GoBigEd

Tuesday, February 25, 2003



NEBRASKA BEATS TEXAS . . . IN EDUCRATS PER PERSON

The Houston Chronicle reported the other day that the Texas State Department of Education has 850 employees.

According to budget figures on file with the Nebraska Legislature, Nebraska’s statewide education agency has 489 full-time equivalent employees.

Texas has 16,920,000 people, according to the U.S. Census. Nebraska has 1,595,000.

So Texas has one state education bureaucrat for every 19,905.9 Texans.

Meanwhile, there is one state education bureaucrat for every 3,261.8 people in Nebraska.

Does that mean education bureaucrats in Texas are six times more efficient than their Nebraska counterparts?

Well . . . if there is a logical explanation, it should come out on March 4, when the Appropriations Committee of the Nebraska Legislature reviews the State Education Department’s proposed budget.

Maybe there will be fireworks like there were at a similar budget hearing in Texas. According to the Houston Chronicle, State Rep. Jim Pitts of Waxahachie went ballistic when he learned that, despite a $2.8 billion budget shortfall in education alone, the Texas State Education Agency proposed reducing its workforce of 850 by only 10 people.

The senator railed, “We’ve got to find more money in this agency. I don’t think you all have looked enough to scrub this agency.”

He said the state’s “severe fiscal crisis” was causing deep cuts in programs for disabled students, teenage parents and juvenile offenders, and yet staff reductions proposed in the state education agency totaled less than 1 percent.

It looks as though the Nebraska State Education Department is asking for funding to stay just about the same, at $48.5 million.

Will that stand? Stay tuned.


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Thursday, February 20, 2003


HOW TO MAKE NEBRASKA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM
THE BEST IN THE WORLD

So seven of the nine budget czars in the State Legislature voted Tuesday to raise state aid to education. That’s despite the state’s $673 budget shortfall and the public’s fearsome anti-tax mood. Have fun swimming with lead balloons for water wings.

And so the rest of the state senators are down at the Capitol reading tea leaves for how they are going to divvy up state aid this time. They’ve come up with $722.5 million in “certified” need, a $60.6 million increase over the current school year. That’s a lot of tea . . . green tea.

Gov. Mike Johanns has agreed to mudwrestle Sen. Ben Nelson to raise funds to cover that $151 million in court-ordered fines over the nuclear waste dump we dodged, and help pay down that $673 million budget deficit. Can’t wait to see if Nelson’s hair gets mussed; bet Johanns has better-looking legs.

Meanwhile, school administrators around the state are consulting their Ouija boards to find out how in the Sam Hill they are going to make ends meet next year.

Union officials are planning to file more than 20,000 grievances, claiming that our teachers are all actually Cornhusker football players and ought to be paid a handsome stipend, too.

And taxpayers are putting on their tattered gloves and torn overcoats, going out to look for driveways to shovel to make enough money to pay their taxes. Sob, sob.

School finance is like fine literature: important, complicated, sad and full of big words you have to look up. At least, that’s what the documents about state aid seem like. See for yourself: they’re posted on the State Education Department’s website, http://ess.nde.state.ne.us

Now, amid all of this, here comes a would-be Man of La Mancha, tilting at windmills: State Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha. He issued a memo last week renewing his call to state senators to join him in a radical change of the school funding system. He wants to switch to 100 percent state financing and send the same amount of state aid to public schools for every pupil across the state.

His quest comes largely because the state-aid process has gotten too cumbersome, and gaps in funding and achievement persist between rich students and poor ones. We can’t go back to 100% funding by local property taxes because that’s unfair to the poor and illegal, anyway, due to all the school equity lawsuits dating back to Serrano v. Priest in the 1970s.

So Maxwell would do the polar opposite: dump local property taxes as a source of school aid. They now are roughly equal with property tax funding, each covering close to 45 percent, with other local revenues, federal funding and other sources covering the rest. He’d make up the difference with increased state sales and income taxes. Oy.

What has been the reaction to the notion of switching to 100 percent state aid? Maxwell says more people have been requesting copies of psychiatric commitment papers for him, than copies of his formal proposal. But he still resolves to get this done.

He claims total state funding would preserve local control because state aid would be like a block grant with no additional state strings attached (um-hmmm) . . .

. . . local private fundraising could prevent unwanted school consolidation in districts that have relied heavily on higher than average state aid (although in other places where that has been tried, people turn their backs on schools if they’re not forced to pay) . . .

. . . the amount would be more predictable from year to year, with a little room for growth, which would help school planners and managers (but the whole idea was to try to cut school spending, not allow it to keep rising) . . .

. . . and the recent broadening of the sales tax base opens a window of opportunity, Maxwell says, for funding the shift away from property taxes (but . . . who else in Nebraska besides the senators and the state bureaucracy WANTS more sales and income taxes?).

There are more reasons why not to switch to 100% state financing:

-- Sales and income taxes are nowhere near as stable and resilient in a recession as property taxes are. Look at California, which has a state-controlled school finance system, with only 25 percent of school funding coming from local property taxes. It fell from the 5th highest spending per pupil to the 41st in the recent recession. Why? Because it didn’t have the conservative buffer that property taxes afford.

