state of minnesota public education 2012

A MinnCAn RESEARCH REPORT

THE STATE Of MinnESOTA PubliC EduCATiOnA 2012 RepoRt CARd foR ouR StAte’S publiC SChoolS And publiC poliCieS

Preface by VALLAY VARROMinncan founding executive director

This report was published in January 2012 by MinnCAN: The Minnesota Campaign for Achievement Now

To order copies of this report please contact Christopher Orr: [email protected]

MinnCAn: The Minnesota Campaign for Achievement now287 East Sixth Street, Suite 513St. Paul, Minnesota 55101www.minncan.org

Design & Layouthouse9design.ca

Table of Contents

Preface: The Playbook for Education in Minnesota 4

Executive Summary: 6The Good, the bad and the Playbook for Change

1 The Good: Gains on the Whole 9

2 The bad, Part i 10Minnesota’s Achievement Gapthe black-White gap 11the Hispanic-White gap 14the asian-White gap 14the native american-White gap 14the income gap 16

3 The bad, Part ii 16Great Jobs demand Great Schools: Welcome to Minnesota’s new norm

4 The bad, Part iii 19Minnesota Education Policy: We’re Middling

5 The Playbook for Change 20

Conclusion 26

4MinnCAnTHE STATE Of MinnESOTA PubliC EduCATiOn, 2012

Preface: The Playbook for Education in MinnesotaVALLAY VARRO Minncan founding executive director

We’re average. That’s the unfortunate truth when it comes to Min-nesota’s K–12 public schools. This fact is hard to swallow because we Minnesotans pride ourselves on being well above average. But we have two Minnesotas: one in which our students receive an unrivaled public education and the other that falls short of teaching even the basic skills needed for a 21st-century job.

One year following the launch of MinnCAN: The Minnesota Cam-paign for Achievement Now, I ask: are Minnesota students faring better? Are we coming together as a state to ensure that the escape hatch for Min-nesota’s poor students and students of color is no longer welded shut?

The answer is no, not yet. Did we begin to change the conversa-tion? Yes.

This report shows us that the state of Minnesota public education is nowhere near where it needs to be. Our achievement gaps are immoral and unsustainable. Minnesota’s jobs of the future will demand higher education and our public schools are not giving many students that chance. Even our better-off children are left behind their counterparts across the globe. There is still so much more work to be done. We’re up to the challenge, but we need your help.

In 2011, MinnCAN helped pass three commonsense reforms to put Minnesota back on track to providing great schools for all:

1. We opened up alternate paths for talented teachers, such as those in Teach For America, to get certified and to allow great teachers certified in other states into Minnesota classrooms.

2. We made sure that the state of Minnesota is creating a new statewide teacher evaluation system that will require 35 percent of evaluations to be based on the performance of students.

3. We expanded Minnesota families’ access to high-quality preschool through a new statewide rating system and $4 million in early child-hood education scholarships for low-income students.


In 2012, our campaign will create foundational changes to reset Min-nesota education:

Play 1: Prize first-string teachers: Keep high-performing teachers in the gameReward effective teachers and end seniority-based layoffs

In 2011, Minnesota passed its first statewide teacher evaluation frame-work (law HF-26), which will provide school leaders and districts with a trusted system to make personnel decisions based on teacher per-formance. This critical step forward, however, is not enough. Right now decisions about who to hire, promote or even lay off when faced with budget deficits are based solely on seniority. The creation of an evaluation system will only drive gains in student achievement if we connect it with common sense reforms to Minnesota’s teacher tenure law so that we can use the system to reward quality. We need to use our teacher evaluation system to ensure that a great teacher teaches every child. This principle means awarding tenure to teachers who demon-strate their effectiveness. It also means moving from a layoff system that focuses only on years on the job to one that retains the most suc-cessful employees. Let’s reward first-string teachers and move them out of the penalty box.

Play 2: Scouting Minnesota’s MVPs: Most Valuable PrincipalsPrincipal evaluations can bolster public schools and achievement gains

Academic research shows that next to the quality of instruction that teachers offer, the quality of the principal is the second most influen-tial in-school factor for improving student outcomes. To ensure that an effective school leader leads every school, Minnesota needs a compre-hensive principal evaluation system. In 2011, the Minnesota legislature mandated the creation of a work group to develop just that model. The legislature and the governor must work together in 2012 to ensure that every Minnesota principal is judged upon a rigorous and comprehen-sive evaluation grounded in the performance of their school, with a ma-jority of a principal’s evaluation based on student learning and teacher performance. Our schools, our teachers, and most importantly, our stu-dents need principals capable of ensuring that all kids achieve at the highest levels. They are Minnesota’s MVPs: Most Valuable Principals.


