Minnesota's educational landscape has been marred by a significant drop in student reading and math proficiency since Governor Tim Walz took office in 2019.
This downward trend has drawn sharp criticism from educators and lawmakers, who attribute the decline to Walz's focus on satisfying the far-left demands of his party, rather than addressing the pressing issues in education.
According to The Post Millennial, Republican State Senator Carla Nelson, a former educator herself, voiced her concerns about Walz's approach to education. Nelson stated that Walz "spent most of the last two years working to accommodate far-left demands in his party rather than working to address real education issues" in Minnesota. She further criticized the governor's agenda, which she said included "burdensome mandates on schools [that] have since led to budget shortfalls across the state and pulled teachers away from their students to comply with requirements.
Under Walz's leadership, reading proficiency in Minnesota plummeted from 59.2 percent in 2019 to 49.9 percent in 2023. The 2021-22 academic year also saw a surge in chronic absenteeism, with a staggering 30 percent of students regularly missing school, more than double the rate in 2019.
Walz's tenure has also been marked by controversial changes to the state's social studies standards. These changes mandate the inclusion of an "ethnic studies" component in K-12 curricula, a move critics argue is an attempt to indoctrinate students with radical left-wing ideology.
Despite Walz's efforts to bolster his appeal by emphasizing his background as a high school social studies teacher and football coach in Minnesota, his decisions as governor have been widely criticized for damaging the state's educational standing. One of the most contentious decisions was his adherence to teachers unions' demands to extend school closures during the pandemic, a move critics argue contributed to Minnesota's drop in national education rankings from 7th in 2021 to 19th in 2024, as reported by the Annie E. Casey Foundations Kids Count Data Book.
House Majority Whip and Minnesota Representative Tom Emmer did not mince words in his critique of Walz's leadership. "As Governor, Tim Walz chose teachers union money over putting students first, and the results have been disastrous," Emmer said. "Minnesota students test scores fell to their lowest levels in decades because of Walzs failed, anti-student agenda." This stark assessment underscores the growing concern over the state of education in Minnesota under Walz's leadership.
Login