Senator Morgan's SB 31 is a "runaway bill" that doesn't help with classroom size, but we're fighting about it anyway?

Senator Karen Morgan proposed a bill, SB 31, that mandated certain small class sizes for grades K-3. The bill started out as a mandate to the legislature, to allocate the money necessary to add more teachers or paraeducators as necessary to meet these classroom size caps. The limits started out as 18 for Kindergarten, 20 for 1st grade, 22 for 2nd grade, and 24 for 3rd grade. In a very reasonable compromise, Senator Morgan later amended two of these caps to 20 for kindergarten and 22 for 1st grade.

I heard her interviewed on KSL the day I was in Salt Lake for the Utah Taxpayers Association's pre-legislative sales pitch. She explained at length about the money allocated. It would range from $12 million to $22 million if only para-educators were hired, and up to $40 something million if new teachers were hired. I believe the fiscal note on the bill originally explained this also, though it does not in its current form. Here's one article explaining this initial version of the bill and how the Utah Taxpayer's Association was against the bill.

As the article explains, the expensive bill passed the stacked Senate Education Committee, which was really the first sign that mischief was afoot. Senator Stephenson revealed his strategy in the hearing:

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said he supports the bill and would like to see it integrated even if funding for it isn't available this year.

"If we're not able to get this fiscal note funded, we ought to push the bill forward anyway and begin to impose a standard for these grades that you have identified," Stephenson said. He suggested that since districts already receive state dollars for class-size reduction, there ought to be a standard in place to ensure they actually do it.

By the time the bill passed the 2nd Senate vote (it has to pass a committee vote, and then two votes in the Senate), it was gutted by Howard Stephenson's amendment. This article about the vote features Sen. Jerry Stevenson commenting that he wanted to make absolutely sure that the mandate didn't apply to the legislature or funding. The article also explains that the money allocated had been reduced to $3.6 million and delves into the legislators' false premises for Stephenson's amendment:

Before lawmakers approved the bill, Morgan amended it to raise the caps slightly, reducing its cost to $3.6 million. Lawmakers also amended the bill to specify that in order to continue to receive state money that’s long been distributed for class size reductions, schools would have to meet the new caps....

...Several said they liked the idea of holding schools accountable for the money they’re already getting to reduce class sizes.

A 2007 legislative audit showed that $460 million meant to make class sizes smaller in Utah over seven years hadn’t led to any change, though some have said class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money.

In an important sidenote, Ms. Schencker got a little lazy with her background info here. Her assertion about the 2007 classroom size reduction audit is apparently her summary of info given her by Senator Stephenson when she interviewed him about this same bill the month before. She just pasted in the exact same paragraph here with no explanation that this spin of the 2007 audit came from Howard Stephenson.

Let's look at what the report actually says. The 2007 audit is available online. (Hat tip to Cameron who first commented on this audit and sent me the link.) It explained that not all districts were accounting specifically for the classroom size reduction money before mixing it with their general funds. This was because the legislature specifically released them from tracking and reporting that to in part reduce the amount of reports to the legislative interim education committee, pg 14. Pgs 7-9 show that the districts specifically tracking the money used 100% on teachers to reduce classroom sizes and supplemented beyond that because the CSR money had not kept up with inflation. The next few pages explain other measures taken that indicate that it is a reasonable conclusion that the districts not tracking the money specifically still used 99%+ of the money on classroom size reduction.

The biggest reason that classroom sizes did not go down is detailed on pg 23. The legislature never once funded enough reduction money to match enrollment growth from 2001 to 2007, contrary to the language in their own statute allocating the money. Pgs 24 and 25 also explain that charter schools, many with charters already committing them to small class sizes, are also diluting the available CSR money for those districts with the largest classes.

So the audit concludes that 99% to 100% of the hundreds of millions allocated were spent appropriately to reduce class sizes, and that money still didn't keep up with student growth. This shows that the faulty Stephenson/Schencker summary of the audit should really be stated as "Of course class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money." Stephenson, Waddoups, and other legislators claiming that the large amount of classroom size reduction money "hadn’t led to any change," implying that the districts are diverting money to administration and other "fat," are purposefully misrepresenting the content of their own audit knowing that most people will never read the audit and find them out. It also shows the absolutely false premise of the current SB 31 as amended, that the districts have to be "held accountable" because they are misusing funds.

Stephenson's amendment made it so the school districts has to achieve these very small class sizes with $3.6 million or lose the $100+ million that had already been proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Meet a moving target with insufficient resources, or we'll take way those insufficient resources until you do. I've said it before--the legislature's mandates could make great Dilbert punchlines.

SB 31 was amended again before passing its 3rd Senate vote and moving to the House, taking out all of the money allocated. The only thing left in the bill is a mandate for districts to restrict K-3 class sizes to the prescriptive levels or lose the $100+ million that the audit has already proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Sen. Morgan's new comments about the bill are troubling and very different than her initial excitement to increase funding in order to reduce class sizes.

Morgan's bill would add penalties to the existing law, which could mean school districts losing class-size reduction funding if they don't meet state standards.

"I have no problem with that," Morgan said of the change. "I believe in fiscal responsibility."

"We can only do one piece at a time," she said.

"The districts can implement this with the money we're giving them," she said.

"The money we're giving them" refers to the fact that the legislature plans to increase the WPU (general funding for all public ed.) by $3 million rather than specifically allocating additional monies to the classroom size reduction mandates. Putting the money in the WPU is a very different thing. WPU changes almost every single year. WPU has gone down significantly over the last few years, with no new money for even new students. It is completely different than what Senator Morgan originally proposed. It just seems unlike her to put in a penalty as the first piece without the resources to meet the standard. She's parroting Senator Stephenson so much that I jokingly wonder about what incriminating pictures he has of her.

That last link also explains how the State School Board discussed the new state of the bill in one of their meetings and were concerned about the unfunded mandate. They discussed various options, took a vote, and ultimately left their official position as "supporting the bill in concept" just as they had before the changes. Senator Morgan heard of this or read the article, and reacted very strongly to the word "problematic" in a post to the Senate Democrats' Blog, saying that "Their lack of understanding of the state public education budget is what’s problematic." She roundly criticized the State School Board, implying that they don't care about kids if they don't support her bill--another Stephenson move--and herself supporting the false premise that the districts have not been "accountable" for the current classroom size reduction money.

I was flabbergasted when I saw her comments. It seems to me that she's staked so much of her pride on getting something...anything...passed with the words "classroom size" in the title, that she's compromised her principles and reverted to hostile anti-public ed. talking points about the State School Board. What next?

The evidence is clear Senator Morgan and the premise of your borrowed criticisms is demonstrably false. Read the audit again and evaluate the claims. I have a daughter in a 1st grade class of 30 and know how hard that is for her. That doesn't make these draconian mandates right. Your bill has been subverted from an intended aid to K-3 children and public education into a hostile bill with severe penalties for not reaching impossibly high standards. The consequences for not meeting the caps are enormous, and the nice, but not drastic benefits of a paraeducator in a classroom of 30 kids do not equal that risk. Howard Stephenson wants these classroom size caps as a way to spin the removal of existing classroom size reduction funds while also discrediting public education. Why pretend it's the school board's fault when the politicians and PCE spokeswoman quoted in these same articles are very open about their goals for "more dynamic reform?" Is your bill making those negative policies more likely to be enacted?

Please reconsider what you really wanted to accomplish and what SB 31 does now. Would a January 2012 Senator Morgan even recognize the bill? Your original called for $22 million in a dedicated revenue stream just to put a paraeducator in K-3 classrooms. You also openly hoped funding could be found to make the increased personnel actual teachers, which is a much superior option to just paraeducators. Now your bill punishes districts for not adding a paraeducator in every K-3 classroom with $3.6 million lumped into the general operating funds needed to meet other increased mandates from the legislature as well. You have empirical evidence from the audit that the districts will be unable to meet this mandate, despite being 100% responsible with the previous money. SB 31 will likely lead to *larger* classes as schools inevitably start losing the current, but insufficent, classroom size reduction assistance. You are on the verge of pushing through one of the most damaging bills in the session.

I'll end with my comments on the blog of another person I respect, Karen of the Utah Moms Care blog. Sen. Morgan apparently handed her the statement from the Senate Democrats Blog above and asked her to urge her readers to call their legislators about SB 31. She said the WPU funding was enough and implored parents to tell their legislators they value smaller classes. I am frustrated with her framing of this issue as any opponent of this mutated SB 31 must not want smaller classes for their children and said so. My young children will all be affected by large K-3 classes, but I have to bear their whole education in mind when evaluating policy.