-- Michigan is an example of a state that went to a much larger percentage of state tax funding for public schools, back in the mid-1990s after a school equity lawsuit. But that concentrated power in that state for the union and the edubureaucracy. According to the education website www.eiaonline.com using government figures, Michigan was second in the nation in state rankings of education salaries plus cash value of benefits, $62,985, vs. Nebraska’s 40th ranking, $40,443. Can the cost of living, and inflation, be that much higher in Michigan? No, but it’s a heavily unionized state with lots of lobbying muscle . . . and hardly any local say-so left, because of the shift to state funding. Note, too, that Nebraska kids beat Michigan kids on the ACT in 2001, scoring an average of 21.6 out of 36 in Nebraska vs. 21.3 in Michigan. Neither score is very good, but it does reduce one’s enthusiasm to copy states that spend more and get less than we do. Doesn’t it?

-- Additional state funding pumps up “The Blob” in K-12 education systems. According to www.eiaonline.com, the State of Kentucky ranks 50th in the percentage of the school workforce that teachers comprise. Only 44.8 percent of their school workers are classroom teachers; the rest are “staff” and aides and administrators and so forth – “The Blob.” Nebraska, in contrast, is more teacher-rich, averaging 53 percent teachers, which is 24th in the nation. Why does state funding of education increase “The Blob” and reduce the amount of money available for teachers? Because state funding results in state interference, state regulations, state monitoring, state consultants, state assessments, state evaluations . . . the more, the less merry, too.

-- To the extent that school districts would be limited to a set amount of funding per pupil, smaller districts would be choked into forced consolidations. That’s scary in Nebraska, a state full of smaller districts. But all the data show that the larger the school district and the more distant the source of decision-making power is from the pupils, the weaker the accountability and engagement of the public, and the worse the delivery of quality education. Accountability and public engagement are the two things schools need, besides stable funding. State financing takes them away.

-- If state lawmakers had their hands on the pursestrings of our schools, what is to keep them from yanking them any way they choose? Look at how California’s state-controlled schools put in class size reduction legislation – because it was “popular,” not because it produces better learning, because it doesn’t. That change forced enormous new expenses and the hiring of many, many inexperienced teachers. Result: test scores bombed. California has nuked what used to be a fine educational system by taking away local control.

Now, look. Maxwell has a point: the state-aid process needs to be simplified. It makes sense to compute a set amount per pupil and quit all this statewide haggling on whose pupils need more and whose can do with less. That’s communistic, anyhoo. Local control is already more of a myth than a reality; as it is, we already have far too many rubber-stamp school boards and burned-out educators complaining that all they do is dance to the tune of unfunded government mandates.

But let’s not make that worse.

And there are many good reasons to keep equilibrium between local and state funding of public education. Balance means stability and protection for our educators and our pupils. It also keeps the reins of power partly with the locals, and partly with statewide elected officials, including State Board of Education members and Erniecameral members.

So here’s what we should do:

Cut taxes with performance audits of state aid. Duh.

But we also can still use Maxwell’s idea, to a degree. Here’s how: figure out how much money we have in state sales and income tax to devote to education, divide it up by enrollment, and hand out the checks. Presto!

We could do that right now. But that wouldn’t be enough. Tie yourself to the fencepost, because here comes an ideological tornado. Here’s how we can make Nebraska’s schools the best in the world, with a combination of innovative deregulation and privatization:

First, Nebraska schools should withdraw from all federal funding, because it costs us more in money, time and say-so than it ever brings in. We really need to avoid the No Child Left Behind federal legislation, which has been dubbed “No Family Left Alone.” Exception: move special education and English as a Second Language programs to the control of the Educational Service Units (ESU’s) to continue receiving partial federal reimbursement. And while we’re at it, remove all but those two functions from the ESU’s – especially the icky data collection and assessment behemoths. Finally, reduce the number of ESU’s from 19 to 3, one for each congressional district, to greatly reduce that mega-bureaucracy. But mostly, get rid of that awful Title I. All kids, but especially poor kids, would be much better off without that largest federal education “deform.”

Second, turn Maxwell’s idea for one equal state-aid check per pupil into a voucher, and send those checks to private-school and homeschool students, too. Wherever they are in Nebraska, if they are getting educated, they deserve equal opportunity and an equal share of the taxes. What students are doing the best in Nebraska? The private-schooled and homeschooled kids, rich and poor. How do they do it? Strong accountability to, and engagement by, their parents. Why shouldn’t government subsidize what works best for kids? Why should it only subsidize what we all agree isn’t working?

Third, roll back or minimize government regulation of all schools in our state. Get rid of, or sharply reduce, our state school accreditation requirements, collective bargaining restrictions, standards and assessments regulations, teacher certification rules, and all other evidence that we have caved in to the nationalization schemes of Goals 2000 and Outcome-Based Education.

Government interference with public education is what has jacked up school spending so much. You can trace the increase in school spending to the growth in reliance on state and federal funding, rather than local funding. It’s the strings attached to dollars that come from Washington, D.C., and Lincoln – that are related to social engineering, not academics -- that damage schools. It’s the whole language, whole math, child-centered philosophy and constructivism – all of which are mandated by state and federal education funding. They cost at least 10 times as much as traditional methods of teaching the 3 R’s. The more funding power is consolidated at the state level, the easier it is for special interest groups – especially the teachers’ unions – to push through their expensive, ineffective fads that require more and more “staff” in schools, and lobby for and obtain more money and power for their increasing membership. Parents and taxpayers are, sadly, out of the loop.

