The education related items the legislature resolved to study before the 2013 session

SJR 13 is the Master Study bill for the interim. There were 155 items to study before a last minute bunch of at least 19 additions. They are all under line 431 with letters in the current draft of the bill to explain how it will look when I list some below.

There is not even a miniscule iota of a chance that all of these items will get looked at by the legislature and their staff during the entire next year, let alone in the 8 or 9 interim meetings the legislators will have.

I am going to list below the study items that have to do with education. Who decided which ones will they actually study? I'm betting Stephenson's priorities won't be skimped on, such as items 25, 30, 32, 34, and 431w.

The elections will be over, and it will be the year to push more strident anti-public ed. stuff in the off year. He's already stated his intention of pushing in 2013 Sen, Reid's destructive constitutional amendment to eliminate the State Board of Education, replacing them with the Governor and an appointed Secretary of Education. After the best year I can remember for public ed. (thanks to the House stopping some bad Senate bills), I predict 2013 will be rocky.

Education Related Study Items

23. Academic Achievement Gaps - to study high quality preschool impacts on academic achievement gaps for at risk students.
24. Alternatives to GED - to study whether to issue high school diplomas to adults and those who do not graduate with the class instead of awarding a GED, to study the relative value between a high school diploma and a GED in the employment marketplace, and to study how to eliminate the GED in Utah and give diplomas instead, to give these students a higher value.
25. Charter School Local Replacement Funding - to study whether school districts should contribute an amount equal to per pupil district property tax revenues for each resident student enrolled in a charter school.
26. Charter School Mission and Online Education - to study whether a charter school student should be denied permission to take an online course through the Statewide Online Education Program because the charter school's mission is inconsistent with the online course.
27. Concurrent Enrollment - to study the current program structure, cost, delivery, and coordination of public education and higher education.
28. Credit for Teacher Professional Development in Technology - to study options for giving credit on the pay scale for teacher professional development in technology unrelated to college credit.
29. Education Interim Committee Reports - to study whether one or more reports required to be submitted to the Education Interim Committee should be discontinued.
30. Enhanced School Calendar Incentives - to study how to encourage school districts and charter schools to utilize their buildings year round to extend calendars, and how to offer teachers a 50% pay raise with no additional costs to taxpayers, with added benefits like paid vacations, holidays, and class room aids.
31. Financial Literacy - to study ways to promote financial literacy.
32. K-3 Class Size Reduction - to study caps on K-3 class sizes and class size reduction line item accountability (S.B. 31).
33. Necessarily Existent Small Schools - to study the current distribution formula, review cost differentials between small and isolated schools and other schools, and determine the best funding mechanism.
34. Pay for Performance Impact on Student Achievement - to study the impact of teacher pay for performance on student achievement and performance gains.
35. Professional Development Classes - to study the impact of enabling professional development classes or tracks under "lanes compensation" schedules.
36. Public Education Funding - to study and carefully review the formulas currently in use and determine if they are meeting the needs of the current education environment.
37. Public School Funding Criteria - to study how money is distributed to public schools based on prior year enrollment, and whether public schools could receive funding based on current year enrollment instead.
38. Quality Teacher Incentive - to study an incentive program to retain quality teachers in the public schools.
39. School District and Charter School Postemployment Benefits - to study how school districts and charter schools are addressing any continuing liability to provide postemployment benefits to employees (H.B. 460).
40. School Funding - to study long term funding options for public education.
41. Sex Education Through Online Video Components - to study in collaboration with the State Board of Education the delivery of online sex education through video components in lieu of in-class instruction, with each component to be approved by the parents before the student has access to the materials.
42. Specialized Student Counseling - to study ways to provide specialized career college counseling, focusing on admissions and scholarships, for high school students (H.B. 65).
43. Student-based Budgeting - to study whether to require a school district to distribute certain revenues to schools in accordance with a weighted student formula and to require a principal to determine how to use revenues available to the school to meet student needs (H.B. 158).

115. Trust Lands Issues - to study and receive a report on school and institutional trust lands issues from the Children's Land Alliance.
116. Utah Land and School Trust Funds - to study the protection of Utah lands and school trust funds (1st Sub. H.B. 209 and amendment #2).

118. Allocations to Schools - to study school allocations measured by property tax (H.B. 507).
119. Computer Software Exemption - to study whether to provide a sales and use tax exemption for certain computer software.

137. School District and Charter School Postemployment Benefits - to study how school districts and charter schools are addressing any continuing liability to provide postemployment benefits to employees.

431o. Comprehensive overview of the WPU in public education

431w. School funding - study of the statewide equalization of school funding.

Rolly was too nice. Senator Buttars showed his ignorance, Stephenson covered for him

Paul Rolly just wrote a column about Senator Chris Buttars' misinformation in an interview with Senator Howard Stephenson and Representative Greg Hughes on their Red Meat Radio Program. He beat me to it! I tuned in just in time the second hour and transcribed the interview as best I could and have just been too busy to write up my frustration. I thought I was the only one still listening to the show.

Rolly caught Buttar's first two easy mistakes. "Incarcerating" youth when discussing the supposed hidden socialism in Alpine District and being unable to identify Granite District. He actually called it Wasatch District until Stephenson corrected him. I suppose these errors, especially the first, can be chalked up to understandable slips of the tongue. I know my students enjoy catching me when I mix up words.

Rolly also did an excellent job of supplying the correct information about the Granite School Board's supposed UEA infiltration--one member, along with some dubious other connections like one person having taught 33 years ago, along with a real estate developer. I was actually surprised the Granite Board had even one teacher. I can't remember any teachers being members of the Alpine School Board as long as I've been paying attention. And just about every idea Buttars espoused was nonsense, from the secret socialism to the local school boards being special interests...while being interviewed by the professional lobbyist who serves in the legislature.

However, Rolly didn't mention the most egregious mistake Buttars made, the one that is more than a dumb misphrasing, but reveals his ignorance about basic, easy-to-verify information. First, he again couldn't correctly name the "common core" when they broached the subject. Stephenson corrected him after some stumbling around. Then Buttars claimed that the "Common Core Standards" recently adopted by Utah don't exist. Go ahead and click on that link for the list of 9 long and frankly boring pdf files containing the core standards along with appendices. Or type "common core" into any search engine. The three I tried displayed the core as the first result.

I wrote about this last week, when a commenter on another blog claimed the same thing, that the standards are not written yet, but somehow we know they will be written by bad people and forced to teach them verbatim. This despite the blog writer having prominently posted the link to the standards in her post. I can only assume the bad information used by both that commenter and Buttars came from the Eagle Forum. Buttars will ironically base major claims and policy decisions on incorrect information that he trusts because of ideology after ripping on school officials for not giving him correct information.

Stephenson even asked Buttars a leading question along the lines of "The new standards increase the rigor of math and English? That's not socialist is it?" Buttars sounded confused and replied, "Well, no." But after a pause, he went into a diatribe that these independently developed standards only appear to be uninvolved with Obama, and that they are not even written yet. On a timeline from 2010-2015, socialists will actually write the curriculum who "don't believe as we do" leading to a "change of doctrine." He finished by repeating that it was "disturbing" that the State School Board agreed to a core that has not been written yet and will be written by socialists.

