EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
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The Fat Lady Has Not Sung
Part II

The evening session of the Education Conference Committee was to begin at 7 PM but did not get started until almost 8 PM.  The Senate conferees were ready to begin at 7 PM but the House Conferees seemed to want to confer with many groups represented in the room.  When the meeting began, Chairman Ness did what proved to be the highlight of the evening, call groups to testify about how they feel on the whole issue.

The following groups testified and we have given their most profound quotes.  We feel they are most enlightening if not alarming.

DCFL - Montano/Hermanson

CFL: "All students must take the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.  The Governor won't allow the NSS without it.'

Ness:  "Are you prepared to go on record that the Governor will veto the bill?"

CFL: "We will not recommend that the bill be signed.  It represents a significant problem getting his signature on this bill."

Ness:  "Is it a deal-breaker?  Is that your position?

CFL:  "That is correct.  We very much want one measurement for all public school students."

Minnesota School Board Association - B. Meeks

MEEKS:  "Voting should be done by teachers -- teachers and school boards. We have to have a total buy-in of the system to make it work." (In regard to whether or not to implement the NSS in a school district. State statute currently gives that authority to school boards only.)

OUR COMMENT: We found the MSBA's position a conflict of interest.  The MSBA is to protect the rights of the locally elected school boards and their ultimate authority.  In this way, the people of the district that elect them receive representation for their taxation.  For the MSBA to position themselves in support of diminishing the ultimate authority of the very people that they represent is unconscionable.  For teachers to make district decisions that are statutorily given to elected school board members is taxation without representation.

Education Minnesota - Jan (last name?)

Jan:  "Our position is that the NSS creates another dilemma."

Jan:  "When we talk to our teachers, they say another system will be dumped on their laps with no additional money and no understanding of what it is all about."

Jan:  "We have another solution separate from the House or Senate bills. The commissioner should be able to determine the number of standards."

Jan:  "Remove the North Star Standard."

OUR COMMENT: Is EdMn leadership truly representing their membership?  These comments are contrary to their own polling.  Why are they deciding for their membership that they do not want an option to the Profile?

University of Minnesota - Joe Nathan

(Joe Nathan from the Center for School Change gave a brief testimony. However, we cannot report on his comments, as we were not in the room at that time.)

Maple River Education Coalition - Renee T. Doyle

Doyle:  "As a former school board member, I believe that it is a mistake to give teachers the same vote as a school board member when state statute reserves the right to superintend curriculum and school policies to the elected school board members.  In this case the teachers' vote could override the elected school board vote."

Doyle:  "Our primary objections to allowing the NSS to be tested by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA's) are found on the DCFL website. The website says that the MCA's are a "systems check" on the high standards of reading, math, and writing under the Profile in the preparatory grades. Why would the NSS be tested with a predetermined set of outcomes based on the Profile of Learning?"

Doyle: "The MCA's are used to see how a school is implementing the Profile. The student's individual scores are not used for remediation and the test does not allow for any national comparison.  Because the MCA's are developed through the DCFL, we have no way of knowing if our children are really learning anything.  The MCA's level of rigor and the passing criteria can be adjusted internally to show students passing even if they are not learning the basics."

Doyle: "We believe that the nationally, norm-referenced testing under the NSS will measure the student individually, against other students in the state and nationally.  The test is independent of the NSS so the outcomes are not predetermined.  It can measure a broader range, with more specificity, of achievement and can be used for remediation.  There is no opportunity to tamper with the rigor or the scoring."

Doyle:  "Wouldn't the proponents of the Profile of Learning find it a bit outrageous if we asked them to test the Profile with a test that was designed to test the predetermined outcomes of the North Star Standard?"

The very fact that no parent, teacher, school board member or Minnesota citizen is ever permitted to view the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments is reason enough to never allow our children to take them.

After the testimony, both sides began to debate bill language and what bill to work from.  Sen. Pogemiller offered a list of changes to the current House offer on the table, LL232.  From that list, Sen. Pogemiller made a motion to adopt Article 3, the NSS.  That motion passed.  He then went on to move the Senate's version of Article 1 with conditions on the NSS, teachers allowed to vote and the NSS participating in the MCA's.  This was met with resistance from the House. The discussion then began to heat up.  When Sen. Pogemiller felt that the House would not move on his language, he went into a tirade about the House not wanting a bill and if the House wouldn't move on this, he would simply pass his other Profile bill, HF 2190, out of the Senate.  He threatened to pull the NSS totally out of his offer.  It was now 10:00 PM. Rep. Ness, holding the gavel, said he wanted to take it up the following Tuesday morning.

It was agreed that the meeting would reconvene late on Monday, May 1.  One of the final comments made by Sen. Pogemiller, with his arm outstretched, palm up toward the area where we were sitting, was, "I have to be careful about what language I use.  It is so obvious to everyone in the audience what this "deal" is."

Does he mean that parents, teachers, and citizens are calling some of the shots in Minnesota?  Imagine that!

EdAction - 105 Peavey Rd, Ste 116, Chaska, MN  55318 
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