Shot in the Dark

The Emmer Plan: Part Two

Just so we’re clear on this:  Mark Dayton’s education “plan” calls for three things:

  1. Gutting charter schools
  2. Ending federal-mandated testing
  3. Giving the teachers union a bunch of money.

To contrast with this, Tom Emmer is releasing his own plan, as we speak.

His education plan is focused on a few simple, key things:

  • ensure that K-12 funding is held harmless in the next biennium.
  • improve school results through broad reforms.
  • cutting mandates on schools

There are also reforms including  initiatives related to teacher effectiveness, kindergarten readiness,and – this oughtta be interesting – the redesign of teacher preparation programs.

And – this should play interestingly on the left – the state will repay the education shift to local school districts in accordance with state law.

Expect the DFL to respond “we really need a huge increase”, and for the union to say the only “reform” needed is more union teachers.

More later today.

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Mitch Berg

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21 responses to “The Emmer Plan: Part Two”

  1. Dog Gone Avatar
    Dog Gone

    His education plan is focused on a few simple, key things:

    » ensure that K-12 funding is held harmless in the next biennium.
    » improve school results through broad reforms.
    » cutting mandates on schools

    I’m hoping the ‘held harmless’ wording is yours and not Emmer’s. I believe you don’t understand what those words actually mean, because the usage here is wrong, and does not say what I think you intend.

    Dayton is not so far as I can tell ‘gutting’ charter schools in his proposals.

    I love the writing you have done (mostly) on charter schools, and I agree with you that they deserve more, not less support. But recent court cases have made it clear that there have been abuses, and that should be addressed because the law isn’t well written regulating it.

    So far, I don’t agree with you on your conclusions about the Dayton proposals OR the significance of what Emmer is proposing either.

    Try again?

  2. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    “Expect the DFL to respond “we really need a huge increase”, and for the union to say the only “reform” needed is more union teachers.”

    Or to pad Tommy Doodoo’s pockets even more!

  3. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Try again?

    No reason to. I got it right on the first try.

    Dayton wants to slash “lease aid” to charter schools. This is an allowance that the state gives to charters to help them lease real estate (since they are legally disallowed from owning property, like their district competition does).

    This means that a lot of charters, especially those with poorer clienteles, will be forced out of business.

    Which is of course exactly what Dayton’s backers at EdMinn want. Parents are leaving the inner city districts in droves, both to open enrollment and charter schools; Mpls and St. Paul charters have a higher percentage of students of color than the district at large. Minneapolis and Saint Paul have lost something on the order of 15% of their enrollment, many of them to charters. The best way to stanch the bleeding is to kill the competition.

    Tellingly, it’ll have less affect on schools that either have solid financial backing (Providence Academy in Eden Prairie) or that had the savvy to float their own contruction bonds.

    As noted in this space before, the court cases break down into two categories:

    1. the sorts of things that happen whenever public money goes through human hands; charter schools get embezzled; so do public schools, units of government, and non-profits.

    2. unintended consequences of government actions taken to try to hobble charters, like the Saint Croix Academy flap last spring.

    As to “Hold Harmless” – I know what it means. The sense Emmer is using is not the same as you intend.

  4. Jeff Rosenberg Avatar
    Jeff Rosenberg

    “The state will repay the education shift to local school districts in accordance with state law.”

    Or at least they will eventually. The Emmer plan pushes it off for two more years. He won’t repay a dime until FY2014. In the meantime, our schools will keep paying interest.

    Emmer’s plan will also cut $500 million from school funding. He’s proposing to spend $13.3 billion; in this biennium, we’re paying $13.8 billion.

  5. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    In the meantime, our schools will keep paying interest.

    Which is preferable to raising taxes in mid-recession, all things considered.

    e’s proposing to spend $13.3 billion; in this biennium, we’re paying $13.8 billion.

    With the difference covered by the $500 million in stimulus money that the legislature accepted in 2009.

    The DFL spin machine is trying to create smoke where there is no fire.

  6. swiftee Avatar
    swiftee

    I’m sure the Democrat party is very happy to have the likes of DG out there defending their endorsed congenital idiot.

    Pffffbwwwaaaaahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa! I crack myself up some times.

    Keep it up DG, you blithering idiot!

  7. Jeff Rosenberg Avatar
    Jeff Rosenberg

    “With the difference covered by the $500 million in stimulus money that the legislature accepted in 2009.”

    Why does it matter where it came from? Our schools are receiving $500 million in this biennium that they will not under Emmer’s plan. Explain to me how that’s not a cut.

  8. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    What must one think about a person who defends a congenital idiot? That person may actually believe the constant stream of lies Barack Obama pronounces.

  9. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Education is indeed overfunded in this state when they can give out millions in paid vacations, otherwise known as sabbaticals, to moronic college propagandists, I mean professors, that work part time at best!

  10. Troy Avatar
    Troy

    When Mark Dayton says “That leaves me $635.4 million to go”, Jeff Rosenberg, I wonder from where he is going to pull all that money. I wonder if he will pull it out of “our schools”.

    Don’t you?

