipartisan support, to do it. He vetoed it. When you have $1.2 billion cash on hand, it is time to start paying your debt. Repaying schools keeps our financial commitment to students and reduces our long-term debt. Governor Dayton would prefer our schools borrow money to pay bills while he keeps the cash in his pocket. Governor Dayton's staunch unwillingness to move forward on a shared goal of putting kids first with no excuses and no exceptions is unconscionable."
Dayton, a step ahead of the Top Clown in the House, chides the MNGOP for their fiscal irresponsibility:
As elected officials, we are responsible for the Wise financial management of our state. Our Íirst priority should be assuring state goVernment's financial stability. This bill would significantly increase that risk. Raiding two-thirds ofthe Budget Reserve would reduce our protection against future volatility. While $653 million in reserve seems like a large amount, it is less than 2% ofthe State's $34 billion biennial budget. The Minnesota Department of Management and Budget (MMB), in its January 2012 Budget Reserve Report to the Legislature, stated that the State actually needs a Reserve of $1 .3 billion, because of our revenue volatility. Thus, in MMB's judgment, our current reserve is only one-half of what is needed to manage adequately the inherent risk.
The following video depicts, almost exactly, how education reformers from A.L.E.C. to Michelle Rhee think we need to "reform" education. You see, they do not think we need to change how we teach at all. The post industrial model we have used for a century is just fine with them. Under that model, the privileged were taught to think, and the poor and minorities were taught enough to be useful to the privileged. Today they learn that all of life's problems can be solved in two minutes by filling in the appropriately rehearsed bubble.
Those of us who want to fix our shameful gap know we have to change how we teach. Those who just want to dismantle public education want to change everything except how we teach because it has kept them in control for a hundred years. The ALEC groups, StudentFirst groups, and Michelle Rhee's of the world want you to believe we just have a bunch of terrible teachers, and we just need that super human to go in and save the day. This is not how any successful countries operate, but who cares. It works in the movies! It has been proven over and over that cognitive jobs actually respond negatively to simplistic carrot and stick motivations. It has been proven over and over that evaluating individiual teachers on test scores actually reduces student learning. This is obvious to anyone in the profession who knows the best way to help all kids is to work together on all kids.
All that evidence aside, these reformers just think we need more super human missionaries. Please enjoy the Student's First documentary on who can save education. The documentary also seems pretty accurate on what reformers think urban high schools look like because most of them have never set foot in one. They just know how to save them.
Minnesota Republicans keep talking about creating jobs. But its all talk. They haven't passed a bonding bill, yet. In fact, they might not at all. Time will tell.
Aside from myriad constitutional amendments (19 so far this session), they've zeroed on public education and unions.
Tea Party Republicans hate hate hate public education. They demonize teachers and want to weaken our public education system anyway they can. Teabaggers also hate unions. For them, unions epitomize what's wrong with America. Whatever that means. At any rate, they pathologically hate unions.
Futhermore, ALEC has instructed the MNGOP to push a bunch of bills, and many of their muppets have done as instructed.
Here are the anti-public education bills:
HF1870/SF1690: School districts allowed to base unrequested leave of absence and discharge and demotion decisions on teacher evaluation outcomes.
HF2506/SF2059: Education staff development reserved revenue allocation requirement elimination.
Eliminates dispersal of staff development funds to ensure that all schools in the district share in the staff development opportunities.
HF2580/SF2546: Low-performing schools parent request for school districts to intervene authorization.
Allows schools to revert back to old parameters of NCLB, including firing teachers and principals, changing to a charter school.
HF2949/SF2482: Prohibiting school employees from using school facilities - will kill membership recruitment: 50 - 25 - 25 distribution eliminated from staff development.
HF0329/SF0577: Public school employees prohibited from using public funds and resources to advocate to pass, elect, or defeat a political candidate, ballot question, or pending legislation.
HF2621/SF2306: Special or independent school districts made subject to mayoral control.
Schools could operate as charters and don't necessarily have to tenured teachers or unionized teachers.
Does not allow teachers to strike if the union has received a qualifying offer that is equal to the percentage increase in the general education formula.
HF0273/SF0388: Students at low-performing schools enrollment options established.
Vouchers, takes public money from public school.
HF1858: School district operating referenda required to be held at the general election in even-numbered years.
HF2651/SF2404: Teachers charged with felonies suspensions without pay authorized.
Teachers could be laid off without pay without being convicted. Doesn't provide for total payback if teacher is not convicted, nor does it clarify what happens if a teacher isn't convicted but disciplined by the board for another action. Authors say it is the conforming language but it does not align with cities of the first class.
Here are the anti-union bills:
HF0371/SF0247: Local government employees required to approve participation in or withdrawal from the public employee's insurance program.
HF1598/SF1384: Three-fifths vote required to enact a law imposing or increasing certain taxes.
This is a high priority ALEC bill. Would result in California-style budget-slashing every year. In other words, yearly state employee layoffs.
