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. 

October Admission--Representative Frank talks out of the other side of his mouth in a national forum as Senator Stephenson's little sidekick

I want to take us back to two bills that became laws and one that failed. They all dealt with forced privatization of public services and were sponsored and co-sponsored by Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Craig Frank. HB 75 and SB 45 passed; HB 76 did not.

Voice of Utah wrote a post in January that made fun of HB 76 and Rep. Frank a little bit. Rep. Frank eventually saw the post and responded with two posts of his own on his Under the Dome blog, claiming that his bill was misrepresented. (Rep. Frank's blog is currently inactive and malfunctioning--the formatting is all messed up and there were comments from Voice of Utah and others that no longer show up, though you can still read his posts and watch the embedded video. Notice his most recent post on Mar. 24th with his coded claim that teachers can't be Republican delegates.)

In that second post of Rep. Frank's, he titles specifically references the Voice of Utah blog and says "STOP THE LYING, DUDE…READ THE BILL… HB75 (2nd SUB) DOES NOT PROHIBIT MUNICIPALITIES FROM BUILDING COMMUNITY POOLS"

He types his command to not lie in caps while ironically ignoring the fact that the post in question specifically mentions the failed HB 76 and even quotes from it. The now missing comments contained some further disagreement about Rep. Frank's misinformation. Rep. Frank also specifically denies in his video in the first post that he is going after community "recreation centers, and swimming pools, and other local entities."

Wednesday's UPD gets a big hat tip for showcasing the recognition that Sen. Stephenson and Rep. Frank received from a national advocacy group for smaller government called the Reason Foundation. (I agree with many principles espoused by smaller government advocates. I definitely agree with the Reason Foundation's apparent push against mandated, universal preschool. I strongly disagree with Reason Foundation's ""Director of Education and Child Welfare," Lisa Snell, that all public education is wrong and that vouchers should be mandated in all states.)

The two Utah legislators were recognized as Innovators in Action for "getting government out of the business of business." The detailed interview with Frank and Stephenson is on pgs. 14-20 of the newsletter, but because of the unnumbered introductory pages, it shows up as pgs. 18-24 when I'm looking at it in Adobe. When interviewed in a setting outside of Utah, which government activities does Rep. Frank consider to be illegitimate?

Quoting Rep. Frank from pg. 16:

It’s my belief that government shouldn’t be in the business of business. For example, you’ve got some of our local governments that are providing rec centers, pools and other facilities that are going head-to-head with local, private gyms...

And on pg. 20:

As the inventory and accounting systems are further developed in the future, I’d like to see some of those “taboo” entities that were excluded through this process, reintroduced for further investigation—independent entities, public and high education, etc. ...
Every time we say “less,” we increase freedom. If we don’t do these things, we do just the opposite—take away someone’s freedom. Because I’m part of the process, I know that for a fact.

First, Craig Frank purposely misled his constituents. He heard the outcry criticizing his HB 76 bill which specifically addressed county and municipal functions and forbid even potential conflicts with conceivable businesses as detailed by Voice of Utah. He then misled voters by pretending the claims were false attacks on his HB 75 and denied on his local blog that he would get rid of community pools and rec centers. But when Rep. Frank discussed the bills with the national advocacy group whose water he is carrying (and who apparently sent "experts" to help convince the legislators to vote for the bill. See pgs. 19 and 20), he voiced his true opinions, apparently secure that either no one would see, or that no one would care. He may very well be right when speaking of his district.

Second, Rep. Frank has the sadly common view among extreme right-wing Republicans in Utah that education would be improved by being totally privatized. It's "business" that should be done by business, rather than a public necessity. Senator Stephenson predictably agrees and throws around the false boogie man of socialism to justify his extreme views. You can get quality cars and toasters on the free market...if you can afford them. So education would be better that way too...

From pg. 15:

Somehow we like the idea that free markets bring us the highest quality of food anywhere in the world at low prices, that we get quality cars and appliances, you name it…the free market works just great. But when it comes to the education of our children, socialism is good enough. When it comes to golf courses, socialism is preferable. When it comes to fitness centers, socialism is great.

I don't expect Representative Frank to lose his election, but I believe that is due more to party loyalty rather than the majority of his constituents holding his extreme views. I think most of them would be angry if Rep. Frank and Sen. Stephenson tried to force their ideological agenda by butting in on local rec centers, golf courses, or Pleasant Grove's rights to contract garbage service. The two legislators view public education as "socialism" and belittle anyone with views more moderate than theirs. I know Utah can do better than that.