    Also, I wonder if “our schools” will get along just fine without that extra $500 million lying around. If we paid every teacher (and other state employees) just a little bit less, I think we might make that up and more.

    Is that impossible?

  11. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Please Troy!

    Don’t ask Jeff to answer questions like that; you’ll drive him crazy.

    Heaven forbid that a union employee would accept a little bit less.

  12. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    By the way, if you want to hear a straight shooter giving an economics letter to a union goon teacher, check out the video posted on True North by Chris Johnson. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey does just that!

    Hmmmm. I wonder if we can get him to talk with Tommy Doodoo?

  13. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Whoops! Should have said lesson, not letter.

  14. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Troy,

    We needn’t worry if the schools will get along without the extra half bill, because it’s not the case. A half billion in stimulus money came into the system in 2009; it makes up Rosenberg’s purported shortfall.

  15. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    But Jeff said “Our schools are receiving $500 million in this biennium that they will not under Emmer’s plan.” He wants Mitch to explain this, when it makes no frigging sense in the first place.

  16. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    OMG, DG – Yet another non-sensical response about ‘some abuses’ there have been in Charter Schools?
    The Liberal Left has it’s arse in the breeze on the public education system they run with the help of their Teachers Unions and where there has been systematic abuse for decades. It’s unfortunate that Republicans (other than you Swiftee) are leery of the education issue when they have the Democrats dead to rights on their neglect of public school children, especially those in inner city schools.
    But the dam is beginning to break.
    New Orleans was forced to bring on Charter Schools when the Public system could not get off it’s backside after Katrina. They are finding that the children are performing much better to the Liberal Plantation Holders dismay.
    “The Lottery”, a documentary by the good Liberals who brought you the fictional docu-drama “An Inconvenient Truth” is beginning to break big and is threatening to perform the role of enlarging the Charter School Underground Railroad from a few oxcarts traveling in the dark of night into a locomotive driven rail system rivaling the Great Northern.
    One looks forward to the day in an Emmer/Christie America when all schoolchildren might cry Free at Last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty I’m Free at Last

  17. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Seflores,

    And I thought I was a charter school advocate…

    (Background here).

  18. Master of None Avatar
    Master of None

    From Twitter

    “Emmer campaign says the amount of K-12 gen fund spending in his budget would be $13.8B, not $13.3B. Says typo in release now fixed”

  19. Troy Avatar
    Troy

    I know, Mitch, but I see it like this:

    Jeff’s candidate comes out with a budget “plan”, or more precisely a list of costly favors he’s going to do for DFL special interests, and then tacks on a “I don’t know where the last 600+ million is going to come from” at the end.

    Maybe you could call it a “plan”, with quotes, but if you do, you have to be aware it’s one of those “plans that suck”, don’t you? The only way it could be worse is if he added “???” and “Profit!” steps onto the end.

    Now, Jeff spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing Emmer and his realistic, economically sound, all around better plan. He’s reduced to identifying “cliques of victim-hood”, trying to spark interest in groups that might be negatively affected by Emmers plan. All the while, willfully ignoring that fact that we are in a negative economic situation. But when discussion turns to Daytons plan it’s “get on your unicorns and ride, boys!”.

    It’s got to be a little painful, not to mention irritating, when you feel you have to back a loser like Dayton. It might even drive you a little crazy. I just felt some pity. I wanted to let him know that, even if someone might be negatively affected, and our Worst Senator doesn’t manage to ride his Pegasus into Supercomputer Central and governors mansion, it’s still going to be OK.

  20. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    Mitch,
    I went to and my children now go to public schools and my wife works in public school. But I like the option that if we were unhappy that we can move the kid(s) to a school more to our liking. I had previously read your ‘through the looking glass adventures’ with the STP Public Schools and that episode may have earned you your angels wings with out having to jump in after George Bailey.
    I’m sick of Liberals bemoaning the loss of public school resources due to charter schools when resource allocation is a law of nature (see Castro, F. lately for more information here). In the eighties I was a young dumb management trainee working in Detroit for a small division of the company now known as Gubmint Motors. We were or chose to be blind to the fact that people preferred to “allocate their resources” by buying Hondas and Datsuns and Toyotas because we were surrounded with people like us who thought our products were swell (well, unless one went to Ann Arbor, where the good Liberals there used “Detroit” as a perjorative term to describe American autos, automakers and ‘workers’ like me).
    I see Charter Schools the same as I see the (then) foriegn automakers. They are people producing a better product for less cost with less resources. In any other endeavor, these people would be celebrated. It’s like I read elsewhere in the blogosphere – at a time when we can choose to watch whatever we want from 500 different channels at any time we want watch it with TiVo and our coffee options have gone from four to 100’s if not 1,000’s of choices, we have a school system with a one-size fits all mentality based on an agrarian system that was antiquated 40 years ago. Don’t look to me for sympathy when the inner city folk nail their charter school treatise to the public school board door, I’ll be handing them the nails.

  21. Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » Chanting Points Memo: The Non-Cut Cut

    […] Last week, Tom Emmer released his education plan. […]

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