SB 271 is a sneaky, last minute revision--of an already bad policy--literally written by Parents for Choice in Education with only one purpose: label schools as "failing" as an excuse for vouchers

The many topics this post touches on are all worthy of lengthy pieces that I don't have time for.  However, the links are excellent and the cut-and-pasting will be informative.

 1.  An overview of SB 271 and how it was purposefully held back until the end of the session in order to avoid most public scrutiny, especially the House Education Committee.  (A familiar tactic used with HB 477)

2.  The whole philosophy underlying the law--that lazy or bad teachers and administrators are the unique cause of public school problems, and that pressuring them through simplistic public "accountability" measures will make them work harder--is flawed.  Teachers are the most important school based factor in education, but school based factors are only 20% of the factors behind "student achievement."  The explicit message of laws like this is that the 60% of achievement explained by student and family background characteristics are only "excuses," and the low grades of poorer schools just show that those teachers and administrators are poor.

3.  The origins of school grading spring from Jeb Bush in Florida.  He then used his "non-profit organization" and ALEC to spread the practice as far as possible.  This has been touted as a great success by reform advocates.  To the surprise of no one, emails have been unearthed further demonstrating that Jeb Bush has been manipulating laws to funnel education money to connected companies (See Stephenson, Howard: Utah), including the absolute dependence on expensive standardized tests for school, teacher, and student data.  The proposals all have different details, but the school grades have not been successful in improving education in other states, including the original, Florida-- 1 and 2. See also Indiana...and note that the flawed grades there were leading to 22% D and F ratings of schools.  (Florida rated fewer than 10% of their schools as D or F.)  The PCE proposal in SB 271 would rate over 50% of Utah schools as D or F.  Does anyone not trying to make money off of miracle schools or software believe that?

4.  The statistical basis of comparison in both the current and proposed versions of school grading (see lines 52-56 & 89-112 of SB 271) is the Student Growth Percentile or SGP.  This has become a common measure to rate schools and teachers, but the creator of the measurement has declared that it is a measurement of student achievement not meant to make any determination of cause...such as what factors of the school or teacher caused that growth.  Here's the technical explanation of why that is (the context is rating teachers based on SGP's, and every problem exists equally at a school level ranking which is really an amalgation of teacher rankings according to SGP) as well as the source of that quote about the measurement.  And another by the same author, Rutgers professor and statistician, Bruce Baker.  Here's an illustrated version by another excellent education blogger.  The New Jersey evaluation in question has some differing details, but the core critique here is the same: that the compared sets of students matched by score independent of context actually condemn many excellent teachers working with difficult students and likely obscure some poorer teachers working with more advantaged students.

5.  It will be statistically impossible to compare scores for two years because of our new curriculum and testing, yet both plans will ram numbers into a formula and do it anyway.  Almost all schools have transitioned into teaching the new English and math cores this year, despite the fact we will still take the old CRT end-of-year tests this year.  That could be bad in English, but it is ridiculously bad for math.  The students have been sorted into Math 7, Math 8, and Math 9 classes independent of math skill, and they study parts of pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry each year.  Secondary math teachers have been working like first-year teachers again trying to keep up.  However, there are no tests to match what they are learning, so they will be given tests from the old classes.  An 8th grade class may have to take an algebra test, even though they may have only devoted 30% of their time to that subject. 

Comparing the scores of these tests to last year when the students were actually in those classes and taught that content to this year when they will NOT be able to study all of the same things is "educational malpractice" to quote Senator Stephenson.

Students will take the new computer-adaptive tests based on the new core in the spring of 2014.  These scores from a completely different test, with different questions and types of questions, and based on a different core will be compared to this year's tests based on the old core, but taken by students being taught the new core.

The comparisons and thus school grades will be invalid and actually misleading, but "educational malpractice" is only bad if it prevents legislative pet projects, not enables them.

6.  The "old formula" actually has never been used--it has been in the planning and working-out-kinks phase for two years--with frequent communication between the Utah State Office of Education and Senator Niederhauser.  The school grading was delayed last year specifically so the formula (as crappy as I think it is) could be further refined, as specifically stated by Senator Niederhauser.

