Gilbert Gutknecht: “But the other thing I wanted to mention about Governor Carlson, he said something really profound; and that is that, for…”

“But the other thing I wanted to mention about Governor Carlson, he said something really profound; and that is that, for too long in public education and education in general, we have measured quality education by inputs. And he sort of reversed. Maybe it is because he came from PS-36. Maybe it is because he was State auditor. But when he was governor, he said, we better start measuring outputs. Because we have all labored under this Lake Woebegone mentality that all our children were above average, and that is not necessarily true. And when we began to actually test the students, we began to find out they were not doing nearly as well in many of the areas as we thought they were doing. And so, we are starting to measure quality now in Minnesota not by how much we put into the process, and we put an awful lot of money in public education in the State of Minnesota, as my colleagues do in Colorado and in Michigan, as well. But we want to find out how well the students really are doing in terms of learning. And I think that if we focus on the students, if we focus on the children, and if we focus on outputs, what we are really getting out for the resources we put into it, I think in the long run the real winners are going to be the children.”