Tag: education

House DFL Leaders & Education Committees, House Members Hold Education Symposium: Bridging the Gap

House DFL logoEliminating racial disparities in education so children can reach their full potential

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA — House Speaker Hortman, Majority Leader Winkler and Education Committee Chairs Davnie and Youakim and House members today participated in the all-day Education Symposium: ‘Bridging the Gap’.

Legislators received a high-level overview of Minnesota’s education system, with a focus on solutions to eliminate racial disparities in education so children can reach their full potential. House members listened to public testimony from the students, educators, parents, superintendents, the state demographer, universities, and various education organizations that have been working on closing the opportunity gap using evidence-based research. An agenda listing the panels and speakers is attached.

“Every child in Minnesota deserves a great start in life — and that includes a world-class education,” said House Speaker Melissa Hortman. “We know that Minnesota has one of the largest opportunity gaps in education in the country. The racial disparities in Minnesota students’ math and reading test scores are inexcusable. It’s time for us to act, and ensure our children can reach their full potential.”

 

“Minnesota has a strong public education system, but it doesn’t work well for everyone,” said Rep. Jim Davnie, chair of the House Education Finance Committee. “We have the data; we have admired the racial disparities long enough. We need to act boldly towards solutions to the gaps our young people and families experience.”

 

“In pursuit of an equitable education for all, my purpose remains to serve as a role model for my students, and find ways to continually provide access and opportunity,” said Jessica Davis, 2019 Minnesota Teacher of the Year.  “I am honored to model deliberate equity by participating in today’s symposium to eliminate racial disparities in education, and I look forward to being a voice for my students in a conversation that will determine the fate of Minnesota’s younger generations. Every voice matters. Together we can realize a better future.”

 

“All Minnesota children deserve a quality education, no matter what zip code they live in, how they look, or where they come from,” remarked Rep. Cheryl Youakim, chair of the House Education Policy Committee. “Since becoming chair, our committee has been focused on community-based solutions and crafting public policy to close the opportunity gap. Our children deserve no less.”

 

“Closing the education opportunity gap and eliminating racial disparities is key to our state’s future success,” said House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler. “We’re going to continue this conversation with Minnesotans as we work to craft comprehensive solutions to address this issue that is holding back our children.”

 

Minnesota House DFLers will continue this crucial conversation across the state in a series of town hall meetings.

 

Trump’s Policies Have Hurt African Americans

This week, Trump will kick off his Black Voices for Trump Coalition initiative. Despite his claims, Trump’s policies have hurt African Americans. Take a look:

Economy:

Trump’s tax law disproportionately hurt African Americans. 

  • African Americans were disproportionately left out from Trump’s tax cut.
  • African American households received only 5% of the benefits from Trump’s tax law, despite making up about 13% of U.S. households.

Education:

Trump rolled back Obama-era efforts geared toward protecting black students from discrimination in school punishment. 

  • The Trump administration rolled back Obama-era guidance on school discipline aimed at protecting black students from being punished more severely.
  • DeVos delayed implementing regulations that helped identify racial disparities in special needs programs in public schools.
  • Trump’s Education Department rescinded Obama-era guidelines for public schools to consider race in trying to diversify their campuses.

Criminal Justice:

Trump took us backwards on criminal justice by rescinding and weakening Obama-era protections on policing.

Trump worked to make life harder for defendants and the imprisoned.

  • The Trump administration rescinded guidance geared toward protecting lower-income people from being buried in legal fees.
  • Trump’s administration cut support for prisoner halfway houses for those transitioning back into society.
  • The Trump administration sought to make legal aid less accessible and argued that some federal prisoners shouldn’t be entitled to challenge their sentences in court.

While Trump tries to publicly take credit for the release of inmates through criminal justice reform, his administration is privately working to put those same inmates back behind bars.

  • Trump is touting the First Step Act in an attempt to reach out to the Black community, but his administration is working behind the scenes to undermine the law and put the inmates Trump claims to champion back behind bars.

Trump encouraged harsher sentences for drug offenses, including non-violent ones.

  • Trump’s DOJ gave federal prosecutors wider latitude to pursue criminal drug charges and harsher sentences.
  • Trump’s DOJ reinstituted the death penalty and advised federal prosecutors to seek death sentences in cases involving large quantities of drugs.

It’s not just his policies that hurt the African American community. We all remember when Trump…

Trump defended white supremacists and repeatedly refused to denounce the KKK as a candidate and as president. 

