Educating Minnesota

Meanwhile, Minnesota New Country School produces results so strong that even the Japanese would like to replicate it. The more than 110 students in grades seven through twelve—almost a third of whom have special education needs—usually spend four days a week in class, though many will often spend weeks at a time on off-campus research projects. (One of those projects, on deformed frogs found in polluted ponds nearby, generated scientific interest and headlines worldwide.)

New Country kids begin school before Labor Day and continue until the middle of the following June. During the summer, the school building remains open and available to students as needed. There are no regular classes on Fridays and students get a week off after every five weeks. The school day ends at 3:35 p.m., but students may stay until 5:30. Each student has a computer, and all students are responsible for keeping the building clean. There are no janitors and no football team. The staff-to-student ratio is 1:18.

The kids do “fine” on the state’s required basic skills tests, says New Country adviser Dee Grover–Thomas, but the project-based curriculum puts at least as much emphasis on such practical skills as goal-setting, time management, decision-making, task completion, teamwork, and communication.

A few schools modeled on New Country are scheduled to open in, of all places, Japan, a country far better than ours at producing technically literate students. The Japanese understand that in order to turn out a more creative population, their schools have to be more creative as well—and where better to look than America and, more specifically, Minnesota? Americans, after all, invented the iPod—and Minnesotans conceived of the charter school.

We most emphatically do not recommend private school vouchers as an alternative to current public school funding. In fact, we believe it’s time to put the voucher concept away for good. Never mind the anecdotal evidence that private schools educate kids better than their public counterparts. According to the latest federal study of math outcomes of private and public schools, when data is controlled for socioeconomic factors, public schools are in fact more effective. Siphoning public money away from the public schools is financially and educationally counterproductive. Let private schools thrive as they always have—without state funds and interference.

The Bottom Line
Today, we Minnesotans are paying less to educate our children, based on a percentage of family income, than our parents paid to educate us. How can we not contribute at least as much as our parents did? Yes, the costs are large in the aggregate, but for individual families they are small, and the gains—for kids and for the state—are gargantuan. This investment is about creating citizens of the future rather than throwbacks to the past.

The additional roughly $1 billion we’re recommending in new tax revenue per year will buy real change by improving the state’s national and international competitiveness. A 14 percent increase in the number of instruction days, a more productive and family-friendly school day, additional well-qualified teachers, technologically up-to-date facilities—all solid, research-backed improvements—will increase the state’s international competitiveness and give our students and families a brighter future.

We believe that nearly half of that total—$472 million—should be derived from a small across-the-board progressive income tax rate increase from the current rates of 5.35, 7.05, and 7.7 percent to 5.4, 7.7, and 8.7 percent. We suggest that the balance—$516 million—come by way of extending the state sales tax to clothing. The former will not push Minnesota further into the income tax stratosphere, but it will provide the kind of long-term benefits that have propelled the state into a personal-income leadership position among the states. The sales tax on clothing, though regressive, is standard in most states and would allow us to capture revenue from tourists shopping at the Mall of America and elsewhere, just as Floridians and Arizonans tax visiting Minnesotans.

The bottom line will be results.