When Mark Dayton first ran for governor, I wrote a wonky little story about a new kind of assessment. When a Minneapolis principal I’d interviewed called after it appeared I flinched a little before picking up. Had I double-checked my notes? Had I gotten something wrong?
Nope. Turned out Dayton, who was running in a crowded field of DFLers who all had remarkably similar—and shallow—things to say about K-12 education, had called the principal and asked if he could stop by.
It can’t have been the only impromptu cold-call. Unlike his challengers, Dayton’s stump remarks on education were peppered with real-life examples of needs his policies would address. His vignettes were rich with the kind of detail that suggested he did more listening than flesh-pressing.
With the Legislature headed toward adjournment and a hailstorm of vetoes coming out of the governor’s office, I wonder where that man went. Particularly since his re-election, on education policy Dayton seems increasingly like a guy who is listening to one set of voices: Education Minnesota.
Thursday Dayton vetoed a bill to overhaul the way Minnesota teachers are licensed that had broad, bipartisan support. And he appears willing to go to the mat over his much less popular universal school-based pre-kindergarten plan known in Capitol shorthand as VPK—voluntary Pre-K. Continue reading