7.  Parents for Choice in Education and Senator Adams are lying.   They claim that SB 271 is somehow a natural extension of the original school grades as understood and implemented over the last two years.  I hope Senator Niederhauser isn't fudging the truth too, but he may be.  I am very suspicious of his original intentions in passing the bill in 2011. 

Testimony at the March 8 meeting of the State School Board, along with Senator Niederhauser's quote above, explained that the formula had been worked on collaboratively for two years.

It seems to me that Senator Adams admitted that his bill is a new concept when he said, "This bill actually sets criteria that is more reflective of what school grading should be."

In two Urgent Action email action blasts sent two hours apart yesterday afternoon, PCE claimed very different facts about both the intentions of Niederhauser and the legislature and how the school grades about to take effect are "vague" and do not provide "accurate accountability."

Senator Adams, on behalf of President Niederhauser, is sponsoring SB271 - School Grading Amendments - making final technical changes to solidify the positive work the legislature has done to provide parents and citizens with clear accountability and transparency for the performance of all public schools.

 

The opposition is working hard to strip the standards of measurement out of the existing law, leaving it vague and creating a moving target on what signifies student growth from year to year. This would not provide accurate accountability for how our students are actually performing. 

President Niederhauser and Senator Adams believe that every child is capable of making a years worth of growth in a years worth of time. The original School Grading law and SB271 both recognize this and reward schools for both the number of students who are proficient as well as those who achieve a full year's growth! We cannot allow this principle to be undermined. The opposition favors a system that equally distributes how many schools get each letter grade, establishing a false measure of accountability that predetermines winners and losers rather than setting a standard whereby all schools can strive to achieve success!

.. 

We need School Grading to move forward as the legislature intended. The Senate has already passed SB271. We need the House of Representatives to approve this amendment! 

 

Please take a few minutes to contact your Representative right now! Tell them you support SB271 and ask them to fully support Senator Adams and President Niederhauser in bringing clear accountability and transparency to our public schools through School Grading.

They are blatantly lying that the punitive changes and last minute unveiling of SB 271 are just "technical changes" to move school grading forward "as the legislature intended."  But they may be telling the truth that they convinced Adams and Neiderhauser to run the bill this way in order for Niederhauser to avoid being the bad guy.  Niederhauser spoke in favor of the bill and said it just needed "tweaks" if the House was concerned.  He didn't mention working with any educators and their concerns.  I think the State Board of Education may have just been speaking diplomatically when they said they felt supported by Senator Niederhauser last week.

8.  The newly proposed formula in SB 271, intentionally held until the last 10 days of the session to avoid public comment and rush the bill through hurried votes, sets up a system with bars so high that almost all Utah schools will rank as "D" or "F schools."  (It also sets up two separate grading systems because of legal requirements and makes Utah the only state of those adopting school grades to put the exact measurements into law, making them extremely difficult to revise, even during the once-a-year legislative session. ) This negative labeling is intentional in PCE's bill because of their intense antagonism toward the public schools that educate the vast majority of Utah children.

9.  In the interim education committee meetings in 2011 after the original school grading bill passed, Senator Stephenson went public with his desire to identify and punish "F schools" by privatizing them, whether the measurements were accurate or not.  Senator Niederhauser certainly knew Senator Stephenson's intentions and that school grading had been used for this purpose in New York.  (They support schools with low grades in Florida with millions of dollars of assistance, while they just close down "bad schools" in New York and cross their fingers.  Guess which model Utah's law follows.)

10.  The intentionally impossible-to-reach standards for a school grade of "A,"  based completely on test scores set by SB 271, are meant to strengthen the propaganda that Utah schools are failing, and then give cover for school closings and transfers to private parties.  Senator Niederhauser voted for SB 271 as it now stands yesterday.  If he starts out his Senate Presidency with this underhanded betrayal of the collaborative work of two years with educators, he will confirm his true opposition to public ed in Utah and support of privatization and vouchers. 

Quick version without background: Utah is copying New York's school grading system, not Florida's

The Senate Education Committee is voting on SB 59 School Grading System today at 2:15.

I have more to add about the methodology and effectiveness of the bill and the newest information about Florida's school grade improvement but here is the book excerpt I will include again in a post today or tomorrow.