My comments on this post are only slightly different from above, but I want to link the Utah Moms Care post as comments and conversation might happen at either spot:

I have to strongly disagree that what this bill has become is beneficial to schools. The WPU is a general resource with many competing needs, especially after the cuts of the last three years. They PR'ed it as "not funding growth," but the same amount of money (no increase 2 yrs, small increase last year) got spread over 30,000+ more students, the equivalent of a cut much larger than 1%. (Math help here anyone?...What would be the equivalent %?)

So we are at a huge low point in funding with class sizes increasing all over the state. The existing "classroom size reduction" money wasn't enough to keep up with growth, even in 2007 when funding and WPU were at a high point.

So increasing this current lower WPU amount by 1% is suddenly enough to achieve what we couldn't in 2007? And if we don't drastically rearrange resources to damage 3-6 grade class sizes (both you and Sen. Morgan know there's not all this budget fat lying around to be used "more effectively" as PCE, etc. claim), we agree to lose the much larger amount of previous classroom size reduction money that was never enough either?

Stephenson is laughing his way to the bank, getting Sen. Morgan to carry his water for him. I seriously don't get this. It seemed to me that Sen. Morgan agreed to the punitive trigger for failing to meet a damaging standard in an unwise attempt to preserve the bill when it had dedicated money, and is now holding on to this shell with no money and only the bad "reform" just to make it look like she's actually getting things done.

Then she flies off the handle with such a strident public statement when it is obvious she had neither listened to the actual discussion online or spoken with a State School Board member. The board members were much more diplomatic than me in their discussion, even those who who were concerned with the bill's provisions. And they deadlocked on their vote, leaving the official "supports concept" designation on the bill as Mrs. Ziegler pointed out above.

So instead of working with people she has worked with so well many times in the past, Sen. Morgan hands a note to you asking parents to email in support of her damaging bill? I constantly realize how little I know of the personal dynamics and relationships up there on the Hill, but this whole thing just seems strange. Framing the bill as the State School Board doesn't support small class sizes is something Howard Stephenson would do. The financial realities mean this bill has become only punitive.

Please help me see what I'm missing here...

The "I Pledge" video controversy and whether students will be brainwashed if they listen to President Obama speechify next Tuesday

I’m really frustrated by the whole Obama speech controversy, but I’m going to spend most of this post on the one school “I Pledge” incident to explain my reasoning.

First, the “I Pledge” video controversy was just a silly mistake by a PTA mom unsaavy in how easily things can cause offense when speaking of politics. I do not believe as Gayle Ruzicka does that the video is “radical, leftist propaganda” from a politically-motivated PTA president, although I don’t think that video should have been shown to the elementary kids—the “I pledge to serve President Obama” is not how I view my relationship to any politician; I don’t like encouraging celebrity worship (although the Red Hot Chili Peppers guy kissing his biceps and pledging to the “funk of the United funk of funkadelica” isn’t offensive, it’s just typical celebrity pap meant to make young viewers laugh.); the reasoning behind many of the ideas is over the head of elementary age kids without a lot more explanation than a blurb; and the few semi-controversial topics along with the more universal ones make the video a lightning rod in a school setting. There are better ways to make the point about service.

I’m reminded of a much smaller misunderstanding during the politically-charged 2007 vote on the voucher referendum. I often discuss elections with my students and encourage them to pay attention and get educated about the basics in preparation to vote in the future. I had to really avoid any substantive talk of reasons during the months leading up to the voucher vote, with both sides distrustful of the motives of the other and PCE flacks making frequent trumped-up reports of teachers pushing their views on students. As normal, we discussed elections and what a city council does (being an odd year election), and I explained how a bill is passed and what a referendum is. I had to leave my discussion of the actual issue to, “The green sign people and the yellow sign people both love their kids and have a strong disagreement over school money issues. People have very strong feelings about this right now and I don’t feel comfortable discussing it here. Go home and ask your parents what they think and why.” (This now sounds ironic after Byrne’s comment about us “not caring about our kids.”) Not one student knew anything about my out-of-classroom anti-voucher work. I know a lot of kids did discuss the referendum and vouchers at home, and I had only one short-lived worry I’d offended anyone. After the vote, I queried one class if they had discussed the issue with their parents and asked them why they voted the way they did. A lot of them were nodding or saying they had a good discussion at home or watched the TV coverage, etc., and then one kid piped up that his mom wanted to know why I wanted to know how she voted. My jaw dropped and I stared for a moment as I tried to unwind that sentence and then understand how my motive had been misunderstood. I had to assure the student that I absolutely did NOT want to know how his parents voted. My request had been totally aimed at the students, but I could understand how it could be misconstrued in that atmosphere. I just wanted all of my students to understand their own parents’ reasoning and not be apathetic about the world around them. All of my other years of teaching, including the past year’s presidential election, I believe my kids have benefited from being able to discuss the political system and how it affects their lives. I try to play devil’s advocate to both sides of any issue and I believe the discussions aid my students in understanding both sides of an issue and dealing constructively with differing opinions from their classmates.