Play 3: Launch the achievement power playExpand schools that are working, close those that aren’t and improve those in between

In hockey, a power play is when your team has a numerical advantage on the ice. More great athletes dramatically shift the odds in your favor. The same principle applies in education. The more great schools, the better the chance of meeting the needs of every Minnesota student. But right now the opposite is true: too few great schools means too many children are at risk of failure. The result is widening achievement gaps and lackluster achievement gains. We need to change these odds by scaling school models with proven results and holding accountable those that prevent children from receiving the kind of education they deserve. To renew our focus on innovation, MinnCAN will provide report cards for all schools, showcase superstar schools, call for the closure of persistently low-performing schools and seed an achieve-ment kick-start fund. By scaling up school models with proven results, we can put Minnesota back on top and ensure that all Minnesota chil-dren have an equal opportunity for a great public education.

Our achievement gap is a disservice to the next generation of Minne-sotans. It jeopardizes our collective future. Prioritizing public educa-tion is a defining characteristic of our state and, rightly so, a source of tremendous pride. Building on that history, we are excited to chart the course for the future of Minnesota. That course begins with education.

That is why I’m proud to present to you MinnCAN’s 2012 legislative campaign grounded in the facts in this report: The Playbook for Educa-tion in Minnesota.

We’re not settling for average.

Executive Summary: The Good, the bad and the Playbook for ChangeOur achievement landscape is polarized. On one end of the spectrum we post enviable results from our top performers. On the other end are


dismal numbers revealing that our low-income students and students of color rank near the bottom of the nation.

Great schools change everything. They change a child’s life trajec-tory. They change communities. They change our economics. They change our very democracy. That is why MinnCAN is fixing Minnesota public policies so that every child in our state, regardless of race, eth-nicity or class, has access to a great public school. The State of Minne-sota Public Education is our annual progress report on this vision.

Key findings:

“C” stands for averageThis letter grade represents the state of education in Minnesota. We post some of the best achievement in the country on the whole, but we are among the country’s worst states when it comes to our black-white achievement gap. We rank 38 out of 44 states for our black-white achievement in fourth-grade math and 37 out of 45 states in reading.

A pervasive achievement gap creates two MinnesotasSince 2006, the achievement gap has increased by 10 percentage points in high school math between white and Hispanic students and between white and black students on the annual state test.

We’re ill prepared for our new knowledge-based workforceBy 2018, 70 percent of all Minnesota jobs will require some level of higher education. Our public schools are not preparing students for the new economy. A staggering 40 percent of Minnesota high school gradu-ates need to take remedial or developmental coursework upon enter-ing a university.

Minnesotans demand change and embrace reformThe conversation in Minnesota surrounding the achievement gap is changing. We are leveraging Minnesota’s legacy of educational innova-tion to close the gap. 2011 marked the most progressive and effective education reform policy wins in decades.

MinnCAN’s 2012 campaign goals are a playbook for change:• Prize First-String Teachers: Keep high-performing teachers in the game• Scout Minnesota’s MVPs: Most valuable principals• Launch the Achievement Power Play


TAblE 1 2011 nation’s report card, overall State rankings, 8th-grade Math

RAnk STATE

1 Massachusetts

2 Minnesota

3 new Jersey

4 vermont

5 Montana

6 new Hampshire

7 north dakota

8 colorado

9 South dakota

10 texas

11 Kansas

12 virginia

13 Maine

13 Wisconsin

15 ohio

16 Washington

RAnk STATE

17 Maryland

18 Wyoming

19 connecticut

20 idaho

21 north carolina

22 Pennsylvania

23 indiana

24 iowa

25 alaska

25 utah

27 illinois

27 nebraska

29 rhode island

30 delaware

31 oregon

32 Missouri

33 Kentucky

RAnk STATE

34 South carolina

35 new york

36 Michigan

37 oklahoma

38 arkansas

39 arizona

40 georgia

41 nevada

42 florida

42 Hawaii

44 new Mexico

45 tennessee

46 West virginia

47 california

47 Louisiana

49 Mississippi

50 alabama


The Good: Gains on the WholeThe 2011 results on the national assessment known as the Nation’s Report Card, or more formally as the National Assessment for Educa-tional Progress, show Minnesota eighth-graders ranked second in the country in math, behind only Massachusetts. Scores in both reading and math remained fairly consistent since the 2009 exam, but overall scores have increased in the last two decades in math. In 1992, just 26 percent of fourth-grade students were at least proficient in math but now 53 percent of students are at least proficient, an increase of 27 per-centage points. Similarly, eighth-grade scores in math have improved: 48 percent of students are at least proficient, compared to only 23 percent in 1990. The number of students scoring at least proficient in reading has also increased slightly. Fourth-grade proficiency in reading has increased four percentage points since 1992, from 31 percent to 35 percent. And eighth-graders improved by three percentage points, from 36 percent in 1998 to 39 percent.