Diane Ravitch is an educational historian who advised both George Herbert Bush and George W. bush on education and was a strong supporter of “market based” reforms and No Child Left Behind. She explains in her book why she has changed her position on many of these reforms after reviewing results.

From The Death and Life of the Great American School System. The underlined section was underlined by me.

pg. 164
Another (albeit mixed) example of positive accountability can be found in Florida, where the state gives a single letter grade, ranging from A to F, to all public schools. This is a practice I abhor, as I think it is harmful to stigmatize a complex institution with a letter grade, just as ridiculous to send a child home with a report card that contained only a single letter grade to summarize her performance in all her various courses and programs. That said, after the grades are handed out, the state quickly steps in to help the D and F schools with technical support, consultants, coaches, and materials. As a result of the state's supportive response, most of the low-rated schools have improved. For nearly seven years, the state sanctioned F-rated schools by giving vouchers to their students, who could use them to attend a private or better-performing public school. In 2006, a Florida court declared the voucher program unconstitutional.

pg. 85-87
The accountability movement entered a new phase in the fall of 2007, when the DOE revealed what it called progress reports for each school. Each school received a single letter grade, from A to F. This approach mirrored the grading system introduced in Florida by then-governor Jeb Bush a few years earlier. Most of each school's grade was based on year-to-year changes in standardized test scores (its "progress"), as compared to a group of schools that were demographically similar; if a school's scores went up, it was likely to win an A or B. If they remained flat or slipped, the school was almost certain to get a C, D, or F.

Some excellent schools, known for their sense of community and consistently high scores, received an F because their scores dipped by a few points. Some very low-performing schools, even some schools the State Education Department ranked as persistently dangerous, received an A because they showed some improvement.

To add to the confusion, the city's grades were inconsistent with the ratings issued by the State Education Department in accordance with No Child Left Behind. If schools failed to meet their adequate yearly progress goals under the federal NCLB law, they were called SINI schools, or "schools in need of improvement." If schools consistently performed poorly, the state called them SURR schools or "schools under registration review." In the first year hat school grades were issued, the city awarded an A or B to about half of the 350 schools the state said were SINI or SURR. More than half of the fifty schools that received an F from the city were in good standing with the state and the federal law. The next year, 89 percent of the F schools were in good standing according to NCLB standards, as were 48 percent of D schools.

In 2009, the city's accountability system produced bizarre results. An amazing 84 percent of 1,058 elementary and middle schools received an A (compared with 23 percent in 2007), and an additional 13 percent got a B. Only twenty-seven schools received a grade of C, D, or F. Even four schools the state said were "persistently dangerous" received an A. The Department of Education hailed these results as evidence of academic progress, but the usually supportive local press was incredulous. The New York Post called the results "ridiculous" and said, "As it stands now, the grades convey nearly no useful information whatsoever." The New York Daily News described the reports as a "stupid card trick" and a "big flub" that rendered the annual school reports "nearly meaningless to thousands of parents who look to the summaries for guidance as to which schools serve kids best."

The debacle of the grading system had two sources: First, it relied on year-to-year changes in scores, which are subject to random error and are thus unreliable. Second, the scores were hugely inflated by the state's secret decision to lower the points needed to advance on state tests. Consequently, the city's flawed grading system produced results that few found credible, while the Department of Education was obliged to pay teachers nearly $30 million in bonuses--based on dumbed-down state tests--as part of its "merit pay" plan.

How could parents make sense of the conflicting reports from the city, state, and federal accountability systems? Should they send their children to a school that got an A from the city, even though the state said the same school was low-performing and persistently dangerous? Should they pull their child out of a highly regarded neighborhood school where 90 percent of the kids passed the state exams but the city gave it an F? The city had no plan to improve low-performing schools, other than to warn them that they were in danger of being closed down. Shame and humiliation were considered adequate remedies to spur improvement. Pedro Noguera of New York University observed that the Department of Education failed to provide the large schools with the support and guidance they needed to improve. "They don't have a school-change strategy," Noguera said. "They have a school-shutdown strategy." Chancellor Klein acknowledged that opening and closing schools was an essential element in the market-based system of school choice that he preferred. He said "It's basically a supply-and-demand pattern...This is about improving the system, not necessarily about improving every single school." But there was no reason to believe that closing a school and opening a new one would necessarily produce superior results; in fact, half of the city's ten worst-performing schools on the state math tests in 2009 were new schools that had been opened to replace failing schools. [My note: SB 59 has no provisions to assist "F" schools in any way. Howard Stephenson has a bill in the chute to close a certain numbers of schools each year. He apparently means to replace them with charter schools that can limit the number of students and online classes. The extra students who aren't accepted to the charter schools or who need more help than an online class can provide...drive further.]