That’s why we need to change the school-finance system. To get around them.

If you read “No Excuses,” the landmark book by Samuel Casey Carter on how 21 high-poverty schools still produced high academic performance, you’ll see the truth: more local control is what works . . . better methods, not more money and certainly not more government control of schools. The state bureaucracy and state teachers’ union blocks those better methods. We need to get shed of them.

Spending per-pupil in Nebraska has exploded by 300 percent in the last 20 years -- $2,471.62 in 1981-82 vs. $7,126.73 in 2001-02, according to the State Education Department. The kids aren’t getting dumb and dumber and requiring more money to be educated. It’s because of the increase in state and federal interference in what, constitutionally-speaking, is supposed to be a local concern – education.

The fault is . . . drum roll, please . . . the STATE’S, not the schools’.

If you really want world-class schools, you have to avoid doing what everybody else is doing. Right?

So let’s do this our way – the innovative, exciting, all-American way – encouraging education in all its forms, deregulating it and privatizing it.

We’d be first in the world to do education right.

GO BIG ED! LET’S ROLL!


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Saturday, February 15, 2003


IDEA: GET RID OF THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Bev Bennett of Roca, Neb., south of Lincoln, has been following education issues for many years. As director of the Nebraska Education Research Council (NERC) and a tireless, experienced researcher, she has a better grasp than almost anyone in the state about education legislation and what's behind what is going on today in education issues.

In light of today's $673 million state budget deficit and growing concern about the social engineering, under-achievement academically and over-politicization of our public schools, she has come up with a pretty striking idea of what to do:

Get rid of the Nebraska State Department of Education. Although K-12 education costs well over a billion dollars in Nebraska, it appears that the oversight agency this year is costing $48.2 million in staff, operations, travel and equipment for nearly 500 employees. Mrs. Bennett maintains that we can get along with them and let other, existing governmental monitoring and regulatory agencies take care of its functions the way other governmental services are handled.

Here's her take on it:

"If we are truly a 'local control' state for education, let the schools handle their own affairs. The constitutional board elected by the people, has the oversight of Nebraska schools, not the corporate, State of Nebraska.

"Each school district is 'connected' to a 'federal' ESU (Educational Service Unit); and each district has their own level of bureaucracy. They are capable of bringing in the 'federal' monies by themselves without the Federal (state) department.

"The main purpose of the corporate, Nebraska Deptartment of Education (namely Washington DC operating within corporate State of Nebraska) is to 'suck' in the local schools with the offers of money -- the ESU's included.

"As one has followed this gradual change from local funding of schools to state funding, it is evident the state has made a mess of things as usual. One has only to follow the individuals who were hired to 'develop' the funding formula and you see who gets the most benefit from the 'formula' . . . and it's not the small schools.

"If the Deptartment of Education were eliminated, look at the savings to the people! See the department's budget information on the Nebraska Department of Education website and that would just be the start of the savings: each sub-unit, including each school district, would save untold monies as a result.

"If you know anything about the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) then you know Nebraska has plenty of money in reserve and has no need to increase taxes. If Nebraska officials were truthful and interested in preserving our freedoms and liberty, they would cut back, just as the people have had to cut back in order to survive."

To contact Bev Bennett, director of the NERC: advonews@inebraska.com



NERC NEWS
Bev Bennett, Director
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ARE OUR EDUCATION LEADERS WRONG ABOUT SEX ED?

More than a year ago, there was a hubbub in the State Board of Education over the way Nebraska teachers were going to teach sex education in health class.

The head of the State Education Department, Doug Christensen, commissioner of education, in alignment with national teachers' union positions on this topic, wanted "comprehensive" sex ed taught, the kind that includes a lot of information on how you prevent pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases. The philosophy is, "the kids are going to do it anyway, so they might as well know how to have safe sex."

Others, though, including former State Ed Board member Kathy Wilmot, pointed out that the wave of the nation was toward "abstinence only" sex ed because that is the approach that most parents want schools to take, and it works much better to preserve children's health. With that approach, students are given the kind of health information and skills that help them avoid sexual contact, with the clear expectation that they should not be engaging in sexuality at all -- the common-sense way to be "safe."

The compromise was that teachers were supposed to be free to teach "abstinence plus," meaning they were supposed to concentrate on teaching kids the consequences of risky sexual behavior, but if a child asked questions about condoms and so forth, the teacher was free to respond.

Now there's a report issued by the Coalition for Adolescent Sexual Health that appears to show that most parents side with Wilmot and "abstinence" sex ed, not with pro-"comprehensive" sex ed advocates.

According to the poll, 74 percent of parents want abstinence-only, character-based sex ed for their children, and not the "comprehensive" type that seeks to "normalize" unwed adolescent sexual activity.