Similarly, Minnesota’s spring 2011 scores on our comprehensive statewide assessment show gains of two percentage points from last year in the number of students proficient in reading. One even more astonish-ing number when we close in on one grade: we gained a full five percentage points from last year in the number of 11th-graders proficient in math.1Our students’ performance on Advanced Placement exams continues this positive upswing. Since 2001, Minnesota’s percentage of students with a “successful” AP experience, meaning that they completed an AP course and scored a three or better on the exam, increased by 8.2 per-centage points, which is a faster rate of improvement than many other states in the country.2 In 2001, only 8.6 percent of Minnesota students had a successful AP experience compared to 16.8 percent in 2010.

Minnesota students are also participating in programs in which stu-dents can earn college credit while still enrolled in high school at higher levels than ever before. A study from the Center for School Change re-vealed that participation in dual enrollment programs such as AP and International Baccalaureate increased among the overall student pop-ulation as well as among students of color in our state. In fact, between 2006 and 2011, overall participation in AP exams grew by 62 percent and the participation of students of color increased by 53 percent. Sim-ilarly, the number of minority students who took an IB exam more than doubled over that same time period. These numbers suggest that more of our students are gaining access to the rigorous academic programs that will help them become college- and career-ready.3

1 The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment is Minnesota’s annual exam that measures kids’ proficiency in reading, math and science. Reading and math tests are given to students in grades three through eight, 10 and 11, while the science tests are given to students in grades five and eight and the year in high school in which they complete a life science course. http://education.state.mn.us/mde/index.html2 http://apreport.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/downloads/pdfs/AP_RTN_2011.pdf

3 http://www.centerforschoolchange.org/publications/documents/progressandpossibilities.pdf

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The bad, Part i Minnesota’s Achievement GapOur rosy picture of progress dims when we examine the equation that results in our average. Our most affluent, white students are racing ahead and carrying the overall state upward, while another mass of stu-dents falls further and further behind. According to Education Week’s Quality Counts 2012 report, Minnesota ranks 37th nationally and re-ceived an overall score of C for the quality of our schools.4 This is a sig-nificant drop in the 2010 rank of 29. This poor ranking is largely cred-ited to our achievement gap. Minnesota scores poorly when it comes to the divide between our poor and middle-class children.

Our population is changing rapidly. In the next 30 years, the number of black, Hispanic and Asian Minnesotans will double. By 2035, 44 percent of Hennepin County residents and 48 percent of Ramsey County residents will be people of color. In the suburbs, the non-white population will double by that time.5

Our public schools are not serving these growing populations well enough. In 2011, 82 percent of 10th-grade white students reached the proficiency standard in reading on the state assessment, while only 47 percent of black students, 53 percent of Hispanic students and 62 percent of Asian students scored at least proficient. Similarly, our math results reveal a staggering gap. Only 16 percent of 11th-grade black stu-dents and 22 percent of Hispanic students met the proficiency bench-mark, compared to 55 percent of their white peers.6

Both the 2011 Nation’s Report Card and the 2011 Minnesota Com-prehensive Assessments reflect Minnesota’s persistent achievement gap. Minnesota is making some progress in closing its achievement gap on the Nation’s Report Card scores. Since 2005, the achievement gap between black and white students in eighth-grade math on the Na-tion’s Report Card closed slightly by three percentage points. And the fourth-grade math gap decreased by two percentage points. Minne-sota’s progress on closing the achievement gap is positive, but it is still clear that Minnesota’s achievement gaps are persistent, cementing educational inequality and affecting thousands of students’ prospects for the future.

The slight gains made on the Nation’s Report Card in fourth and eighth grade deserve acknowledgement. But these gains are not reflect-ed in the upper grades on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment.

