Growth & Justice Blog

A statement for government redesign, goal-setting, and budgeting for outcomes

Few voices reflect Minnesota's moderate mainstream ethics more perfectly than Star Tribune editorial columnist Lori Sturdevant, and her call-to-action for government "redesigners'' in Sunday's Star Tribune Op-Ex was squarely on target.

 

And this morning Sturdevant hit the note again with a short editorial page item describing a discussion group on redesign that we at Growth & Justice have been part of for a year-and-a-half now. The nucleus of the informal ad hoc group is comprised of current and former presidents of the Citizens League, long considered a premiere civic improvement organization in the Twin Cities and Minnesota. The discussion group includes key leaders in the business community, from nonprofits and foundations and from the conservative think tank, the Center of the American Experiment. Much of the spirit and substance of the group's deliberations can be found on the pages of the Civic Caucus website.

 

Last week as the state government shutdown dragged on and a mutually unsatisfactory budget deal unfolded, our group produced a strong statement urging a commitment and offering specifics toward redesigning our governmental systems.

 

The statement is being shared with top leaders in the executive and legislative branch and will be districtuted broadly in coming days and weeks. Despair and cynicism about our political gridlock is undesrtandable but unnecessary. Recently I wrote a Capitol Report column noting that these actually are not the worst of times, and urging that we emerge from them with a commitment to redesign and invest in better government and measurable results. We can begin, for instance, by setting a 75 percent post-secondary completion goal for our young adults by the end of this decade, which is a top Growth & Justice policy objective.

 

The good news is that on many fronts conscientious Minnesotans, both inside and outside state and local government and in our state employee labor unions, are already working to improve our vital public investments. Let's encourage much more of that, and keep our minds open.

 

--Dane Smith

Bringing home "total community" for rural and Greater Minnesota student success

Coming home to Minnesota this week after an intensive three days of learning about student success efforts in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky - and trying not to think about the state government shutdown - one of the first things to pop up on my screen was a powerful op-ed in the St. Cloud Times, headlined “Education is up to all of us."

The article was all about a “Student Success Task Force" and a "Linkages Committee" in the St. Cloud area, which is mounting a “total community" campaign aimed at cross-sector coordination to improve achievement and attainment. "The goal is to change the way people in the St. Cloud area think about the stake we have in the development of all (bold italics mine) our children."

The author of this eloquent appleal was Patrick Henry, a retired executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical & Cultural Research. His main point was that everybody in the St. Cloud area needs to get enthused about a “communitywide, top-of-mind" campaign for universal student success. Henry urged his fellow central Minnesota citizens not to compartmentalize their thinking and not to defer to the public sector and public schools and welfare agencies, or the nonprofit sector, on a mission that’s so crucial to the health and vitality of all of Minnesota. Reading between the lines, Henry was exhorting businesses and all individuals to get more involved, whether they had children or not, and he noted that the portion of households with kids in school had dropped from one-half to one-fourth over the last few decades.

I really liked this passage: "Don't underestimate the significance of your attitude. When everyone in the community takes ownership and acknowledges a stake in the development and achievement of all (bold italics mine) our children, the St. Cloud area will be transformed, deserving even more its 'most livable' designation."

The column nailed almost perfectly the kind of “total community" effort we learned about from the Strive Partnership in Cincinnati, and that’s being advanced in Grand Rapids by the Blandin Foundation-supported Student Success Team, which organized our tour. One of the happier takewaways from the trip is that Blandin and Grand Rapids are already well along toward a "total community, cradle-to-career'' initiative for improved school success.

Strive in Cincinnati is very much an urban model but the principles - setting measureable goals and benchmarking results, focusing on early childhood, in-school and out-of-school support for every student, pushing academic rigor, preparing for and securing post-secondary attainment and career entry - can and should be applied everywhere.

Some specific advice for rural areas came in a presentation from the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, which has education attainment at the forefront of an agenda for 32 mostly rural eastern Ohio counties. And we were linked in that session to some other national efforts, including the Ford Foundation's "Creating Rural Wealth'' initiative, aimed at finding ways to sustain and restore economic health and wealth, which is really what the student success initiatives are all about.