Last day of the session: Howard Stephenson pushes a 75% reduction of corporate income tax late fees at the cost of 3 million education dollars a year

Take a look at the legislative calendar for the last day of the session. If you click on the box labeled Senate Bills under the House menu, you will see the queue of Senate bills waiting to be considered by the Utah House of Representatives today. There are two consecutive bills by Senator and registered lobbyist for the Utah Taxpayers Association (A euphemism for Utah Big Business Tax Reduction At All Costs Advocacy Association), Howard Stephenson, SB 186 and SB 64.

Senate Bill 64

SB 64 had already been on my "to blog" list, but Rolly beat me to it the other day. When I had first checked out the bill after seeing it pop up, I read the first few lines of the text through the "Highlighted Provisions" and just started laughing. To anyone following Gehrke's and Rolly's coverage last December of Stephenson unethically advocating for state contracts for ProCert , the intent is obvious. (Those 2 links lead to just the comments from the articles because of the Trib's lame archival policy. I'll post the text to the articles and an editorial in the next few weeks when I review the controversy and explain why "professional textbook review" is a total crap corporate giveaway.) The legislature would form an Administrative Rules Review Committee composed of 10 permanent legislators, plus 4 leaders of specific committees for each bill review, to check if state employees are acting legally (line 55), to ensure that they "comply with legislative intent" and that the legislature is allowed to slowly usurp the executive branch's functions(line 56), to certify that business taxes go down (lines 57-58), and to badger the State Office of Education to hire ProCert. The bill curiously has no fiscal note even though it requires this new committee of up to 14 legislators to meet once a month (lines 35-37), and I highly doubt they'll be meeting without receiving their per diem. Finally, the bill gives this mini-inquisition of intent power to spend their time examining basically anything they want:

60 (c) (i) To carry out these duties, the committee may examine any other issues that it
61 considers necessary.

Senate Bill 186

And as bad as that is, SB 186 could be worse. I'm trying to be fair and not claim dishonest intent without sound evidence, but the bill was certainly not presented accurately by its sponsor nor vetted completely by the Senate committee or body. Help me here. Listen to the audio (Click on "Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee 2/18" under the Audio Recordings of Debates heading. When 17:49 of audio pops up, just know that only the first 8 minutes concern SB 186). Does Senator Stephenson mislead the Senate Revenue and Taxation Standing Committee about the larger impact of a nice little bill to encourage individuals to pay their late taxes promptly?

0:00 Sen. Stephenson starts out, speaking from the committee dais of a committee he sits on rather than taking the floor, and says that "the bill in large part was brought by the tax commission," but then mentions that "tax practitioners" (What or who does that mean? Those members of the UTA who pay taxes?) asked for a reduction from 2% to .5% in late fees "for failing to pay certain income taxes." Senator Business Lobbyist doesn't mention that these are largely corporate franchise and income taxes and avoids the topic for the rest of the bill's hearing.

From about :30 to 2:30 in the recording: He invites a tax official, Bruce Johnson, to explain the innoucous, common sense part of the bill . They are giving individuals submitting their taxes late a break for the first 15 late days, allowing them to pay less than the normal 10% late fee in order to encourage rapid submission. Plus, they are coordinating with a new computerized tax system, GenTax. Lines 67-313 of the bill deal with this graduated partial grace period. That sounds fine, but I was looking at the enormous fiscal note and wondering how cutting the late fees on people for a few days was going to cost the education fund over 3 million dollars a year.

2:34 Sen. Neiderhauser asks Stephenson if the bill has a fiscal note.