At this juncture in my notes, I wrote "Long pause...." It was obvious that Stephenson knew the standards existed as he gathered himself in the silence and then completely ignored what Buttars had just said, instead changing the subject to the Education Budget Subcommittee Meeting. Stephenson may be unethical, but he's not stupid. Buttars is embarrassing. He presumes to lecture others while ignorantly passing on false information he gets from untrustworthy sources. He would flunk a high school sophomore writing assignment for presenting such faulty information, let alone an introductory college course.

Stephenson's enabling was further in display during the following interview with State Superintendent, Larry Shumway. Stephenson brought up Buttars' socialism claim about the common core to get Shumway's perspective, but he had to lie about what Buttars really said. It was actually a pretty funny conversation. Once again, my transcription is not perfect, but it's close.

Stephenson: Senator Buttars claims socialism is pervading the state public education system. Of course it's a socialist system.

Shumway's immediate interjection: "Public system."

Stephenson: Ahum. Well. What he meant is that the federal standards being pushed, the common core, is being developed by socialists. We asked him and he said the current math and literature standards are not socialist, only better. But he is concerned that future versions, for example social studies, will be.

Why did he have to make up words and ideas that Buttars never said? In my notes, I added "Covers for Buttars." Buttars did not say the core was better, and he never said anything about being concerned with the future social studies curriculum. He actually asserted that the existing standards had not been written yet. Even Stephenson was embarrassed to repeat his claims.

Superintendent Shumway also answered Stephenson's questions about some supposedly missing data that Buttars talked about with some fancy tap shoeing around a delicate insinuation that Buttars and his staff had not read existing reports containing those answers. "I was surprised that legislative staff and members of the committee were not aware of the reports..." repeated about three times.

It is very, very frustrating as an educator to be accused by someone so unwilling to educate himself.


Three final notes related to other content during the second hour of the Red Meat Radio show last Saturday.

1. Hughes and Stephenson made the point that "civility" is getting too PC and being used as a club to suppress views you don't agree with. I totally agree. (Though it comes from both sides. Conservative commentators and groups jump all over every little word of Democrats too.) They discussed a letter from the State School Boards Association to the legislature critical of Stephenson's comments about school boards which apparently compared his language somehow to the Rep. Giffords shooting. That connection is dumb and counter-productive. Now don't get me wrong, Stephenson's comments, which were repeated twice in the course of the hour, about local school boards being stupid and being led around by the nose by the superintendent, are ideologically idiotic. He means they don't believe in vouchers and think that school teachers should be replaced by computers, therefore they must not be as "bright" as him.

However, it is better to hear the criticism and know his position than suppress his ideas in the name of civility. The lack of trust he engenders by revealing his own thoughts should be the real consequence of such language. My post here could certainly be considered "uncivil" because of my harsh criticism of Buttars and Stephenson, but I feel my assertions are based on evidence and that it is important that the public really know these legislators as they make decisions and evaluate what they hear from them.

2. Superintendent Shumway is much better suited for his job than I would be. I am sometimes frustrated with Shumway for being too accommodating and uncritical of the blatant falsehoods some legislators perpetuate about education, but I can see he is needed. He, Hughes, and Stephenson had a lovefest of how much they trust each other's motivations, while all I could think was that I emphatically do not trust Stephenson's motivations. However, criticizing them openly wouldn't accomplish anything, and his diplomacy may hopefully at least moderate some of the extreme bills that will pass regardless of what Shumway or the State Board say. I was proud of Shumway for making the point that the hostile attitudes and mistrust of "some of the committee," (e.g. Buttars) were unfounded and actually hampered their work.

3. In the last minute, Stephenson proudly listed some of his pending bills to stick it to education. He mentioned the school grading bill, his teacher tenure bill, and a new bill about school accountability that I hadn't yet heard about. I'm assuming it's the unnumbered bill named "Public School Accountability" in his bill list. Stephenson said the bill would involve "dissolving" the 5 lowest public schools each year. The state would do an RFP for private management and the parents would vote on it. There were a couple other details I missed with my kids talking to me. This is another backdoor voucher scheme, and Stephenson and his association have financial ties with companies that would profit from this bill. He is determined to arrive at his goal of dismantling the public school system piece by piece, making a tidy profit as he goes.

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Legislative Session 2011 begins....but it's not just about immigration! Will public education be harmed while no one is paying attention?

The illegal immigration debate is important. The state budget is important. But what will affect your children the most over the next couple decades? Won't the state of our public schools have a more lasting influence on the children of Utah? I am a parent and have as vested an interest in these schools as anyone, but it's also about the investment in helping the other hundreds of thousands of kids in the state. I believe the Utah public education system is a fundamental base to our society, as well as our economy.

The debate on illegal immigration policy in Utah will generate a lot of sparks and media attention this year, nationally as well as locally. With public attention diverted, and the difficult budget as cover, there are serious proposals to damage public ed. and divert public funds in the name of "reform." Basic funding is at a quiet crisis level risking the accreditation (i.e. whether colleges will accept their credits) of every high school in the state, but legislators currently DO NOT plan on funding almost 15,000 new students entering the system next school year (and that is net after accounting for seniors leaving) after not funding the 13,000 new students that entered this year. On top of that, many have pet projects favored by anti-public ed. groups to slice away even more of that money. Then when public schools struggle with the impacts of huge classes and little resources, those legislators will claim the worsening results justify further defunding the public system in favor of their connected donors poised to profit from the changes.

A large number of influential legislators--the ones who control the money--hold views on public education far outside the mainstream of the Utah public. Three examples just in the last week:

1. House Rep John Dougall explains in the comment section of this blog post about partisan school board elections that he thinks local school boards are uninformed, his new reading of the state constitution means that the state legislature isn't responsible for funding education, and that he thinks the entire public school system should be replaced by the free market.

2. Senator Howard Stephenson -- professional lobbyist, member of every possible education committee, and the sponsor of 15 education related bills in 2011 (no one else has more than 2...correct me if I miscounted) -- spoke to students at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. I learned this from Stephenson himself on Twitter (SenatorHowardS):

Had an awesome time speaking with students at the Hinckley Institute about Utah's public education system. #utpol 1:34 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

Also on Twitter, someone with the Utah House Democrats (utahhousedems) tweeted some highlights of Stephenson's remarks, including:

# Sen. Stephenson says difference between old Soviet farmers & Ut teachers is teachers care about their turnips--farmers don't. #utpol #utleg 12:46 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

# Republic Sen. Howard Stephenson calls state education planning "Soviet style" @ Hinckley Institute. What's his solution? #utpol #utleg 12:43 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

Stephenson has repeatedly made this comparison--public education is the same as Soviet-style communism. It's purposefully inaccurate and not representative of Utah.


3. Senator Chris Buttars, the new chair of the Public Education Appropriations Sub Committee, spoke at the Eagle Forum convention about his beliefs that Utah's schools are literally pushing a "socialist agenda" to destroy the country. "This is an entire program to bring America down and I want to tell you right now it's well entrenched in Utah."

This Deseret News article hits the nail on the head. It details how the the micro-managing legislature yanks public education back and forth every year, often in conflicting directions. They passed 42 bills about education last year. Forty-two! Stephenson admits he thinks he knows best and will run even more:

"We watched and realized that there are some things in education that simply have to change and be addressed," Stephenson said. "We feel we have to push the envelope now because there is so little action going on in certain areas."