The report contends that the data used by sex education groups such as Planned Parenthood, that are often cited by those with Christensen's pro-comprehensive sex ed views, are mostly propaganda intended to sway public opinion toward the "enabling" of adolescent promiscuity and all the diseases and expenses that come from that. The report contends that many of the statistics on which liberal education leaders and teachers' unions rely are fraudulent because they are "cooked" to drive more contraceptive and "family planning" business to Planned Parenthood and the like. It also shows that parents do not want explicit sex messages taught to their children, in contrast to the claims of the pro-comprehensive sex ed advocates.

CASH commissioned the Zogby International polling firm to survey of parental opinions about sex education -- using the explicit language of the sex educators themselves -- to find out what kind of sex education parents really want for their children.

The results of the Zogby study show just the opposite of what the sex education industry has claimed in the past. The sex educators have claimed that a majority of American parents want “comprehensive sex education” in the public schools. Just the opposite is true. When confronted with exactly what kind of sex education is to be taught their children, most parents are overwhelmingly against the kind of explicit sex messages promoted by Planned Parenthood and others.

Parents objected, for example, to sex education guidelines paid for with tax funds that teach children ages 5-8 that it feels good to touch and rub body parts; teaching children ages 9-12 that homosexuality is as satisfying as heterosexuality; and teaching children ages 15-18 that using erotic photos, movies, or literature is a good way to enhance sexual fantasies.

The Zogby study showed that by a 4.4 to 1 margin, parents disapprove or strongly disapprove of teaching young people that homosexual relationships can be as satisfying as heterosexual relationships.

By a 4.6 to 1 margin, parents approve or strongly approve of abstinence sex education.

By a 2.4 to 1 margin, parents disapprove or strongly disapprove of comprehensive sex education.

CASH noted in the introduction to this Zogby study that the “safe-sex cartel’s” own public opinion surveys have been deeply flawed. They have been based on biased sample selection, leading questions, deceptive questions, and a biased interpretation of the results.

It also noted that before "comprehensive" sex ed, including condom use, began being taught in schools, there were basically two sexually-transmitted diseases, syphilis and gonorreha. Now there are more than 30, and most of them are not prevented to any significant degree by condoms.




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Thursday, February 13, 2003



TOP TEN REASONS STATE FUNDING STINKS

State Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha suggested recently that Nebraska scrap local funding of our K-12 schools and shift all of the financial responsibility to state and federal sources.

Rationale: solve the property-tax crisis and the gaps between urban and rural Nebraska, and rich and poor Nebraska. Have just one K-12 fund, feeding into it from state sales and income taxes from all across the state, and then dispersing it equally as the same amount of money for every pupil, no matter where he or she goes to school.

Ahhhh! Property taxes would shrink to next to nothing!

Ahhhh! No more back-door deals and arm wrestling down in the Legislature as they wrangle with the state school aid formula.

But bleahhhh! State financing of local schools is a stinky idea. And here’s why:

1. How has state funding worked elsewhere? Not too hot. Hawaii is the only state in the country with just one statewide school district. According to Education Week’s 2003 Quality Counts report (www.edweek.org), Hawaii’s high-school graduation rate is 69 percent. Nebraska’s is 84 percent. That factoid is enough to make most of us say “aloha” to the state-funding idea.

2. But isn’t it better for kids if you “equalize” spending from place to place instead of allowing the richer school districts to spend more than the poorer ones? Well . . . in 1990, Kentucky embarked on the most sweeping equity-based school reform in the nation. It was supposed to be the big model for equal opportunity and state control over curriculum, assessments, teacher training and all the rest. In 2002, the students who were in kindergarten when the reforms began took the ACT. Their scores dropped from previous years. They scored 20.0 on a 1 to 36 scale. The national average was 20.8. Nebraska’s students scored 21.7. So “equalization” looks like it makes ALL of the students LESS equal.

3. But might it not be cheaper in the long run to consolidate a lot of functions at the state level and reduce all those pesky local bureaucracies? Well . . .why don’t you ask the former Soviet Union? THEY had state schools and no “bothersome” local control at all. But a lot of people think their centrally-controlled education system is what ran their country into the ground. It was “borscht,” in other words.

4. But what about teacher pay? If we could tap into a more equitable pool of money from all across the state, then we could give much-needed raises to some of the teachers in our rural areas. They are now trapped by the relatively low wealth ratios in their districts, compared to city teachers. But . . . do we really want to make all 20,000-some teachers state employees, with all the cascading consequences of that move? Do we really want to ignore the significant differences in the cost of living between urban and rural Nebraska? And do we really want to strip local school boards of the prerogative to set salaries and benefits?

5. But what about the politicization of education? Right now, there are so many political hoops our educators have to jump through, from the local school board to the Legislature to the State Department of Education and the State Board of Education . . . wouldn’t it be better to be done with a lot of that? O . . . K. Even if you kept elected school boards in place, they’d be “steers” instead of “bulls” because they would have to dance to the state’s tune to get the state funding. The closer you are to the source of the funding, the more power you have. With a state-financing system, the power would be thrown to the statewide education bureaucracy . . . and . . . organ music . . . the teachers’ union.

6. But wouldn’t state financing streamline a lot of the administrative functions and duplicated services that we now have? Well . . . define “streamline.” You mean, the state would set all the priorities? The state would spec all the textbooks? The state would evaluate all the teachers? The state would determine who has met the standards for graduation? The state would determine which districts get capital improvements funds and which do not? That’s not a “streamline.” That’s a “chokehold.”