More encouragement on the rural and urban homefront came from an all-day session I attended in St. Paul on Thursday, sponsored by the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership and its Minnesota College Access Network project. We heard from no fewer than 10 "College Connector Teams" as they proudly described their efforts to improve post-secondary participation and completion among specific groups, in rural areas as well as in the Twin Cities.

Among those that particularly impressed were a couple of teams focusing on American Indian kids at the Bois Forte and Fond du Lac reservations. We also saw presentations from groups working on minority success in St. Cloud, in Northfield and among the Latino population, which has a strong presence not just in urban areas, but in southern and western Minnesota.

--Dane Smith 

Wisdom from Principal Smith, and others, urban and rural, in Ohio

Anthony Smith belongs on a growing list of today's public school "turnaround" artists, having transformed a rock-bottom high school in Cincinnati into a model of academic success, and interestingly, athletic success, too.

Smith will be in the Twin Cities Wednesday evening to tell his story about imposing rigor with a human touch (and finding a corporate sponsor) to bring confidence and real achievement where little of either existed before. The host for Smith's visit is the Center for School Change at Macalester College and co-sponsored by Growth & Justice.

I got a preview of Smith's Minnesota presentation as a member of the Blandin Foundation's "Student Success" team, which is on the ground in Cincinnati this week to study the progress of the Strive Partnership and its model of total community involvement and "cradle-to-career" investment in improving education outcomes.

Smith could have been a military or corporate leader. He's all about mission and focus and results. His students, mostly African Americans and mostly boys, must wear uniforms. The link between mental and physical discipline in his school is clear, and the Taft Information Technology High School has gone from bottom to top in football and basketball rankings too.

But Smith is also proficient at the softer skills, exerting a peripatetic and surrounding presence. He says that he is almost "never in his office" and that he prowls and drops in on classrooms throughout the day. He tries to know every student in his building, often personally tutors in math and is focused on the intellectual and spiritual content essential to success, and has enlisted a veritable army of tutors (from the employee ranks of his corporate partner, Cincinnati Bell) who are similarly committed.

Before Principal Smith's bravura performance, we were treated to an equally persuasive presentation from some African American leaders in Cincinnati who are working on parental and community involvement in the cause. Rolanda Smith, executive director of Parents for Public Schools of Greater Cincinnati, made the case for an intensive two-day program that her nonprofit is conducting for "professional development" for parents. It 's the first time I'd heard the term"professional development" applied to parents, and it struck me as a brilliant concept.

We also heard from Khalilah Slater Harrington, director of community partnerships for Strive, who admitted that despite encouraging gains, "we're not there yet" with grassroots community understanding and embrace of the Strive concept.

Ohio's urban challenges on the education front are matched by problems on its rural eastern Appalachian border. And our fact-finding expedition ended up Tuesday with a presentation from Megan Wanczyk, manager of Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. A common chord was struck with the Grand Rapids contingent and Blandin Foundation representatives, over how to deal with distance to school, access to the quality courses offered in metropolitan areas, and worries by rural parents that higher education attainment will cause kids to leave and not return.

This is the third and final dispatch from Ohio, and the Blandin team and I are thankful for more than a dozen committed Ohioans and Kentuckians  who have been eager to tell their stories about efforts to do better by their children. We have learned from them.

--Dane Smith

Lessons from Cincinnati: Total community effort begins to show results

Lynda Jackson is a southern lady with a sweet disarming drawl, but she's a steel magnolia when it comes to school improvement and demanding real results. Jackson is the superintendent of the school district in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, and she's steering this very poor school district toward individualized learning plans for every student. She also is transforming Holmes High School into an "early college high school," with a goal of every student earning at least 15 college credits before graduation.

Meanwhile, over in Cincinnati and on both sides of the river, the Ascend Performance Institute is developing high-performing teams of principals and teacher leaders through intensive, accelerated sessions featuring best practices and case studies and taught by topnotch leaders in education, business and medicine. The template for this instruction was drawn from the Mayo Clinic model of integrated expertise and "putting the patient (students) first."

