| |
| |
|
|
2/19/2006 12:00 AMCarol Bomben, Opinion, Pioneer Press One of the biggest drawbacks of Minnesota's complex education funding system is it is very easy to manipulate statistics for political purposes. A commentary by Charlie Weaver of the Minnesota Business Partnership (Feb. 14) is the latest example of using deception and distortion of statistics to attempt to advance a political agenda. Weaver accuses Sen. Mark Dayton of spreading a "myth" by claiming the state has under invested in public education. To make his case, Weaver takes one slide from a Power Point presentation developed by the Association of Metropolitan School Districts completely out of context. The slide he references notes that total per student revenue has increased 49 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1984. Not surprisingly, Weaver fails to note the next two slides show if funding dedicated to special education and building debt service is factored out, the increase since 1984 has been just 8.5 percent. He also fails to mention the federal and state governments continue to under-fund special education to the tune of $350 million. In other words, the federal and state governments are forcing Minnesota school districts to use $350 million in funding meant for regular instruction on mandated special education programming. In addition, Weaver fails to note the basic education funding formula, the lifeblood for our schools, has continually lost ground to inflation since 1992. In fact, the basic formula would be $332 per pupil higher in the current school year if it had just kept pace with inflation since 1992. Weaver also fails to point out national school finance expert, John Myers, recently concluded Minnesota under-funded public education by almost $1 billion during the 2003-2004 school year. He further failed to acknowledge the Minnesota Department of Education recently released a report showing Minnesota school districts have been forced to increase fees by 45 percent over the past three years to make up for insufficient state funding. But enough with the statistics. If you are a student or parent, you don't need any statistics to know what the impact of inadequate state funding has been. If you are a teacher, all you have to do is try to walk through your overcrowded classroom to see the impact. Grandparents, inundated with requests to buy magazine subscriptions and gift wrapping paper for school fund-raisers see the impact. Property taxpayers who have seen the ill fated state takeover of education funding disappear definitely understand the impact. Only those with their head buried in the sand or those with ulterior motives fail to see the impact inadequate state funding has had on our public schools. Bomben is chair of the Association of Metropolitan School District and a school board member for the Eden Prairie Public Schools. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Per Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work is distributed | |||||||||||||||||||||||