Thread by @whstancil

Here’s a piece that defends the effort to eliminate and replace the Minnesota education clause, and seems to attempt to rebut my criticisms of that effort.

Frankly, it doesn’t even begin to come close to addressing the concerns of me and others. default.salsalabs.org/T55026e5e-1f89…

First off, it's rarely a good sign when the thing you're supposedly defending isn't even mentioned until the 11th paragraph, halfway through the piece.

The author admits that "quality education" is a legally undefined term. This is a key problem with the proposed amendment: you're replacing a guarantee of "adequate education," with the force of precedent behind it, with an undefined generality.

She then rather vaguely says that although "quality education" is undefined, we'd have to come together as a state to define it. But that just leaves us back where we started! The amendment wouldn't have actually accomplished anything.

Also, please note the shot at "people outside of our state, legal scholars or lawyers."

This has become the amendment backers' go-to way dismissal of the actual experts, including a large group of civil rights scholars, who have said their plan would threaten students' rights.

"We can't let fears of the unknown keep us from doing this thing, even though we can't explain how it will help us" - at some point, casting yourself headlong into the unknown is reckless, not brave. This is someone daring Minnesota to jump off a cliff.

The comparison to the 13th and 19th amendments are ridiculous and cynical. The lesson of those amendments wasn't "All constitutional amendments are good." They did specific, good things. No one who supports the Minnesota amendment can really explain WHAT it's supposed to do.

There are so many things wrong with this sentence that's hard to know where it started. First, "amending your constitution" isn't something you can do generically. States have added or changed specific language, and none of those rewritten constitutions looked much like ours.

But perhaps more importantly, HOW are these states "eliminating their achievements gaps in unprecedented ways"? Are there states out there where racial achievements gaps have vanished, and no one told the rest of us? Dramatic claims like this need specificity.

Really, the main argument the piece seems to make is that this would extend rights to "all children" (helpfully italicized throughout the piece). But Minnesota's current educational rights DO extend to all children. The amendment would not change this!

There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of the MN ed amendment. But one big reason is how slippery and shady its supporters are being. They seem incapable of accurately and honestly describing what they're proposing or how it would work. That's the reddest flag of all.