On Nov. 3, 2026, Minnesotans will elect the state’s next governor and the first female to hold that position. The new governor, whoever she may be, will be responsible for shaping the direction of Minnesota’s education system.
Since our founding over 35 years ago, American Experiment remains committed to education reform and renewal that will best meet the needs of all students, no matter who is sitting in the governor’s office.
Below is a list of suggestions that we hope the next administration will make a priority. Support for any number of these policies will help Minnesota schools better serve students throughout their K-12 education journeys. Just as important is who is in charge of implementation. In many ways, personnel is policy, and the next governor should choose a reform-minded education commissioner who can shepherd these proposals from concept to concrete reality.
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Reading
During the 2023 legislative session, Minnesota overhauled its approach to reading literacy through the Reading to Ensure Academic Development (READ) Act. While a positive step forward, strengthening what is already on the books and buy-in would help ensure the READ Act doesn’t become like other state-based education reform that came before it — a paper commitment without the follow-through.
The Minnesota Literacy Coalition, representing a large group of education organizations that work on READ Act implementation, has three major priorities for the future of early literacy legislation: increasing public awareness, ensuring strong, accountable implementation of the READ Act, and influencing the curriculum of higher education teacher prep programs.
As we wait for the READ Act’s reforms to materialize, today’s literacy proficiency suggests that Minnesota has a long way to go, and a turnaround will not happen overnight. Minnesota policymakers would do well to consider reading reform policy efforts in other states and be ready to emulate effective practices. Mississippi is one example that Minnesota has somewhat copied, and Maryland could be another, given its recent passage of similar reading literacy legislation. Both states have third-grade promotion policies.
Math
Just like reading, mathematics instruction needs focused policy attention to result in meaningful academic changes. Teacher training programs, professional development, and curricula can (and should) be aligned to science of math principles to help foster mathematics mastery. Given the state’s history of declining and stagnating math proficiency, the next governor should support policy measures that renew and revitalize math education in Minnesota. Alabama is one state policymakers could look to for math reform inspiration. Based on national assessment data, Alabama is the only state that has significantly increased its fourth-grade math score since pre-COVID.
Chronic Absenteeism
Academic reforms in reading and math require consistent, daily classroom participation to help students build foundational skills. If students aren’t in the classroom, they don’t have the opportunity to learn.
About one in four students has been chronically absent from Minnesota’s schools for the past three years. While other states have enacted targeted programs, Minnesota has been stymied by out-of-date data reporting. Publishing timely and accessible chronic absentee data would shift Minnesota’s approach to chronic absenteeism from reactive to proactive. A state-funded $4.7 million three-year pilot program, which began in 2024, revealed in its July 2026 report that an up-to-date and publicly available attendance dashboard was in the works, but that hasn’t yet materialized.
Pending its completion, the incoming governor should treat the dashboard as a starting point. Getting students to school is still a parent’s job, but parents can’t act on what they don’t know. Making the information available to parents then puts the onus on them to use the data as they will and opens up the opportunity for more questions to be asked to get on top of this real problem.
Ed-Tech and Cell Phone Policies
As of spring 2025, Minnesota school districts must have a cell phone policy in place. While the future governor could advocate for a statewide cell phone ban in schools versus the current local control approach, technology reform shouldn’t only include handheld devices. Many schools issue each student a personal Chromebook or similar device for schoolwork, often referred to as one-to-one (1:1) computing. Moving significant parts of instruction (such as homework, quizzes, or textbooks) online gives students more scrolling temptations during class. Assessing the role state agencies and districts play (or should play!) in these decisions would be worthy of the governor’s attention.
Merit Pay
In a landscape that often locks educators into salary schedules based on years in the classroom and educational attainment, compensation reform aligned with effectiveness rewards high-performing teachers and is linked to higher student test scores.
The future governor should champion efforts to strengthen performance incentives through Q-Comp reform and expansion. A multiple-measure evaluation system would help keep above average teachers in hard-to-staff districts and establish incentives for administrators to support teacher improvement. Minnesota can use Texas’s pay program as a model, which has seen widespread teacher and district approval at very low cost to the state. Keeping the model’s opt-in provision would allow districts to maintain local control over teacher bonuses.
Tutoring
Few education interventions have a stronger track record than high-quality tutoring. Minnesota currently supports tutoring through ServeMinnesota, an AmeriCorps partnership with initiatives called the Minnesota Reading Corps and the Minnesota Math Corps. Families can also put tutoring costs toward the K-12 Subtraction or Credit.
