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Britt Robson, CityPages

When the now-infamous state government shutdown officially concluded earlier this month, Minnesota politicians wasted no time bragging about the generous funding increases public education would receive over the next two years. Not coincidentally, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and every seat in the House and Senate are up for reelection this November. If you don't think there is a cause-and-effect there, consider that even miserly Minnesotans who would sooner see their fellow citizens tossed off state-supported health insurance than countenance a tax increase change their tune when it comes to investing in our schools.

After the last major budget bill, for example, a clear majority of those participating in a February 2003 Minnesota Poll approved of Pawlenty's slash-don't-tax strategy for solving the $4.2 billion deficit, but merely 31 percent approved of Pawlenty's decision to freeze school funding where it was. (And actually it was a $185 million cut, the first K-12 funding decrease in modern state history.)

That's why, for all their bickering through the shutdown, incumbents from both parties were slapping each other on the back over how much they'd ponied up for education. The media has dutifully parroted this assessment. School administrators proclaim themselves ever so grateful for all the new dollars--because it could be, and recently has been, much worse. All this bonhomie is apt to gull voters into believing the current buzz that education was the "big winner" this session. It will also set them up to resent the teachers and superintendents when they plead poverty and ask for more money two years down the road. That's because the size and scope of the just-passed education bill is being cynically oversold.

Let's get specific. Right after the shutdown was resolved, Pawlenty claimed that the new K-12 education funding package was "the best the state has seen in 10 to 15 years." This was echoed by a Sunday Strib editorial, which stated, "Legislators and Gov. Tim Pawlenty agreed to the largest percentage hike [in the basic per-pupil spending] in at least 15 years."

Wrong. Six years ago, during Gov. Jesse Ventura's first budget session, legislators passed an education bill that boosted the per-pupil spending allowance by 8.66 percent over the course of the 2000-'01 biennium. By contrast, the per-pupil allowance in the recent education bill is slated to increase by 8.11 percent during 2006-'07.

One explanation the Strib and Pawlenty might have for their erroneous claims is in the formula. The spending is supposed to increase 4 percent in 2006 and another 4 percent in 2007. In 2000 and 2001, the increases were 4.7 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. Lazy math says add the biennial percentages together and conclude that the comparison is 8 percent versus 7.9 percent. But that's not how the formula works. Anyone who runs the numbers would conclude that the increase six years ago was greater.

The math may be complicated but the point is significant, because the per-pupil spending allowance (the best in, ah, six years) is the current K-12 bill's almost sole claim to generosity. The Pawlenty administration trumpets the $86 million it is putting into its QComp program, linking pay to teacher performance. But this, too, looks less impressive in context: Six years ago, legislators put $123 million into reform incentives like hiring more teachers in order to reduce class sizes.

Then there is the lack of funding needed to even pretend to keep up with special-education needs in the schools. Six years ago, state special ed funding was increased by $101 million, in part because state law mandated that it keep up with inflation. Inflation increases for special ed were repealed by Pawlenty and his no-tax crew in 2003. Thus, instead of the additional $175 million necessary to keep up with inflationary costs in special ed this coming biennium, schools are getting an increase of just $23 million. In a similar vein, only a third of the past cuts in Early Childhood Family Education were restored this biennium.

What's more, Pawlenty and other Republican lawmakers are disingenuously taking credit for education funding increases that in reality will rely in part on local property taxes. Where the K-12 funding package six years ago was designed to reduce school property-tax levies by $50 million, the current budget is designed to boost property taxes by $139 million to pay for education--money the schools won't receive until 2007, if at all, depending on voter referendums.

The bottom line is that the 2000-'01 K-12 education bill totaled approximately $1.1 billion. The 2006-'07 K-12 education bill brings it to about $800 million. Even if you factor in the slight decline in statewide enrollment and the property tax buy-down, there is no way to conclude that the current education bill is anywhere near as generous as the bill six years ago.

Of course, that was before an economic downturn, but even in an era of government penny-pinching, Minnesota has lost its luster as the Brainpower State. In 2002--right after that bountiful 2000-'01 budget--per-pupil for education in Minnesota was shown to be below the national average according to data from the U.S. Census. And in per-pupil funding for education as a portion of our per capita income--how much we are committed to education investments relative to what we can afford--Minnesota ranked 38th in the nation in 2002, the most recent year data is available.

Since then, of course, there was a two-year budget that actually cut money for schools, not to mention ignored inflation. Literally thousands of teachers statewide have been laid off. Well-respected and highly praised superintendents of our two major urban districts have fled their jobs, one without another job lined up. The only big winners this session are the politicians who perpetuated the myth that they had somehow saved our schools.

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