GoBigEd

Friday, April 25, 2003



POWERFUL SUGGESTION ON STATE FINANCE TO SENATORS
FROM LONGTIME OMAHA TAX ACTIVIST BOB ZABAWA:
TWO YEARS OF 5% PAY CUTS FOR STATE EMPLOYEES

Senator Wehrbein,

You and your committee associates have nibbled around the edges on your proposed cuts/decreases in increases, moving money from specified funds like the gasoline tax, and maybe things I am not aware of. All this while the revenues, especially from income tax, are declining markedly as the result of the economy going into the tank. And, no sign of any rebound in the next two years with the typical delay in filing returns.

The usual screaming by all state, university and local entities about possible cuts from you, the state, is perfected to a science. Don't cut us, just give us more money, even though have not produced any better results, especially in the field of education.

Over 300 studies on K-12 education and all the elements -- teacher salaries, quality of facilities, pupil-teacher ratios, curriculum, discipline, high expectations and enforced, analyzed by Erik Hanushek, professor at Rochester University, NY, absolutely show that more money is not the answer. Strong curriculum and high expectations do the job.

Now to my point. From the state to the UNL System, the K-12 system, cities and counties, et al, their operating budgets are salaries and healthy fringes (30%) usually representing anywhere from 50% to 85% of the total.

The public sector in this nation, over 19,000,000 employees strong, makes anywhere from 20% to 60% more than the private sector, according to a study done by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) in the mid-1990s. If the trend continues, as it has since then, with the powerful unions getting by with strong-arm negotiation instead of productivity, collectively they will break this country. Just ponder what the steel, meat packing, airline industries and others have done.

In our case in Nebraska, I know we have the CIR in statute, and apparently in statute, that any disputes on salaries cannot take into consideration a falling economy and declining revenues. If true, that needs to be changed by the Legislature.

Now, a suggestion for a solution. Instead of all these agencies nibbling around the edges and cutting the weakest employees and terminating the few non-tenured teachers, why not recommend that all agencies including administrators take consecutive 5% cuts over the next two years and nobody would have to laid off? That would be the compassionate thing to do. If they don't do it voluntarily, force them all into Chapter 11 to renegotiate.

After all, they all have had it pretty good over the last 30-40 years with their steady increases. Maybe a 2-year break in the trend would solve our dilemma.


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Thursday, April 24, 2003



MOURNING THE LOSS OF A WARRIOR FOR EDUCATION:
LIZ KARNES DIES OF CANCER AFTER A LONG BATTLE

Omahan Liz Karnes, longtime school board member for the Westside Community Schools, has died of ovarian cancer after dealing heroically with the disease and its consequences for more than a dozen years. She held an Ed.D. degree in educational administration and worked in a variety of educational jobs and public service posts.

Throughout her life, she did as much as any Nebraskan in history to inspire people, improve education and encourage children. Wife of attorney David Karnes, the former U.S. senator, and mother of four grown daughters, Mrs. Karnes' one wish upon diagnosis of cancer in 1991 was that she live long enough to see her girls grow up. Observers said it was remarkable that she survived so long and did so much, sharing her charismatic personality and keen intelligence whole-heartedly and with distinction.

Rest in peace, friend of children, inspiration to many, and most of all, child of God.

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TWO HEAD-SCRATCHIN' SPENDING ITEMS
FROM FREMONT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The Fremont Public Schools are going to spend $5,000 for a motivational speaker for faculty and staff next school year, to start the school year off right, according to the Fremont Tribune.

The money will come from a grant from the Lester A. Walker Fund of the Fremont Area Community Foundation.

The key here is not that the donor wanted to do something nice for the schools. That's awesome. What's key is what else school officials could have steered that $5,000 toward . . . just think what $5,000 extra could have provided for students.

You'd think an awfully inspiring and peppy talk could be had for free from some of these public-spirited people always in the news aping about education . . . and the five grand could go for the kids.