4 http://www.edweek.org/media/qualitycounts2012_release.pdf

5 http://www.demography.state.mn.us/documents/MinnesotaPopulation ProjectionsbyRaceandHispanic Origin2005to2035.pdf

6 http://education.state.mn.us/mde/index.html

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In fact, in high school, the achievement gap in math increased between whites and Hispanics by 10 percentage points and between whites and blacks also by 10 percentage points since 2006. So, even though overall student proficiency has steadily improved since 2006, it is distressing that whites are progressing at much faster rates than students of color. The scores illustrate two very different Minnesotas for our schoolchil-dren. In one Minnesota, children get a solid education, and in the other, children fall further behind as they shuffle through school.

Most notably:

• On the 2009 Nation’s Report Card, Minnesota had the second-largest achievement gap in the nation, a 32 percentage point gap, between black male students and white male students in eighth-grade reading.7

• Minnesota is tied for the 10th-worst achievement gap in the country when it comes to the graduation rates of black male students compared to white students, a difference of 29 percentage points.8

The Black-White Gap

The achievement gap between black students and their white peers is enduring. On the Nation’s Report Card, only 15 percent of our black eighth-graders are at least proficient in reading, meaning that 85 percent read below grade level. It follows that by the time these chil-dren enter high school, more than 80 percent of black students are un-prepared to read grade-level material. By way of contrast, 44 percent of white eighth-graders scored at least a proficient in reading. In fourth-grade math, only 23 percent of black students scored proficient or above, while 60 percent of white students surpassed that same bench-mark of proficiency.

Minnesota is among the country’s worst states when it comes to our black-white achievement gap:

•We are ranked 38th out of 44 states for our black-white achievement in fourth-grade math.

• Similarly, in fourth-grade reading, we rank 37 out of 45 states for our black-white achievement gap.

8 Ibid.

7 “Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males 2010,” Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2010, available at http://www.nyccej.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bbreport1.pdf


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The Hispanic-White Gap

The data illustrate significant and persistent gaps between Minnesota’s Hispanic students and their white classmates. Hispanic fourth-graders in Minnesota:

• Perform worse than Hispanic students in 43 other states out of 47 states examined in reading.9

• Only 12 percent of fourth-grade Hispanic students in Minnesota are reading on grade level, according to the Nation’s Report Card.10

• By eighth grade, reading proficiency increases to 23 percent among His-panic students, but that means that 77 percent of Minnesota Hispanic students enter high school unprepared to read at their grade level.

The achievement gap between Hispanic students and their white class-mates in mathematics is also disturbingly wide. Much like our black-white gap, Minnesota has some of the largest gaps between Hispanic students and white students in the country. In eighth-grade math, Minnesota has the third-largest gap in the country out of 46 states ex-amined, and Hispanic students are more than three grade levels behind their white peers.11 In fourth-grade math, Minnesota has the fifth largest gap out of 47 states examined.

The Asian-White Gap

There is a noticeable achievement gap between students in Minnesota’s burgeoning Asian population and their white classmates. The largest gap occurs in eighth-grade math, where only 35 percent of Asian stu-dents scored proficient or above while 55 percent of their white peers met or surpassed the proficiency threshold on the Nation’s Report Card. In fourth-grade reading, only 32 percent of Asian students scored at least proficient, compared to 42 percent of white students. These gaps are not as large as the others, but they are significant and lasting.

The Native American-White Gap

Descendants of Minnesota’s indigenous people, our Native American students, score far below Minnesota’s white students. Only 30 percent of Native American fourth-graders—less than one-third—are at least proficient in math and a very troubling 14 percent are proficient or

10 http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx

11 Ten points on the NAEP are the rough equivalent of one grade level’s proficiency in reading and math. A 30-point gap is therefore approximately a three-grade level difference. Scale Score difference: 301.6-269.9

9 http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/statecomparisons/


SOuRcE http://www.epi.org/publication/ib278/

fiGuRE 3 black-White unemployment rate, 2009, Minneapolis and St. Paul

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above in reading on the Nation’s Report Card. Among states with large Native American populations, Minnesota’s eighth-grade math gap is worse than every other state. Only 11 percent scored at least proficient on the exam. In fourth-grade reading, only Arizona and North Carolina have a larger Native American-white achievement gap.12

The Income Gap

Significant disparities in achievement remain between Minnesota’s poor students and their wealthier peers:

• Poor Minnesota students in eighth grade are more than two grade levels behind their more economically advantaged classmates in reading13 and nearly three grade levels behind in math.14

• Only 17 percent of poor students in Minnesota are proficient in fourth-grade reading, while 46 percent of wealthier fourth-grade students demonstrated proficiency in reading.

