A Primer on the K-12 Compromise
Twin Cities Business Monthly, September 1997
By Mitchell B. Pearlstein

What follows is a pretty good question about Minnesota's distinctive political culture. Or better yet, what some might describe as our incongruous and counterintuitive political culture. But first, some history.

Earlier this summer, Gov. Arne Carlson and legislators agreed on a K-12 compromise which gives Minnesota families the most expansive public and private school options in the United States. While the Republican Carlson didn't get all the private-school choice he wanted out of the DFL-controlled Legislature, he got more than any American governor has ever won.

Go back now to the end of the last decade and the start of the current one. The hot (and sound) educational idea of the moment was charter schools: Publicly supported institutions which, in exchange for being held accountable for students actually learning something, would be freed of many state rules. Minnesota, as you may recall, came to be the first state in the nation to adopt legislation allowing charter schools.

Now go back now a few more years, to the mid-1980s. The new, and again sound, reforms on the table were open enrollments and post-secondary options. The former proposal would allow parents, with some limitations, to send their children to the public school of their choice even if it were in another district. The latter would permit high school juniors and seniors to start taking college courses if they were ready and eager to do so.

Once again Minnesota, this time with DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich in office, led the way, as we were the first state to implement these two breakthroughs. Hence the question -- or questions:

Why has Minnesota been the very first of all 50 states to take each of these steps? Why, especially, insofar as the very core of Minnesota's educational establishment -- the two teacher unions as well as organized school board members and assorted administrators -- were opposed each time, often frantically so? In overly brief outline, here are some reasons suggested by friends who have been involved in these issues for a long time.

• Faith in governmental activism and experimentation. To the extent that the recent debate over "private-school choice" suggested diminishing confidence in the ability of "government schools" to adequately serve all children, it admittedly sounds strange to attribute Arne Carlson's victory, at least in part, to confidence in governmental action in the first place. But there is a direct link between such implicit faith in government and a belief that the "system" really can be seriously manipulated in order to better serve real, live kids.
• Key coalitions. Without suggesting that business groups, the foundation community, and minority and civil rights organizations have been consistently of like mind during these three rounds of educational change, fact is, they have been in concert frequently enough to make a difference. This was particularly the case in the mid-'80s.

  As for this past legislative session, it's perfectly correct to say that while the business community was supportive of the governor's plan, charitable organizations were no-show irrelevancies, and private civil-rights and urban-affairs organizations weren't big fans, either.

  Yet ironically, a case can be made that one of the more important developments in the debate was the acute criticism directed at Minneapolis public schools by the head of the Minneapolis Urban League, Gary Sudduth. His indictment of the ability and commitment of that city's public schools to successfully educate children of color put DFL legislators and teacher union officials (I've been told) on the defensive.

• Endangered kids. Related here is a commendable refusal by many leaders not to focus so narrowly on Minnesota's impressive national rankings on measures such as high ACT scores and low drop-out rates that we lose sight of the sizable number of kids here who are doing terribly.

  This point can be made stronger. I would contend that it's precisely this concern for children who are failing which most animates many of my reforming friends. And if I might say so, myself.

  Carlson, for example, had survey data during the recent debate which showed that it made much more public-opinion sense to focus on how his plan would help all Minnesota families, not just economically and socially strapped ones. Yet whenever he was on the stump, he wound up largely ignoring the poll's admonitions and spoke, instead, about what moved him most: kids falling through cracks, as he nearly did as a child. Which brings us to . . .

• Gubernatorial leadership. It's easy to dwell on abstract factors such as "faith in governmental experimentation" and serendipitous ones such as Gary Sudduth's blast. It's also easy to focus on strategic and tactical questions, such as the very big mistake made by choice opponents in assuming that House Republicans wouldn't stick so loyally to Carlson and his plan. And it's likewise easy to give plenty of credit to the cohesive campaign conducted on behalf of the governor's initiative by Minnesotans for School Choice, a grass-roots organization I'm privileged to chair.

But perhaps the best answer to the question of why Minnesota has led the nation in educational innovation for the last 15 years is that first Rudy Perpich and now Arne Carlson have been willing to go to the proverbial wall to get what they've wanted -- or something close to it -- never mind Minnesota's presumed enthrallment to union power and liberal orthodoxy.

Writ larger, this is another way of contending that while questions of ethos, alliances and suchlike matter a lot, conviction and tenacity, especially when employed by elected officials with the authority to beckon legislators and sign laws, matter a lot, too.

-- Mitchell B. Pearlstein is president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis.