MN lege: Education, so far

It’s unclear whether we’ll get any real change for the better in education funding through the Party of Trump-controlled MN Senate. Here’s what they’re about:

A proposal at the core of the differing education policies favored by Minnesota Republicans and DFLers might end up on the table for end-of-session negotiations between Gov. Tim Walz and Senate majority Republicans.

The bill is called the Equity and Opportunity Scholarship Act, and it would allow donations to scholarship foundations to be credited against state income taxes. The foundations would use the money to give private school scholarships to low- and middle-income students.

It is a version of private school vouchers and tax credits that have been used in other states (and to some extent in Minnesota) that have often raise constitutional questions, though the bill’s chief supporter believes the structure of the proposal would allow the program to pass muster with the courts. - MinnPost

A voucher for a few thousand dollars isn’t going to help a typical living paycheck-to-paycheck family be able to make the five-figure tuition at some private school. As always this is just the rich man’s whimpering, groveling political curs of the GOP looking to provide requisite payback. In this case, at the expense of public schools, which in spite of all the obstacles continue to turn out more and more graduates who are just plain too smart to ever vote for a conservative.

Moreover, and as people have been pointing out for a long time now, there is absolutely no evidence that private schools do a better job. Quite the contrary, more often than not.

The EPI report’s findings contribute to a significant and growing body of research showing the negative impacts of school voucher programs on student learning and the public education system.

New America Foundation’s Kevin Carey writes, “a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.”

Carey lays out how recent studies of voucher programs in Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio reveal that students who use vouchers to attend private schools tend to fare worse academically, particularly in math, compared to their peers attending public schools. - Jeff Bryant/OurFuture.org

Thankfully, while Gov. Tim Walz has said he’ll be willing to negotiate on a lot of things, according to the MinnPost article this isn’t one of them.