7. But local school districts are infamous for favoritism, nepotism, pork barreling, parochial judgments and petty politics. Wouldn’t a move to state financing remove a lot of that? No, because the local yokels would still be contracting, wouldn’t they? They just wouldn’t be controlling the money any more; they’d only be receiving it, like a handout. And which kind of public servant do you feel is more accountable to you, the taxpayer: the fat cat whose office is right around the corner and whose wife you run into at the grocery store . . . or the fat cat sitting in a high-rise office building in Lincoln who’s never even been to your town?

8. But it isn’t fair that students in poor school districts don’t have the money for some of the extras that students in rich districts have access to. Yes, but . . . decades of research have shown that there is no connection between increased school funding and improved academic achievement. The calculus goes a lot deeper than spending per pupil. Shifting financial resources to poorer districts tends to anger middle-class, suburban parents who have worked very hard to get into those wealthier districts and are willing to shoulder those higher tax burdens in order to provide those extras for their children. Remember the Communist Manifesto . . . “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That’s what statewide financing does. We’re supposed to AVOID that kind of stuff, aren’t we . . . Comrade?

9. What schools are working not very well at all? Sad to say, it’s the Native American schools in Nebraska. How come? It appears to be because the source of the funding is totally from outside the local area: federal funding. Parents and the public feel no ownership and have no leverage. There’s a lot of apathy and hopelessness. So they “check out” of the educational equation. And it shows. Surely that’s not what we want. And how.

10. What schools are really working well? Private schools and home schools. They wax Nebraska’s public schools in every measurement, from test scores to spending per pupil to evidence of character and citizenship. Everyone agrees that the main reason is that there is hardly any central-office bureaucracy for private schools and home schools. The building principals (or parents) have power over the purse-strings. And with private schools, the parents have power over the whole shebang, because it’s their money, and everybody knows it. The public schools act as if it’s THEIR money, even though it’s not. But in private schools, common sense rules the day, pennies are pinched, and kids are thriving in that environment. We should be following their funding model and driving the power closer to the parents, not further away as we would do if we went to a statewide model.

Nebraska right now is one of the states with the highest proportion of local property taxes in the school financing picture, nationwide. Switching to total state funding would be a radical move, indeed.

But get this: an even more radical move might be the best move of all. Instead of turning schools over to the state, we need to be turning them back to the parents and taxpayers. How to do that? Privatize.

And that ain’t no borscht.

Aloha.
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SCHOOL BUDGETS: HARD TIMES REVEAL POOR MANAGEMENT

There's not much good that can be said about Nebraska's $675 million budget deficit and the significant hit that our K-12 public schools are expected to take in the way of reduced state school aid next budget go-round.

Maybe it's not a silver lining -- but at least it's a pretty color of gray -- to recognize that the schools' own financial foibles often are the cause of their budgetary woes, and hard times just force them to face facts and quit making boo-boo's.

This may be the best leverage yet to insist that Nebraska start doing performance audits on state school aid. After forking over hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, wouldn't you say it's about time? Go, State Auditor Kate Witek, go.

What kind of school spending foibles are on the table? The overspending of the last decade is pretty obvious, and the responsible parties are, of course, our largely do-nothing, rubber-stamp, clueless school boards. A pox on any school-board member who isn't in there bustin' heads, insisting on clear budget information and effective accountability from our district and government employees. We should expect more leadership from them from now on.

Perhaps what the Nebraska school finance mini-crisis is revealing is too many years of less than stellar school management, too. Look for sloppy bookkeeping, clerical errors, outdated information systems, staff turnover in the budget offices, communication problems between school departments, lax training for school finance officials, and poor planning by senior staff members to be revealed in the coming months.

Here's our chance to rectify some of those.

Take a look at what's happening in other locations. Maybe we can learn something, and find some school funding in the "Lost and Found." These examples are from the Jan. 8 Education Week:

-- El Dorado (Calif.) Union High School District accidentally left a number of employees off the balance sheet because of old, incompatible personnel software. So district officials thought they had $2.3 million more to spend than they really did. They had to raid the raise fund . . . which didn't go over well.

-- The Boulder County (Colo.) District Attorney is investigating the alleged inflation of reserves estimates by school officials in the St. Vrain Valley District, and two district officials have resigned.

-- In Seattle last year, the double-counting of a number of students in vocational education resulted in $7 million extra put on the balance sheet and all kinds of cascading consequences, among the errors that led parents and the union to call for the superintendent's ouster.

-- In Jenks, Okla., the half-day preschool kids were accounted to the state as full-day . . . but when the state found out, the district had to come up with the reimbursement cash, $500,000, a significant chunk of its annual budget of $44 million.

-- Oakland, Calif., school officials agreed to raise salaries by 24 percent over three years to help with teacher recruitment, but never did the necessary cost cutting to raise the cash, and now they are seeking a $100 million bailout loan from the state to cover the promised raises.

-- New administrators in Birmingham, Ala., are blaming their predecessors for inaction in necessary budget cuts and inflated reserves that "let" a fiscal crisis happen with a $42 million deficit in a $205 million annual budget, resulting in a forensic audit by the state.

-- In Englewood, Colo., a $478,000 clerical error by a staff member because of poor accounting techniques in "position control" is causing an embarrassing shortfall.

The REAL shortfall is between some school managers' performance . . . and the public's reasonable expectations. Ya think?


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SIGNS OF THE TIMES IN NEBRASKA SCHOOLS

-- Home ec class gets with the '00s as a Papillion-LaVista High School student was ticketed earlier this month on suspicion of marijuana possession after he was caught putting marijuana into brownie dough in home economics class. The brownies were confiscated and none were eaten, officials said.

-- A makeshift lab for making methamphetamines was found in the parking lot of Avery Elementary School in Bellevue.

-- Douglas County Sheriff's Office is recruiting volunteer deputies to patrol outside 11 schools in Waterloo, Bennington, Ponca and Millard districts, watching for suspicious people and cars before and after school.

-- The State Board of Education has approved an anti-bullying policy after countless hours of wrangling over staff training, program development, state and federal grant hunting, monitoring and mandate systems design, and so forth.

The question is: when's the last time you read something about how our schools are doing in teaching the 3 R's? Is it time for parents who want their kids to learn the 3 R's to pull them out of public school, if this is all they're concerned about?

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NEBRASKA EDUCATOR FEARS 'TOP-DOWN' CHANGE

A Nebraska reader who self-describes as "involved in public education" writes:

"I am concerned by the top-down education which we are experiencing. Each school is required to adapt their curriculum to the State expectations, and those come from the Federal level. So much for local control.

"The schools have had to do assessment tests and now curriculum is run by teaching to the tests. No matter that there is no time for Kindergartners to learn music, etc. The teacher is busy teaching to the test.

"I am concerned about the increasing Federal control and the increasing amounts of time and paperwork for teachers to do, instead of their supposed job of teaching children. No public school in the U.S. is immune to these directives. Currently private and home schools are immune but constant vigilance is imperative for them."

Reader, you are right on. Sad, but true!

Nebraska is already in the confusing situation of not having in place a set of the federally-required statewide assessments in apparent violation of the new "fed ed" law. Of course, most of us can see that these new-fangled assessments, which are pretty much boilerplated from coast to coast, constitute de facto, dumbed-down, ideologically problematic nationalized curriculum. What on earth are we doing, accepting the deformation of America's diverse and strong schools all across the land into a bunch of matchy-poo McSchools?

So even though Nebraska looks like we're stubborn rebels who won't toe the line with our own federal government, actually, we're doing the right thing for the moment. And the best move of all, both financially and academically, would be to can any kind of state-mandated, state-monitored, state-pre-chewed assessments right here and now.

It gets wackier. Beyond our borders, now we have the weird spectacle of parents suing their own school districts and states in federal court for not living up to their obligations under the federal No Child Left Behind act of 2001. According to Education Week, citizens in New York City and Albany, N.Y., sued because they contended their children were denied a chance to transfer out of what were considered non-performing schools under the new legislation, or did not receive supplemental services.

Meanwhile, the California State Board of Education is sued because its own decision to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, coupled with California's high standard of living, caused the hiring in that state of 34,000 teachers, or 11 percent of its workforce, with "emergency certification." Now, most of those teachers were totally bona fide, professionally, but merely had just moved to the state or otherwise didn't have their papers in order. But under the new "fed ed," their own citizens are contending, kids have to have "highly qualified" teachers, and teachers without formal certification don't measure up, no matter what.

So much for even the semblance of local control now. The feds even get to "spec the teachers."

It's a crazy, mixed-up, un-American situation when we have local parents in local school districts suing their own education leadership. And to make it stick, they are siccing on their own local leaders the feds -- who, under the Tenth Amendment, are supposed to be totally hands off education matters, leaving those calls to the local yokels.

No Child Left Behind? We will be leaving American principles behind, if we stick with this mess.

I say, pull out of all federal funding, Nebraska educators, and do it now, before it's too late. Transfer special ed and ESL functions to our ESU's so that those federal funds can still flow. But pull out of everything else . . . and now's the time.


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Thursday, February 06, 2003



ADOPT AN ED BILL

If you’ve been watching the Nebraska Legislature and following some of the proposed bills, you know there are too many in the hopper that have to do with education for any one of us to “major in” to the degree we probably should.

So let’s share the load: announcing Go Big Ed’s “Adopt an Ed Bill” program.

Pick a proposed bill, research it, and advise the rest of us on what kind of a stand we should take on it. Then let’s all let the Education Committee senators in particular, and our own senators in general, know what the scoop is from the private-citizen point of view.

Our first adoptee is LB 778 on assessments, from Sen. Chris Beutler, adopted by longtime Nebraska State Board of Education member Kathy Wilmot of Beaver City, Neb.

Here’s what she says about it:

“I know we need to watch 778, although I would probably support it with an amendment attached.

“I doubt it will make it out of committee.

“It calls for ONE test in math, science, social studies, etc.

“That would be much better than (State Education Commissioner Doug) Christensen's multiple assessment.

“The Nebraska Department of Education will fight this bill. It would be good to get it out of committee and then attach an amendment that stipulates: 1) the tests be machine scored (hard to put "touchy-feely" psychological questions in a machine scored "right/wrong" test), and 2) that the tests be made public so there is true accountability.”

Keep the tests academic? And accountable? Twin concepts that apparently have not occurred to the educracy . . . but wouldn’t that be an improvement?

Thanks. Who else will adopt an education bill and keep us informed on Go Big Ed over the coming weeks? You can be named or anonymous, too.

Consider LB 263 (extra money for all-day kindergarten; ick), 372, 17CA, 534, 660 and 682, slated for public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 10, in Room 1525. Then there’s all the state aid wrangling; there may not be a more important issue this session.

If possible, email me at swilliams1@cox.net with your statement of adoption, similar to Kathy Wilmot’s, by the end of business Monday, and I can file it in a Legislative Update being published by the Nebraska Civic Digest as the centerpiece of their March issue. See their online edition at www.ncdweb.net for some reporting by yours truly and others who are either natural-born or adopted sons and daughters of the great Cornhusker State.
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GO BIG ED'S MINNESOTA FRIENDS ARE GAINING IMPACT

The pro-academics, anti-nationalization grassroots organization, the Maple River Education Coalition, gained a Page One story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press recently, "Anti-Profile Group Sees Victory Ahead." The 30-column-inch feature was about the growing opposition to Minnesota's Profile of Learning, the statewide graduation standards and assessment system that is very similar to what Nebraska's education establishment is attempting to build.

Nebraska could save itself a huge amount of time and money by studying what is happening in Minnesota.

Impact and clout are growing for the education activists, who have gained several champions in the Minnesota legislature as well as Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who agree that the Profile of Learning standards must be repealed to preserve Minnesota's already-excellent education system that was built with local control.

Go to Maple River Education Coalition's website for more on what they're doing. They oppose:

-- the dumbing down of curriculum to minimum standards

-- globalism at the expense of Americanism

-- forced assessments of nonacademic opinions, values and beliefs

-- career-tracking, job-training and child pigeonholing into set levels of schooling

Minnesota's standards were a tough sell to parents, teachers and the public, according to the article, but were slipped through with political maneuvering. Similar tactics worked in Nebraska as well, although Nebraska's standards and assessments are about three years behind Minnesota's in implementation.

Now that more Minnesotans are aware of the problems and more families have direct experience with the centrally-controlled system, the Profile of Learning is on the chopping block, and schools have a real chance of going back to local control and quality decision-making.

It'll be useful to watch how the organization continues to battle with state educrats, and oppose the nationalization of the "No Child Left Behind" federal education takeover.
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MILLARD EVENT SET MONDAY ON ADD/ADHD

Lynne Popp, an educational therapist and one of the Omaha area's best-known child advocates, will present "Attention Deficit Disorder: How ADD or ADHD Affect Your Family." The talk is planned from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 10, in the west meeting room of the Millard Branch Library, 13214 Westwood Lane. Registration is required: 444-4848 ext. 3.


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Monday, February 03, 2003




WHAT TO SAY WHEN THE SCHOOLS SAY THEY NEED MORE MONEY

It's a fairly popular ploy, these days: educators say they need more money or kids will be shortchanged out of a decent education. It's pretty hard for other units of government to compete with that threat, much less taxpayers with a mind toward holding the line on government spending.

But then there are quiet voices of reason crying out in the wilderness. The most influential ones are likely to be the local newspapers. So parents and taxpayers who want quality education for kids without taxing everybody out of their homes might study what the North Platte (Neb.) Telegraph said, and urge your local newspaper to say something similar.

In a Jan. 22 editorial, that western Nebraska newspaper quietly and understatedly pointed out that state tax funds allocated to K-12 public schools in the Cornhusker State grew 4.8 times faster than the rate of inflation over the past 30 years. That's nearly 500 percent faster. Meanwhile, senior citizens are expected to be happy with inflationary increases and not a penny more. Certainly nothing like 500 percent more than inflation's toll.

That's probably fairly similar to what has been happening in other states.

So when schools come crying to legislatures and taxpayers saying that they are terribly and unfairly underfunded and kids are going to suffer, find out what has happened with school spending over the last few decades in your state. Then compare those numbers to the rate of inflation. A call to the school finance bureau of your state department of education, or perhaps the research office of your state legislature, should produce the necessary figures.

With statistics like that to back taxpayers up, when the schools come calling for more money, the answer can be quiet, clear, understated and emphatic: "N-O."

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Saturday, February 01, 2003


SO LONG, K - 12; HELLO, PreK - 16?!?

In yet another example of the disconnect between taxpayer distress over school spending, and the thinking patterns of Nebraska educators, note the annual meeting of the Nebraska PreK-16 Initiative in Lincoln last week as reported in the Lincoln Journal. It's located by a search for "Teachers Focus on Seamless Transition" and be sure to note how nary a mention was made about the state's horrific budget squeezes in school spending.

More than 100 educators assembled to discuss "Linking Teaching and Learning PreK-16." Their leaders were top educrats from the University of Nebraska and the State Department of Education.