HF1612/SF1364: Budgeted spending limited to the amount collected in prior biennium, and constitutional amendment proposed.
This would force nearly yearly layoffs of state employees
HF1661/SF1381: Level of budgeted spending limited to 98 percent of the amount forecast to be collected in the biennium, and constitutional amendment proposed.
Another bill to limit spending resulting in state employee layoffs every year.
HF1974/SF2078: Contract terms continuance not allowed after expiration of a collective bargaining agreement.
HF2150/SF1738: Public employee insurance program (PEIP) participation conditions temporary moratorium.
HF2168/SF2010: Minnesota statewide and major local benefit retirement plan actuarial reporting interest, salary scale, and payroll growth assumptions revised.
HF2360/SF2031: Public Employees Retirement Association; minimum monthly salary amount increased for plan coverage eligibility.
HF2448: Collective bargaining agreement employee group insurance contract requirements modified.
HF1848: School boards authorized to determine number and identity of annuity contract vendors.
MN House Representative John Benson is running for re-election in his northern Minnetonka and southern Plymouth district. John is among the most knowledgeable, thoughtful, open and articulate legislators in Saint Paul. He is a law maker who scrapes away the cheese and shuns the chest thumping noise in the House. Follow the link to his current appearance with Tim O'Brien on Democratic Visions the public issues cable show I produce for the entire metro region through DFL Senate District 48. Ohh yes, share this link with others.
MN House DFLer Linda Slocum can be seen on the current edition of Democratic Visions, arguably the best video venue in the state for progressives -- no crummy IPhone video or decorative plastic plants placed around the studio.
The Richfield Democrat talks about representing a diverse Richfield/Bloomington constituency, education, GOP constitutional amendments and the House of Representatives.
Democratic Visions is produced by volunteers through DFL Senate District 42 at the Southwest Community TV access studio in Eden Prairie. The program can be seen in Hopkins, Minnetonka, Edina, Richfield and Eden Prairie on Channel 15, Sundays at 9 p.m. and Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. The program is also broadcast on Bloomington Cable Access Television Channel 16 on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m., and Wednesdays at 2:00 p.m. and on Minneapolis MTN Channel 17 - Sundays at 7 p.m.
Minnesota Republicans covered massive budget shortfalls last spring by an accounting trick. They decided not to give schools the money they promised them. Of course, after all our schools had budgeted based upon the amounts they'd been promised. Republicans call this bit of Enron accounting a "shift."
The brilliant minds amongst the Republican legislative leadership have come up with a solution to the crisis they've caused our education system: pay back schools out of the state's reserve fund.
Republicans in the Minnesota House are proposing to tap two thirds of the state's budget reserve to pay back a portion of a K12 school shift they used to balance the budget in 2011.
Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, says the measure is part of a K12 bill that will be heard in committee tomorrow. He said paying back schools with $430 million from the state's budget reserve is a better use of the money.
"If you look at accounting principles, it's better to reduce your debt and reduce your liabilities than to have that cash sitting around," Garofalo said.
What's that you ask? Isn't the reserve meant for rainy day or don't we have to repay the the reserve fund or when are we going to repay the entire IOU?
Quit being so negative. Never you mind. Nothing to see here.
Republicans never fix problems they cause ... they just kick the can down the road. Aren't y'all used to it, yet? Don't you all remember Gov. Tim Pawlenty papering over his massive holes in his budgets with accounting tricks and various gimmicks?
What bad things happened other than a bridge fell down and Minnesota now has a structural deficit that will only cause our deficits to expand indefinitely?
Thanks to screwed-up conservative priorities, Minnesota state government has taken to an exceedingly inglorious practice of delaying payments to schools, to balance budgets in the wake of tax cut handouts for the rich and corporations. There's a proposal to change all that.
Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature say they want to end a tax break for foreign operating corporations to help pay back recent payment delays to K-12 schools.
The Legislature and governor delayed $2.2 billion in payments to schools over the past four years to balance the state's budget. Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, said closing what she calls corporate tax loopholes would generate $450 million a year. She said the plan would pay back the schools within six years.
This time around, the $323 million will be used to further replenish reserves and begin restoring the $2.7 billion lawmakers borrowed from public schools...
As I noted just after redistricting, 
In contrast to Rep. John Kline (R-MN) who was 
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the MNGOP's bill to borrow more money to pay back the "school shift." Last session Republicans borrowed money that they'd promised to pay our school districts to cover the deficit they'd created. This robbery via an accounting trick was euphemistically called a "school shift."
Minnesota Republicans keep talking about creating jobs. But its all talk. They haven't passed a bonding bill, yet. In fact, they might not at all. Time will tell.
Thanks to screwed-up conservative priorities, Minnesota state government has taken to an exceedingly inglorious practice of delaying payments to schools, to balance budgets in the wake of tax cut handouts for the rich and corporations. There's a proposal 