What do Utah state legislators say to themselves before they go to bed at night? Or legislative mixed messages…

State legislators, to put it mildly, seem to be sending some mixed messages these days. I’m not asking how do they sleep at night, just what they say to themselves. I wonder, from their perspective, what does the world look like? I seriously wonder what goes on inside of their heads. How do they internally reconcile conflicting actions or input? What is truth? These are just some of the recent education-related mixed messages:

1. As I blogged about on Jan. 21, the legislative audit of the classroom size reduction money specifically said that the school districts money were spending the money correctly…but that the legislature hadn’t allocated enough to cover smaller sizes and normal population growth. The lack of reduction was purely about not enough money for too many kids; NOT mismanagement by the districts. Cameron at Magic Valley Mormon explains the findings of the audit even better here and here.

But the Senators I heard speak at a neighborhood meeting claimed the opposite. Senator Stephenson has gone further and said that it’s not the state’s job to reduce classroom size. He wants to take away the classroom size reduction money the districts now receive unless they magically reduce classroom size.

Mixed message to districts: We didn’t assign enough money to reduce classroom sizes, but we’re mad that you didn’t reduce classroom sizes. Now as punishment for not accomplishing what we didn’t assign you enough resources to do, we’re going to take the already insufficient state money away and demand you reduce class size with local money. All of this, even as Rep. Dougall runs a bill eliminating some of the local revenue streams in favor of taxes distributed by the state legislature. (Does this sound like an educational Dilbert comic to anyone else?)

2. The legislators insisted that the voucher bill was not about privatizing the public education system. In fact, vouchers were only going to strengthen public schools.

That assertion is hard to believe when Rep. Frank and Sen. Stephenson are running HB0075 and HB0076. These bills seek to create special “Privatization Commissions” at both the state (both HB0075 and 0076) and local (HB 0076) levels with business interests representing the majority of the commissions. These commissions would have authority to disallow any government service that could be provided privately (with very few exceptions), regardless if that service would be more expensive or of it even would be provided. Local governments would have to comply with large amounts of paperwork to justify their actions to the commission. (Rep. Frank has been correctly zinged for the bills’ effects and for talking out of both sides of his mouth on his blog. He passionately claims that he is ONLY going after state government, citing HB0075, while conveniently ignoring the other bill he is sponsoring, HB0076, that would specifically disallow public pools from “competing” with private pools.)

So the legislators want to privatize public pools, recreation centers, golf courses, garbage collection, etc. but they of course have no interest in privatizing education…or financial stake.

3. Senator Bramble similarly danced around the truth. I asked him at the local meeting if the legislature was going to change what I regard as already tough referendum laws to make it even harder for citizens to vote on a controversial law. (The referendum last November was the first successful state referendum in over 30 years. Not successful as in passing—it was the first state referendum to even get enough signatures to be voted on in that time.) The senator went on for several minutes about why he thought referendums were a bad thing. I thought the arguments didn’t hold a lot of water. But he finally said that they weren’t going to change the requirements, though they might for citizen initiatives. (To the best of my understanding, voter initiatives are bills/proposals/laws written by non-legislators. If a high enough percentage of voters sign a petition, the bill is put on the public ballot, thus bypassing the legislature. Voter referendums involve laws that the legislature has already passed. Afterwards, if a high enough percentage of voters sign a petition, the passed bill is put on the public ballot, thus potentially overriding the vote of the legislature. The legislators I heard speak seem to hate both. Go figure.)

Senator Bramble was misleading. They are leaving State Referendums alone, but SB0054 attempts to change both county and municipal referendums, as well as state, county, and municipal initiatives.

If it passes, the deadlines will be moved up over two months for all of those vehicles of citizen redress, making it even harder for a group to gather the necessary signatures before the arbitrary deadline. They left state referendums out because that move would attract too much attention after the successful referendum last November. Does anyone doubt that within a year or two the requirements of state referendums will also be changed to match all of the other citizen referendum and initiative laws?

4. Last, the legislature has been hit hard in the media and by bloggers this year over the influence of lobbyist gifts and campaign contributions. Speaker Curtis, State Attorney General Shurtleff, and Senator Dmitrich have all publically claimed that these perks do not corrupt or influence the legislative process. Senator Dayton told the Cherry Hills meeting that “The voters should be offended” that the media would make such a claim. Senator Bramble gave one-sided examples where supposedly lobbyist gifts helped the legislative process and childishly asked the attendees to raise their hands if they disagreed with him.