A pivotal catalyst for these efforts and countless others in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is the Strive Partnership, described as a "backbone organization" of truly comprehensive community sweep, dedicated to improving student success. Strive has more than 300 partners, including the region's leading corporations, regional business associations, the Catholic schools, lots of foundations and nonprofits, early childhood advocates, and of course, the school districts and higher education systems.

I'm privileged this week to be part of a "Student Success Core Team" from Grand Rapids with the support of the Blandin Foundation, taking an immersion course on the Strive model and other education reform efforts in the region. The Strive example also is being studied by a working group of Twin Cities’ advocates for improving school outcomes.

As we sat down to hear their story, we were warned at once by Strive leader Jeff Edmondson (see his TED lecture here) not to get too worshipful of the Strive model. Although groups of school and nonprofit leaders are descending on Cincinnati regularly to learn about the six-year-old partnership, Edmondson said progress has been painful, slow, uneven and even "ugly." Lots of mistakes have been made, he said, and he encourages each region that tries to replicate Strive to build its own set of standards and goals and prescriptions, from the ground up.

But there is some truly impressive progress to consider. On 40 out of 53 benchmarks for educational success set by the partnership, mainly basic test scores in 4th and 8th grade and measures of college retention and graduation, schools in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky have improved since the baseline year of 2005-2006. And that's despite a severe recession and worsening poverty rates in a region that's been struggling for decades with a decline in its industrial economic base. In Covington, the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, a standard benchmark of income status, is a staggering 90 percent.

Of all the many ways this Strive animal was described, I thought "Building a Cradle-to-Career Civic Infrastructure'' might have been the best. As developed here, the model consists of five goals: every child prepared for school, every child supported in and out of school, every child succeeding academically, every student enrolled in post-secondary study (college or instruction for a workforce credential) and every student graduating and entering a career.

"Strive gives air to good ideas and then helps implement them faster than they would be otherwise," said Leslie Maloney, a senior vice-president of a major foundation tied to a banking family, and a member of the Strive executive committee.

Almost everybody involved agrees that Strive's strength and its effectiveness so far has been drawn from good-faith buy-in and persistence by just about everybody with any kind of stake at all in the community, in every sector. The partners include corporate giants, the chambers of commerce and business moguls -- particularly Procter & Gamble, and nonprofits and funders such as the United Way and KnowledgeWorks, an operating foundation with a mission of school success and a sponsor of the Strive Partnership.

These partners are elites within the community. Grassroots support and commitment from more ordinary folks would be helpful to this "everybody in" philosophy, and we had the great fortune of listening to a guru on the theme of community vitality and how neighborhoods can be energized and empowered to improve themselves. Peter Block, a Cincinnatian and author of the book "The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods,'' spoke to our group to start the day. Block said that big system reforms can be an elusive mirage and while they "can deliver some things, the schools can't raise a child. ... I spent decades on school reform (before realizing) that the question is, `How do we raise a child?'" I'd highly recommend checking out his book or the website linked above for elaboration.

More tomorrow, in the third and final installment from Cincinnati. 

--Dane Smith 

 

Total community, birth-to-career: Studying the Cincinnati/Strive Experience

For a lesson in how effective we all can be when business, nonprofits and public education work together, check out this ABC News success story on Cincinnati's Taft Information Technology High School and its effort to boost success and achievement for disadvantaged kids.

Over the next three days I'll be blogging on education issues directly from Cincinnati, where I'm joining a contingent from Grand Rapids and the Blandin Foundation to learn about some encouraging progress in Greater Cincinnati, including northern Kentucky and the rural Appalachian area. A key catalyst in this regional approach is the Strive Partnership, which is being studied also as a possible template for a broader community initiative in the Twin Cities.

Blandin is mounting what I'd describe as a "total community" effort at improving student success, focusing on the north-central rural area it serves in Itasca County, and enlisting business owners, school district officials and a wide swath of other public, private and nonprofit leadership. An important explicit principle in this Blandin initiative is "unprecedented community support."