2:37-3:13 Sen. Stephenson says he doesn't know, gets handed an incorrect fiscal note for a couple hundred thousand dollars total cost in 2010 and 2011 (which from things said later in the recording, I believe shows the cost of just the 15 days reduction in penalties for individuals proposed and discussed by the Utah Tax Commission), and is unable to decide if the lost revenue is from the General Fund as he first claims or the Education Fund (income tax), which I also believe also shows his change from the original intent since Bruce Johnson firmly thought it was a General Fund reduction.

He then takes awhile to explain that passing this before the GenTax system comes on line is important.

4:47-6:23 THE INFURIATING PART Senator Valentine both illustrates the potential for a committee to thoroughly examine proposed legislation and weigh its ramifications...AND the "You scratch my back..." mentality of "I don't want to hold up the bill" even though I have no idea how much it costs and it is obvious the sponsor has no idea either.

. - 4:47 Sen. Valentine asks about lines 322 and 326-330 and explains that those heretofore undiscussed corporate franchise and income tax late fee cuts, as well as penalty reductions for late individual income taxes, come out of the Education Fund. I start to see where the $3 million cost was coming from.

. - 5:25-5:56 Sen. Stephenson is confused by the dates in that updated portion of the bill. Sen. Valentine reads the bill quickly and accurately and explains that the penalty rate reduction from 2% a month to .5% a month in income tax is the source of the reduction in revenue for the bill from the Education Fund.

. - 5:57-6:09 More evidence that Stephenson subverted the bill. Bruce Johnson of the tax commission pipes up and says "That was the reduction in rate that you added Senator and I didn't look at that...but it would appear to me that it should be education funds." He had no idea about the intent or effects of Stephenson's business-friendly "additions" which clearly DID NOT apply to his explanation of the original intent of the bill. I am very, very suspicious as to why Sen. Stephenson would not understand that cutting the penalty on large, corporate income taxes by 75% per month would have a huge net effect on state income. In fact, from his testimony, it appears that Stephenson is largely unfamiliar with that part of the bill and I suspect the corporate franchise and income tax penalty reduction was a late business lobby addition after the original bill went to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst and came back with the smaller general fund reductions mentioned around the 2:45 mark.

. - 6:09-6:25 Sen. Stephenson will request a new fiscal note, Valentine doesn't "want to hold up the bill because I understand exactly its need..." but he wants to be accurate about which budget they're dealing with in the "tight budget year." If Valentine really cares about fiscal responsibility and understands the need to encourage prompt payment of late taxes (the first 313 lines of the bill), why doesn't he demand real information about a hastily added section of the bill that encourages late payment by reducing the penalties associated with large corporations paying their franchise and income taxes on extensions by 75%? (Lines 314-330)

6:25-6:51 Sen. Valentine begins follow-up question possibly addressing my concern about the intent of the bill to encourage prompt filing, and...Sen. Stephenson interrupts because he has finally figured out that he has the wrong fiscal note.

6:55-7:08 Jokes about perjury and whether it was intentional or merely negligent oversight...Possibly both in my opinion...

7:09-7:37 Sen. Niederhauser declares they won't ask questions because they don't have a fiscal note and opens it up to the public who surely had no idea what was going on.

7:37-8:08 Senator Valentine moves they pass the bill anyway and the committee unanimously votes in favor of the bill with "encouragement" to get the fiscal note. My opinion of committees as largely being political softballers which only scrutinize certain bills for political or ideological reasons is confirmed.

Now the floor debate:

Click on the Day 35 debate. It's 6:03, including liberal amounts of downtime and a role call vote. (The bill name links to audio, or you can click on the day and scroll down the list to SB 186 for video.) A couple weeks have passed since the committee hearing, and Sen. Stephenson now rises and says absolutely nothing about the story that got him through committee, encouraging the prompt payment of late taxes. He says nothing about those 15 grace days of reduced penalty. Instead he jokes they are going to make Utah as friendly as the IRS, gets a laugh, and now sorrowfully announces that the tax decrease will cause a fiscal note, explaining nothing specific or even what was requested at the end of the committee hearing. The lame highlight comes from 1:30 to 3:00 on the recording. Sen. Okerlund asks Sen. Stephenson to explain the fiscal note--remember, this $3-million-a-year ongoing hit to the Education Fund from 2010 onward was presented as as a two-year $125,000 cut in the General Fund during committee. Sen. Stephenson asks Okerlund questions back, hems and haws, followed by an awkward pause, and explains nothing. Sen. Okerlund, however, appears a bit reluctant to admit he has no idea what the bill is doing and especially why. No one understands what the one-time money that is shown as income means, including Sen. Stephenson. It makes me so mad when legislators have no idea what they are sponsoring because they are just acting for some lobbyist!! The next day, Sen. Stephenson gives an explanation from the Fiscal Analyst...how many do you think really understood it? I didn't.