  • Trump said removing confederate monuments was “trying to take away our culture, our history.”
  • Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides at a white supremacist march in Charlottesville.
  • Trump refused to disavow David Duke and the KKK four times in one interview.

Trump repeatedly took aim at African Americans during his 2016 campaign.

  • Trump believed that urban minorities writ large are “living in hell.”
  • Trump described African Americans and Hispanics as communities wholly impoverished and crime-ridden.
  • Trump suggested that all African Americans were living in poverty.
  • Trump claimed he had “no opinion” of whether or not there were racial disparities in law enforcement.
  • Trump decried the Black Lives Matter movement and thought they were looking for trouble.

 

The Danger Private School Voucher Programs Pose to Civil Rights

Since Betsy DeVos became the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, she has continued to push for a federally funded private school voucher program. These programs currently exist in 29 states and provide state support—through direct payments or tax credits—for students to attend private schools. (see text box) Voucher supporters such as Secretary DeVos describe vouchers as providing parents with freedom of choice in education. However, some states have historically used private school voucher programs as a means to avoid racially integrating schools, as occurred during the 1950s and 1960s.1 More recently, evidence has shown that these programs are not effective at improving educational achievement.2 Recent evaluations of certain voucher programs have shown no improvement in achievement or a decline in achievement for students who use them. For example, a Center for American Progress analysis found that the overall effect of the D.C. voucher program on students’ math achievement is equivalent to missing 68 days of school.3 Voucher programs are also not a viable solution in many rural areas of the country because these programs can strain funding resources in communities that already have lower densities of students and schools.4 Public funding should be used to ensure that all students have access to a quality public education, but voucher programs divert funding away from public schools. There have been a number of reports detailing how voucher programs provide public funding to schools that can legally remove or refuse to serve certain students altogether.5 This issue brief provides a comprehensive analysis of the various ways that voucher programs fail to provide the civil rights protections that students have in public schools. Continue reading “The Danger Private School Voucher Programs Pose to Civil Rights”

English Language Learners Bill Receives First Public Hearing

SAINT PAUL, MN – Today, legislation to increase funding for English Language Learners (ELL) received its first hearing in the Education Finance Committee. Rep. Kaohly Her (DFL – St. Paul), a former ELL student and chief author of the bill (H.F. 448), advocated to significantly increase ELL funding to help address unfunded costs to school districts. Per-pupil funding for English Learners has not been increased since 2003.

“As a former ELL student myself, I know that language barriers can prevent students from participating in and advocating for their own education,” said Rep. Her. “With growing new immigrant communities in Minnesota, it’s important for us to ensure all Minnesotans receive appropriate funding for an education that prepares them to be successful in life after the classroom.”

ELL funding goes to research-based language instruction programs that help all students achieve language proficiency and high academic outcomes. Minnesota Local Education Agencies enrolled 73,128 ELL students in the 2018-2019 school year.

A companion bill, S.F. 26, is carried by Sen. Charles Wiger (DFL – Maplewood) in the Senate.

Education is on the Ballot in November

While Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is working to dismantle the department she is charged with leading and Republican governors are ignoring educators’ pleas for better funding, voters are making their voices very clear – they want better pay for teachers and better schools for every child. Education is on the ballot in November, and Democrats are running and winning by making education central to their campaigns.

In Arizona, Democrats nominated education activist David Garcia for governor and 2016 Arizona Teacher of the Year Christine Marsh is running for state Senate. It’s no wonder; in April, teachers in Arizona took to the streets in support of better pay and school funding as part of the Red for Ed movement.

Arizona Capitol Times: “Garcia jumped into the governor’s race last year after Ducey signed legislation to create universal vouchers. Garcia was so incensed by the action that he characterized as a major blow to public education in Arizona that he set his sights on ousting Ducey.”

Continue reading “Education is on the Ballot in November”

The Government Just Stomped on Science—Right When We Needed It Most

The following article by Tanya Basu was posted on the Daily Beast website November 19, 2017:

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

Emily Slonecker is a second year PhD student student at the University of California, Irvine studying developmental cognitive research. She currently earns about $19,000 per year after taxes. The new tax plan, however, would drop her income from her work at the lab to about $16,000 a year in one of the most expensive places to live in America, or about $1300 a month. With her fixed monthly expenses ringing in at $1680, however, Slonecker is nowhere close to making the money she needs to live—and that doesn’t even begin to cover the loans she’s accumulated from her undergraduate years. “But that’s a whole other can of worms,” she brushed off. “If this thing passes and the school is unable to find a loophole, I will have to walk away from the path I have dreamed about my entire life, as will many students. I don’t know anyone who can survive on a negative net income for six years.”

