Minor Party gubernatorial candidates discuss getting back to the “Minnesota Miracle”* and fixing the achievement gap.

Today I listened to the minor party gubernatorial debate and listened more intently to the discussion of educations. I’ve tried to extract what I think the candidates were trying to get across in their responses – they were certainly less polished than the major party candidates and it was sometimes hard to figure out exactly what they planned to do for Minnesota education.

MPR audio: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/20/midday1/

Linda Eno (Resource Party): Linda agrees with Ken, it’s a social issue. The first step to take is address what we’re doing in the communities for the kids. The second step is to run the school like a business – Linda believes that the union is too strong and without holding staff accountable, there’s too much “fluff” in the system. Linda believes that there are plenty of resources available for the under-achieving kid, but the kids who are capable of excelling are being held back because there’s no resources to push their development – “We breed mediocrity,” she says. She says to teachers, “I don’t care if you’ve been there five years, ten years, or twenty years, it’s that kid's only year in your classroom and I would hope you were teaching with the same enthusiasm.” Eno also believes that the proportion of education dollars throughout the state is inequitable – rural students getting about $7,000 a piece, urban students receiving about $14,000 a piece.

Farheen Hakeem (Green Party): Farheen Hakeem is a teacher, but never clearly expressed what it is she was specifically going to do. She talked about offering the “nuts and bolts” behind education as a governor, but didn’t actually describe what those were. Her primary response to the question was using Title 1 money for tutoring, though she doesn’t support the No Child Left Behind Act nor the Race to the Top. She says we need to stop cutting money from education.

Ken Pentel (Ecology Democracy Party): In order to fix the achievement gap we should stop looking at schools in isolation and work on building up the communities. Pentel said, “We can’t continue to pick on the teacher to resolve health problems, housing problems, diet problems, and things like that.” Pentel said the schools needed more revenue (but didn’t offer any plan for generating revenue), and smaller class sizes. He also emphasized the importance of creativity in the classroom. He said we need to “allow for more creative time in school, physical fitness, a chance for young people to become more whole rather than just memorizing and regurgitating.” He believes creativity promotes gains in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Chris Wright (Grassroots Party): The achievement gap should be closed by creating a constitutional right to free post-secondary education. High college tuitions only allow for financially capable students -
“We burden our families and students with debt in search of the American Dream.” Wright also said that the state should concentrate on early childhood education and provide before and after school daycare for kids up to ten years old – he believes this will really help out the families. And we need to address special needs of students from various backgrounds.


*The Minnesota Miracle refers to the time when Minnesota students had a lot more resources than other students in the country, and now Minnesota students have fewer resources than the national average. Some historical information is provided here by the Minnesota Historical Society.