Click on the Day 36 debate. It's a whopping 2:52 long. Stephenson gives the canned explanation and the bill passes with a unanimous vote. Whenever the legislators brag about how much careful, unbiased, non-lobbyist-influenced deliberation they give policy, I just think of crap like this. You could have taken a roll call for justification of SB 186 right after the vote, and I bet not one senator, with the possible exception of the sponsor, could have done more than repeated Stephenson's sorry excuse for an explanation that "It makes us not as mean as the IRS." I wonder how many even looked at the fiscal note which Stephenson purposely avoided announcing out loud.

Recap

1. Sen. Stephenson presented the bill as one thing during committee, and emphasized the opposite on the floor. His lobbyist interests seemed to conflict with the goals of his Tax Commission partners who helped draft the bill. (This seems familiar...)

2. NO ONE ELSE EVEN CARED!! Sen. Stephenson could not satisfactorily answer one question in committee or on the floor. If a PTA lady speaks in support of a bill in committee, Bramble, Stephenson, and Dayton grill her. If the powerful Senator Stephenson is completely unprepared, cannot answer basic questions about the reasoning behind his bill, omits that his bill costs 3 million dollars a year, and disingenuously changes his story from place to place, while other legislators vote for a bill they obviously know nothing about....that's fine. And once again, they will tell us it's the media's fault the public distrusts the legislature.

3. Sen. Stephenson is mucking around with HB 2, trying to shift charter school costs to districts, which regardless of substitute version cuts all training days and Career/Technical budgets and portions of everything else, while sneakily cutting over 3 million education dollars a year through a fee decrease that almost exclusively helps corporations. (I'm not sure what happened to the laptops for preschoolers Upstart program. Does anyone really know if that money was spent this year or has been cut?)

4. Weber County Forum and Ogden County Forum have been featuring well-reasoned pleas for the state or county to collect late property taxes...so Senator Stephenson goes and makes it easier for corporations to delay payment of corporate franchise and income taxes. The regular Joe Taxpayer's burden gets a little heavier.

Any legislative interns reading this, please ask your legislator to ask one question of Rep. Harper, the House sponsor, when SB 186 comes up for debate this morning. Why does the majority of the bill encourage prompt payment of late taxes, but the small expensive part encourages LATE payment of owed taxes? Seriously. And for a difficult bonus question, ask: Why are you stealthily cutting $1 1/2 million from education next year and $3 million every year after that?

What else can I say? Brief comments on the omnibus fiasco, positive developments, and some live-blogging of the final 1:15 of the Senate floor debate

As I said last post, I'm just sad. I was talking to some people earlier when I was mad, but I just don't have the energy to express my anger adequately right now after 12 hours of teaching and attending my own class. So I'm copying two comments I made on other blogs and some wonderfully sarcastic comments from a UEA observer of the Senate debate on SB 2 and SB 281 yesterday.

The comments are on a couple of Republican blogs that are pretty open to constructive criticism if you keep the ranting to a decent tone. Here's my comment on the Senate Site, minus the name of another commenter I was responding to:

[T]he legislature does not practice what it preaches in terms of local management. The recent audit of class size reduction money specifically found that the districts were using the money correctly, but that the money just hadn't kept up with growth.

The point is, the Republican leadership is playing games and pushing a corporate agenda rather than responsibly legislating. Senator Valentine calls the American Board program "tried and proven" in the press conference when their own website explains that it is a pilot program. It's a fly-by-night outfit that sells online courses. What lobbyist even put this organization on the radar? Maybe all the pro-voucher people on the board? It's just weird. That million dollars could go towards WPU which had been appropriately and efficiently used by districts.