If the philosophy behind the Strive and Blandin thinking had to be summed up in 10 words or less, I'd choose "total community and total pipeline, cradle-to-career." In other words, involvement and commitment by every significant player in the community, not just the schools and teachers, and simultaneous attention to all potential leaks in the pipeline, not just one or two magic patches or reforms to this or that segment of the education continuum.

At Growth & Justice, we've already done some preliminary work with a policy brief about Cincinnati School District success and we've summarized the gist of these lessons in a Capitol Report op-ed in April. For several years now our primary policy advocacy focus has been on driving Minnesota to much higher post-secondary attainment levels with a comprehensive Smart Investment in Minnesota's Students agenda, beginning in early childhood and continuing to career preparation and job readiness.

We Minnesotans, owing to our mostly deserved reputation as above-average in almost everything, can be complacent, and provincial, even smug. As my mother always said, "pride goeth before the fall" and we are falling behind on some important measurements of school success, especially for kids of color and in low-income households. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Americans in other states and billions of people around the world are trying to do better by their children and their schools, and we most certainly can learn from them.

Stay tuned!!

--Dane Smith

 

Looking to the Mayo Clinic, and the "village" of Cincinnati, for comprehensive and collaborative models of education success

As we strive toward our goals of much higher post-secondary attainment and reducing our racial and income achievement gaps, let’s consider the Mayo Clinic. This world-famous institution, a point of pride for Minnesota, might seem like a strange model for school improvements. But health care and medicine, like education, is fundamentally a human-helping-human enterprise. And the concept of healing is fitting as we try to address what ails our education system.

"The Mayo" earned its reputation by: considering the whole health of each patient in the most comprehensive way possible, dedication to the principle that "the needs of the patient always come first," coordinating the efforts of its entire group of doctors, and devoting much of its resources toward research and evidence, according to Wikipedia. (As the father of a daughter whose life was saved by Mayo’s collaborative expertise, I actually have firsthand knowledge of the Mayo formula.)

Similarly, we strongly believe that the ideal strategy for improving education investment in Minnesota must be comprehensive, student-centered, collaborative and evidence-based.

There actually is a growing consensus nationally that the entire cradle-to-career pathway must be tended and improved, as outlined in a national "Broader, Bolder Approach," with its guiding principles for educational redesign. While we should demand improvement in K-12 teachers and principals and administrators, we are missing the boat completely if we neglect the fact that about half our kindergartners, mostly from low-income families and disadvantaged minority neighborhoods, are not fully ready to learn when those professionals first see them. And education must begin by better equipping new parents for their weighty responsibilities.

This or that "silver bullet" — school uniforms, alternative teacher licensure or merit pay, all-day kindergarten — are not likely all by themselves to move the needle dramatically on educational outcomes. And we simply can’t hope for this or that individual miracle-worker in the school system to save our struggling students. Rather, the African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" comes to mind. And although that phrase might be a little overused in recent years, this very comprehensive and collaborative mindset was crucial to success over the last decade in Cincinnati.

The graduation rate for Cincinnati Public Schools increased from 51% in 2000 to 80% in 2009. And the graduation rate differential between African American students and white students not only narrowed to nearly equal standing in that time but has remained at similar levels since 2006. Achievement scores for the district improved significantly. And perhaps most important, college enrollment and readiness have bumped up too: colleges in the Cincinnati area are reporting that more of the city’s high school graduates are enrolling, and more students from the local area are entering academia prepared for the challenges — and staying in college.

The Cincinnati story truly was a group effort. Cincinnati’s success involved multiple interventions along the entire pathway, from cradle to career launch, not just one or two of those "silver bullets," such as lower class sizes, aggressive testing or assigning pass/fail grades to schools. And the overriding lesson is that the school district was not alone in its efforts to reform schools and improve achievement for all students. The local business and philanthropic community, parents and community groups, teachers unions and even national experts on school change (including Minnesota’s own Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College) played a key role. More about the Cincinnati experience is available on our website at Growth & Justice, which also features our own Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students agenda and project, detailing a comprehensive, evidence-based strategy for driving Minnesota toward a 75% higher education attainment rate by the end of this decade.

Education has always been a public responsibility in Minnesota and the United States, for the very good reason that it is essential to our common good, our economy and the quality of life in our community. Education really is everybody’s business, extends well beyond the school and before and after the school day. Mayo and Cincinnati teach us that comprehensive and collaborative are the right way to meet this responsibility.