The other item, also reported by the Tribune, is that the public schools there are going to subsidize kids who want to go to Camp Invention this summer. Taxpayers will be picking up $140 of each camper's $190 registration fee for the weeklong summer camp, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. June 23-27.

There were reportedly 110 camperships available, so that represents a taxpayer subsidy of $15,400 for the summer school program.

The camp will employ Fremont Middle School geography teacher Jason Chicoine and several other district employees, among others and is open to second through sixth graders.

The question is: haven't we been reading that the Fremont Public Schools is just as worried as the other school districts in Nebraska about state aid and how on earth will they manage to make ends meet?

Do you suppose school officials might subsidize a few taxpayers to attend another kind of Camp Invention -- a camp where taxpayers invent louder loudspeakers through which to state loud and clear that the district should cancel this boondoggle immediately, if not sooner?
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RURAL NEBRASKA SUPERINTENDENT
SAYS MAXWELL PLAN WOULD MAKE THINGS WORSE

Here's a letter sent this week to State Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha from Superintendent Curtis Cogswell of McCool Junction, a K-12 school district with 150 pupils about 50 miles from Lincoln. Cogswell said in an interview that Maxwell's proposal would takeaway the voice of the people at the local level and ruin schools. He said that all 18 graduates this year are going on to post-secondary institutions, without a single dropout, and that the key reason for that success is what little local control the schools have left. He wrote:

Senator Maxwell:

I just read your educational budget proposal for the 2004-2005 fiscal year. Your proposal did not go far enough. You need to get the State of Nebraska and especially the Legislature out of school funding all together. If our school system operated as inefficiently as the Unicameral we would have been shut down long ago. Give all control back to each local district in regards to funding through property taxes. Continue to set a tax levy limit that must be overridden by the voters if they want to exceed it. If they do not want to exceed the levy then they would decide the future of their district, not the State. Who might be the big loser if we go back to funding schools purely through local property taxes? Could it be Omaha!

WHAT DO WE LOSE IF WE GO TO YOUR PLAN? WE LOSE . . .

a. Further local control of our school districts and give control to senators who know nothing about educating children, some of whom haven't even set foot in a PUBLIC SCHOOL.

b. Small schools where superintendents and principals substitute when teachers are out of the building and help with the maintenance to save money. These people would be forced to go to bigger systems where this is unheard of. Thus cutting out the bureaucracy?

c. Schools which don't need to worry about alternative education because we can serve all of our students. Case in point -- we currently have taken in a student who was going to be expelled from the districts in which he attended. This student is doing quite well in our small school where we can give him the individual attention he needs

d. The school personnel knowing each parent and grandparent of the children in their school, creating a school where the family is valued as one of its greatest assets.

e. The list is endless.

There is a lot more at stake when you start closing schools and more importantly when the Legislature takes the approach that they know what is better for local communities than the people who live in them. The runaway spending by schools which you so commonly refer to (we operate our K-12 district on $110,000 per month) can be attributed to a number of things, from health Insurance going up at a rate of 10-19% a year to the services we use, like advice from lawyers who increase their fees each year. Senator Maxwell, why are you not calling for a freeze on these types of expenses? Or are some runaway expenses all right while others are not?

Senator Maxwell, I invite you to visit the McCool Junction schools where I have the privilege of serving as superintendent. It is only 50 minutes from Lincoln and would be well worth your visit to see what small schools have to offer. By the way, according to most legislative proposals, our district looks to get zero dollars in state aid.

I served as an administrator in a district with 30,000 students and chose to come to a district with 150 students. Please don't take that choice away from parents, especially when the state isn't funding any part of our budget.

Please come see this small school so you have another perspective of the future that YOU choose to represent. The children of Nebraska deserve your best in every decision you make. I would be more than happy to come to Lincoln to pick you up and bring you out to our school to visit. I am very serious about my proposal to have you come see this school. Sometimes it is easy to make a decision 50 miles away when you don't see the faces of the people impacted by those decisions. I can be reached at work: (402) 724-2231 or home: (402) 724-3150.

