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Alternative teacher certification bill splits DFL caucus. Becomes leading issue in final days of the legislative session.

Late Tuesday night, the House debated the alternative teacher certification amendment that would have reinstated ALT CERT into the k-12 Education bill.   There were many passionate speeches supporting the amendment by members of both parties. But despite the growing and frankly overwhelming support for underserved kids, in the end DFL caucus politics prevailed. We were told that leadership, um, that would be the recently Minnesota Education endorsed gubernatorial candidate, yes, the Speaker, threatened to kill the entire k-12 bill if it included ALT CERT.  Here’s a Politics in Minnesota story from this morning.
DFL leadership weighed in. If the k-12 Education bill has ALT CERT, kill it. The amendment went down 65-68. Ed Minn won this battle. Will they lose the war? Waiting for the Senate and hopefully a Conference Committee to bring it back.

DFL leadership weighed in. 'If the k-12 Education bill has ALT CERT, kill it'. The amendment went down 65-68. Waiting for the Senate and hopefully a conference committee to keep it alive.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Senator Poggemiller is delaying the bill, some say holding the bill hostage, awaiting the larger Guv v. DFL legislative drama to be resolved. Here’s a YouTube post in which Senator Poggemiller is on record strongly supporting alternative teacher licensing. Perhaps he needs to be reminded of his support?

Check out this WCCO-TV story on the ALT CERT bill from last night. Senator Bonoff is again spectacular in her support of ALT CERT.  Note WCCO-TV’s Pat Kessler comments:

“the three things you need to know are:
– That alternative teachers would be required to meet — and exceed — current teacher standards.
– They have to hold a bachelor’s degree with at least a 3.0 GPA.
– And they have to pass the same teacher exams as everyone else. “

Education Minnesota’s $85,000.00 tv buy this week (well over $500,000.00 in the last couple of months) didn’t tell you that, of course.

Finally, here again are the links to the tv and radio ads put out by the Minnesotans for Excellent Classroom Educators and Leaders (MN-Excel) in support of ALT CERT.

Text Box:

Click here to listen to the television ad.

Click here to listen to the radio ad.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 10:25 am and is filed under Alternative Certification -- ALT CERT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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