We must create an education system that allows every child the opportunity to meet their fullest potential. Unfortunately, our current system falls short of this goal for far too many students, especially in our own backyard. Recent research of the Minneapolis metropolitan area has consistently shown massive racial and socio-economic gaps in educational outcomes for our children: only one out of every three fourth-grade children of color are achieving reading or math standards, compared to closer to two out of every three white students. The statistics are even worse for children living in poverty. And Minnesota ranks 3rd to last in the nation for on-time high school graduation rates for young people of color. Not only do we have an obvious moral obligation to address this issue, but if racial gaps in educational attainment had been closed from 2005 to 2019, Minnesota’s GDP would have increased by $1.1 billion dollars annually.
Every child deserves a high-quality education that is aligned with community-adopted standards, prepares them for college or careers, strengthens our national workforce, gives them the tools they need to help solve society’s most vexing challenges, and to become socially responsible citizens. The primary measure of the effectiveness of our investment must be the lifetime outcomes of our students. Schools are the first, and too often the last, opportunity to close our troubling prosperity gaps. It is important that they effectively serve to undo our deliberately unjust past.
Any successful education policy should focus on four critical areas to make sure we are addressing these issues effectively and setting our children up for success. They are: early learning, kindergarten through twelfth grade, higher education, and the needs of students’ families.
I stand for progress in the following areas: