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.)

Legislature 3-2-09 on HB 312: "Of course diverting an ethics reform bill to an unrelated committee in order to kill it is ethical. Trust us."

The Senate Education Committee is apparently the ideological right-guard of the Senate; a non-education bill is being re-routed inappropriately to this committee to die. Things like this just fill me with confidence that the Senate Education Committee is making well-reasoned, non-ideological decisions to improve education.

After passing the House on a 55-15 vote despite any lingering bad feelings towards sponsor, Rep. Sheryl Allen, from Republican legislators upset over her involvement in the ethics charges against Rep. Greg Hughes, HB 312 has taken a curious turn.

The Senate Rules Committee and its House counterpart evaluate bills and send them to the appropriate Standing Committees to be debated. (Revealing my ignorance here…I have no idea WHEN the rules committees make their decisions. They have no meetings listed and the calendar is full of other things. It’s just one of those mysteries I guess.) A look at the list of ethics reform legislation (which is just unnecessary appeasement of the gullible public whipped up by the sensationalistic media says House majority leader, Kevin Garn) shows that the vast majority of the bills are stuck in committee, generally Rules or the House Ethics Committee. The Senate has allowed only two of six Senate-initiated ethics bills out of Rules Committee so far, SB 156 and SB 162. They Rules Committee sensibly sent both bills to the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee, which then sent both bills to the Senate floor and eventual passage in the Senate. They were sent to the House and assigned to the House Ethics Committee.

Now three House ethics bills have passed a House vote, two after also passing through the House Ethics Committee, and arrived to be debated in the Senate. HB 345 and HB 346, compromise ethics bills from Rep. Brad Dee with many loopholes that nonetheless represent a step forward, arrived in the Senate and were assigned to Rules on Feb. 25th. They have not yet been assigned to a Standing Committee.

Rep. Allen’s HB 312, Amended Campaign Finance Filings, arrived in the Senate the day after on Feb. 26th. It passed via the House Government Operations Committee. (HB 312 is a no-duh, common sense change that requires legislators and lobbyists to submit an explanation when they amend their financial reports after filing them. Changes in reports happen as a matter of course—all for totally understandable administrative mistakes according to legislators—but this bill would help limit possible abuse of amendments to conceal donations or expenditures until after the election. It costs nothing and adds a reasonable safeguard.)

The next day, HB 312 was immediately assigned to the obvious choice…The Senate Education Committee?! Hmmm. Let’s see. The Senate Rules Committee composed of:

Sen. Margaret Dayton, Chair
Sen. D. Chris Buttars, Vice Chair
Sen. Curtis S. Bramble
Sen. Gene Davis
Sen. Peter C. Knudson
Sen. Mark B. Madsen
Sen. Scott D. McCoy

…saw that the appropriate and logical destination for HB 312, the relatively moderate (by Senate standards) Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee, composed of:

Sen. Peter C. Knudson, Chair
Sen. Gregory S. Bell
Sen. Jon J. Greiner
Sen. Scott K. Jenkins
Sen. Daniel R. Liljenquist
Sen. Scott D. McCoy
Sen. Luz Robles

…had already passed the other two ethics bills and stood a very good chance of passing this common-sense bill as well. They therefore skipped the Senate Government Operations and Political Subdivisions Committee and shipped HB 312 to the Senate Education Committee, composed of:

Sen. Curtis S. Bramble, Chair
Sen. Margaret Dayton
Sen. Brent H. Goodfellow
Sen. Lyle W. Hillyard
Sen. Scott K. Jenkins
Sen. Karen W. Morgan
Sen. Howard A. Stephenson

Do the members look familiar? Sen. Dayton sent the bill to her own committee where ethics reform stalwarts such as herself, Sen. Bramble (also, on Rules Committee), and Sen. Stephenson can proceed to vote down the bill. I can think of no other explanation for such obvious, purposeful, and expedited routing of a campaign finance bill to the inappropriate committee while other ethics bills with high-profile support languish in Rules. But remember, it’s all the media’s fault anyone thinks there are ethics problems in the legislature.

More omnibus fun: SB 35 -- High quality smoke and mirrors brought to you by Howard Stephenson and Greg Hughes

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Howard Stephenson still surprises me with his relentless drive to attack public education so that his secret big business clients (Click on About Us and read the history and the 5th bullet under Association Purpose and Objectives) who bankroll the Utah Taxpayers Association can pay fewer taxes, regardless of the effectiveness or truth of the measure. I knew there were problematic aspects with SB 35, but I hadn’t realized exactly how much this bill had deceptively morphed into something much different than originally proposed, even when I briefly wrote about the timeline of its votes. I also listened to Greg Hughes interview Senator Hillyard last Saturday on Red Meat Radio (Senator Stephenson is the driving force and most frequent host of the show) and forcefully claim that the legislature is already ethical and transparent, and it’s just the unethical media who misportray the truth. Talk is cheap my legislative overlords, and stuff like I’m about to document is why people don’t trust you. I belatedly caught one more instance of ideological, secret agenda pushing here 8 months after the fact...how many more go unseen among the wheels within wheeled amendments at the legislature?

SB 35 was another bill logrolled into the omnibus education bill, SB 2. Unlike the million dollar laptop program, this bill had seemingly passed the Senate. Its path was a tortured one however and the bill that passed the Senate was NOT the same one that got illicitly passed in the omnibus.

First, the original SB 35 passed a vote in the Senate Education Committee on Jan. 22nd and then the first of two required floor votes in the Senate on the 30th. The bill was relatively short. If you read the Highlighted Provisions summary and the actual bill language, it directed the State School Board to annually survey the schools for difficult-to-fill science and math positions, create a “criticality index” to rank which positions were the most difficult to fill, and give $5,000 more dollars to a math or science teacher who accepted one of those positions. This rankled some teachers, but I thought it was a relatively good idea. If you need to pay teachers more at schools where fewer people want to work, that may be necessary in order to help kids. I had an acquaintance who moved to Dugway for a year to teach. I bumped into him the next summer and he was ecstatic about leaving. I personally think it’s noble, but there’s no way I would take my family to a rural school in the state.

A second thing that bothered teachers only emerged gradually: it wasn’t all math and science teachers who would qualify, only those teaching selected advanced classes, excluding other sciences such as Biology and implicitly the vast majority of jr. high math and science teachers.

70 (2) The money appropriated in Subsection (1) shall be used to provide a $5,000 salary
71 supplement for a full-time-equivalent position as a teacher of:
72 (a) mathematics level 3;
73 (b) mathematics level 4;
74 (c) chemistry;
75 (d) physics; or
76 (e) integrated science.

I’m not specifically clued in on the hiring difficulties of districts, but I was still mostly OK with this if it would help get some teachers to less desired areas. It was a relatively straight forward “market incentive” geared towards filling areas of need. There was nothing about teacher qualifications since the bill specifically addressed “teachers,” and all teachers already need a teaching certificate which requires a bachelor’s degree.

Senator Stephenson then amended his own bill on Feb. 5th, just before it passed the 2nd floor vote in the Senate. The new amended text now required that in order to get the $5,000 bonus, teachers that filled these positions of critical need had to have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent through later class work in the content area specifically, not the teaching specific degree that the vast majority of teachers get. So a Physics Teaching major who went to work on the Indian reservation school wouldn’t get the bonus because she didn’t get her bachelors in plain old Physics, and then pay the much more expensive post-graduate rates to earn the teaching certification. She would instead be punished for earning the certification as part of her undergraduate degree and moving quickly into the teaching area of greatest need. This angered a lot of teachers. Many debated if a Math major who later certified as a teacher was necessarily better than a teacher who entered teaching directly via a Math Teaching degree. And philosophically, this seemed to go against the supposed main thrust of the bill which was to find good certified teachers for hard-to-fill positions. It reduced the potential pool of qualified applicants by over 90% as very few secondary teachers have taken this route to certification. The change wasn’t consistent with the stated objective of the bill.

The bill passed the 2nd Senate floor vote, but I would be very interested in what debate took place and whether the legislators, with no time to study as the bill was passed soon after the amendment, fully realized the rather large shift in emphasis.

The amended SB 35 was then sent to the House and introduced on February 5th. It was sent to the House Education Committee on the 7th. This next sidenote worries me. I had thought that the bill records kept online were accurate and independent of politics. The official status log has no record of an Education Committee vote, but just shows the bill sitting in committee, not voted on, until the 27th. I took that information at face value when I was making my timelines and wondered why the bill got stuck.

I was recently fishing through old material and came across an update the UEA sent out on March 4th about the omnibus bill. It was talking about the defeated bills tacked on and specifically mentioned Senator Stephenson’s SB 35 as having been defeated in the House Education Committee on a tie vote. Hmmmm. Fishy. I checked back and the status still does not show that vote as having occurred. However, a new section has recently appeared on each bill’s information page titled Audio Recordings of Debates. (Did I miss an announcement of this at the Senate site?) This is great news! It absolutely was not there in early June when I previously wrote about this bill. This section contains a link to a House Education Committee debate on Feb. 27th, while the status still says no vote happened. Was it really debated and not voted on? Or is the UEA claim correct and there is something wrong with the record? And regardless, what discussions and negotiations happened in the 3 weeks from Feb, 7th until the bill was debated on Feb. 27th? An important factor was apparently the discovery by Greg Hughes that Margaret Bird, an employee of the State Board of Education, was going to exercise her constitutional right to run against him that Spring in a bid to win the Republican nomination to his House seat. I remember reading about Hughes angrily saying he couldn’t trust the state board back in February over this, but I didn’t save the articles. Bird and Carol Lear recently testified to the House Ethics Committee about the incident during an ethics hearing on charges against Rep. Hughes. Senator Stephenson apparently got in on the attacks as well.

I haven’t had time to listen to the debate yet, but I want to so I can gain some insight into the vote as well as the next transformation of SB 35. That same day, Feb. 27th, voted on or not I do not know, the bill was sent back to the House Rules Committee. That committee’s vice-chair happens to be Greg Hughes and it is chaired by voucher sponsor, Steve Urquhart. The bill was then substituted by Rep. Hughes on Feb. 29th and that is the end of the status of the original SB 35. Another strange inconsistency emerges at this point in the bill timelines. The original SB 35 status shows the bill being sent to rules on Feb. 27th and substituted on the 29th. The new 1st substitute inherited the voting history of the original bill, but now showed something different for those last days in February. There are two new entries, one on Feb. 27th and one on the 28th, both apparently sending the bill to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst (LFA) for fiscal analysis. Both timelines then agree that the substitute bill was put forth on the 29th. So what gives? Which bill was evaluated by the LFA, the original or the substitute, and why the discrepancy between the two status reports?

A substituted bill is in effect a new bill and must pass both houses in its new form to become a law. So SB 35, 1st Substitute now needed to pass both committee and floor votes in both chambers in order to become a law in the face of stiff opposition from teachers and legislative education supporters…except that Senator Stephenson was actively planning his SB 2 omnibus at this point and just decided to pass the bill the easy way—attach it to teacher raises and hold them hostage. He waited for the fiscal note, apparently for the correct version of the bill, from the LFA on March 3rd and immediately inserted the bill into the omnibus, SB 2, which was created that same day.

The new bill bore little resemblance to the original SB 35. The original bill called for 7 million Uniform School Fund dollars to the State Board of Education to be distributed through the districts as $5,000 bonuses to those teachers in critical need positions. The substitute was now over twice as long and featured an utterly bizarre set of new expenses.

First, it created a new “restricted” sub-account called the Teacher Salary Supplement Restricted Account, within the existing Uniform School Fund.

Second, it allocated $127,000 this year and an ongoing $190,000 every year hereafter from the General Fund to the Department of Human Resource Management to create an online application system to determine teacher eligibility for the bonuses, which then forwards the information to the Division of Finance, which then distributes that money to the districts, who then include the bonus in the teacher’s check. In other words, in order to do the same work the State Board of Education was prepared to do as just part of their duties, Hughes and Stephenson, the supposed “small-government” advocates, created a special account of education money specifically not accessible to the State Board of Education, and then inserted not one, but two additional bureaucracies as middlemen between the state and the teachers, all at an annual cost of $190,000. Stephenson regularly claims that public schools waste too much money in spite of class sizes consistently approaching 35 students, yet these two jokers can afford to spend $190,000 a year to redundantly sidestep the State Board of Education in order to teach some Board employee an important lesson about not running against incumbent Republicans because it hurts their feelings. And then Stephenson, co-chair of the committee that sets the board’s budget and the person who had just called Bird specifically to pressure her to drop out of the race, righteously claims that “he was careful not to pressure her.”

Third, the allocation for bonuses was also increased by $646,100, despite the fact that the bill’s provisions substantially reduced the pool of possible recipients. Finding 1400 spots to be defined as “critical shortages” in order to distribute the original $7 million was going to be a stretch anyway, depending on how you defined “critical.” Now in the substitute bill, I don’t believe for a second that Sen. Stephenson and Rep. Hughes thought they would find 1529 teachers holding one of that very limited range of degrees in order to distribute the $7,646,100 of annual bonus money available from the Uniform School Fund. I would be surprised if more than 5% of secondary science or math teachers held those degrees. It forces me to speculate that they are purposely withholding more Uniform School Fund money in that special “restricted” account than is strictly necessary to administer the bill in order to punish schools for opposing it.

Additionally, HB 35 1st Sub completely gutted the original purpose of the bill and revealed what appears to have been Stephenson’s intention all along, to delegitimize teachers as professionals and frame them as inferior to “real” mathematicians and scientists. The bill sneakily includes language about filling critical shortage in its Highlighted Provisions summary (Lines 20-22), despite there being absolutely no mention of that in the bill itself. I guess this would satisfy those legislators who only read the summary. The actual portions of the bill that are concerned with teacher salaries rather than four-bureaucracy-deep payment protocols decree that any teacher can now receive the $5,000, whether teaching in Parowan or the Wasatch Front, as long as he/she received a bachelor’s degree in a selected “hard” science and later became a teacher. “Critical shortages” are not addressed at all, and biology teachers and jr. high teachers are once again found less worthy than the high school teachers. The bill’s implicit purpose now apparently became to remake the teacher ranks by persuading scientists and mathematicians to become teachers by paying them $5,000 more than their colleagues. This was confirmed in the press conference introducing the omnibus on the afternoon of March 3rd when Senator Margaret Dayton rambled for a few minutes about how differentiated pay was going to make Utah "the feeder state for NASA.” (You can click through to the video and watch her speak if you wish.)

It seems to just be common sense that $5,000 won’t change much. I don’t believe there’s this huge pool of higher quality people than our current math and science teachers, just waiting to switch careers if only they could make an extra $5,000 a year.

More to the point of this post, Senator Stephenson and Representative Hughes surreptitiously changed the purpose of SB 35 to something completely different than originally voted for and what its own Highlighted Provisions purported it to be, added $190,000 of completely unnecessary duplication of services to grind a personal ax, and then dishonestly avoided debate by sticking it all into an enormous omnibus bill two days before the close of the session.

Dishonest. Unethical. Sneaky. Power hungry. Irrationally ideological. Take your pick. Trust is not won in an ethics hearing; it is won through transparent actions in the best interest of those citizens whom you represent.

Red Meat Radio—Who do you trust more? Politicians or the media?

I first saw the announcement in my UPD update: the legislative Republicans (and they claim Democrats) are going to host their own radio show every Saturday morning from 8-10 to “set the record straight” “for those tired of getting their news filtered by the liberal local media.” Then I saw the Senate Site announcement and this kcpw interview where Senator Stephenson constantly repeats how constantly the local media’s lies distort the truth. Paul Rolly and the Out of Context blog commented, as well as JM Bell (Be ready for some language, but check the comments at the bottom of the post for examples of the legislature winning the spin war). I don’t agree with JM’s politics that often, but this statement is right on:

Republicans in Utah acting picked on and oppressed? With a straight face? Are you kidding me? You guys have no sense of shame, irony or, for that matter, self awareness.

Last Saturday morning, Sep. 6th, was the first show. I had a commitment until just before 9:00, but caught the rest of the show. The first thing I heard was Senator Stephenson interviewing Trent Kaufman, candidate for State School Board District #8. Kaufman was complaining about an article by Lisa Schenker of the Tribune, who often covers education stories. She called him to ask about the disproportionately large amount of money he had already raised for his campaign, much from out-of-state donors. This would be an important angle I think in any political campaign, but especially in a State School Board race contested the year after the huge influx of out-of-state money during the voucher referendum, and hundreds of thousands of dollars during the Utah legislative races in 2004 ($250,000 that year alone) and 2006. (See a bunch of good posts from the Accountability Blog on the subject.) Kaufman said the money came from friends and family and explained that he would never, ever have dreamed that vouchers would come into this. He “could tell” that Schenker really wanted to write a story about how voucher money was coming into the race, and although she quoted him correctly, the subtle feeling was still there. And he thinks she would have written lies about him if he hadn’t spoken with her. Stephenson agreed and pointed out that around 130,000 people live in state school board district and so you need lots of money.

Kaufman may be a potentially great school board member (I 100% agree with his comments about class size at the bottom of his bio), but he kissed up to Senator Stephenson about “all that he does for Utah” and came off to me like he was trying to make an issue out of nothing in order to please the anti-media legislators. I think the fact he’s raised $8000 dollars in a school board race where $15 is the norm is suspicious, and that Schenker’s article covers that without even a whiff of accusation. The fact is stated and the situation itself raises eyebrows. Kaufman’s website alleviates most of my concerns, but I will rightfully be very suspicious of any out-of-state money coming into school board races. That’s all my opinion—see for yourself in the article that was “set straight.” Here’s the relevant half of Schenker’s article that talks about Kaufman. Realize the article was titled “State Board of Education: A new name may go on ballot for school board” and the Kaufman stuff doesn’t start until over halfway though.

Financial disclosures due Tuesday also showed that one candidate has pulled far ahead of the others in terms of money raised.
Trent Kaufman has already raised $7,939 for his District 8 race against incumbent Janet Cannon. That's more than 13 times as much as any of the other 12 candidates for school board had raised as of Tuesday. Most state board candidates haven't raised more than $15.
"The amount I've raised is not quite yet, but close to, commensurate with how serious I am about the need for change on the school board," Kaufman said.
So far, nine of Kaufman's 18 contributors live outside of Utah and $1,344 is Kaufman's own money. Kaufman said all those out-of-state contributors are friends, former co-workers and/or family. He said none of them donated because of vouchers. Kaufman said as far as he's concerned the voucher issue is "off the table."
Kaufman is a former teacher and principal with a master's degree in educational leadership. He said he's also a doctoral candidate at Harvard Graduate School of Education in education policy.
Cannon has not yet raised any money to campaign for her seat, according to the disclosure reports. She could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

I wish now I’d taken notes, but the second hour was largely about Utah’s bad math standards and interviews with Oak Norton and Senator Dayton. I don’t know if I agree with their very possible assertion that our math standards are weak (I don’t work with those standards and my kids aren’t in school yet.), but the only media debunking was when they would argue the media was not dissecting and reporting test scores the way they think is the right way. It was more of a bully pulpit for Norton’s new website and the push for Singapore Math to be instituted statewide. I expect to hear a lot more of this as they struggle to find enough dishonest reporting each week and instead turn to just advocating their positions.

Relevant side note: As I said, I’m not in a position to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of math programs, but I see in this movement the same kind of one-sided justification of a favored position I’ve previously written about. Norton’s website has a frontpage headline and link about a study that shows all constructivist studies are wrong. The little I know of the basic concept of Singapore Math seems very interesting to me, but it’s still just one program trying to make money in a crowded market. This homeschooler curriculum review section shows a diversity of opinions and opposite interpretations from people who presumably have no need to mince words or protect a school or specific company. (The first three reviews are all positive, but you get a wide variety of reviews after that.) It’s the exact same curriculum, but it gets attacked for being both too repetitive and not repetitive enough for students to master basic concepts. Some find it entertaining, some “very dry.” Does it cover concepts too slowly or too fast? The same section also has similar reviews of Saxon Math, the beloved curriculum of many area charter schools. The reviews come in mixed as well--it is perfect for some kids and doesn’t work at all for others. I don’t believe there is one sure curriculum and teaching method that will help all students. A comment on their petition page (Use the find function to search for Ofa Moeai’s comment down the list.) expressed the same type of concern. The Board President of Liberty Academy Charter School said she found that Singapore Math was nice, but needed to be supplemented to reach Utah’s state standards, let alone world class standards. The webpage editor then puts in a note that they propose to change the Utah standard to mimic the standards of Singapore Math thus solving the problem. A bit myopic maybe? The Singapore program might be good enough for a large enough percentage of all kids to be worth the shot, but it can’t be the panacea it portrays for all students. I think commentators too often get hung up on their personal silver bullet.

To continue with my rundown, Rep. Urquhart had taped a commentary about Sarah Palin and Sen. Stephenson, our host for the day, summarized something that Rep. Becky Lockhart had planned on calling in about, but was unable to. I was interested more in reading about the math program stuff and don’t exactly remember what that last issue discussed was. I assume they spent the first hour attacking Bob Bernick for his twisting of legislators’ words in a meeting he didn’t even attend.

Beyond my discussion of the specific topics of Saturday’s show, here’s the substantial question: Do you feel this new program addresses a substantive problem? Is the “liberal local media” really distorting the truth as told by our legislative leadership? Who do you trust more? Senator Dayton and Bramble went on and on about this at the public meeting I attended in January, saying we “should be offended” by the ethics accusations in the papers. I think I was too lenient in my post on that meeting and how vehement they were that we not trust the media. I think I could sit and chat with Senator Dayton on some subject not related to politics or education, but I don’t trust her research and judgment on education issues, despite her position as chair of the Senate Education Committee. I certainly don’t trust Senator Bramble or Senator Stephenson. I thought Senator Valentine’s explanation to me during a November voucher meeting about why the $7200 dollar spending figure was “intellectually honest” was intellectually dishonest.

So the short conclusion is that I generally trust the media A LOT more than I generally trust politicians. That’s not saying I trust media a lot, but that the gap between the two is wide. I really don’t trust any of them that much, and my trust for both national media and politicians is substantially below that for their local counterparts. Politicians and the hardcore believers in either “liberal” or “conservative corporate” media tell themselves in their echo chambers that it’s the media’s fault, but they have no one to blame but themselves for consistently playing politics over truth and well-reasoned debate. I would bet the general public agrees with my trust hierarchy here:

national politicians < national media < local politicians < local media

The middle two could be switched, but I feel pretty comfortable hypothesizing the general public would agree with my two endpoints.

What do you think? Who is trusted more or less? Did anyone else listen to the red meat radio show?


.

My first political convention and a few first-person tidbits of interest

“Wow!” was the first thought I had as I approached Orem High on foot after parking a block away. I wish that I had brought my camera. There were hundreds of signs covering every available inch of lawn and fence space. David Leavitt made an extra special effort to completely cover the school’s lawn as well as the fence of the neighboring house (assumably with permission). I really hadn’t understood what a spectacle the convention would be. Very interesting. I grabbed a donut and milk from one of the 3rd district candidate tables out front, had the doors held open for me by young men wearing Leavitt stickers, politely refused a Bramble ID badge lanyard, and then got my ID and info packet from the sign-in table.

It was crowded and interesting. I ran into two old BYU friends. They were both first-time delegates also, but even greener than I was last Fall in terms of political awareness. One found out I was now a teacher as I expressed my disagreements with the Parents for Choice in Education booth nearby. She immediately said “Oh. Then I’m against you. I teach at a charter school.” This surprised and saddened me. I think there are funding issues with charter vs. public schools as well, but I’m not opposed to them and vouchers would rob both. I told her why I was surprised and that I thought the problem was more about elements of the legislature setting us against each other over funding. We both recounted stories of funding snafus when students switch back and forth between the two mid-year. We didn’t have time to get into a good discussion on voucher funding, but we parted each more informed I think. She was frustrated that her charter school in Lehi has trouble filling its spots despite the overcrowding in local schools right now as they wait for the new jr. high and high school to be finished in Saratoga Springs. She said many didn’t like the dress code and other rules. I was surprised that those would be such obstacles in northern Utah County and that any charter school there had open spots.

The Senate Caucus was relatively uneventful as Senator Dayton is not up for re-election. Senator Dayton and other elected officials about broke their arms patting each other on the back, except for Representative Fowlke who stood ignored with a strained look on her face as Rep’s Daw and Grover got to take the microphone and talk about their accomplishments. Lt. Governor Herbert openly joked about running for governor during his spiel.

Lt. Gov. Herbert took one question and Sen. Dayton took a few. The first was a request to explain the I.B. program issues from the session. Sen. Dayton segued into her opposition to NCLB for awhile, but eventually came back to the same bologna she believes from her Eagle Forum sources. She acknowledged some of the positives of the courses which she cannot avoid now, but claimed that the classes are accountable to the U.N rather than local and state school board “if you look at the flowchart.” Here’s the interesting bit: she is preparing a bill for the ’09 session that will require parents to sign an “opt-in” release form for International Baccalaureate saying something to the effect that you are giving up your right to be governed by the school board. C’mon. I really have trouble understanding how intelligent adults believe all this stuff. The IB Board certifies if the IB classes meet the standard to receive their “credits” or stamp of approval. This is independent of the local school boards, but doesn’t take away their “sovereignty.” If the Iowa company decided that a batch of 11th grade Iowa tests from Utah were inappropriately proctored or something, they could rightly refuse to accept those tests as valid for their national data comparisons. This would certainly influence how the state viewed it, but the state would be perfectly able to count the test for their own purposes if they saw fit. These evil U.N. classes from International Baccalaureate are 100% under the jurisdiction of the school boards Senator. They have 100% freedom at the local level to choose curriculum, management, or anything they want. If they don’t follow certain standards of rigor and content required for I.B. certification, then they lose the right to receive a certificate and put a fancy name on their resume. That’s it. Utah would still be free to count those classes for credit, count the students, test the students, discipline them, etc. No one has to fly to Geneva or submit to the North American Union. An “opt-in” bill over a program that has parents clamoring to get in will just look even sillier than Senators Dayton, Stephenson, and Peterson already have.

The House Caucus was very interesting as things got a bit chippy, motions were ruled out-of-order, and Brad Daw avoided a primary by a single vote. This was a major surprise as I think almost no one gave Linda Houskeeper a chance here. I want to write about this separately, so I’ll come back to it.

The convention itself was interesting and fairly fast moving. I was very thankful for the strict time procedures on all of the candidate speeches. The “Reagan Award” was given to Utah County Clerk Bryan Thompson. I mentioned to my friend that I was very surprised by this, but I don’t think I was any more surprised than he was. Thompson didn’t expect the award, mentioned how surprised he was to receive it after the long lines at the Western States Primary Election, and thanked everyone for their forgiveness. It was kind of sweet and kind of weird.

The state office holders spoke. Chris Cannon got a little animated and inadvertently occasioned a funny moment. He said he supported Mitt Romney as the vice presidential pick and told the crowd that he wanted to hear from them if they agreed. In response, he got a quick, but hearty cheer. He then rhetorically asked if any one was opposed and received another fairly loud cheer. Hesitation, nonplussed look, and reply, “Ooooh, I guess there’s some of you.”

The candidate speeches were more varied, had more personality, and were more interesting. First, the Second Congressional District candidates spoke. My first ever attempt at a political joke for a National Junior Honors Society speech in middle school was about Merrill Cook (It was something about his being like the energizer Bunny—going and going—and my best friend and I thought it was hilarious. My mother vetoed the idea upon perusal of the final draft and instead supplied a Dan Quayle joke that was very successful), so I was happy to see him in person for I think the first time in my life. Kenneth Gray explained that we have three centuries worth of oil at $15 dollars a barrel in the shale of Eastern Utah. (Cannon claimed a comparatively pricy $20-$30 a barrel for shale oil.) And I am curious if the gregarious Don Ferguson running for the Second Congressional District is related to Joe N.P.C. Ferguson running for the Third Congressional District.

The Third Congressional District candidates were generally much more issues oriented and bashed the incumbent Republican congressmen more as opposed to the Second District guys who bashed Matheson and the Democratic majority. Joe Ferguson had an informative poster for his N.A.U. warning. I was sitting with another teacher whom I frequently agree with, but he is much more worried about the possibility of the N.A.U. than I am. He bought one of Ferguson’s DVD’s for 5 bucks to see what he has to say. I want to borrow it if I get the time.

Chuck Smith, running for the Republican nomination for governor against Jon Huntsman, started out pretty typically by explaining that “more efficient” government was an oxymoron. He then proceeded to tell us that he had spent the last 8 years devising a plan for less government to “take education out of tax funds altogether” or something like that, which I assume means privatization. We can check his website or literature for full details.

The State Treasurer candidates argued over who could survive longer in the desert with only a protractor and an abacus, and then results were announced. There will be no Republican primaries this year, which I assume is exactly what the party leadership wanted, minus the part about Rep. Tilton’s opponent winning 60% of the vote and securing the nomination. Rep’s Daw and Grover had 60.4% and 60.6% percent of their delegates’ votes respectively. Only 2 of 7 winners in contested legislative races garnered more than 68% of the vote. More on this tomorrow…

Clearing up "potential misconceptions" and one bald-faced lie about the education omnibus bill

Over the last week and a half, every member of the family has taken repeated turns being extremely sick. (I don't know if JM Bell and Jeremy were contagious through the internet or what....) So I haven't posted in nine or ten days and the session ends in two days. Luckily, President Valentine has wrapped up all of the remaining education bills into one omnibus bill that he claims has a little something for everyone.

I often disagree with the Senate Site, but they post a lot of good information and acknowledge criticism fairly well. Earlier tonight, my wife and I listened to the audio of the "Education Press Conference" featuring Senators Valentine, Stephenson, and Dayton. It's a little over 18 minutes long and the Senate Site states that the purpose was "to clear up potential misconceptions about education funding that seemed to be swimming around." Let me give you a quick summary:

We have put a lot of money in public education this year.
We are including a lot of the Republican "reform bills," including the American Board program because of its "track record" (see below), in one, gigantic omnibus bill.
We love merit pay and we are going to "experiment" with lots of merit pay proposals. Of course we're not interfering with Rep. Last's merit pay taskforce.
We're putting it all together into an omnibus bill. Of course this is not a plan to ram through unpopular, right-wing, Senate-Caucus-devised-and-Eagle-Forum-approved legislation sprinkled with token Democrat bills so we can accuse no votes of being "obstructionist." The fact that some of these proposals were already voted down individually just shows how diverse and "experimental" the education omnibus package of fun will be this year.
Senator Dayton briefly speaks for no apparent reason, answers no questions, thanks the governor, and tells us that she hopes Utah will become known as "the feeder state for NASA" through differential pay.
Omnibus is good. Omnibus is good. Omnibus is good.
Individually considering the bills isn't actually as good as throwing them all together. If you don't like it, make an amendment.
Omnibus is good. Omnibus is good. Omnibus is good.

My comments on "potential misconceptions":

At about 1:10 in, President Valentine estimates that funding is up 50% from last year. He's serious too. Take off the 0 and I believe a 5% increase would be closer to the mark. But I will grant him, it's a good increase overall. I understand why it's less than originally proposed.

BLATANT LIE COMING... At about 2:35 and again at about 3:50ish, Senator Valentine specifically praises the American Board program as having been "tried and tested" and having a "track record." Did he even read the original bill? It's like Senators Dayton and Peterson on the IB program all over again. Except a simple web search here would give you the openly acknowledged fact that the "Distinguished Teacher" award from American Board is a less-than-a-year-old "pilot" program. You can become "one of the first teachers in the nation to earn this prestigious certification" and they are so desperate that you do so that they will pay you $1000 dollars to earn their award. I honestly wonder how the legislature grabbed onto this random program from a profit-seeking headhunting company that claims they can turn you into a teacher with "a classroom of your own in less than a year!" all for $850 bucks. My earlier post on the subject reveals the organization is tied to national voucher advocacy groups and testing companies. I've been too lazy to hunt down the campaign contributions, but I can't figure out another way this random program gained traction to be funded with one million taxpayer dollars. Maybe they Googled " corporate teacher award" and threw a dart at the results? Why not put money towards teachers who earn the truly proven and well-known National Board certification? This is the organization whose name American Board is trying to copy and for which Rep. Moss has already written a bill, HB 84.

At about 7:10 into the audio, Senator Stephenson defends the proposals as "research based" right after he and President Valentine talk about how they're all experimental too.

It is hard to hear the reporters, but around 9:45 a reporter asks a long question about why so many bills that have already been voted down in committee or on the floor are included in the omnibus bill. Senator Stephenson assures him around 10:20 that many of these bills were going to be revoted on anyway because they had just been "misunderstood" during their initial defeats. Just like vouchers, right?

At 12:15ish, Senator Stephenson apparently reveals that they are taking out the original "critical shortage" criteria (lines 12, 17, 40-41, 45-49) for the extra $5000 bucks for math and science teachers. So instead of paying teachers extra to teach in Dugway or Juab, which I could support, all math and science teachers will make more money.

And to finish off, President Valentine assures us at about 18:05 that despite the fact that many of these proposals wouldn't pass by themselves, "we can look at the total and say that this is a good plan."

Does any of that sound suspicious to you too? I want to see the text of this omnibus bill immediately. I wonder if it will be available online at all before it is debated or passes...

Plus, ridiculous paranoia about the UN infiltrating Bountiful and Provo

Next, hat tip to The Third Avenue where Oldenburg caught a Tribune article I had missed about state funding to support schools offering the International Baccalaureate degree. (Though, I disagree with his jab at public ed. quality in Utah.) Now, I am not a huge International Baccalaureate program devotee. It ensures a rigorous curriculum with critical thinking and international studies, including the requirement to learn a language. In my opinion, it's part fine program and part hoop to attain resume padding, as are most high school recognitions such as National Honor Society and the Sterling Scholar awards. I don't know if spending $300,000 to fund these programs is a good idea in light of other crucial funding needs.

But...that doesn't excuse parochial silliness:

Lawmakers decided against helping Utah schools pay for International Baccalaureate (IB) programs after one legislator called IB's philosophy "anti-American" today.
"I'm not opposed to understanding the world," Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, told members of the Senate Education Committee. "I'm opposed to the anti-American philosophy that's somehow woven into all the classes as they promote the U.N. [United Nations] agenda."

But ultimately, Dayton, Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, and Sen. Darin Peterson, R-Nephi, voted against it. Stephenson said only, "I'm not yet comfortable with this based on some of the input I've received."

Huh?! What "input" are you receiving from what sources? Anti-Americanism is "somehow woven" into classes at Provo, Skyline, and Bountiful High Schools? That would be news to the many parents who drive their kids miles to attend these programs. Have any of those three senators been to an IB school, let alone talked to an actual student in an IB program in a Utah school? I seriously would like to know who is putting these ideas in their heads to be promptly and blindly accepted as truth.

The concerns apparently come from articles such as this one from EdWatch. There's a more recent article that I can't individually link to. Go to EdWatch and click on the February 18 article about International Baccalaureate and notice all of the CD's and books being sold to conspiracists across the nation. To paraphrase for you: Every statement in every unrelated UN proposal or document (and I will grant that there are plenty of wacky/scary examples) is being propagated in IB classes because the mission statement talks about "understanding that other people can be right" and you are required to learn about international points of view. ... Wouldn't that be an incredibly useful and moral thing to learn rather than a scary assimilation agenda?

I challenge any interested party to attend an IB class at one of the schools participating in the program. Don't even give notice. Just be sure to actually listen to what is being taught and talk to the teachers and students. Ask them your bogey-UN-man questions, look at their curriculum, and see for yourself. As I said, these programs would probably not be my first spending priority either, but base your decisions on facts and observation rather than hearsay.