Stephenson is in the process of writing bills about online high school programs, math initiatives, public school curriculum, charter schools, teacher tenure and more.

"Push the envelope" means radically alter or damage public schools in favor of his pet proposals that are largely unsupported by the public which supports our schools. Rep. Jim Nielsen speaks out in the article too, stating what anyone following public education policy debate in Utah can easily attest to:

Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful, believes the legislature's role in education reform should be "relatively limited," as that is mainly the responsibility of the state school board and local school boards.

"I think we can do things to indicate what our priorities are and build financial incentives to reward schools that meet certain objectives, but I wouldn't go beyond that," Nielson said. "In my opinion, the legislature has overreached its authority during much of my lifetime."

Amen Representative Nielson! The legislature fights for local control...except when they disagree with you.

I can't go over the details of every bad education proposal in this post. Here's the link to the list of all the 2011 education bill, although most of them still are not available to the public to read less than 9 hours before the opening of the legislative session.

I have already commented on some of these issues in the past week. I will write more about many/most of these proposals later. They include:

Vouchers by a different name. Yes, seriously. They will only apply to online private schools (at first) and any legislator you question about it will wince and try to explain these are better approved private schools, but it redirects the state WPU per student funding to private organizations.

Hypocritically taking away local districts' ability to fund and tax, but increasing the state sales tax which is controlled by...the state legislature.

Senator Buttars' proposal in response to the secret socialism to amend the Utah State Constitution to take away the State School Board's authority over schools and curriculum and give it to...you guessed it, the state legislature.

Two bills aimed at converting traditional public schools to charter schools.

Increasing "socialism" by hypocritically taking away arbitrary "full measures" of locally voted district funds and giving them to charter schools in addition to the state funds they already get, but with no way for those local school boards to account for or recoup the money except by raising taxes...unless that power is taken away as mentioned above, leaving local districts defunded. (Which I suspect is the plan of some.) And if that bill doesn't pass and a district does raise taxes to make up for the charter subsidy, Howard Stephenson will then criticize the increase as waste through his Taxpayers Association bullhorn while touting how much more "efficient" charter schools are. (Stephenson is actually sponsoring the bill and apparently doesn't worry about hypocrisy or irony) The euphemism for this removal of local control is "backpack funding" as used by Parents For Choice in Education. Sen. Liljenquist's "Student Based Funding" may involve the same concept.

"Grading" public schools based on test scores by assigning one letter grade to explain every aspect of a school's performance. I have a lot of interesting information on this to post this week. They are following New York's utterly failed grading system rather than Florida's semi-supportive model, despite touting Florida's recent educational successes as only due to its school grading. (Which is also untrue.) This will apparently motivate those lazy teachers to teach better.

Removing due process requirements to get rid of provisional teachers. There basically aren't any already, so this bill puzzled me. (Plus, I can't read it yet.) But there will also be a bill to put longtime teachers back on provisional status based on their test scores. I think there is actually some merit in this concept by itself, but combined with the other bill, it appears that it's a disguised two-step method to instantly fire teachers without due process. Tough schools already have a much tougher time hiring good teachers. Who would work at a school in South Salt Lake with 90%+ low income and minority kids under this proposal?

A bill using "surplus" energy taxes to create curriculum promoting Utah's coal and oil industries.

5 more curriculum bills, 4 of them sponsored by Howard Stephenson. They involve Civics education, Engineering education, Honors Math Programs, and two ominous, unrevealed bills vaguely title "Curriculum in the Public Schools" and "School Curriculum Amendments." Once again, although the federal government is an over-reaching tyrant when it usurps local control via unfunded mandates, the state legislature and specifically Senator Stephenson who is proposing all these bills are virtuous defenders of good when they act as a political school board and usurp local control via unfunded mandates. Does the hypocrisy even bother them anymore?

So please, whoever you are, whatever your political leanings, pay attention to education this session!!!! It runs from Jan. 24 through March 10. You can click on this calendar each day for the schedule of committee meetings (the majority of time is spent in committees the first couple weeks) and general House and Senate floor time. When a committee or the floor is live, there will be little icons next to the lines on the calendar. You can click on them and listen live to committee meetings and actually watch live video of floor debate. The first education related meeting is the Senate Education Committee (chaired by Howard Stephenson) at 3:15 pm today, Monday, January 24. Listen for half an hour. Hearing the legislators' words and tone from their own mouths can help you cut through spin from various sides and begin to form opinions on who actually represents your interests.

Pay attention. Get involved. Contact your state representative or senator. Defend public education as a crucial part of our community and not as a fund to be drawn down and replaced by educational programs based on ideology and campaign donations.

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SB 188, Howard Stephenson sneaks provision into charter school bill specifically allowing conflicts of interest

At the end of my budget post last week, I mentioned that I generally have no beef with charter schools, but that I have problems with legislators using them for financial gain. Howard Stephenson sponsored a bill that could possibly reap direct financial benefits for sitting legislators and other influential GOP insiders on charter school boards. The most ethical full-time lobbyist on the hill--so ethical that he can earn his substantial living by being paid to advocate for laws that benefit his secret clients--yet NOT have any important conflicts of interest as a legislator, pushed this bill which dealt with another substantial policy issue, removing the cap on charter school enrollment.

SB 188. The frustrating part is that those in charge of acting as gatekeepers were asleep at the wheel. The executive summary of the bill mentions on Line 20 that it "modifies conflict of interest provisions applicable to charter school officers."

Click on the link above and then listen to the file, Senate Education Committee 2/24, of the Senate Education Committee hearing for the bill. The relevant sections are about 17-18 minutes long, but the relevant part to this post is only about a minute and 5 seconds long, from 4:00 minutes into the audio to 5:05. Senator Stephenson has a staff lady basically read the executive summary and explain it to the committee, and she explains the basics of allowing conflicts of interest in that minute. Following this, the State Superintendent of Public Schools, Larry Shumway, (whom I generally like and applaud for his ability to work with legislators), some State Charter School Board members, and the legislators get sidetracked off onto a minor issue: whether the new non-voting member of the State School Board should be called a delegate instead of a non-voting member. They chew on this over and over and never even talk about the principal issue of the bill, whether the enrollment cap should be lifted, let alone the conflict of interest provisions or committee to review charter school loan requests. I have reservations about lifting the cap purely because of funding considerations, but charter schools are serving a lot of children well.

Next, you can click on the link to the floor debate in the Senate (scroll down to near the bottom of Part 2 and look for SB 188). It's 12 minutes long with another minute for voting. I watched the video; I'm assuming the audio is the same length. Once again, Senator Stephenson gives the short explanation of the conflict of interest provision from 1:35 to 1:57. The Senate debates about the "non-voting delegate" amendment for the majority of the time and the bill passes without one question being asked about the other provisions. Does no Senator see any problem with this?! Now I can understand that possibly this was dealt with extensively in interim, but I know all of the legislators who talk so much about poorly informed people signing voting initiatives did not read this bill. I don't think Senator Stephenson was even very familiar with it in committee. They just trust each other because they are all so trustworthy and stuff. I blogged about this last year as well.

Now to the floor debate in the House (The SB 188 video is about halfway through Part 2). At first I was happy with Representative Lockhart's presentation. She first moves a technical amendment. From about 1:30 to 2:30, she gives a much better summary of SB 188. She focuses on the change in the charter school enrollment cap and lists some other provisions. However, she curiously omits both the conflict of interest change and and the new non-voting member of the State School Board that the first two debates fixated upon. Representatives Allen and Cosgrove at least ask some questions about other sections of the bill. Small little bravo as it is also obvious they are not familiar with the bill and haven't read it. No one else asks a question. At about 6:30, Speaker of the House, Dave Clark, says there are no other questions and turns the bill over to Rep. Lockhart for final summation. At this point, when debate has been cut off, she mentions those last two items she omitted from her initial explanation. At 6:35, she brings up the new position on the State School Board. From 7:00 to 7:17 she "explains" the conflict of interest provisions. Here's my rough transcription:

"And then there's also at the end of the bill some issues having to do with members of charter school boards and potential conflicts of interest and how they deal with those conflicts of interest as it relates to their individual schools."

Whether on purpose or not, this is a dishonest description. The relevant part of the bill is on lines 270-282. The original text of that section of law read:

A charter school officer or a relative of a charter school officer may not have a financial interest in a contract or other transaction involving a charter school in which the charter school officer serves as a charter school officer.

There was NO potential for conflicts of interest. The new bill text reads as follows (The underlined parts represent the additions or changes being made to the current law.):

270 (3) (a) [A] Except as provided in Subsections (3)(b) and (3)(c), a charter school officer
271 or a relative of a charter school officer may not have a financial interest in a contract or other
272 transaction involving a charter school in which the charter school officer serves as a charter
273 school officer.
274 (b) If a charter school's governing board considers entering into a contract or executing
275 a transaction in which a charter school officer or a relative of a charter school officer has a
276
financial interest, the charter school officer shall:
277 (i) disclose the financial interest, in writing, to the other charter school officers;
278 (ii) submit the contract or transaction decision to the charter school's governing board
279 for the approval, by majority vote, of the charter school's governing board;
280 (iii) abstain from voting on the issue; and
281 (iv) be absent from any meeting when the contract or transaction is being considered
282 and determined.

The bill doesn't "deal" with potential conflicts of interest; it puts them into code!! The board members of a charter school used to not be able to make money off of the school, and now they can. OK, they can't be part of the meetings to decide. But did any legislator think about what it would be like to work closely in a policy group (like the legislature or a charter school board--management being respectively the executive branch and the school administration) with someone who provides a service, omit them from a meeting on purchasing that service, and then have to tell them at the next meeting that their company did not provide as good a service as a competitor? They didn't think there would be any undue pressure there? They honestly thought this was a section of code that needed changing to better serve the charter school students of Utah? Or did they even know about it?

Following this non-explanation, Speaker Clark immediately opened the unanimous voting in favor of the bill.

Did no one in the House even read the executive summary?! Even if Rep. Lockhart didn't bring it up until it was too late to comment on it, was no one curious about the conflict of interest section? Couldn't that provision have been easily amended out, leaving the actual meat of the bill? Let's place unprovable bets on what percentage of the legislators in both houses had read the bill at this point. I would feel confident saying under 10%.

The Trib's education reporter, Lisa Schencker, who does a sporadic job of in-depth coverage as opposed to the other papers who only cover controversial school legislation, covered the story both in committee and after final passage. She reported the main point about the removal of the charter school enrollment cap, but just got a quote from Stephenson the first time, repeated it the second time, and didn't dig any deeper.

I'd love to hear any justification for allowing conflicts of interest at public charter schools. I'm serious. Is there some wonderful service out there currently not being provided to the charter school students that some charter school board member will now provide? Is this wonderful service worth allowing someone's close colleagues to vote on whether he/she personally profits from their position of influence at a charter school? Who thinks Senator Stephenson knows at least one person by name who just happens to be a legislator or GOP donor and will immediately profit from this bill? Maybe even someone who contributes secretly to the Utah Taxpayer's Association?

1. So, please be angry at the end result of a tiny section of this bill expressly permitting conflicts of interest in charter school board expenditures.

2. Please be angry at the lack of review given this bill through a committee hearing and three separate floor hearings. There were a total of two questions asked not about the member/delegate semantics debate. This criticism does not just include legislators, but education representatives, including Superintendent Shumway.

3. And really think about the broader issue this one example represents of how the legislature works. A registered corporate lobbyist with secret clients sits as a Senator in our state legislature. He has frequently misrepresented his bills in committee and floor presentations (Example 2009, Example 2008) and abused legislative process (Example 2010) in order to push his pro-corporate, anti-school, money-making agenda.

This same Senator passed a bill, SB 275, allowing voter initiative proponents--almost exclusively establishment Republicans who oppose sharing power--to have an extra month to go door-to-door claiming that "deceptive signature-gathering practices" result in "lemon laws." He and the rest of the legislative leadership claim that no one is reading the initiative due to "half-truths and misrepresentations" and they don't know about the secret, horrible provisions that are unfair to the virtuous legislators.

Think about this post and think about their position. Be angry that the legislators reflexively trust each other and excuse their repeated lack of proper review of laws (Self-admitted example from 2007--this link is to a really long post full of great examples and quotes, relating both to bad legislative decisions and their attack on voter initiatives and referendums. It's worth the read.) while constantly insulting the public who are easily fooled by "hucksters."

I think this perspective helps better understand Dave Clark's comments about wanting Kevin Garn "back with us" and the standing ovation he received. Too many legislators instinctively and instantly rally to their own little club and defend it against all outsiders. Sign the voter initiatives for Fair Boundaries and ethics reform and take a larger step toward limiting conflicts of interest and money in our state legislature.

Budget debate resolves...Bravo Gary Herbert and Ron Bigelow! Carl Wimmer tries reverse psychology...

The budget battle over Howard Stephenson's mini-omnibus policy insert at the last second finally resolved late Thursday night. Charter school funding is still a difficult issue to which I don't have the answers, and good legislative process is important to me whether I agree with a bill or not.

One thing I am pleasantly surprised but also confused by is the increase of WPU back up to current levels...along with the explanation that the state is still not funding growth. There's something I'm not quite getting. The original plan was for the WPU to go down about $90. Each new or continuing student would receive the same funding, but a lesser amount than last year to reflect the higher numbers caused by growth. If each student next year is funded $2577 via WPU, then districts will receive increased funding for each new student...or in other words, the growth in student numbers will be funded. Lisa Schenker reported above that "Districts will absorb that lack of funds in other areas." The principal state funding mechanism to the districts is the WPU. I don't understand which state expenditures the districts can cut millions of dollars from without impacting WPU.

Bravo to Gary Herbert and Ron Bigelow, as well as most of the House, for their firm roles in preventing any last minute strong-arming by the legislators who were valuing their pet project over transparency and rational policy discussion. Rep. Bigelow gave us the "telling it like it is" quote of the debate: "If there is any bill in this session that has subverted, bypassed and held our process to be the worst process, it is this bill."

Howard Stephenson cleverly, but falsely framed the debate in two ways in order to spin things his way. First, I explained in my last post why his "phantom student" argument, a new tactic this year, is a fundamental lie in dealing with locally assessed property tax. The district does not have significant marginal costs when adding or losing an individual student; property tax funds are not distributed per student. Stephenson repeated this meme several times.

Second, Stephenson claimed that there is money going to districts when students leave for a charter school that would otherwise go into WPU (the main state funding mechanism), and that's why it's important to shift some of the local money. Unless Senator Stephenson is talking about some obscure pot of money somewhere that only he knows about, that just isn't true. State funds are distributed per student via the WPU. For each student, the district gets the designated amount of money. Local property tax is voted on by the residents of a specific geographical area and then spent on overall programs which benefit large numbers of students at once. At no point does it follow around individual students; at no point are there "phantom students" as students move in and out of the district; and at no point can these locally approved funds be diverted into the statewide fund for WPU allotments. So what is Senator Stephenson talking about?

The bill bounced back and forth several times as the Senate would not agree to have the charter school funding changes deleted from the bill. To listen to the first debate Thursday morning when the House substituted the bill and took out the charter funding change, click here. (This is a list of the debates on all the bills that morning. The easiest way to find this debate is to scroll down to the Part 2 subheading, and then count 9 links above it to the SB0002S01 debate.) You can listen to or watch the conversation--I think watching often makes it easier to understand who is talking. Here are the highlights to pay attention to and the time in the debate they happen:

2:42
Rep. Bigelow gives an excellent 4-5 minute summation of the procedural and policy concerns with the original bill while proposing the substitute bill. He also explains the inherent difficulties of applying local funds to charter schools and how the substitute bill reflects the work of the education subcommittees.

9:00
Rep. Craig Frank declares his willingness to take care of pet charter school funding via bad process. "This year is the time" regardless of whether my colleague purposely prevented the proposal from being vetted.

14:40
The weirdest comment of the debate. Rep. Carl Wimmer stood and disagreed on the substitute based on "process." He wasn't necessarily voting because of the content of the bill, but the "process." He then claimed that Stephenson's original 16-hour-old bill has been vetted, but the "changes" in the substitute dating back to the education subcommittee's recommendations had not been. Therefore, black is white, up is down, and he voted against the substitute bill.

15:08-15:30
This is the money quote from above by Ron Bigelow. He acknowledged Wimmer's outspoken concern for process and then declared "If there is any bill in this session that has subverted, bypassed and held our process to be the worst process, it is this bill."

The motion to substitute passed a few minutes later by a count of something close to 50 yeas to 20 nay votes. The substituted bill then passed 71-4.

After Gary Herbert personally aided a compromise which took out the "monkey wrench" of the surprise charter funding, a final substitute bill was agreed upon and passed Thursday night by both houses. I didn't have time to fully comprehend the different changes in this substitute bill, but it appeared to be very reasonable upon first inspection.

Education Budget

If someone had asked me a couple months ago what I thought the chances were that I wouldn't blog about this year's legislative session until the 2nd to last day, I would have replied "About the same as the Jazz signing a guy named Sundiata AND a guy named Othyus this year..." Oh well. As always, I hope to blog about some stuff that I saw, but we'll see. I have some things to do, and I realized today that I fell in the same trap as David. It's hard to be both a consistent blogger and balanced otherwise, but once I fall off the wagon, sitting down and composing a thought or argument that I'm happy with becomes more daunting. Then it just becomes easier to follow the session and occasionally stew about it, rather than really buckle down and compose my thoughts.

I was fairly happy with the education budget. Before I criticize him, even Howard Stephenson stepped up early in the session. In this video (which you now can't access unless you're willing to pay well-to-do Republican lobbyist/shill, LaVarr Webb, even more money. I'm not, but I bet a lot of blog regulars are still subscribed to UPD.), he explained to a policy group that a proposed 5% cut on top of not funding growth was actually going to be an 8% cut. And he was even willing to publicly disagree with his red meat buddy, Greg Hughes, when he fought for preserving as much as possible the base WPU budget that hires teachers to keep class size down. I agree with his stated position that the programs are peripheral to this.

Public Education will not receive funding for the approximately 11,000 new students entering the system next year, which depending on which article you read, ends up being a 3 to 4% cut in funding as the new students are absorbed into the existing budget. Then last week, the Senate Republican Caucus decided public ed. needed to share more of the pain and proposed a further 1% cut. It looks like Stephenson's view prevailed, and the programs mentioned in the KCPW article were the principal ones on the chopping block as the budget debate continued. Finally, it appeared that a compromise was reached between the House, Senate, and Governor Herbert to cut only $10 million, or about 1/2 a percent from the budget. I frankly think this is reasonable given the circumstances and was happy with the result. As much as I believe cuts in school nurse funds or having no new library books will hurt next year, I think they are very much preferable to further increasing our class sizes which are already going to increase next year.

That hard fought compromise was upset again when Stephenson slipped in a last minute rider to the budget bill, SB 2--a defeated concept from 2 years ago year, making districts pay more for the education of charter schools students within their boundaries.

Now this is where I really have problems with Stephenson, independent of the concept of the charter school funding shift which I also strongly disagree with. He himself has sponsored anti-federal resolutions this year and decried the lack of transparency in decisions made by Congress. I happen to agree that the backroom meetings, earmarks, and constant vote-buying in Washington are wrong. But Stephenson turns around and proposes a HUGE change in charter school funding that he knows is controversial, and he does it on the second to last day of the session by attaching the change as a parasite to a budget compromise bill arrived at after extensive negotiation. This however, is becoming a standard tactic for Stephenson and charter school funding. The original attempt to shift charter school funding to districts was part of Stephenson's SB 2 in 2008, the omnibus bill, which also was first debated on the 2nd to last day of the session. I guess that makes this year's SB 2 the "minibus bill", smaller and just as ugly. This planned attack was no last minute priority that popped up. Stephenson could have run a charter funding bill and put this through the process just like anything else, but he purposely waited until the last minute to try and ramrod it through. It is dishonest and hypocritical. I have pointed out Stephenson's and other legislators' hypocrisy on this score in the past--they hate hardball tactics and procedural games when someone else does it, but the end justifies the means when it comes to their own pet proposals. Margaret Dayton, an even more strident critic of government interference, also tried to slip her defeated SB 77 into the bill as an amendment. Just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's ethical Senators!

As to Senator Stephenson's rationale for the charter funding changes, I believe he is very disingenuous with his phantom student explanation on the Senate Site. State funds are distributed from state income tax revenues to districts on a per student basis called the WPU. Lose a student, lose the allotment of WPU. Those funds are already given to each charter school and are not the subject of this change and Stephenson knows it. Local property taxes, in contrast, apply only to the residents of a specific school district and are implemented after a vote by those residents in a general election. They are collected to fund specific building projects or as a certain percentage to fund local schools, and make up a chunk of each district's funding over and beyond WPU. Local education property taxes are not collected by nor distributed via the specific number of students. They pay for the general program of classrooms and teachers, and a specific allotment is not saved or spent when a student leaves or enrolls in the district. You can use a blunt fraction to say that there is so much more money per student when a student leaves to a charter school, but claiming that "we are funding phantom students" or that this is some huge "bonus" when a student leaves is willfully deceitful. It is not the same formula as money coming in from the state.

Since the charter boards are not made of publicly elected officials and do not represent geographic areas that could hold a vote, they do not have the power to assess these local taxes. The difference in how much local property tax is coming in is the center of the debate between Canyons and Jordan Districts and one of the fundamental difficulties with funding charter schools. The state has eased that burden for charter schools in the past by sending Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT funds), to help them have more to spend beyond WPU.

So the true wording of Stephenson's analogy should be "We authorized charter schools as individual districts within a district, but without publicly elected officials or natural constituencies. Their lack of ability to raise local funds has demonstrated the deficiency of state funding when trying to run even a pared down school lacking common facilities such as gymnasiums, auditoriums, or grounds to play soccer. We want to allow these non-elected bodies to access funds the voters approved at the ballot box for their local public school districts. We fabricated "phantom students" in order to justify this "phantom funding" to schools without accountability to our locally elected school board." (To be clear, I have no problem with charter schools themselves. I just hate that the legislature sets public ed. districts and public charter schools against each other and worry about funding problems. Well, I also have problems with the attitudes of some legislators who profit from charter schools. More on that in another post.)

The challenge of effectively integrating technology and education--A Utah district turns to expensive Play Stations with no teacher supervision?

I posted recently about the desire of some to use technology resources as a replacement for classroom teaching or an excuse to raise class size. I use computer assessments and online resources in my own classroom that are extremely beneficial for the students. However, I think “technology” or its euphemism, “21st century teaching,” often become context-free buzzwords used as an end to themselves rather than a means to learning content or skills. In most cases, technology is just a tool that succeeds or fails according to the preparation and skill of the teacher. A traditional public school teacher and a dedicated homeschooling parent can both successfully use technology, especially online resources, and likewise, they can both fall for enticing gimmicks with little real educational value. I plan on posting about some current situations in Utah schools that demonstrate the hit-and-miss, politicized nature of educational technology. (I also plan to follow up on what little information I have on the implementation of the Waterford Software program and would love further information or data anyone could point me to.)

This post will talk about a recent purchase in a Utah school district that appears to fall squarely into the “enticing gimmick” category.

The Bullet Point Version for easy digestion:

1. A school district received a large amount of stimulus money earmarked for Title I schools. Title I is a 45-yr-old federal funding grant for schools designated as having a high percentage of low-income students.

2. A single employee had almost complete latitude to make the decision on how to spend that money.

3. That person had the feeling, true or false I’m not sure, that he/she had to “hurry” and spend that money.

4. The person got the idea somewhere that kids would use learning programs more willingly if they were on a Portable Play Station (PSP).

5. 60 of the PSP’s were purchased for a pilot program at a cost of $180 each. However, the district did not want to be seen as having purchased Play Stations, so employees are under strict instructions to call them “Achieve Now devices” instead, referring to the name of the learning software that was purchased to play on the non-Play Stations.

6. The Achieve Now software was purchased from a vendor the district had previous experience with, Plato Learning, but Plato had no previous experience making games for the PSP. (Many districts and schools had used Plato “lab” in the past as a remediation class where students spent time using a set math or language drill program from Plato. Both my school and the district in question had cut those labs in past years. My school changed because we found the lab was not as effective as we wished; I believe budget concerns drove the elimination of Plato in this district. I’m sure Plato programs are still in use in schools around the state.) The new Achieve Now “games” for math and language skills are not engaging or adapted for the PSP in any way. They do not use the graphic capabilities of the PSP or even the joystick. You can only use the arrow keys and the games appear to just be bumped over from Plato’s already-mentioned computer division. They are just drill games that could be played on a regular computer.


7. Furthering this unwise rush to spend money on the appearance of progress, the Achieve Now games come in a different format than the regular mini-CD-like discs used for PSP games. Instead, the learning games come on little memory cards similar to what is used in a digital camera, and the PSP has to be specially formatted to use these cards. If a child places a normal game disc into the PSP, an automatic prompt will ask them if they want to update the PSP. When the child selects yes, their game disc will work perfectly, but the PSP will no longer accept the memory cards with the Achieve Now games. This change is irreversible without shipping the PSP back to Plato for expensive reformatting. Plato has advised the district that the reformatting is not cost effective, so they should just tape the game port in back shut and lie to the kids that these PSP’s will not play the regular games.

(Insert memory of some kid named Josh sneaking a Weird Al Yankovic cassette tape into the machine at an audio learning center in 5th grade. We LOVED that center for the week or so he got away with it.)

8. Speaking of cost-effectiveness, two of these memory cards, one for math and one for language arts, were purchased for each of the 60 PSP’s. Each card cost $550, bringing the total for each PSP with two cards to $1280. If a kid reformats the PSP on the first day—sorry, no refunds. Total cost so far = $76,800.

9. At the district’s bulk pricing, that $1280 for each set is enough to buy about 2 and ½ desktop computers. A multitude of websites feature free drill games of the same quality, or in many cases higher quality than the precarious memory cards. If the computers were installed in a lab in a school, they could then be used to play math or language practice games AND ALSO be available for all of the other activities computers are used for in a school. (writing, powerpoints, grades, research, etc.)

10. These 60 PSP/2-card sets were purchased to pilot in 2 schools’ summer programs. The current plan is to soon purchase 30 sets for each of the Title I schools in the district, with each set costing that same $1280 price—$38,400 per school. I don’t believe those purchases have been made yet.

11. The early feedback from those involved in the summer program has been negative. The games are boring and the employees involved had difficulty cajoling the students to play the Achieve Now games for any extended period of time. The language arts games are especially confusing and their real effect on reading comprehension, vocabulary, etc. is extremely questionable. The problem is magnified because the the PSP’s and Achieve Now games are being used exclusively in after-school settings supervised by aides. The aides are generally assigned only to supervise and are unprepared to answer questions that arise if a student is practicing a skill he/she does not understand. The classroom teachers will not be involved in order to give advice at what level of practice to place kids on the Playstations. It’s a case of throwing the kids in a room with a game and hoping they learn.

12. I believe this was a well-intentioned attempt to find creative ways to reach struggling students, but the spending decision was made hastily at a district level without input from school personnel actually working with these disadvantaged students. The district is paying an extremely high cost for a mediocre product. Just sticking a boring learning activity on a Play Station will generally not make a kid enjoy it more. If high quality learning content were developed that took advantage of the PSP’s enticing capabilities at a cost effective price, then maybe an investment into these machines would aid student achievement.

As it now stands, I believe the “Achieve Now devices” are merely an ineffective boondoggle. I hope that district personnel will seek honest feedback about the program and reconsider the upcoming purchases. There are better ways to use the hundreds of thousands of dollars from the stimulus.

Your kid's Spanish class probably has 40 students and LaVarr Webb thinks that is too small

Hello. I’ll start with a quick update on my blogging or lack there of--I think about the issues daily and have a ton of posts semi-written in my head about current education topics and other issues dating back to the legislative session. I’d love to post daily or even weekly, but the reality is that I will likely be blogging in spurts for the near future rather than on any sort of set schedule. I hope to get in 10 posts or so in a spurt the next few weeks, and would like to do a belated 2009 Legislative Report Card as rated by me. I’m going to try that for December, in time to digest the information before some issues are continued in the 2010 session and the budget situation forces even more drastic cuts.

