Tag Archives: education

Jensen Blocking Improvements for Education, Nursing Homes, Roads, and Mental Health

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GOP gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen says he wants a special session to address public safety. 

Great. Despite the GOP insistence that DFL candidates support “defunding the police,” DFL Governor Tim Walz has proposed $300 million in public safety improvements. DFL legislators have some other ideas of their own for improvements.  For his part, the Trump-supporting Jensen hasn’t proposed any funding, saying he would leave such minor details to the Legislature. But Jensen does have a brief fact sheet which makes it seems as if he supports a lot of the same general approaches as Walz.

So, here is a rare case of bipartisan common ground, right?

Nope. Despite the fact that Minnesota has a massive $9.25 billion budget surplus that can help Minnesotans in multiple ways, Jensen is stubbornly insisting that public safety be the only issue addressed in a special session. Everyone, including Jensen, knows that such an insistence is a deal breaker when dealing with a bipartisan representative body that has broad-ranging responsibilities to the Minnesotans it serves.

To be clear, Jensen’s narrow-minded demand that the Legislature have an anti-crime only special session means the party that claims to be all about tax cuts is effectively blocking the largest tax cut in Minnesota history. Stop and think about that for a second.

And that’s not all.

The Republican party that insists it isn’t anti-education is blocking $1 billion in improvements for a struggling e-12 education system.

The party that historically relies on large majorities of seniors to get reelected is blocking a massive amount of funding that is needed to keep struggling nursing homes open.

The party that claims to be best for the economy is blocking a huge amount of investment in transportation and infrastructure that economists say is necessary for economic efficiency and growth.

The party that calls for improving the mental health system after every tragedy that is enabled by easily accessible guns is blocking a $93 million mental health package.

And the party that is opportunistically running a “tough on crime” campaign is demanding a “my way or the highway” legislative approach that is serving as the death knell for a sweeping anti-crime bill pending at the Legislature.

When Jensen made this announcement, the headlines in numerous publications were variations of “Jensen Pitches Public Safety Plan.”  That’s accurate, but incomplete.

It would have been just as accurate, and more complete and illuminating, if the headlines had said something like “Jensen Blocks Improvements for Education, Nursing Homes, Roads, and Mental Health.”  That’s an equally important part of Jensen’s extreme right-wing candidacy that is currently being under-reported.

An Unlikely Liberal Explains Himself

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I have a nearly perfect profile for a political conservative. I check all the “right” boxes: I’m a straight white male. I’m a native born American, with northern European heritage, and my family’s immigration happened several generations ago.   I was raised in a middle class family with a stay-at-home mom in a small city in a bright red state. I attended a religious elementary school.

Now, I am married with three kids. I go to a protestant church. I worked in the corporate world for a while, and started my own successful small business 16 years ago.  I’m beyond middle age, in my mid-50s.  I’m financially comfortable.

That’s a whole lot of right wing risk factors. If you presented that profile to a political scientist or demographer and asked them to guess my political leanings, they’d surely guess that I’m a conservative.   After all, Pew Research has found the following about contemporary political conservatives:

More than nine-in-ten (92%) non-Hispanic white and 56% male. The oldest of the groups (61% ages 50 and older). Married (79%), Protestant (72%, including 43% white evangelical), and financially comfortable (70% say paying the bills is not a problem). Many are gun owners (57%) and regular churchgoers (57% attend weekly or more often), and fully 81% are homeowners.

Other than the gun, that is me. You might as well fit me from my Tea Party tricorne hat right now.

So how is it that the guy who would be Central Casting’s idea of conservative is a liberal?  My conservative friends speculate that I must be a) uninformed, b) brain-washed by the liberal media; c) deranged; and/or c) stupid.

But I have a different explanation: I’m liberal because I recognize a few fundamental things about myself.

I GOT A HEAD START, AND OTHERS DESERVE OPPORTUNTIES TOO. First, I recognize that I had a head start in life, and others deserve an opportunity to catch up. I have come to realize that being a straight, white, male, Christian American who was not born into poverty has given me unearned societal privilege.  After all, we’re a nation whose private and public sector have always been controlled by straight, white, male, Christians of means, and that fact has given me significant built-in advantages that others don’t enjoy.

I often try to deny it, and chalk up my successes to my hard work, charm and talent. But the fact is, in many ways I was just plain lucky. Through an accident of birth, I was born with traits that the ruling class shares, and that helped me enjoy extremely important things in life, such as a stable childhood, a solid education, good jobs, raises, wealth and equal protection under the law.

For this reason, I support public policies that bring equal opportunity for those who, through no fault of their own, didn’t have that kind of head start — poor people, people of color, non-Christians, and new immigrants, among others. Fairness dictates that those folks have equal opportunities, and that’s why I support affirmative action, law enforcement reforms, targeted education scholarships, targeted income supports, pay equity legislation, progressive taxation, and civil rights laws.

Instead of protecting the privilege that fell into my lap as a newborn, the fair thing to do is to take steps to level the playing field for people who weren’t lucky enough to win the birth lottery.  Extending equal opportunity to less privileged Americans is how the American Dream of upward mobility lives on, and I want it to live on.