For more about this latest money-sucker-upper from the education establishment, visit the Nebraska PreK-16 Initiative and be sure to note how their retreats have been held in the following places over the last few years:

Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Stowe, Vermont
Park City, Utah
Fish Camp, California
Englewood, Colorado

Umh-hmmmmmmm. :>)

The idea is to extend the authority and funding for public education down to the moment of birth, apparently, and throughout the traditional K-12 years on through the college or technical-school years. Who's behind it? University wonks, educrats and big business types. It is linked to the Goals 2000 and School-to-Work debacle now showing its ugly underskirts in the tax hurricane going on in Oregon; preliminary tidal waves are already hitting Nebraska school districts that have succumbed to the Outcome-Based Education / School-to-Work spending maelstrom. (See story below, 1/31)

So what you used to know as "senior year in college" has now become "Grade 16" -- at least in the minds of the educators who want us to think of the "system" that way now. Bottom line: they want to glom their hands onto control of your child's every move from birth to 'bout age 22, and the big, big bucks that come with. Ewwww!

What about the incontrovertible fact that kids used to come to school ready to learn much, much better back in the good old days? That was before confiscatory taxation, when moms could stay home and work with them 1-on-1. Now, apparently, we are going to have government-subsidized, school-delivered, universal preschool so that "No Child Shall Be Left Behind and Certainly No Child Shall Be Allowed to Get Ahead." Sigh. Shouldn't the real focus of any truly useful pre-K initiative be how NOT to suck the poor little kiddies into the system too soon? Haven't the last 20 years of Head Start and increasingly ill-structured preschool, with concomitant discipline and academic problems on down the road, already clearly proven that "state preschool" costs a ton and doesn't help them anywhere near as much as their mamas could do for free?

And what about the incontrovertible fact that families and friends are much better suited to advise young people in their proper post-secondary paths on into the workforce, NOT the educrats, and certainly not making taxpayers pick up the tab for what the students and families themselves have always understood to be their responsibility?

And isn't it pretty much a fact that the reason more and more college students need remedial classes in college is that the traditional academic skills that used to be delivered to them in the K-12 years are just not getting delivered now? And that what we need is LESS of the same-old, same-old, not another six or eight YEARS of it before and after the K-12 model?

Facts don't seem to matter, though, with this slide into cradle-to-grave educational socialism. Education activists have noticed the gradual substitution of "PreK-16" for the familiar "K-12" over the past decade or so, beginning with the Goals 2000 verbiage of the 1980s and escalating with the Clinton years.

Nebraska educators have been using the jargon, "seamless web," for some time now, exposing how they have been brainwashed by the national movement toward preK-16 and a nationalized education system that stems directly from the U.S. Department of Education. "Seamless" is one of the memes, right along with "benchmarks," "proficiencies," calling schools "local education agencies," and so forth. You could look it up. "Seamless transition" is code for "nationalized schools." But apparently, Nebraska educators think THEY invented the term. Oy.

They also think they're entitled to grow government education to this extent, too. Entitlement disease is epidemic now, with people who used to be satisfied with public payment for educating children for 13 years now trying to change our mindsets to more like 20 years, and counting.

Double oy.

Think this isn't a big-dollar power play? Check out the power players listed as contact people on the PreK-16 Initiative website: Joe Rowson, assistant vice president for external affairs and director of communications for the University of Nebraska . . . Jay Noren, N.U. executive vice president and provost . . . and Rachael Black, another N.U. staffer. Then there is Polly Feis, deputy commissioner, Nebraska State Department of Education, and Ann Masters, Nebraska DOE official.

The steering committee members are so prominent, they don't even have to have their names listed. Now, THAT'S when you know big power is involved, when the people behind it are hush-hush.

Think about it: preK-Grade 16. This isn't a pipe dream by educators. This isn't child's play. It's a power play. And it's time the rest of us got a defense pumped out and into the game.



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WILL NEBRASKANS ALLOW A STATE TAKEOVER OF OUR SCHOOLS?

State Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha bought a 7 1/2-inch by 15-inch ad on Page 7A of The Saturday World-Herald seeking input on his idea of transferring authority and finance for all the K-12 public schools in the State of Nebraska away from local control and locally-elected school boards, and to state government.

This would be the worst possible move, and in the coming days, I'll file a report to that effect based on what has happened in other locations with a similar scheme.

Sen. Maxwell raises good points, such as the fact that school enrollment in Nebraska has been about the same over the last 20 years, but total spending tripled and put enormous pressure on politicians and bureaucrats to keep raising property, sales and income taxes.

His idea is to take the huge pile of money now being divvied up in the form of state tax aid to public schools, and attach it to each student -- the sum of $6,000 apiece -- so that the funding is based on the student, not on the spending choices of the local district that student attends. Maxwell contends that this would "provide a significant reward for consolidation of schools" and suggests that it would provide "a billion dollars of true property-tax relief" and "stop the runaway, budget-busting growth of K-12 spending."

He also calls for more "alternative education" of "disruptive" students, subsidized by the state.

Bottom line: Sen. Maxwell is a good guy. But . . . right problem, wrong solution.

Stay tuned for why.

And if you already know you oppose a state takeover of our schools, please contact him at:

State Sen. Chip Maxwell
State Capitol
Lincoln, NE 68509-4604

(402) 471-2723

cmaxwell@unicam.state.ne.us

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