This is where I really wonder. What are they thinking? Really. They can’t see the appearance of impropriety…even if we buy their claims of perfect integrity against all financial temptation? I wish I had been saving articles last year and knew the details of the proposal last legislative session to ban teachers from accepting Christmas gifts from students. I don’t think it ever got anywhere, but can’t they see the disconnect there?

Look at this scenario: I’m a teacher. Let’s suppose that I honestly am a longtime friend of two families. All of our families have honestly spent time as legitimate friends before now. Let’s say the other two families have children of the same age and I end up with both of them in my class at the junior high. The night before an end-of-level test, the other two families just happen to treat my family to a nice dinner followed by a Jazz game with luxury box seats. My family pays for none of this. The test is given the next day and both of those students just happen to get perfect scores.

It is course possible that their scores were legitimate and that these families always give me generous gifts in appreciation for my friendship. But would you believe that was the case? Can you not see how it appears? Would you blame other students and parents for being suspicious or angry if they found out about the situation? Would you perhaps propose rules regulating teacher/student relationships?

Can you see that the public and you are often viewing the issues from conflicting points of view? Is it at least possible that the public is right?

Flyer distributed late Oct. and early Nov. in Orem neighborhoods

This is the flyer distributed through one neighborhood initially. It represents my personal research and opinions and was made completely with my own time and money. A few other teachers have made copies and plan on distributing them also. So the first sentence naming the specific neighborhood has been deleted.

A PUBLIC SCHOOL OPINION FROM A NEIGHBOR

AND WHERE YOU CAN LOOK FOR ANSWERS

I am a public school teacher who wants the best for all children. I believe that vouchers are not a solution to any of the problems facing schools in Utah or the Alpine School District. In fact, the voucher campaign has been misleading about their philosophy and funding, and vouchers will hurt the majority of students in public schools while subsidizing a select few who choose to leave. This flyer outlines my reasoning and includes a lot of web links so that you can research the issue yourself.

This is a link to the official Utah Voter Information Guide on Referendum 1 with arguments from both sides, an impartial fiscal analysis, and the actual text of the bill, HB 148. http://elections.utah.gov/Citizen.htm

Public schools lift society up

Public schools are designed to teach all children and are open to all children. Public education available to all students is one of the main reasons that the United States has been able to create the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. And Utah’s public schools are great! Our students have some of the highest test scores, graduation rates, and percentages of students going on to college in the country while spending the least amount of money per student.

The inevitable and frustrating problems we sometimes face in public education are worth it when considering the alternative—a system where private schools are the only choice and only for those who can afford them. We have the entire history of the world before U.S. public education in the 20^th century as empirical evidence that a completely private system will not educate all students.

Vouchers are specifically designed to hurt public schools

Vouchers are not new. They have been rejected by many states for over 30 years. Influential thinkers promote vouchers as a tool to “defund” public schools until they are eliminated, leaving a “free market” of only private schools. After failing in Utah repeatedly, voucher advocates added “mitigation money” to the bill in order to “mitigate” their negative effect on public schools, allowing them to pass vouchers by one vote. (See below for more on the real effect of the mitigation dollars.) Senator Curtis Bramble, the sponsor of HB 148, is a “Legislative Advisor” to a large think tank, The Heartland Institute, that advocates vouchers on a national basis. You can check their website for many pro-voucher arguments and see what you think. I am including a link to an essay by the president of The Heartland Institute where he specifically explains to libertarians how vouchers are the first step in the plan to “wean” the public from public schools and completely privatize education.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10644

This explains why organized, out-of-state groups poured $750,000 into the 2006 Utah legislative campaign to elect those who promised to vote for vouchers, why they ran ads this spring trying to stop the public from petitioning for a referendum on the law, and why they initiated the current multi-million dollar ad campaign trying to convince voters that this subsidy will help public schools. They are convinced that Utah is the start of a tidal wave of voucher experiments across the country designed to redistribute public funds to individuals attending private schools.

Vouchers and Money—The Oreo commercial isn’t true

Some voucher supporters sincerely believe public schools are not worth the millions of dollars spent and should be eliminated. We have an honest disagreement. But the voucher campaign in Utah claims that vouchers will actually help public schools through increased funding. This is an effort to confuse people who may want improvements in our schools, but would never dream of hurting them.