Equity_and_equality_graphic

I’M SELFISH, AND I NEED TO BE SAVED FROM MYSELF. Second, I’m a liberal because I recognize that I and all humans need to be saved from ourselves. I know that we are all continually tempted to do things that helps us individually, but hurt the community as a whole. For instance, to feather our own nest many of us will cheat on our taxes, pollute, mislead fellow citizens, or otherwise harm others. Given that unfortunate part of our collective human nature, we need governmental rules and enforcement bodies to deter us from selfishly harming the community on which we all rely.

Because humans are selfish, we need the IRS, cops, soldiers, environmental and business regulations and civil and criminal laws.  We need laws and law enforcement to have the stable, safe, fair and efficient communities that individuals and businesses need to thrive.  And if you agree that administration and enforcement of laws is necessary, you have to be willing to, sigh, pay for it.

I BENEFITED FROM GOVERNMENT, AND NEED TO PAY IT FORWARD. I’m also a liberal because I recognize that government played a big role in my success. To some extent, I actually did “pull myself up by my bootstraps,” as the conservatives like to say. After all, I studied and worked hard, and overcame difficulties. But fortunately, I wasn’t alone in my pulling.   I pulled, but so did past generations of taxpayers, with the government services and public goods they funded. The taxpayer-funded GI Bill, public schools, Social Security and Medicare pulled my parents up into the middle class, so that I could have a stable household in which to develop.  My parents’ generation of taxpayers pulled me and my wife up, so that we could attend subsidized schools and universities, own a home, and benefit, directly and indirectly, from a government-funded infrastructure, safety net, regulatory structure and security force.

A lot of folks in past generations paid to lift up my family, and I appreciate their sacrifices. So now that I have benefited, fairness dictates that I return the favor to the people coming up the ladder behind me.

I NEED GREAT COMMUNITIES FOR SELFISH REASONS. The things I just mentioned may sound very altruistic, and I do hope the Golden Rule underpins my liberalism. But there is also a very selfish reason I am a liberal.

I support liberal policies because I, my kids and my grandkids will all benefit from living in stable, pleasant, efficient, and stimulating communities full of a diverse group of happy and successful people.  It would suck to live in a gated community surrounded by a chaotic society, a crumbling infrastructure, crime, squalor and people who hated me, even if it meant my taxes were  lower. That’s a more selfish reason why I’m willing to pay to help the community-as-a-whole succeed together.

This is not to say that I support unlimited government.  Of course, I want government to continually strive to get more effective and efficient. Of course, I oppose illogical and unnecessary laws and regulations. Of course, I want incentives for people to work hard, and take personal responsibility for their actions.  Of course, I want equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes.

But there are still plenty of very good reasons for successful white males like me to support progressive policies.

Making Standardized Tests A Less Evil Necessary Evil

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standardized_testsFor a lot of years, whenever I thought about standardized tests, I only thought about how much I sucked at them. The difference between my strong grades and my weak standardized test scores was dramatic.  My low standardized test scores cost me early academic opportunities, scholarship money and self-confidence.

But now that I’ve been professionally successful for a few decades, I’ve been thinking about those tests in a different way.

The primary reason I was lousy at standardized tests was that I was always running out of time, and being forced to randomly fill in answers at the last moment. More to the point, I was running out of time was because I couldn’t stop thinking about things unrelated to standardized test problem-solving.

While reading through questions, I’d continually think about all kinds of extraneous things:

  • “Why did the test makers word it that way? Wouldn’t it have been more clear if they had said…(composing in head)?”
  • “What is it about me that makes me a crappy test taker?
  • “Why do test makers think that particular kind of question is a reasonable indicator of future success?  Are they right?”
  • “Why do they need to time tests?  Is life like Jeopardy where you have to buzz in the fastest?”
  • “Why a #2 pencil?  What do the numbers even mean?  Is there a good reason for that, or is it a control thing?  Would they really throw me out I snuck in a rebel pencil?”

Why? What? How? You don’t need to be Stanley Kaplan to understand how this kind of frivolous intellectual meandering hurts standardized test performance. Every moment I was diverting thoughts to those kinds of questions is obviously a moment I wasn’t solving problems.

But I couldn’t stop myself. Today they might say I had inattentive type Attention Deficit Disorder. In those days teachers said I was “dreamy” or “spacey,” and they were correct.  I was more successful in the classroom, where time was much less of an issue and different things were evaluated, but my off-topic musing was devastating when it came to tightly timed standardized tests.

Weakness Becomes Strength

But in later years, I’ve had an epiphany of sorts about all of this: It occured to me that the thought processes I was using when I should have been focused on the standardized test is precisely the kind of thought processes that has made me successful on a professional level.   I get hired because people say I’m analytical, creative, unconventional, curious about a wide variety of subjects, a persuasive writer, and can put myself into others’ heads.

In other words, if I had been better at the things that made me a poor standardized test taker, I might have stunk at my chosen career.