Which leads to what frustrates me intensely in the reasoning of those mad about the “I Pledge” video—the overreaching desire to shield children from opposing opinions. These justifications used by a mom bother me:

They shouldn't be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we're in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle," Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to "end slavery."

What?! We should do away with about every piece of literature studied in school post-Dr. Seuss (though that eco-terrorist Lorax had better be omitted too), including Charlotte’s Web dealing with the possible murder and consumption of the main character? Finding ways to expand the knowledge, perspective, and empathy of naturally self-centered kids (that’s not a reference to a group, just to kids in general) without being unduly negative is an important balancing act, but school is a place to hear and try new ideas. Whether it’s The Bridge to Terabithia, The Giver, Maniac McGee, or Number the Stars, books that insightfully reveal injustice, suffering, and plain old evil help kids develop their intellectual and emotional senses.

The Standard-Examiner’s article had another piece of Ruzicka’s lame reasoning:

Utah Eagle Forum also took exception to the parts of the video where environmental issues were raised, especially those pledging to stop using plastic bags and bottles and limit toilet flushing.

Ruzicka said a lot of families may not view those issues as important. She said children seeing the video may see their mother use plastic bags from the store and "begin questioning her actions."

This from an outspoken critic of public schools and their supposed lack of critical thinking in an article where she is angered by what she calls “a thinly veiled attempt to indoctrinate” children. I don't believe a child questioning his mother about plastic bags is a bad thing. Here’s my hastily worded, but deeply felt disagreement to Ruzicka’s opinion:

If your child doesn’t learn, discuss, and read about numerous things at school that cause them to reflect on themselves, their family, and the world, they are being done a disservice and being left unprepared to think for themselves.

I hope my child hears about environmentally friendly practices at school and comes home to question us someday. We can get motivated to improve if warranted, or explain how leaving the toilet unflushed is not worth it to us, but we do keep a bottle of water in the tank to reduce the water used and why we think that’s especially important here in Utah.

I hope my child hears or reads something at school that makes her cry. I hope she begins to understand the bad things of the world enough to show kindness and mercy to those less fortunate and to be more grateful for the good.

I hope my child learns how to reason for herself independently enough to agree with me when I’m right and see my flaws and disagree with me when I’m wrong.

So to circle back to the upcoming Obama speech on the 8th, I sincerely believe my students can listen to the president and judge his words for themselves and that the “brainwashing” stuff is silly. At a school where students read and debate about the morality of opening trade with China, animal and human cloning, the death penalty, the Holocaust, the Latino drop-out rate, eating disorders, and cute outfits, they should be judged capable to listen to a presidential speech on education.

The fact that President Obama was even giving a speech to students kind of snuck up on district schools and how to handle the event has been debated. In the past few days, different Alpine District high schools have considered requiring teachers to show the speech or conversely forbidding teachers from showing the speech. A Daily Herald article yesterday quoted the district spokesperson saying it was being left up to schools and principals, but as I understand it, a clarification was made that teachers cannot be forbidden from showing the speech as long as accommodations are made for individual students who wish to skip the video. My principal has received calls about the issue already. I really think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot.


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Sad, but true--I don't think teachers are very politically minded or generally mobilized to fight for important issues

This is a follow up to a previous post discussing whether education issues actually affect how people vote.

My two broad points:

1. Teachers generally do not follow the legislative session closely, do not contact their legislators about issues, and do not feel extremely comfortable arguing policies or even articulating their stories in public forums. This sometimes prevents legislators and the public from knowing the real picture of everyday teaching, the good and the bad of public education in Utah. That’s bad.