Senator Stephenson pushes software as an alternative for class size reduction and family reading--the originally rejected HB 200 bill that gives laptops to preschoolers!--because he uncritically accepts what industry lobbyists tell him. Pushing these bills in a conglomerate is an attempt to avoid public and legislative scrutiny. Claiming that we or they can adequately evaluate all of the pieces of SB 2 in two days is a self-serving lie.

The Senators complain about "media bias" at town meetings and tell themselves that is why the public mistrusts them. Can't they see that it is their determination to push their corporate priorities over sound education funding that alienates us?

The next comment is from Representative Steve Urquhart's blog. I'm hoping he'll be blogging more after he recovers from tonight. My comment was on a post where Rep. Urquhart explained his democratic method of running the House Rules Committee, which was changed, apparently at Speaker Curtis' command, halfway through the session.

Wow. In my opinion, your amendment to HB 473 was one of the few sane things done by a Republican in the last week of the session. I saw you acting as Speaker for awhile today.

I'm still interested in anything you can say about the rules changes.

I'm even more interested in your opinion of the omnibus bill, especially the inclusion of three bills that had been voted down in committee. As a "process guy," why did you vote for the bill?

I am disillusioned and angry. I feel like the talk about moving on from vouchers was just talk and that the legislative leadership is pushing their agenda over good government. Even someone who supported all 12 of those bills should be angered by the lack of respect shown to the process and to public input.

The following description comes from a UEA staffer attending the Tuesday, Mar. 5 Senate debate on the omnibus bills. I'm underlining some more interesting bits and adding a comment or two in brackets. A lot of villains and good guys here:

SB 2, “Omnibus” Bill # 1, (Stephenson)

Sen. Stephenson introduced the bill as the “much heralded” omnibus bill which contains twelve separate education bills. He acknowledged that is it “unusual” for this many bills to be packaged together like this, but claims the purpose is to “reduce the confusion” that would result from the “coordinating clauses” that would be required were the bills to be run separately. (One has to wonder how it has been done in past years).

Sen. Jones pointed out that she has worked on her bill, (SB 61, Financial Literacy), for nine months, marshalling it through the entire legislative process, only to see it now sitting next to other bills that were rolled out late in the game, some not even having passed out of committees. “Next year, should I just wait until the last few days and hope that the ‘powers that be’ put my bill in an omnibus bill?”

Sen. McCoy offered an amendment that would eliminate the $3.5 million for HB 200, Early Childhood Learning (Last), because it failed in a House vote 31-37-7, saying, “I don’t think it’s right to ‘bootstrap’ bills that have been killed with other good bills”. Sen. Stephenson argued against the amendment, saying that it was a “close vote” in the House, and that if we can approve funding for Head Start, we can approve this bill”. (Never mind that he voted against Lou Shurtliff’s $100,000 appropriation bill for Head Start, as Sen Romero pointed out). The amendment failed along party lines. [What?! It was a close vote? So we shouldn't have had to waste all that time and money defeating the voucher bill because it only passed by one arm-twisted vote?]

Sen. McCoy then spoke out against going down the “omnibus bill road”, much like the federal government does, and expressed the “utmost confidence” in the ability of legislative staff to “coordinate” the different bills as they have successfully done for years.

Sen. Romero then offered an amendment to take the $5 million from SB 35 (Differentiated Pay for Teachers), and use it to fund Rep. Morgan’s HB 194 (Class Size Reduction). “We already have $6.9 million for math and science teachers . (HB 270), but my constituents overwhelmingly want smaller class sizes. This way we can do both, and this is a better policy decision”. Unfortunately, the amendment failed, but Sen. Romero requested a “call of the Senate” so that all senators had to vote to support class size reduction, …or not. Only Senators Greiner and Van Tassell joined the Democrats and voted to support the class size amendment.

The bill ultimately passed, with Senators Davis, Dmitrich, Fife, Goodfellow, Greiner, McCoy and Romero voting “No” in protest. Sen. Romero explained his vote by saying, “Yesterday we patted ourselves on the back for how well our state is managed, and today we pass an omnibus bill that contains seven bills we haven’t even discussed. I’m disappointed”. [Over half of the twelve bills stuck into the omnibus weren't even debated on the Senate floor. That is disgusting. Way to go Republican leadership!]