-Dane Smith

Post originally published on LearnMoreMN Blog on April 13, 2011

Business-backed early childhood quality-rating proposal must be resurrected

We all make mistakes and the Minnesota House made a big one last week.  It can and must somehow perform a do-over on an early childhood measure that was defeated, in large part through the behind-the-scenes influence of social and religious conservatives in the Republican Party base.

The legislation would take advantage of private donations to establish a statewide rating system that would help parents assess and find high-quality early childhood care and education offerings for their children.  This initiative will be of great and lasting benefit to disadvantaged and middle-income parents who are most in need of this cost-effective investment in human development.  And the proposal actually puts a premium on parental choice, a favorite mechanism for free-market conservatives.

Moreover, the Quality Rating proposal, and the Parent Aware system it would help expand and develop, enjoys strong business leadership backing and a truly rare breadth of consensus in these polarized times.  As education reporter Beth Hawkins of MinnPost assessed it, "the bill was revenue-neutral, meaning its implementation would not cost a cent, and it enjoyed the backing of (DFL Gov. Mark) Dayton, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and pretty much everyone on the political continuum between them."  The author of the proposal was Rep. Jenifer Loon, an Eden Prairie Republican and a leading critic of the GOP vote to strip it was Duane Benson, executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation, a former executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership and a former Republican Senate minority leader.

Leading the effort to undermine and defeat the proposal were social and religious conservatives, represented by the Minnesota Family Council and the Education Liberty Watch.  With all due respect to both, on this issue these groups simply do not reflect the mainstream views of the state's business community, our  leading economists, and a vast array of education experts on this issue.  The Minnesota Family Council puts a high priority on "Biblical Worldview" education and generally favors all things private in education, seldom voicing general support for our public institutions or governments in general.  And the Liberty Watch, in a 10-point statement of principles, does not offer a single word of support for public education or schools, positing instead that "nonpublic education without government interference is essential to a healthy education system."

In Minnesota, a clear moderate and progressive majority, joined by many conservatives, essentially agrees that early childhood education is a growing public responsibility, and that the growing percentage of children showing up not ready for kindergarten represents a real threat to our long-term prosperity.

Mainstream business owners and leaders agree that higher-quality early childhood education is essential for the long-term quality of Minnesota's workforce.  And it just doesn't make policital or policy sense for the House majority caucus to continue defying that wisdom and consensus.

Dane Smith

"Beyond the Bottom Line" and the split-screen analogy

Lori Sturdevant in the Sunday STrib offers a positive review of some of the best efforts now underway toward redesigning our governmental systems, focusing particularly on the extensive new "Beyond the Bottom Line'' report.  BBL is a project of Minnesota's blue-chip charitable foundations (Bush, Blandin, Minneapolis, Minnesota Community, Northwest Area, and St. Paul), and it's actually a new and improved rendition of a similar effort two years ago.  The highly regarded Public Strategies Group and the venerable Citizens League are key shapers of the report, and Growth & Justice was part of a recent citizens listening project called Common Cents, the results of which hopefully will help shape further redesign work for our state and local governments.  Bush Foundation President Peter Hutchinson, who has spent decades working on reinventing public systems, is a key advocate for the BBL work.

The BBL report does not piddle with some of the attention-getting but mostly inconsequential ideas for reform and cost-savings, such as rearranging state agencies, or cutting legislative per diem allowances. Rather, BBL drives toward big-system ideas that could save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, with concepts such as paying health care providers a lump sum for broad health outcomes, rather than for specific services rendered.  The report also calls for strong consideration of removal or reduction of our tax expenditures -- various tax breaks, credits or deductions that now cost the state some $11 billion annually.

These recommendations are heavy lifts, politically.  And we can virtually guarantee that in this legislative session neither the Legislature nor Gov. Dayton, committed as both might be (see House Redesign Caucus) to redesign and good-government principles, will arrive at a significant and sweeping remake of our public investment structures.