But the credit only reimburses parents who can front the cost. A targeted K-5 tutoring voucher, such as Louisiana’s model, could help close that gap without building new bureaucracy. Families get a voucher they can spend only with approved tutoring vendors, and every provider’s curriculum must be state-aligned and state-approved.
Classroom Order
Classroom learning cannot occur effectively when chronic discipline issues and disruptions go unmanaged. Minnesota should restore local authority regarding suspension and expulsion decision-making at the K-3 level and prioritize teacher authority over their classrooms. The governor should also end the pressure school districts face to implement discipline policies driven primarily by “disparity” targets. Strengthening parental responsibility and requiring parental notification and involvement for serious or repeated offenses would bring families back into the process as true partners in their child’s education.
Several southern states take a distinct approach to discipline policy, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental pillar of educational success. This helps reframe discipline away from being punitive or controversial and positions it as a prerequisite for meaningful instruction.
Ethnic Studies
New mandates have embedded an ideologically charged version of ethnic studies into the state’s K-12 public classrooms. Starting fall 2026, every K-12 public school in Minnesota will be required to teach ethnic studies as a new strand of social studies. Schools are also required to offer an optional course on ethnic studies. As other required academic standards come up for review and revision — math, science, PE, health, arts, and language arts — ethnic studies must be embedded across those standards as well.
American Experiment believes this version of ethnic studies diminishes the common humanity of each student by requiring them to understand the world primarily through a contested framework, a lens of power-centric, race-based social struggles. Concern has also been raised over ethnic studies being used as a vehicle to enable bias and bigotry across the state. The next governor should push for repealing these mandates, defunding the implementation grants, stopping the teacher licensing changes, and restarting the social studies standards revision process with a new committee.
Graduation Exams
As an accountability measure, Minnesota should reinstate high school graduation exams. Until the requirement was phased out beginning in 2013, Minnesota students had to pass all parts of the Graduation Required Assessments for Diploma (GRAD) exams to receive a high school diploma. Retakes were allowed, and special education and English Learner students could meet modified criteria through alternative pathways.
With grade inflation sending conflicting signals on whether students are actually learning, students, parents, post-secondary institutions, and future employers need to know that a high school diploma represents more than just a piece of paper. The mere presence of a graduation requirement that measures math and reading proficiency can kickstart the entire system.
Federal Scholarship Tax Credit
Under the Walz administration, Minnesota will not be opting in to the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, also referred to as the Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC). Minnesota taxpayers can still qualify for the federal tax credit by donating to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) in participating states, including our neighbors North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa. But Minnesota students won’t qualify for the scholarships funded through the credit.
The next governor should opt Minnesota in. An estimated $1.1 billion from private individual donations could benefit Minnesota public and nonpublic school students. Eligible public and nonpublic students could use the EFTC scholarships for tutoring, tuition, summer learning, special education therapies, supplemental or enrichment opportunities, school supplies, and technology, to name a few. With the majority of states officially opted in, Minnesota’s current non-participation is a real outlier.
Education Savings Accounts
At the state level, Minnesota should establish an education savings account (ESA) program, allowing families to direct a portion of the education dollars allocated by the state for their child’s public school education toward a variety of educational services.
Across political and geographic spectra, Minnesotans support policies that allow parents to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school that best serves their needs. ESAs are also supported by a majority of respondents who identify as Republican and independent and by a plurality of Democrats.
Open Enrollment
Minnesota’s 1988 open enrollment law was the nation’s first, allowing students to attend public schools outside their zoned home district. It remains a central feature of Minnesota’s public education system and is used by tens of thousands of families each year.
But more can be done to strengthen Minnesota’s public school open enrollment laws and implement best practices that prioritize student need over boundary lines. Removing participation caps from cross-district open enrollment, requiring districts to participate in within-district open enrollment, requiring districts to post their available capacity and open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites, and addressing transportation challenges would help improve access.
Charter Schools
It has been over 35 years since Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law, pioneering a model for the rest of the country to follow. But Minnesota’s historic charter school movement needs a refresh. High-performing charter schools should be protected, funding should be calculated under the same formulas as traditional public schools, and authorizers and their schools should be held accountable.
Authorizers are currently reviewed every five years by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). Reviews should become more frequent (such as, every three years) and authorizers should be held to more consistent levels of accountability for the schools they are expected to monitor and hold accountable. Currently, corrective action is administered to authorizers by the education commissioner on a case-by-case basis. The next commissioner should explicitly and publicly signal what type of authorizer action (or inaction) could trigger corrective action.
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Rebuilding Minnesota’s education system won’t happen overnight. But as the state’s track record shows, delay is a choice with real costs for students. The policy reforms outlined here are a starting point, and the next governor should pursue them with urgency.