Slonecker’s dire situation worries of her living costs might be the classic story of the poor graduate student: making ends meet with a patchwork of teaching jobs, grants, and, most importantly, scholarships waiving tuition that make spending long hours in the lab a fair tradeoff. Continue reading “The Government Just Stomped on Science—Right When We Needed It Most”

The Stakes Are Too High to Ignore the Trump-DeVos Agenda

The following article by Catherine Brown and Meg Benner was posted on the Center for American Progress website September 5, 2017:

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, some advocates1 and philanthropists are shifting their focus and energy from the federal level to the state and local level in the hopes of maintaining the momentum of gains made by the Obama administration. As Ernest Young, a professor at Duke University, describes, “[f]ederalism is not a conservative or liberal thing. … It offers a way of not having all your eggs in one basket.”2 This approach is important but incomplete.

Since the nation’s founding, states and the school districts they created have been in the driver’s seat when it comes to education policy; they are central to the academic outcomes and well-being of children nationwide. While the No Child Left Behind era saw a strengthened federal role and increased federal funding for education,3 states and localities have always provided the vast majority of school funding and made the majority of important decisions about how schools operate. Continue reading “The Stakes Are Too High to Ignore the Trump-DeVos Agenda”

Are Trump and DeVos Waging a War on Teachers?

The following article by Kami Spicklemire and Stephenie Johnson was posted on the Center for American Progress website June 5, 2017:

President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos in April, 2017

Throughout his campaign and time in office, President Donald Trump has touted being a “tremendous believer in education.” And Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has repeatedly called for “equal opportunity for all kids.” However, neither Trump nor DeVos has demonstrated any interest in supporting or leveraging the most critical resource for improving student achievement—teachers. Indeed, research shows that well-supported, highly skilled educators achieve an average of 1.5 years of academic growth among their students.

In the most recent budget proposal, however, President Trump and Secretary DeVos have decided to completely withdraw federal investment from the educator workforce. This threatens every child’s access to a quality education. Throughout their first several months on the job, Trump and DeVos have shown nothing but disrespect for teachers and the teaching profession. Continue reading “Are Trump and DeVos Waging a War on Teachers?”

Five startling things Betsy DeVos just told Congress

The following article by Valerie Strauss was posted on the Washington Post website May 24, 2017:

Does this sound familiar? Betsy DeVos went to Capitol Hill to testify before U.S. lawmakers. She didn’t answer a lot of direct questions and engaged in some contentious debates with some members.

That happened in January when she went before the Senate education committee for her confirmation hearing, during which she said schools needed guns to protect against grizzly bears. This time, the education secretary didn’t talk about guns, but she did say that states should have the right to decide whether private schools that accept publicly funded voucher students should be allowed to discriminate against students for whatever reason they want. Continue reading “Five startling things Betsy DeVos just told Congress”

How Jeff Sessions Helped Kill Equitable School Funding in Alabama

The following article by Ryan Gabrielson was posted on the ProPublica website January 30, 2017:

A lawsuit in the 1990s had Alabama poised to fund poor black school districts as fairly as wealthy white schools. As state attorney general, Sessions fought the effort passionately.

In the early 1990s, children across Alabama’s large rural stretches still attended faltering public schools, some with exposed wiring and rainwater leaking into classrooms. The education was in disrepair, too. Teachers couldn’t assign homework for lack of textbooks. A steel mill announced it would no longer hire local high school graduates because most tested below the eighth grade level. In short, Alabama’s most economically disadvantaged students, primarily black children and those with disabilities, were missing out on a basic education.

Then, for a moment, change seemed possible. A civil-rights lawsuit challenging the system for funding Alabama’s schools succeeded, and the state’s courts in 1993 declared the conditions in the poor schools a violation of Alabama’s Constitution. Gov. Guy Hunt, who had battled the litigation, accepted defeat, and vowed to work with the courts to negotiate a solution for equitably funding all of Alabama’s schools. Continue reading “How Jeff Sessions Helped Kill Equitable School Funding in Alabama”