(Note: If you are the local contacts for the senators listed above, please thank them for their efforts to bring some common sense to this omnibus mess.”)



SB 281, “Omnibus” Bill #2, (Stephenson)

Sen. Stephenson introduced this bill by saying, “We’re asking school districts to develop ways to distribute money based on merit”. The bill also provides $5 million for “signing bonuses”, as well as $1 million for teachers who pursue American Board Certification of Teacher Excellence, or ABCTE. (Not to be confused with National Board Certification, or NBC)

Sen. Jones offered an amendment that would make those gaining NBC eligible for financial rewards as well, pointing out that there are 64,000 NBC teachers across the country compared to only 100 ABCTE “pilot program” teachers, and that NBC is recognized in all 50 states where ABCTE is not yet recognized by any state. (Perhaps the reason they came to Utah)

Sen. Stephenson argued against the amendment, claiming that ABCTE is focused on “student performance gains”, where NBC is “too focused on teacher training”. Sen. Madsen chimed in, saying that the ABCTE bill was “completely vetted”, and that, “I wouldn’t want this program watered down”. [Vetted by who? How do you "water down" a pilot program from a shady online teacher course provider? See my posts below.]

Even Sen. Hillyard asked, “Why not open the bill up to both NBC and ABC teachers?” Sen. Stephenson argued that, “NBC doesn’t look at student test scores. Only the ABC program does”. [So screw the taskforce and poor schools. We'll just push through payments for test scores with that determination made by out-of-state, voucher-supporting corporate donors.]

Positive Developments

I was not a big fan of Rep. Daw, but he showed some grit today in the SB 2 debate. He's a charter school supporter, but he called BS on the state's attempt to unethically resurrect another defeated bill, HB 278, via the omnibus bill and to pawn off the cost of charter schools on local school districts. The bill in effect said "We want to require charter schools, but we want the school districts to be the bad guys and raise taxes to actually pay for charter schools." Rep. Daw wasn't able to completely get rid of the bill, but he cut the impacts down to 1/4 of the original cost to districts.

I was listening to the live Senate session and lo and behold, Sen. Stephenson stood at 10:45 and announced that the house had substituted SB 281 and gotten rid of the million bucks for the ABCTE funding. Sen. Stephenson expressed an eagerness to secure the 20 million dollars in top-down merit pay, so he was willing to let go of the ABCTE for now. The bill eventually passed. I looked at the substitute and it was Representative Dougall who proposed it. The $20 million was still a surprise insult to teachers and Rep. Last's taskforce, but at least they will work with/lean on the districts in conjunction with how that money will be spent. The elimination of ABCTE is a victory against corporate crap disguised as "merit."

At 11:25, Senator Hickman inadvertently revealed the utter hypocrisy of the education omnibus bill when he commented how "disturbing" it was to see a bill that his committee had designated as a low priority, HB 3, pop up at the last minute. Where was his anger about Stephenson ramrodding three defeated bills into the omnibus bill? Senator Hickman was so mad that he really surprised me with a reference to the "black baby" controversy. He said something like "I won't quote Senator Buttars, but, uhhh, this is an ugly bill." Huh? As I type this, he is announcing that he won't run for re-election, so maybe he doesn't give a hang what people think.

An example of bad government:
The Senators were rushing through bills in the last few minutes when they received an amended SB 327 from the house. Sen. Neiderhauser requested an immediate vote concurring with the amendments. Another senator asked for clarification on the fiscal note because he had heard it had increased by millions. (Was this the millions for the bid by Speaker Curtis' client?) Sen. Neiderhauser had no idea... no idea, but he wanted it passed anyway. The second senator froze the process when he demanded the fiscal note. Ten minutes later, he waived his request, apparently in a concession to time, and then voted for the bill having no idea how many millions it cost. That's disappointing.

And the final bill that passed, literally at 11:59, was...dang, I think it was SB 41. The amended version... It was something about education from Senator Stephenson. Well there's what I think was maybe the last bill.