Issues: Education is tops in state funding

10/24/2006

Norman Draper,
Star Tribune
Last update: October 23, 2006 – 11:37 PM

If money equals significance, then education is the most significant thing funded by the state of Minnesota.

Education consumes the single biggest piece of the state budget pie, with K-12 schools accounting for 41 percent of state expenditures and higher education using up another 9 percent. During the current two-year funding period, that amounts to $15.5 billion.

No one seems to begrudge education its dominant place at the table. In 2005, state legislators—Republicans and DFLers alike—joined forces to approve one of the largest K-12 school-funding boosts in history: $800 million in new money over two years. Minnesota’s public colleges and universities also got a hefty funding bump.

But thorny problems persist. Despite state funding increases, the soaring cost of higher education has made college even more of a financial hardship for families. Too many children start school unprepared to learn. Schools are faced with rising costs, erratic state funding and in some cases declining enrollment. When their budgets come up short, they make repeated trips to their voters for more money.

Still, Minnesota can lay claim to lots of bragging points. Minnesota’s kids continue to post top scores in the nation on college-admission tests. Minnesota students also are the leaders on all kinds of other tests comparing them against counterparts from other states and countries. Minnesota’s high-school graduation rate is one of the highest in the country.

At the higher-education level, the University of Minnesota has become more academically competitive and has launched a campaign to become one of the top three public research universities in the world.

But how do we get better?

Critics of the status quo argue that Minnesota students remain unprepared for a new world in which technology and science will dominate the marketplace—and the economies of developing countries will mushroom. Some have suggested huge changes, including vouchers that would allow students to use public money for private schools, and longer school years.

Tough education assignments await whoever becomes the next governor. There is pressure to reduce, or at least control, soaring college costs and student-teacher ratios in K-12 schools.

And the gulf must narrow between the achievement of affluent white and poor minority students before Minnesota schools can truly say they have left no child behind.