The bad, Part ii Great Jobs demand Great Schools: Welcome To Minnesota’s new normAn educated citizenry is necessary to the vitality of our state. By 2018, there will be 902,000 job vacancies in Minnesota due to the creation of new jobs and the retirement of our baby boomers. A whopping 620,000, or more than 68 percent of those jobs, will require a degree beyond a high school diploma. The number of jobs requiring post-secondary training will exceed many of our Midwestern peers, such as Wisconsin (60 percent) and Iowa (60.5 percent). In fact, by 2018, 70 percent of all Minnesota jobs will require some level of higher education.15

Minnesota public schools are not adequately preparing our students for that kind of economy. In fact, we’re far from it. Only 49 percent of 11th-grade students score on or above grade level in math on the state

13 Scale Score difference: 276.8-255.3

14 Scale Score difference: 303.6-276.2

15 http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/midwest -challenge.pdf

3

12 http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/statecomparisons


fiGuRE 4 only 45% of Minnesota adults have a post-secondary degree. but, by 2018, 70% of all new jobs in Minnesota will be middle-and high-skill positions.

Middle- and High-Skill Workers

Middle- and High-Skill Job Opportunitites

SOuRcE http://achieve.org/files/Minnesota-CCRFactSheet-July2011.pdf;http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/minnesota.pdf


assessment. That means that Minnesota schools are not preparing a ma-jority of our students to take college-level math courses. Only 55 percent of white students scored at least proficient on the state math exam, meaning that only 55 percent of Minnesota’s highest-achieving demo-graphic in the 11th grade are able to do math at the 11th-grade level.16

Moreover, a staggering 40 percent17 of Minnesota graduates need to take remedial or developmental coursework upon entering a uni-versity and only 45 percent18 of Minnesota adults currently have some sort of post-secondary degree. This is not a regional issue, a class issue or a race issue. Minnesota’s failure to educate low-income and students of color will affect us all.The achievement gap extends from Minnesota’s education system di-rectly into the workplace:

• In Minneapolis and St. Paul, the unemployment rate in 2009 for white Minnesotans was 6.6 percent, compared to 20.4 percent for black Minnesotans.19

•White Minnesotans are 3.1 times more likely to be hired than black Minnesotans in the Twin Cities.20

Minnesota sorely lags behind our global counterparts

Minnesota and Massachusetts are the only states in the country that are close to being competitive with any of the world’s leading industrial countries, according to the report, U.S. Math Performance in a Global Perspective,21 completed by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. The report looked at scores on the 2005 Nation’s Report Card and then com-pared each state’s test scores with the scores of other countries on the Program for International Student Assessment.22 The highest ranked state is Massachusetts, which is still significantly outranked by 14 other countries in this world comparison, followed by Minnesota, which is outperformed by 16 other countries. Minnesota is doing better than most American states, but it is still far behind the international leader, Taiwan. Twenty-eight percent of Taiwanese students scored at the ad-vanced level on the international exam, while only 10.8 percent of Min-nesotan students did. Other countries such as Korea, Finland and Swit-zerland also have significantly higher percentages of students scoring at the advanced level in math.

The information is clear: Our neediest students continue to leave school unprepared to take on even the most basic skills that a 21st

16 http://education.state.mn.us/mde/index.html17 “Getting Prepared: A 2010 Report on Recent High School Graduates Who Took Developmental/Remedial Course,” Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, January 2011, available at http://www.mnscu.edu/media/newsreleases/2011/pdf/1 _getting_prepared.pdf 18 http://achieve.org/files/Minnesota-CCRFactSheet-July2011.pdf .

19 Algernon Austin, “Uneven pain—Unemployment by metropolitan area and race,” Economic Policy Institute, 2010, available at http://www.epi.org/publication/ib278/

21 http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19 _HanushekPetersonWoessmann.pdf

20 Ibid.

22 PISA is an international test that compares math, reading and science scores with member countries of the OECD. Comparisons are made between 50 countries including the top industrialized nations.


century job requires and even our highest-performing students are no match today for many of their global peers.

The bad, Part iii Minnesota Education Policy: We’re MiddlingA 2009 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that ranked all 50 states in a number of categories including teacher and principal evalu-ations, hiring practices, school management and removing ineffective teachers from the schools,23 awarded Minnesota a C grade for providing an effective pipeline to post-secondary education for our high school graduates. Only 59 percent of Minnesota schools have dual enrollment programs that allow students to earn college credit while still in high school. That number is below the national average of 65 percent. Minnesota also received a C for the strength of our teacher evaluation system and hiring practices primarily because only six percent of our teachers come from alternative certification programs. More flexibility and innovation is needed in Minnesota to improve our overall teacher hiring system, though recent legislative changes in our teacher evalu-ation law to help provide principals with the authority to dismiss inef-fective teachers is a positive step.