Curtis Cogwell, Superintendent
McCool Junction Public Schools

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TAX WATCHDOG LIKES MAXWELL PLAN
WITH A FEW 'TWEAKS'

Here's a letter from Wally Fritsch, an Omaha tax watchdog, who suggests a few changes to the plan proposed by Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha to shift state aid to education to one per-pupil sum instead of all different ones. Overall, though, Fritsch urges support for the Maxwell plan in the Legislature's education, appropriations and revenue committees, and with other senators.

---------------------------

I have received the proposal from Senator Chip Maxwell concerning his approach to the budget problem and education funding and have read it for concept.

I have found some items on the downside which, in my opinion, needing clarification or revision:

-- On his proposal to fund schools on a per-student sum only: first, the count should be on the average daily attendance only. A head count is more accurate than enrollment padding.

-- Objections to the unit funding must be made after a performance audit by the State Auditor to verify any claim of under funding.

-- Special education and alternative education will be a separate funding by the state. There must be guide lines established for qualification of these students.

-- The tax base of one half of real property value + income to fund education may be questionable from some aspects.

On the upbeat side there are some good points of great value to both education and taxpayers:

-- The plan would encourage consolidation of small districts to eliminate administration costs or merge districts.

-- Efficiency of schools would improve because of the uniform funding of all students.

-- Equity of funding will be positive and eliminate possible claims of court actions to get more.

-- The "Social Engineering" factor incorporated in the present special education programs would be removed from the schools and managed by state programs.

-- The total education taxation would be based on actual need if the program of performance audits is demanded by the legislature.

-- Lobbying efforts by educators, which we pay for, would be curtailed or eliminated.

-- The time delay incorporated by the 2004-05 year funding lapse would give the Legislature time to place a long term working program in effect.

Please contact your State Senator and ask for support of Senator Maxwell's proposal.

TAXWATCHERS INC

Wally Fritsch

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Wednesday, April 23, 2003



OH, THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE SO BRIGHT
ON OUR OLD KENTUCKY EDUCATION SYSTEM --
HERE'S HOPING NEBRASKA TAKES NOTE

KENTUCKY TESTING DEBACLE SHOWS FOLLY OF REMOVING LOCAL CONTROL

Kentucky was the first state to Goals 2000-ize itself, and institutionalize Outcome-Based Education in its public schools, replacing local control with state control.

Now it has major, major egg on its face. Are other states paying attention?

After a lengthy court fight led by radical leftists in that state, a June 8, 1989, ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court held that it was unfair for some districts to spend more per pupil than others just because they happened to have more wealth in their districts. In response, the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) became law and basically ruined the schools by "governmentalizing" them.

With a tax increase of $1.4 billion, a whole new system was put in place. It includes standards, assessments, graduation proficiency exams, penalties for schools that don't meet their goals and millions of dollars of rewards for those that do. Plus Kentucky now has a whole new big bureaucracy to administer all this. It's the same kinds of incredibly expensive and intrusive system that most states now are putting in, and which will be made even worse as the federal program, No Child Left Behind, sinks its teeth even deeper into public schools and pushes local school boards aside.

But here's what's sad:

After all of that spending and hardball politics and fuss, Kentucky's ACT scores last year averaged 20 out of 36, one of the worst averages in the nation. That average ticked up just .10 of 1 point since 1990. All that money, and all that damage to schools, for absolutely nothing.

Now that they realize that financially, educationally and from a public-policy standpoint, this has been a disaster, the state is considering getting rid of its statewide high-stakes assessments, the CATS exams (Commonwealth Accountability Testing System), but they have all that bureaucracy in place, they want to save face, and it's a big, fat mess.