There is a commercial currently running that features a prominent Utah couple using Oreos to claim that each publicly educated child in Utah costs $7500, so that when we spend $3000 on a voucher it leaves $4000 extra dollars to be spent on the remaining students. Here is a link to a true cookie video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Kt-i4pmV0

To explain briefly, public schools are designed so that each tax dollar benefits many students at once, not just one individual. The voucher supporters totaled every expense possible: teachers, administrators, counselors, custodians, heat and electricity, extra-curricular programs, school lunch, computers, buses, buildings, the interest on the loans used to construct the buildings, etc., and included funds that come from the federal government, school bonds in individual districts (The $229 million dollar bond Alpine District Voters approved last year is counted as “state funding!”), and school trust land money, to claim that the state spends a unique $7500 on each student. http://utahtaxpayer.blogspot.com/2007/08/7500-per-utah-k-12-student-in-fy2008.html This statistic is useful to compare education funding between states, but has no basis in reality when it comes to how money is actually spent in a classroom.

A student does not uniquely cost $7500 dollars in a school year. The state WPU, or the amount of tax dollars the state government actually sends each school district per student, is $2417 for the 07-08 school year.

http://le.utah.gov/interim/2007/pdf/00000364.pdf

The state also sends block grants for special ed., ESL, and other programs which leads to an average state expenditure of around $3500-3800 dollars per student. (The inexact number stems from the disagreement on figures from the various sources arguing about this bill.) Those WPU dollars are spread out to pay for the above-listed variety of things to help all students. So when little Johnny leaves a public school, taking a $3000 dollar voucher with him, there are not $4000 dollars left unspent to redistribute among the other children. The $4000 dollars is already allocated to some program or employee of the district, and it wasn’t provided by the state government anyway. The “mitigation monies” only refund the difference in the state’s average portion of funding for five years. So the state gives the district $500-800 dollars for five years…in exchange for removing $3000 dollars from district funding for thirteen years which has to be taken out of some other resource because Johnny only uniquely costs the school a few bucks in supplies each year.

Rich families subsidized with public money

And it gets worse. Look at the impartial fiscal analysis in the official voter information guide and notice how the program gets more and more expensive each year, costing at least $71,000,000 each year after 2020. Why does the cost grow like that? If the voucher bill passes, the kindergarten students of current private school families are eligible for a voucher next year, even though they weren’t planning on attending public schools in the first place and would not have cost us a dime of tax money. Each year, another grade is eligible until ALL private school students are eligible for vouchers after thirteen years. There are currently 16,000 Utah students in private schools. There will be an estimated 20,000 private school students in 2020 and the impartial fiscal analysis, which the state legislators saw before voting on the bill, estimates that the vast majority of voucher users will be from these families that were already planning on attending private school. These predominantly upper-class families will receive publicly-funded vouchers to make a choice they had already made, costing the state between $500 and $3000 dollars per child and saving nothing. Plus, the state’s estimate openly admits that most voucher users will come from rich families already capable of paying the expensive tuition—not regular kids able to switch because of the extra money.

Remember, for every $3,000 tax dollars spent in a public school—a teacher…a computer lab…an extra-curricular program…we help hundreds of kids who use those resources. On the other hand, every $3,000 tax dollars that an individual uses on vouchers would be resources taken away from the public good to pay individual tuition at a for-profit institution.

Teachers are not a “special interest”

The coalition against vouchers is not composed of evil, liberal, union goons “trying to take away parents’ choice” like the commercials tell us. The majority of Utah families oppose vouchers and have in every poll for twenty years. The legislature listened to out-of-state voucher groups that donated large amounts of money, passed a law knowing Utah didn’t want it, and then tried to prevent the referendum through a lawsuit and advertising. Now the voucher groups are smearing teachers to excuse their attack on the schools. Think of the teachers or other school employees you know. They don’t act one way at home or on Sunday, and then covertly turn into liberal monsters at school. They’re your neighbors who want to prevent vouchers from damaging or destroying public education in our state. The union money sent to respond to the frequent TV commercials, radio ads, and slick color flyers of the pro-voucher advocates represents the donations of individual teachers all over the country, as opposed to huge individual donations made by billionaires interested in paying less taxes. (Google vouchers, Waltons, All Children Matter, and their funding to see for yourself.) And the union money has been openly donated, not anonymously using loopholes in state campaign laws. (Google Parents for Choice in Education, PAC, PIC, funding.) Check the Fact and Myth sections at the websites of both Utahns For Public Schools and Parents for Choice in Education. Then Google the sources of their research and see for yourself which information is more credible.

http://www.choiceineducation.org/schoolchoice_myths.php http://www.utahnsforpublicschools.org/facts/myths.php

For more info and clickable links, see: http://www.utahedu.blogspot.com/

Vote no on vouchers, VOTE NO ON REFERENDUM 1 — 10-29-07