Doing some fact-checking about Matt Entenza's education claims--which seem to have shifted from concerns with the achievement gap for students of color to funding disparities between rural and metro schools--Bluestem came across this item in The Capitol Note: Dayton, others support Otto, while Ellison backs Entenza, by Politics in Minnesota's Mike Mullen:
1) After a flood of DFL leaders moved to shore up support for state auditor Rebecca Otto, last-minute DFL challenger Matt Entenza picked up a small win with an endorsement from US Rep. Keith Ellison.
Earlier in the day, a swath of politicians ranging from Gov. Mark Dayton to Sen. Jeff Hayden had backed up Otto. But, citing their longtime friendship and Entenza’s progressive values, Ellison said he supports the former House minority leader for the job.
“Matt has taken on corporate interests, prosecuted white-collar criminals, and stood against photo ID. He introduced the first bill ever in the legislature for marriage equality in 1995,” Ellison said in the statement. “He brings a valuable progressive voice to the discussion about the future of our state.”
The statement is repeated on the Entenza campaign site.
That's a bit odd, since according to information about the history of the issue at the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, the first marriage equality bill introduced in Minnesota was HF 3773, a 1998 bill that had Representative Karen Clark as chief author. Entenza was a co-sponsor.
There's nothing in 1995, the first year of Entenza's first term in the House.
And in MPR's October 2012 piece at Minnesota Public Radio, The deep roots of the marriage debate, Sasha Aslanian reports:
In 1997, Minnesota passed its own version of DOMA. The law banned gay marriage, and said same-sex marriages from other states would not be recognized in Minnesota.
DFL State Rep. Karen Clark countered with a proposal of her own: the first bill to propose legalization of same-sex marriage in Minnesota.
Is the dating on the Entenza material just a typo? Whatever the case, the Entenza campaign should correct the record, while crediting Clark as author. Her persistence and coruage finally paid off in 2013, when love became the law.
But the backdating makes us curious about the former House Minority leader's record, and we'll be taking a closer look.
A shifting message on education funding
As noted above, we've been startled to see a shift in Matt Entenza's message about education as he campaigns for auditor.
On June 4, 2014, the Star Tribune reported in Entenza seeks fellow DFLer's auditor seat:
Entenza said, if he wins, he would concentrate on protecting pensions, making sure that local governments are not bullied into giving corporate tax breaks that pit one Minnesota city against another, and looking into school spending to close the racial achievement gap.
That is certainly an admirable goal, as the K-12 graduation rate for children of color is a disgrace; however, it's curious how the state auditor could transform the audits of school districts into a tool for policy making. Perhaps Entenza can provide the details on just how that might work; we fancy that the state legislature and the governor, charged with setting policy and education budgets, might want to know.
But as the former St. Paul lawmaker campaigned around the state, his message on education changed. By June 9, Heather Carlson at the Rochester Post Bulletin reported in DFLers face primary fight in auditor race:
Entenza, of St. Paul, said he decided to run because he thinks the state needs a more active state auditor. If elected, he said he would fight to protect government pensions, stop corporate giveaways and investigate education spending to make sure rural schools are being treated fairly.
That too is a noble goal, and one that DFLers in the state legislature have been working on. On June 20, MPR reported in PoliGraph: Parsing school funding claims:
The legislative session is over, and DFLers are back in their districts talking up their accomplishments, including efforts to reduce the funding gap between urban and rural school districts.
Rep. Joe Radinovich, DFL-Crosby, wrote that, “We’ve reduced the funding equity gap between metro and rural school districts by a third in two years after watching it double over the last decade.”
Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, wrote that, “After a decade where the funding equity gap between metro and rural schools increased by 67 percent, we enacted legislation that cut this unfair funding disparity by a third in just two years.”
As with all things that involve public school financing, it’s complicated.
Both Radinovich and Marquart point to a May 2014 presentation put together by the Minnesota Department of Education. Slide 63 shows the funding disparity between the state’s wealthiest and poorest schools over the course of more than two decades.
It’s a measurement the department has used for decades to determine whether Minnesota schools are on the same financial playing field.
In 2002, the funding gap between poor and wealthy schools was at about 18 percent – the lowest it had been in decades.
But as the Minnesota’s finances entered a rocky period, the state gave school districts the ability to ask for more money from local taxpayers in levy referendums.
The strategy was a boon to wealthy districts that had no problem getting more money from the taxpayers. But poor districts, where levy referendums were routinely voted down, didn’t do so well.
In 2012, the funding gap between poor and wealthy districts stood at about 30 percent – the highest it had been since 1998.
That’s why the Legislature approved several initiatives in the most recent session to chip away at the disparity. According to the education department’s calculations, the funding gap will drop by about a third between 2012 and 2016, when the new funding rules are in full affect. . . .
. . .because Radinovich and Marquart are using a long-standing measure to underscore their point that the funding gap is shrinking, and because the gap is shrinking due to new financing rules aimed at helping rural schools, PoliGraph says their claim leans toward accurate.
The fact-checking--though unrelated to the auditor's race--suggests that the metro-rural funding gap hasn't been a secret locked away in the audits that the state auditor's office receives.
Rather, it's been a high profile, concerning issue that the DFL controlled legislature, along with Governor Dayton, has acted upon.
Image: Someone wants to place a sign in your lawn.
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Geez, Keith, are you sure you wanna let Entenza try to mooch some of your star power? Some of his stench is going to rub off onto you if you're not careful.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Jul 28, 2014 at 07:12 AM