The Education Evolving Blog

Even though it isn't a budget year, there are still many important and relevant education policy issues being discussed this legislative session. This post will summarize four pieces of legislation that have garnered a lot of attention and that we recommend you keep an eye on.

On Friday, March 16 the PELSB hosted a meeting at the Minnesota Department of Education MDE in order to receive public input on PELSB’s rule draft for the new, four-tiered teacher licensure system. This post will discuss two major issues in the rule draft—mentoring and cultural competency—that have so far been a focus of public comment, as well as a timeline for how individuals can provide feedback to PELSB.

Last week, the MDE released the four-year graduation rates for the class of 2017, which reached a new statewide high of 82.7 percent overall. That said, when the graduation rates data is examined in conjunction with other data points the success story becomes more muddied and raises the question: Do increasing graduation rates mean more students are doing more rigorous and higher-level work that prepares them for college, career, and life?

On January 10th, Secretary DeVos notified MDE that their ESSA accountability plan has been approved. However, just because MDE’s plan was approved does not mean that their work is done. Rather, MDE has formed a new stakeholder Committee in order to gain input about future improvements to the plan and will have to implement the plan starting in the 2018-19 academic year.