This statistic should alarm you: only 50% of Minnesota’s students are reading at grade level proficiency. That’s 1 out of every 2 kids.
If you scored 50% on a test, you’d receive a grade of an “F.”
The rate of literacy in schools among our students is an educational crisis and should be treated as a disaster demanding immediate intervention. It is false – to all those saying it – that education scores are down due to COVID-19, as scores were dropping steadily before the pandemic.
And yet, the Democrats who are in control or our state’s government refuse to address or even discuss this catastrophe. Their solution is to simply throw more money at schools – with plenty of strings attached – and hope the media ignores this embarrassment. Which, of course, it predictably does.
To be clear, I’m not blaming teachers. With more being asked of them and with student discipline problems on the rise, more teachers are leaving the profession than ever before. This is not a recipe for success, and is also contributing to our education crisis.
If you were to believe headlines from this session, you would think K-12 Education has never been better. Schools received “record funding.” That must mean our problems are over!
The question is, are you simply a headline reader and falling for the political rhetoric? Or are you digging deeper and following along and understanding that our schools are in a crisis situation?
There are two facts associated with K-12 funding this session – one over-reported, and one under-reported. But both are undeniably true:
During the 2023 legislative session, Minnesota schools received a record amount of new funding - $2.2 billion.
Minnesota’s schools are now worse off financially after receiving this record amount than they were before the law was passed.
The second fact is due to new mandates approved by the Democrat-led legislature. These are basically marching orders sent down to the local school districts from state government. They must be followed and many of them come with a significant price tag. 65 new mandates were ushered into law this session, creating more work for schools and putting more burdens on stressed-out teachers who are already struggling to find time to teach basic subjects like reading and math.
Don’t believe the political spin: instead of sending this new revenue directly to the classrooms to help students, far too much of it has been placed into special pots restricting the way districts can utilize it.
In addition, these mandates take away the local control of school boards and administrators, the people who best understand the problems being faced by your school district. Local districts should have the funding and flexibility to innovate and meet their individual needs. But the Democrats who control state government have insisted they know best.
By implanting 65 new mandates – such as forcing every Minnesota public school to stock free menstrual products in BOYS bathrooms – Democrats have made it clear they do not have a problem with a one-size fits all approach that hinders many schools statewide.
I’ve been holding open panel discussions throughout Minnesota so people can learn the truth about what is going on in our schools. Statistically, we are spending more and more dollars, but our children’s education is suffering. We need to get back to the basics, and that starts with the Legislature focusing on ways to help students improve their performance in core academic subjects such as reading and math.
If kids cannot read, they cannot succeed. It truly is that simple.
I am urging people to get involved and become a voice for change. Just because the Democrats in charge don’t want to talk about it, and the media at large doesn’t want to report on it, doesn’t change the fact that students and schools are struggling and that our state is facing a very real – and to date, unaddressed - crisis.