2. The corollary to point #1 is that teachers and the UEA are not some huge, powerful political machine as described by some legislators and commentators trying to portray themselves as the underdog or victim in disputes over education policy. (Much less the PTA. It always makes me shake my head that people try and argue that the PARENTS who would join a parent-teacher association would somehow be biased in favor of teachers in the supposed conflict of interest between teachers and students. People sign up for the PTA not because they want to be involved in their children’s school, but because they suddenly feel an untrustworthy longing to help teachers? Their $5 membership in PTA somehow makes them enemies of their own children? That’s stupid. The PTA on a local level is about as grassroots as it gets. Can’t you just admit that these people can honestly like their public schools and pursue policies strengthening those schools to benefit all students?) Sure, there’s a small politically active core of teachers in the UEA. Yes, there are individual teachers who are angry and individual teachers who are informed and politically active. But when they try and pawn off the voucher defeat as solely because of the UEA vote or blame legislative defeats on teachers, it’s a political strawman meant to energize those who have a negative view of public school teachers. That’s good…or to say, the understanding of that reality is good when legislators try the “pity poor me” defense when attacking public schools against the will of the electorate.

I have tried to follow local politics and especially education issues much more closely in the last year. Before, I think I was more like the typical teacher or person in general. I would be aware of big issues that showed up on the front page, but couldn't usually give you names, bill numbers, history of the conflict, etc. I knew more about some national issues than local issues and thought more about the presidential campaign than local elections.

I know other people and other teachers have similar feelings and it kind of makes me sad now that I see this huge disconnect between our state leadership's perception of public education and reality. We as teachers need to be talking to people and making our experiences known, but we get too busy. On the other hand, I totally understand. Like many good people, work takes a lot of time to do it well and we often want to spend time with family and pursue our outside interests in our limited free time. I have personally had a lot of difficulty balancing all of my responsibilities this summer.

Two examples of teachers I know and current education controversies in Utah:

First, I was talking to another teacher at a meeting in June soon after school ended. He is an excellent teacher, highly respected by students and teachers alike for being very effective at teaching his subject as well as making his classroom an inviting place to be. We were chatting before the meetings began and I asked him what he thought about the education omnibus bill. He had no idea what I was talking about. I believe that would hold true over the whole district—there would be more teachers who haven’t heard of the omnibus bill than who have.

Second, I was taking classes this summer with a bunch of highly motivated teachers seeking their Masters Degrees, and our small talk often consisted of educational issues. I didn't talk to all of them about it, but no one I spoke with had heard of the 20 million dollar merit pay bill that passed the legislature this last year. And as far as I know of my school's faculty, only the couple other guys I talk to about politics had heard about it as we started our meetings in August.

Teachers rarely if ever win political battles—the UEA or a sympathetic legislator might hold a press conference, the papers will cover it, a Dan Jones poll will reveal for the umpteenth time that Utahns in general support higher funding for public education, and…the legislature will still do whatever it wants and rarely suffer an election night defeat because of it. Or to repeat myself, here is part of a comment I made in the discussion of a post I wrote about the UEA (with one corrected typo):

But that illustrates the true lack of power of the UEA (My point #1). They make a lot of noise and get news coverage...and what? Senator Dayton mentioned how mad she felt over the UEA's "paving over the backs of students" ad campaign a couple years ago. (The legislature assigned tons of surplus to transportation in '06 when polls and the UEA wanted more for education. I feel we direly need both and it's a tough call, but I definitely believe that many legislators have a personal grudge against education.) The legislature was pilloried in editorials and in polls, but the money still got assigned to roads, none of the Republicans got ousted (well, PCE picked off a few anti-voucher Republicans, but with other Republicans), and business went on as usual. Polls support giving more money to education all the time, but legislators know that doesn't translate to the ballot box. How many teachers are there compared with habitual Republicans like my dad? The UEA has some token influence and gets some publicity, but the public only got really mad and acted with the rich money grab of vouchers.

The empirical evidence of my observations is the results of the elections so far this year. Behold the (non-)power of the education lobby! I wish that teachers and public education concerns did have more influence on some of these races, but right now we’re just one more loosely affiliated group of semi-frequent voters with little quantifiable power.