But all parties can and should commit to a long-term persistent effort in that direction.  Former Citizens League leader and education reformer Ted Kolderie, who has spent a lifetime studying governmental and school systems, is trying to popularize the idea of a permanent "split screen'' mentality for our elected leaders.  The basic idea: on one "screen," do what you can with what you have and political realities, try to improve and compromise and balance budgets in the usual ways.  That's fine.  But on another "screen," as a separate and ongoing enterprise at all levels of government, keep working on the grand, innovative, sweeping structural reforms, such as the "Human Capital Performance Bonds" concept proposed last week at the capitol.  For a more detailed outline of the "split screen" or "Continuous Improvement + Continuous Innovation" strategy, check out the recent discussion and statement on the  Civic Caucus website.

Patience and hard work have paid off for Minnesota over the decades.  We achieved a more progressive tax structure under Farmer-Labor Gov. Floyd B. Olson in the 1930s, reformed our civil service system under Republican Gov. Harold Stassen, worked a "Minnesota Miracle" in school-finance reform under DFL Gov. Wendell Anderson, and advanced beyond most other states with health care for working families and MinnesotaCare under Republican Gov. Arne Carlson.

Each of those efforts demanded sacrifice and compromise and hard work and wrenching changes.  But we can and will have better governments in Minnesota.  It's our way.

Dane Smith 

Minnesota needs a sense of urgency on education, says Secretary Duncan

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wishes that Minnesota would take action on education reform.

Duncan came to the Twin Cities Friday and told the large crowd at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon that Minnesota faces challenges, notably the gap in educational achievement between the state’s students of color and its white students.

“What I haven’t quite felt – candidly, recently – is this sense of urgency,” said Duncan, adding, “We have to get better faster.”

Educational achievement and attainment constitute the “civil rights issue of our time,” he told the crowd.

Other states haven’t solved the challenge of gaps in educational achievement, but they’ve made progress, he said.

Minnesota: not so much.

Minnesota and the nation as a whole must step it up when it comes to education if we hope to hold our lead in the world economy, Duncan noted.

“As President Obama says, the nations that out-educate us will out-compete us.”

Duncan’s messages are ones that Growth & Justice, too, is delivering. Many of the themes that Duncan presented in his talk on Friday line right up with ideas and recommendations from our initiative on Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students:

• Duncan set out as a goal a 50 percent increase in the share of U.S. students who finish higher education. At the state level, Growth & Justice is pushing for Minnesota to commit to a 50 percent increase in the share of young people who successfully complete a post-secondary education program.

• Duncan flagged early childhood education as critical, urging Minnesota to ensure that children from low-income families have access to high-quality child care and that all children enter their school years ready to learn.

• He emphasized the need for high standards and high expectations for students.

• And he called for effective parental involvement to increase student success, noting that his own federal agency hopes to double funding for initiatives aimed at identifying and supporting parent-focused initiatives.

Duncan talked, too, about the critical role of community colleges in education and retraining. He spoke in favor of alternative certification for teachers and of including student performance as one element of teacher evaluations. He called teachers the nation’s “great unsung heroes.” And he cited the need to encompass a wide range of academic subjects in our push for excellence.

Mindful of his audience at this Minnesota Chamber of Commerce event, Duncan welcome the active interest of the business community in education.

“The business community’s voice in education – involvement in education – is desperately needed.”

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event, has made education reform an issue. The Chamber’s priorities include effective teachers in every classroom, reading at grade level by the time a student leaves third grade, and increased high school graduation requirements.

Business and state government leaders took the stage after Duncan’s talk, echoing many of his themes.

Republican State Senator Gen Olson cited proficient reading by third grade as a stand-out issue. And she noted the need to teach skills in a variety of different ways that match up best to how individuals learn. “The burden on my heart in education is closing the achievement gap,” she said.

Democratic Representative Carlos Mariani, who directs the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership, noted the need to “tie reforms to strong funding for our schools.”

Said Democratic Senator Terri Bonoff of kids at risk, “We have to be willing not just to identify that these kids have the greatest need but then also that we’re willing to do something about it.”

And Republican State Representative Pat Garofalo laid out his motto when it comes to education: “Kids first. No excuses. No exceptions.”