It’s the beginning of the school year, and I thought I’d again present the reality of class sizes as conveniently ignored by both the Utah State Office of Education and the legislature in one of their rare collaborative ventures. The last official stat I saw bandied around was 22.5 students per class on average for the 08-09 school year. Maybe K-2 was close to achieving that…I don’t have hard evidence, but anecdotal claims say that was too pie-in-the-sky for even the early grades. I know later elementary classes are not that small, and I definitely know what’s happening at my school.

I work at a junior high in Alpine District, one of the larger districts with more financial cushion than the smaller districts. I teach a “core” subject, meaning one of the subjects with an end-of-year CRT test that counts towards the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard that determines if we are labeled a “failing school” under the No Child Left Behind law. Core subjects are often “protected” somewhat with class sizes smaller than elective classes. I averaged 32 students per class last year (08-09) and had to get extra desks for the classes larger than that.

This year (09-10), excluding one special non-core class for students who need extra assistance, my average class size is 33.4. For the first time in my career, I have some students seated in chairs in the back at tables because I don’t have room for any more desks. The classes of all core subjects at the school are averaging about the same, and the elective classes are averaging 38-42 students per class. Other secondary schools in the district are facing similar numbers. There are local claims that class size is an unimportant factor in learning, but I firmly believe otherwise. Everything in a larger class takes more time and less material can be covered, classroom discipline—a means to the end of learning—is worse, one-on-one teacher/student time decreases, and the workload is increased for the teacher. That affects the amount of involved assignments and home work that can be given, again decreasing the amount of material covered and practice of that material.

Larger class sizes decrease the effectiveness of good teachers and exaggerate the flaws of bad teachers. I believe all arguments to the effect that large class sizes don’t matter fall flat when confronted by any parent. Does any parent of any student, whether the brightest gifted student or a struggling child achieving below grade level, think their student will do just as well in a class of 35 as in a class of 25? I would speculate that 95% or more of parents would tell you otherwise. I don't want my children to attend school in classes of that size.

With that said, I know we cannot avoid further cuts in education funding next year with the budget crunch pain coming. I am personally and sincerely grateful for the quality work done by the legislature this past session in terms of balancing the budget under difficult circumstances. Even more difficult choices will have to be made in the 2010 session. Many smaller districts did not rehire their first, second, and third year teachers this year, and I think Alpine will likely follow suit to some degree next year, again increasing class sizes. Our school could lose up to three teacher FTE’s next year under current projections—meaning 100 or more students would have to be redistributed each period, increasing the class size of the teachers who remain.

However, when it comes down to drastic measures, I would strongly favor reasonable cuts in teacher pay—reasonable and temporary cuts—before mass layoffs and even larger class sizes. I know many teachers would argue that is a bad precedent to set, but packing classes more and more full when they’re already averaging more than 30 students per class from late elementary school on is even worse. Oversized classes do not benefit the students or the profession. I can rearrange my finances for a couple years more easily than I can overcome the laws of physics and give personal attention to more than one kid at a time.

But when LaVarr Webb, lobbyist and Republican mouthpiece, advocates “boost[ing] public-education class sizes dramatically, “force[ing]” many public school classes to be online, and “an aggressive voucher program… saving billions over the long term,” realize that all savings from these approaches can only come on the backs of our kids. The massive savings would only come by packing our students into “dramatically” larger classes (larger than 33, not 22.5), putting instruction online and paying someone low wages to oversee students working on the computers, and by closing public schools to fund private school vouchers.

Hard times are here and cuts are coming, but don’t let anti-public education voices use them as an excuse to push a destructive agenda.

.

Teacher opinions on the budget cuts

I’m alive and intending to comment on many education related things in the legislature, but I’ve made that promise before. So I’ll shoot for being tentatively optimistic about the probability of posting regularly. My first post in a long while will just be lost in a Buttars blogstorm today anyway, but here’s my perception of teachers’ perceptions. I regularly interact with small numbers of teachers from other districts, as well as my own school and district.

First of all, teachers aren’t really discussing anything regularly. The budget comes up frequently in passing, but it seems like some storm you just sit back and comment on, rather than take an active part in. Sadly, I would still broadly estimate that most teachers don’t actually keep close tabs on what’s going on in the legislative session—I’d say 70-80% couldn’t name more than two broad education issues they saw on the news...and my estimate could likely be low. They hear about big issues that affect teachers through the grapevine, but day-to-day stuff and American Idol or Biggest Loser are discussed much more than the legislative session.

As I said, the fact that the budget is bad and that cuts are coming is frequently discussed, but much more on the local “How does this affect me?” level than the global “Philosophically, how should the legislature approach and prioritize cuts to programs?” level. We’ll be discussing plans for next year on a department, school, or district level, and it will come up that anything we plan might be cut.

Painting with some broad strokes, I’d say teachers are generally very grateful to be employed at a time like this. There’s not a lot of griping right now, but those near retirement are worried about their 401k’s, healthcare, whether they need to stay for more years, etc. The rest of us are worried about class size increases, probable cuts in money for supplies, and cuts in aides—especially special education aides—and other classified employees like trackers, math lab employees, etc. I haven’t heard much discussion of the possible furlough, but I think it would largely be perceived as fair in a bad situation.

Personally, I wish I’d posted this a few weeks ago, because I generally supported the legislature’s pessimistic assumptions of 15% cuts as realistic. I wasn’t surprised at all to see the figures come in even a little worse than that Tuesday. I support a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility by government. I was pleasantly surprised by the lesser cuts and backfilling for public education in the budget for this year. The cuts have been extremely reasonable and I am grateful.

I’m internally conflicted with ranking public ed. among other important priorities, especially higher education. Public K-12 and state higher education are different administratively by tradition and necessity, but it’s really all part of the same end societal goal—a stepping stone provided for all citizens to enable them to seize opportunities through education. I also am concerned about courts, prisons, and human services.

I’m fine with holding the money from both Rainy Day funds until the 2010 budget IF it is actually used. (I think legislators may have gotten unfairly beaten up over the Rainy Day money.) I’m fine with spreading the fund out over 2 to 3 years because as I said, I think the economic downturn really may last a few years, but using ¼ to 1/3 for next year’s budget would fulfill the exact purpose of the funds as I understand it—to preserve crucial programs during a time of budgetary stress. I don’t believe there will be a “rainier” few years in the near future than the next three years. I think the rah rah stuff coming from the economic chambers and realtors, and statements to the effect “It would all be OK if everyone just wasn’t so negative” is BS. I think we’ll just have to weather difficult times, but class sizes are getting worse.

Those whiny teachers…Does legitimate criticism depend purely on the eye of the beholder?

I was angry after watching that omnibus bill go through the non-process last week and had (well, still have) more pointed things to say about Speaker Curtis, Senator Stephenson, and others. I decided to let it go for a few days and get other things done. In the last week, I have seen legislators express their frustration with educator criticism and many comments calling teachers “whiny” and “ungrateful.”

After stepping back for a few days, I could see why that perception exists. Teachers got a much-appreciated raise for the second year in a row as well as an increase in WPU. (Sidenote: WPU is the traditional funding mechanism where the state distributes so much per student to each district. It is NOT a measure of how much or little it actually takes to educate each student; the funds are pooled and shared hyper-efficiently in our crowded schools. Distributing money by number of students is just the fairest way the state has come up with to share state funds among districts with vastly different amounts of students and different needs—big/small districts, urban/rural districts, etc.)

