We are in challenging times. The new budget forecast has been released and the news is sobering. Clearly we all will need to be fiscally responsible as we make decisions. And, many would say, quality education is our hope for the future. Fiscally responsible educational decisions may be among the most critical decisions to be made during the coming year. Both BOT and MACTE are charged with making many of the critical educational decisions.

Let's consider some of the types of educational decisions facing us and consider the financial consequences.

MACTE and BOT are collaborating to revise the PEPER process. Program review is essential to ensuring that we produce high quality teachers who are knowledgeable about content and pedagogy. This type of process also costs money. The BOT has to pay staff and reviewers to review data and render decisions regarding licensure program quality. MACTE institutions need to employ faculty and staff to gather data, analyze data, build reports, and maintain a dialogue to answer BOT questions. The larger MACTE institutions report that it requires the equivalent of a half-time position more than one year to prepare a PEPER report under our current PEPER process. This does not include the time required for many individual faculty within each institution to document their own work and that of their students.  Additional time is required during the years between reports in order to maintain a data-based system. Can our revised PEPER process maintain high standards for quality, but reduce the effort and costs?

Changes in rule-making also involve costs. BOT invests staff time in decisions that may lead to rule-making. The state bears the costs of gathering comments, hosting hearings, and providing judgments on new educational rules. MACTE bears the costs and time involved with serving on state-wide committees, and revising and/or planning courses and programs that will meet the new rules. The time and costs for MACTE members goes beyond simply having a faculty member adjust a syllabus. Similar to the BOT process, MACTE requires curricular decisions to go through several committees and levels of review and approval. Rule-making changes are costly and take time.

The BOT and MACTE are also in dialogue about how to accomplish alignment of learner and teacher standards. The ultimate goal of standards alignment is logical and valuable.  But, are we also analyzing the costs of different approaches to standards alignment?  Both BOT and MACTE will need to invest staff time in resolving standards alignment. How time-intensive and cost-expensive does that alignment process need to be, while still maintaining educational quality? We appear to be headed towards investing BOT and MACTE staff/faculty time in developing an approach to alignment, deciding on a reasonable amount of documentation, collecting and analyzing documentation, creating reports, and evaluating reports. Are we being cost conscious in that process? Are we having an explicit dialogue about costs as we consider this educational decision?

High quality education in Minnesota will ensure a high quality future. We will need to work together to use our limited financial resources to ensure we maintain a high quality education. Quality and cost may become our mantra over the next year.