We still struggle with many of our other laws related to teaching. In the 2010 National Council on Teacher Quality report, Blueprint for Change in Minnesota,24 our state received an overall grade of D− in five key areas of effective teacher policy:

D Delivering well-prepared teachersD− Expanding the teaching poolD Identifying effective teachersC− Retaining effective teachersF Exiting ineffective teachers

To address these dismal statistics, Minnesota passed a teacher evalua-tion system that will require 35 percent of the evaluation to come from standardized test scores showing evidence of how much students are

24 http://www.nctq.org/stpy09/updates/docs/stpy_minnesota.pdf

23 http://icw.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/LL-2009-16-USCC.pdf

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learning. Passing the new evaluation system is a positive first step, but more change is needed to ensure the most effective teachers are in our classrooms.

Minnesota is ranked number two in laws that allow for charter school innovation and expansion. Two areas for improvement are equi-table funding for charter school buildings and equal access to all-state and federal funding.25

The Playbook for ChangeWe’re not settling for average. Minnesotans recognize the need for comprehensive education policy reform. That’s why, building on the incredible momentum from last year’s policy victories, MinnCAN is in-troducing our 2012 legislative campaign: The Playbook for Education in Minnesota.

If we can muster the political will this year in our state to follow the goals in this playbook, we can put Minnesota back on track to becoming a world leader in education for every single one of our kids, regardless of their background.

In 2012, our goals will create foundational changes to reset Minne-sota education:

Play 1: Prize first-string teachers: Keep high-performing teachers in the gameIt’s time to reward effective teachers and end seniority-based layoffs

Minnesota is on the path to recognizing and retaining its best teach-ers, but much more needs to be done. In 2011, Minnesota passed its first statewide teacher evaluation framework (law HF-26), which will provide school leaders and districts with a trusted system to make personnel decisions based on teacher performance. This criti-cal step forward, however, is not enough. Right now decisions about who to hire, promote or even lay off when faced with budget deficits are made solely on seniority. The creation of an evaluation system will only drive gains in student achievement if we connect it with common sense reforms to Minnesota’s teacher tenure law so that we can use the system to reward quality.

25 http://charterlaws.publiccharters.org/charterlaws/state/MN

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It is our moral obligation to provide every Minnesota student with highly effective teachers. To make Minnesota’s teacher evaluation system even more valuable, we must:

• Make tenure meaningful. Right now, teachers in Minnesota receive tenure after three years, with little attention paid to their effective-ness in the classroom. Once granted tenure, teachers are all but guar-anteed a job for life regardless of what the new evaluation system determines about their performance. We must reform the teacher tenure laws so that a teacher only receives and maintains tenure after receiving an effective rating or higher under Minnesota’s new state-wide evaluation system.

• Adopt a layoff model that accounts for performance. Our schools are compromised by the inability to choose which teachers will best serve their students. Minnesota is one of only 11 states that require districts to use seniority as the deciding factor in layoff decisions.26 In the face of financial hardship, Minnesotans must end seniority-based layoffs and use our new teacher evaluation system to keep our best teachers in the classroom.

Performance matters

Teachers are the most important in-school factor for student success.27 Minnesota’s rigid tenure rules and quality-blind teacher layoff policies affect students and teachers in many ways:

• Highly effective teachers positively impact the course of a child’s aca-demic and professional life. In fact, students taught by a very good teacher for a single school year may gain up to a full year’s worth of ad-ditional academic growth compared to a student assigned to a less ef-fective teacher.28 Conversely, “students taught by an ineffective teacher make 2.5–3.5 fewer months’ worth of academic progress in a year than they would with an average teacher.”29

• Seniority-based layoffs disproportionately affect schools with large populations of low-income students and students of color because those schools tend to employ more novice teachers.30

• Recognizing high-quality teachers elevates the teaching profession by praising their contributions to their students’ academic success.