Why are they so mad when the legislature gave them substantial raises two years in a row? Why did some educators argue against the raises?

I think the answers have to do with a common assumption about the legislature’s role and the perceived antipathy for teachers and public education from the legislators.

First, the charge of ingratitude relies on the common language I used in the question above—that the legislature “gives” public educators, and other public employees for that matter, their funding. The language bears some resemblance to common practice both nationally and locally, but I don’t think the arrangement should be viewed that way. We are not children, “ungrateful” for the reward doled out by our legislative parents. Public education for all is a morally just innovation of the 20th century, as well as part of the Constitution of the State of Utah. The legislators are constitutionally charged to effectively fund public education. Funding for the basic needs of education should be viewed as a baseline duty for legislators, just above that of showing up for the session.

Legislators are also elected to represent their constituency. This is a moral duty as well as a pragmatic one for those wishing to be re-elected. Polls at the beginning of the last legislative session and for the last few years have consistently shown immense support for increased funding for education, even when the alternative is a tax cut. Wouldn’t further underfunding public education be breaking the public trust?

So I view legislators who increased education funding during the years with the largest (2007) and 3rd largest (2008) budget surpluses ever in the history of the state as doing their duty and enacting the will of the electorate. A solid, admirable job, but not spectacular. That is not the same as fighting for real improvement in education.

The legislature often tacitly defines “gratitude” as unquestioning acceptance of their will, which educators view as insulting and paternalistic. “Look. We “gave” you these raises, so just quit griping about vouchers, top-down merit pay schemes, false accusations, unproven corporate programs, message bills aimed at non-existent educational problems (i.e. flag and Constitution in every classroom), and our removal of local control. You wouldn’t want to make us mad after all we’ve done would you?” That’s not good or “generous” government; that’s ham-handed manipulation.

That line of reasoning frustrates almost all involved with education. And on top of that general condescending attitude, legislators are constantly misrepresenting information and sending negative messages about educators, directly and indirectly. That doesn’t engender trust or gratitude.

Legislators pressured State Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to sign off on legislation attacking their right to donate personal funds to the UEA in 2001, which was over-turned in an expensive court battle, just as outside observers and Shurtleff himself originally predicted. [h/t to The Sidetrack for the link to the Trib blog]

They constantly maligned teachers and education officials as being dishonest during and after the voucher debate.

A week before the referendum vote, Rep. Dougall even photo-shopped an image of State School Board Chairman and voucher foe Kim Burningham and the Borg from Star Trek and wrote an insulting little poem on his blog. Here’s a couple lines:

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a hideous creature -- your absolute worst nightmare, With a little old chairman, so lively and slick, I knew in a moment I'd probably be sick

This was the single most childish thing I saw from a non-anonymous figure during the voucher debate, and you know the legislators would throw a self-righteous fit about disrespect for the office if Burningham were to write a similar caricature of one of them. The attack also includes the vast majority of public educators whose views Burningham represented as their state chair and voice in state government.

Senator Stephenson has made repeated comments on the Senate floor and in meetings with education officials that he believes technology (i.e. teaching software from well-connected development companies) is a substitute for class size reduction as well as accusing teachers of not being willing to use technology. He views us as replaceable by programs and disagreeable because we don’t turn all of our lessons over to computers and become skill drill facilitators. He works against the one issue I view as the most pressing need in education, class size reduction, because his business lobby group (Utah Taxpayer’s Association) doesn’t like education taxes. I would bet a higher percentage of teachers can design their own websites and Powerpoint presentations than of legislators.

I heard claims that teachers and school districts waste money in both of the town meetings I have attended in recent months. Teachers were portrayed as obstacles to progress and the legislators tried to pit us against each other by claiming veteran teachers don’t care about new teachers. (I discussed the real differences between teacher views here.) Senator Madsen made similar claims about district funds and then tried to backpedal when proved wrong by actual numbers.

These are my own views, but many teachers feel the same way. We are glad when our salary and other education funding is increased, but feel betrayed when those important improvements desired by the public are then condescendingly used as justification for attacks on public education by our elected representatives. Is that whiny? I view it as principled intellectual honesty.

Do you believe Senator Madsen, or...Who does Senator Madsen believe?

Senator Mark Madsen of Lehi claimed 25% of Alpine School District funds were spent on district administration when it's really less than half of 1%. He believes Utah as a whole spent 35% on administration. I already explained how that was false and was backed up by the district numbers in the article. He then claimed he was "misinterpreted" by the local media and expressed frustration that the Alpine District didn't come to him and "ask if I had been misquoted." See the D-News article here:

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695254916,00.html

I see two problems with Madsen's claims:

1. The inherent assumption that others should assume "local media" would "misinterpret" or "misquote," thus the need to vet your information with the assumably more trustworthy legislators.
2. The fact that he then apparently expects Alpine District Officials and others to only accept and believe his version of events, despite his uncritical acceptance of misinformation, or if you will, "misinterpreted information," from a corporate group with an anti-public-education agenda,

First, I've been to two local meetings with legislators in the last few months, one at Orem City Hall and one at Cherry Hills Elementary. They were both very informative and interactive...after the legislators finished their initial comments of over 30 minutes each time. Teachers were payed lip service both times, but were accused of lying about vouchers or opposing reform soon after. Both Senators at the Cherry Hills meeting falsely claimed the districts were mismanaging tax dollars and conveniently accused the media of "bias" when they talk negatively of the legislature. Having experienced these meetings, I would believe the words of a local paper or blogger over what the legislator claimed when in conflict. I would like more information here. Does anyone know what "local media" the article refers to? Were any of you there? I have a hard time believing that Senator Madsen claimed that Utah districts spend 35% of funds on administration...but of course, not Alpine.

That leads to the second problem. He got these numbers from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate lobbying organization which advocates vouchers for the supposed full amount of spending per student and believes Classroom Size Reduction is unnecessary if we just teach better and use more alternate teacher certification. (I'm not kidding. Look at the first paragraph of the link below.)

ALEC on vouchers.


ALEC on Classroom Size Reduction.

ALEC also inflates spending-per-student in its state report cards besides dishonestly inflating administration costs.

Madsen said it was the American Legislative Exchange Council in December 2006. He was told that in 47 states in the country, the administrative costs for public education exceed 35 percent of their budget. He was told Utah had just crept into the "above 35 percent" category, upping the total states to 48.

Look at some of the comments after the article and see how they begin to arrive at the same conclusions as ALEC. Everything not in the "student instruction" category of the budget--i.e. teacher salaries--must be administrative waste. That includes the 6.52% on school administration (principals and vice-principals), 3.09% for support staff such as counselors and secretaries, 5.12% budgeted for instructional staff such as librarians, 8.55% on operation and maintenance of facilities, 3.75% percent on transportation, and 0.60% percent for the district business office, including accounting (and legislative audits...).

Those assertions go right along with Senator Madsen's bill to reward teachers for passing a test given by the ABCTE, a teacher headhunting company which alternatively certifies teachers for the low, low price of $850. Senator Madsen apparently believes that teaching is easy and that audits, buses, lunches, secretaries, and supplies are "luxuries" for a school.
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A request: does anyone know of links to the "local media" who reported on the town meeting with Senator Madsen?