There’s no time like the present for that.

— Matt Kane

Michael O'Keefe with budget wisdom

Michael O'Keefe was one of the standouts in  a highly respected state cabinet that came together to help neophyte Gov. Jesse Ventura in 1999, and O'Keefe served ably as commissioner of the Department of Human Services, one of the state's largest and most complex agencies.   He's also had a distinguished career as a foundation CEO  (McKnight) and a college president (Minneapolis College of Art and Design), and he has degrees in mathematics and physics.   So when he talks about state budget crisis realities, one really should pay attention.   Here are some of the standout excerpts from his recent interview with the Civic Caucus on the "Hard Realities of Minnesota's Budget Situation."

•  Address the problem with every tool in sight, but do not dig a deeper hole--O'Keefe described how he was in government for "good years," when they had extra money to spend. "Then we hit a bad year. The budget was good before the Legislature got a hold of it. Governor Ventura had actually put together a very reasonable plan that included some taxes and some cuts, and drew down some  state reserves with a strategy to replace them.
• "Offset medical costs by accepting federal Medicaid assistance, and find efficiencies--In the area of health, O'Keefe advocates taking the federal Medicaid money-over $1billion-"because one of our goals of a state is to have a safety net." The state really screwed up when it cut general assistance medical care, he said. Now minor conditions become chronic or more serious and people will show up at emergency rooms that cost someone--the state, the county, insured people-- much more than if they had received preventative care.
• The health care system will need a crisis to change--He has concerns about the system of care, and its methods of payment. "A third-party-payer marketplace is never going to work unless you have substantial restructuring. We have a system that rewards doctors on volume, on throughput," and on the cleverness of their support staff to classify what it is that went on in the exam room. He described a doctor who told him that whenever he performs a service he cuts and pastes a description for the service directly out of the Medicare guidebook, which guarantees he'll be reimbursed. Instead, O'Keefe said, the state needs more systems like Mayo where doctors are paid salaries.
  
• The state may not need two public post-secondary systems--A participant asked whether the state government really needs two higher education systems. "I don't think so," O'Keefe responded. "Take a look at the administrative over-structure-it's huge." O'Keefe described his hope that new leadership at the University and at MNSCU will be willing to engage in a discussion about reducing the aggregate administrative overhead, admitting that it would be enormously unpopular with their constituents but nevertheless needs to be done."
  
• Post-secondary costs are being driven up faster than inflation--Higher education costs have been rising at double the rate of inflation for 25 years, he said, and that's not sustainable. Part of the cost-driver has been on the administrative side, and part because of increased complication caused by increased requirements of the federal government. "But a huge increase has been a market phenomenon driven by students and families: they want more, and they're willing to pay for it."  Expectations have increased. "You can't sell a dorm room with three beds anymore. What students and their families want is an apartment suite with living area, kitchen, laundry etc. And, they're willing to pay for it. Witness private developers who are putting up such style dorms and making them profitable."  O'Keefe recalled many years ago that The George Washington University was considered "middling" in terms of quality. They brought in a consultant whose recommendation was that they double tuition. They increased it by 40 percent in the face of deep concern that  applications would go down; instead they went up by 60 percent. "People were willing to pay more because of the perception of quality implied by the higher tuition."
• Virtual education has significant, widespread potential--To a question about virtual education, O'Keefe said he thinks it has huge potential to bring students rich experiences without having to first bring them together in person. At the college of Art and Design he described a professor who taught via the internet from South Africa. The students were satisfied, he said, with a balance of internet-conferencing, faxing images to each other, and working face-to-face in groups on campus. "I was very surprised; it resulted in a quality experience." Even so, the application of technology has increased costs: "So far when new technologies have been added they haven't reduced costs, as some had promised. I'd argue you have to change the system of teaching for that to happen."

There's substantially more from O'Keefe on the Civic Caucus website,  including a provocative challenge to rethink  whether Minnesota's spending on prisons and lifetime incarceration of sex offenders can be sustained.   We're proud to have Michael on our board of directors at Growth & Justice and as a significant  influence on our policy thinking.

Dane Smith