27 Steven G. Rivkin, Eric A. Hanushek, and John F. Kain, “Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement,” Econometrica, Vol. 73, No. 2 (March 2005)

28 Daniel Weisberg, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulhern and David Keeling, The Widget Effect (The New Teacher Project, 2009)29 Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobold, Assessing the Determi-nants and Implications of Teacher Layoffs (Center for Education Data & Research, University of Washington-Bothell, 2010)

26 The Case Against Quality-Blind Teacher Layoffs (The New Teacher Project, 2011)

30 Cristina Sepe and Marguerite Roza, The disproportionate impact of seniority-based layoffs on poor minority students (Center for Re-Inventing Public Education, 2010)


Performance is knowable

Many experienced teachers are highly effective, but the number of years a teacher spends in the classroom provides little indication of the quality of their teaching. Research shows that the first few years of teaching are a critical period in the growth of an effective teacher. After these initial years, however, additional experience is not a predictor of student gains.31 Rather than use years in the classroom to determine tenure, we should use factors such as student achievement and class-room observation. We should only award tenure to teachers who con-sistently prove their effectiveness.

In 2011, Minnesota law HF-26 created the foundation for a system that will recognize, reward and retain teachers who perform well. Under the law, Minnesota’s teacher evaluation system will encompass a three-year professional review cycle, including: peer reviews, sum-mative assessments, value-added assessment models that measure student growth, portfolios of teacher and student work, and improve-ment timelines for ineffective teachers.32

It’s time to use our teacher evaluation system to ensure a great teacher teaches every child. This principle means awarding tenure to teachers who demonstrate their effectiveness. It also means moving from a layoff system that focuses only on years on the job to one that retains the most successful employees. Let’s reward first-string teach-ers and move them out of the penalty box.

Play 2: Scouting Minnesota’s MVPs: Most Valuable PrincipalsPrincipal evaluations can bolster public schools and achievement gains

For Minnesota’s public school teachers, the leadership, culture, vision and support their principals provide matters a lot. Academic research shows that next to the quality of instruction that teachers offer, the quality of the principal is the second most influential in-school factor for improving student outcomes.33

To ensure that an effective school leader leads every school, Min-nesota needs a comprehensive principal evaluation system. Given the critical role that principals play as instructional leaders, the major-ity of a principal’s evaluation should be based on student learning and teacher performance. Every principal in the state should be evaluated under this system.

31 Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen, Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making Tenure (2009)

32 Laws of Minnesota for 2011, 2011 First Special Session, Chapter 11, HF-26

33 Robert J. Marzano, Timothy Waters, and Brian A. McNulty, School Leadership That Works: From Research to Results (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005)


A great principal can foster a winning team

Minnesota schools thrive or falter based on the quality of their princi-pals because they are in the unique position to influence every element of an effective learning environment. Without strong leadership, nec-essary components of a successful school such as “internal instruction-al coherence”34 and “organizational trust,”35 are unlikely to develop on their own. Principal quality is also a key driver in the quality of teachers that are recruited and retained in a school. In fact, teachers cite “inad-equate administrative support” as a major reason for leaving the pro-fession.36

Principal evaluations put our leaders in the game

In 2011, the Minnesota legislature mandated the creation of a work group to develop a model evaluation system for principals.

Since the fall of 2011, the Principal Evaluation Work Group has worked to develop this evaluation model. The goal is to provide a trusted way to assess which principals are thriving and which are faltering. The model is also intended to make sure that principals get the help that they need or the recognition that they deserve. The group, composed of principals, superintendents, academic researchers and other educa-tion leaders including MinnCAN, has met monthly with experts and educators from around the country to help inform the creation of Min-nesota’s evaluation system. It is scheduled to present a report to the legislature on February 1, 2012.

With the best play, our schools can score big

The convening of the Principal Evaluation Work Group was a critical starting point in the push to ensure that a strong and effective principal leads every school in Minnesota. In order for this model to succeed, it must contain the following elements:

• The majority of a principal’s evaluation must be based on a combina-tion of both measures of student outcomes and measures of teacher effectiveness.

• Student outcome measures should include, but not be limited to, state-approved assessments.

34 Abelmann and Elmore, When Accountability Knocks, Will Anyone Answer? (Consortium for Policy and Research in Education, 1999)35 Newmann, Bryk et. al., “State of the States: Trends and Early Lessons on Teacher Evaluation and Effectiveness Policies” (2001) 36 Richard Ingersoll, Is There Really a Teacher Shortage? (Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, 2003)


• Principal performance measures should be based on a principal’s ability to recruit, develop and retain teachers rated as “effective” by a reliable and rigorous teacher-evaluation system.

• Development of principal leadership skills that align with explicit lead-ership actions: creating a positive school culture, setting a clear vision for the organization and allocating appropriate time and resources to operations.37

• Distinguish between principals at different schools to create attainable benchmarks.