Ban Standardized Tests?

The realization that standardized tests weren’t entirely correct in their verdict about me doesn’t make me want to ban standard tests.  Many poor test takers seem to go there, but I don’t.

A world without standardized tests certainly would have been good for me, but I don’t think it would be good for society collectively.  Standardized tests are necessary for holding administrators, teachers and students accountable, and for helping administrators, teachers and students understand specific weaknesses and strengths, so they can use that knowledge to improve. These tests are far from perfect, but relying solely on random anecdotal evidence presented by people with self-interested agendas is much worse.

Last week, Governor Dayton announced that he was recommending a reduction in the number of standardized tests used in the k-12 system, from 21 to 14.   I haven’t studied the issue nearly enough to be qualified to judge the specifics of his recommendation.  But whatever the optimal number of tests, I am glad that most of the standardized tests that I detest will continue to be used.

We don’t need to do away with standardized tests.  What we need is for counselors, teachers and parents to be doing more to help kids understand what test results do and don’t mean. We need lower scorers to understand that, while the ACT, SAT and GRE will close some doors, research indicates that they still can be academically successful.

As scores are being shared, students should be told this broader truth:  Lots of people with great test scores struggle mightily in their careers, while lots of people with poor test scores excel. More importantly, students should study why both of those things happen.  They should study the role effort, creativity, and passion will play in making their post-standardized test lives.    We need to explain the ways in which adults routinely turn their disadvantages into advantages, and how the skills and knowledge evaluated on standardized tests aren’t necessarily the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in many fields.

The problem with standardized tests is not that they exist.  They problem is that we do too little to help dazed and confused test takers put their scores into proper perspective. If we were just a little more deliberate and thoughtful about helping students gain a deeper understanding of what their test scores do and don’t mean, we could make this necessary evil slightly less evil.

Note:  This post was also republished in MinnPost.

Teacher LIF0 Reform: Weirdest. Politics. Ever.

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Minnesota remains one of the few states in the nation that requires decisions about which public school teachers to hire, promote or  lay off to be made solely based on seniority, and not teacher performance measures, such as student progress or principal evaluations.  DFL Governor Dayton and the DFL-contolled Legislature want to keep it that way.

The DFL has faired well at the polls recently, but Minnesotans aren’t tracking with the DFL on this “last in, first out (LIFO)” issue.  The education reform group MinnCan commissioned a poll which put the following statement in front of a random sample of Minnesotans: “If teacher layoffs are required, seniority should be considered, but the primary factor in deciding which teachers to layoff should be based on teacher performance.”  An overwhelming 91% of Minnesotans support that notion (68% strongly support, 23% somewhat support), while just 9% oppose it (4% strongly oppose, 5% somewhat oppose). Continue reading →

Snow Birds, Not Snowed Birds

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In his 2013 budget proposal, Governor Mark Dayton proposed a “snow bird tax” as a matter of fairness:

“It’s one of the unfairnesses that somebody can spend six months and one day out of the state and pay no state personal income taxes and come back here and take advantage of all the state has to offer for five months and 29 days. So, yes, there’s a snowbird tax.”

As Fox News dutifully reported, Florida GOP Congressman Trey Radel wrote a snarky rebuttal letter a few weeks back to Governor Dayton: Continue reading →

Beyond Duluth Flood, Minnesota Legislature Must Address Quieter Everyday Disasters

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Last Friday, following the Minnesota Legislature’s passage of $160 million in flood relief for the Duluth area, House Speaker Kurt Zellers (R-Maple Grove) was in full self-congratulatory mode about the body’s decisive bipartisan action to help Minnesotans in need:

“When bad things happen to people … the last thing you want is a bunch of politicians bickering in the Capitol.”

My goodness, no, we don’t want THAT!

But, Mr. Speaker, “bad things” aren’t limited to buckets of water falling from the sky on the Duluth area.

Every day, “bad things” quietly happen to ordinary Minnesotans.  Every day, Minnesotans go untreated, undertreated, homeless, unprotected, undereducated, abused, underemployed and unemployed because of “a bunch of politicians bickering at the Capitol.”

Those “bad things” are often due to events that, like Duluth’s storm of the century, are not the fault of the victim:  Being born into poverty.  Being born into an abusive or otherwise non-functioning family.  Having your job sent overseas, or eliminated due to a global financial meltdown.  Discovering a debilitating tumor or aneurysm.  Falling off a ladder, or getting in a disabling car crash.

And when Minnesotans face those “bad things,” your cutting of $7 billion in services over the last decade has made their catastrophes much worse, not better.

So, yes, I applaud Speaker Zellers and the Minnesota Legislature for not bickering at the Capitol last Friday when Minnesotans needed help to survive the spectacularly “bad things” that recently befell the great City of Duluth.

But please also remember that most of the emergencies in our state are much less visible than the recent Duluth drama.  Most Minnesota emergencies don’t lead our news.  But they are crises nonetheless, that crush hopes, dreams and lives nonetheless, that require disaster relief nonetheless.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Morning Report, “Best of the Blogs.“