• Structure for principals to receive constructive feedback from superin-tendents and their teachers.

Most importantly, the initial legislation mandating the creation of the Principal Evaluation Work Group did not provide it or the Commis-sioner of Education with the authority to ensure that districts actually adopt a trusted principal evaluation system. Therefore, it is essential that the legislature and the governor work together in 2012 to build upon the initial work done to date. Our political leaders must ensure that all Minnesota principals are judged upon a rigorous and compre-hensive evaluation grounded in the performance of their school. Our schools, our teachers, and most importantly, our students need principals capable of ensuring that all kids achieve at the highest levels. They are Minnesota’s MVPs: Most Valuable Principals.

Play 3: Launch the achievement power playExpand schools that are working, close those that aren’t and improve those in between

In hockey, a power play is when your team has a numerical advantage on the ice. More great athletes dramatically shift the odds in your favor. The same is true in education. The more great schools, the better the chance of meeting the needs of every Minnesota student.

Right now the opposite is true: too few great schools mean too many children are at risk of failure. The result is widening achieve-ment gaps and lackluster achievement gains. We need to change these odds by scaling school models with proven results and holding ac-countable those that prevent children from receiving the kind of edu-cation they deserve.

37 Evaluating Principals: Balancing Accountability with Professional Growth (New Leaders for New Schools, 2010)


The drill: Identify, learn from and scale up superstar schools

In 2012, we will press across four fronts to increase the odds that all Minnesota students have access to a great school:

1. Provide report cards for all schoolsWe ask parents to choose the right school for their children, but then we don’t give them the tools to make a smart choice. MinnCAN is going to change that. To promote an environment where we settle for nothing less than the best schools for all Minnesota children, MinnCAN will launch school report cards. We will showcase Minnesota public schools that are outpacing other schools in student achievement and make transparent the best practices they use to achieve those outstanding results.

2. Showcase superstar schoolsThis year, MinnCAN will seek out the story behind the numbers. Our success stories will document the best practices of our most compel-ling and achievement gap-busting schools. MinnCAN will identify top-notch schools and encourage the community to see them in action. We’re not just going to talk about them and write about them, we’re going to invite you to join us on school site visits.

3. Close persistently low-performing schoolsMinnesota has the policy tools in place to close schools that are not delivering on the promise of providing an excellent education for our students. MinnCAN will challenge our state to enforce these rules. We will ask for different school models, such as turnaround models, site-governed schools and charter schools with a track record of success, to take their place.

4. Seed an achievement kick-start fundTo ensure that the supply of highly effective schools continues to grow, MinnCAN will work to seed an achievement kick-start fund. This fund will provide the financial resources to scale up school success stories so that more students can benefit from these proven innovations.

By renewing our focus on innovation and focusing on scaling up school models with proven results, we can put to Minnesota back on top and ensure that all Minnesota children have an equal opportunity for a great public education.


ConclusionThe facts in this report make several things clear:

•We should be rightfully proud of our place as one of the top states in the country for education, and of the real improvement we have seen this year and for the past many years. But when we look at our raw numbers, we see that huge swaths of our kids are not able to read or solve math problems at the levels we know are appropriate for their grade.

•When we compare Minnesota students with their peers across the globe in places like Taiwan, we are nowhere near the top.

• The achievement of our students cuts along racial and class divides in disturbing ways. A student’s zip code and color predicts their academic success in ways that go against our Minnesota ideals.

The good news is that we are making progress not just in our class-rooms, but also in the halls of power to reform Minnesota education policy. MinnCAN will continue to lead this fight in 2012 with our Play-book for Education in Minnesota campaign, buttressed by the unforget-table facts in this report. Join us at www.minnesotaplaybook.org.

About MinnCAnMinnesota’s achievement gap—the persistent and significant dispar-ity between the academic achievement of low-income and minority children and their white, middle-class peers—is the most urgent social and economic problem facing our state. We have one of the country’s largest achievement gaps between rich and poor kids and African-American and white kids. Each and every one of us is paying the price for our failing public schools. But Minnesota, and the entire nation, was built on the promise of universal education for all. Public schools are the cornerstone of our democracy. Our future is inextricably linked to the education of our children—all of them. MinnCAN is building a new movement of concerned citizens advocating to fundamentally reform our public schools through smart public policies. We will not rest until every Minnesota child, regardless of race, ethnicity, or class, has access to a great public school.

www.minncan.org

state of minnesota public education 2012

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