You can read all about what's going on in the article, "Critics Push to Revamp CATS Exams," in the April 22 Louisville Courier-Journal, www.courier-journal.com

And you can talk to your state senators and educators and warn them that Kentucky puts on a heck of a horse race, but their education system is a broken-down nag.


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TAX WATCHDOGS APPROVE OF MAXWELL'S PLAN

Doug Kagan of Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom reports that he is conversant with Sen. Maxwell's plan to equalize state aid to education in the same lump sum per pupil statewide, and is willing to work with him on the idea.


ARTICLE ON HAWAII'S STATE-RUN SCHOOLS NOT SO ROSY

On the other hand, balance and equity in spending per pupil across a state has gotten a big, fat thumbs down in Hawaii.

Fans of Maxwell's plans ought to take note.

According to an article, "The Death of Public School" in the May 2001 issue of the magazine "Honolulu," Hawaii is the only state with a centralized school district offering universal free public education and the same amount spent per pupil, using state employees in a system that allows very little local say-so in any aspect of operations.

How is it working? Well, 71 percent of public school parents graded Hawaii's schools a "C" or worse; fewer than 2 percent gave them an "A."

The national publication, "Education Week," ranks Hawaii seventh from last in terms of a number of performance measures.

Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are below the national averages, as is the average SAT score of 995 (in 1999), vs. the national average of 1016 that year.

Even though school spending increased by 34 percent after inflation between 1986 and 1996 and stands as one of the highest spending levels in the nation, the longer students are in the Hawaii public school system, the worse they do on standardized tests compared to their age peers nationwide.

"Equity of funding is a farce," one state representative is quoted as saying.

Consider the subheads in the article:

Government, Not Public, Schools

Equity? Ha!

Inefficient, Ineffective

What Money?

Not a Happy Place

No One Is in Charge

Guild Protection

They've Got the Power

The Alternatives

Homeschooling

Vouchers

Charter Schools

The article's conclusion: "The state can't do the job. We've given it more than 40 years to try. Now it's time to kick government out of the public schools."

Those who think Maxwell's plan might take politics out of education might want to study this article.







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Friday, April 18, 2003



SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER, NORTHEAST NEBRASKA:
RESPONSE TO SEN. MAXWELL'S PLAN

Say we have 1,000 students in the state. Say we have $100,000 to spend in state aid.

What say, we send each of them $1,000.

But someone else says, "It only costs $600 in Plattsmouth and the burden is $1,400 in Taylor, because they only have enough students to average 15 per class."

It is an impossible task to equalize educational resources and opportunities with mindsets like that. What we need is a willingness to be fair and impartial, and then use that good, old-fashioned American ingenuity to make it work in every district.

And I say, knock down a wall between the third- and fourth-grade classes, and then do the same in all classes in odd and even years. How do I know that will work? The smartest, best-educated, best-adjusted people I have ever known were my parents, who both attended one-room schools. It isn't the dollars spent per pupil. It's the ability to do the best you can for kids with whatever resources you have, and those are too small for the way you've been doing things, you have to change.

The problem is that every senator feels a need to appease and try and represent his district and the other 48 at the same time. The Unicameral is not King Arthur's Round Table; it is a legislative body that has forgotten to focus on the needs of its constituency.
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DICK BUNTGEN, NEBRASKA TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION:
RESPONSE TO SEN. MAXWELL'S PLAN

We fell for the "create a new tax for schools and reduce the property
taxes" before. The property taxes went back up and the sales and income taxes have been increased to
pay for education. I believe the teachers union would jump at this, in order to get a new taxing
plan introduced into the system. The teachers union would only need 25 votes to increase any new
tax.

Sen. Brashear pushed his plan of taxing services to lower the tax rates and now look, rates are going
up even with the tax expansion.

Sen. Maxwell brings up some good ideas but there are a lot of problems in taxing and spending and
I'm afraid that Sen. Maxwell's plan is not that well thought out.

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Thursday, April 17, 2003



Happy Easter, one and all. :>)

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SEN. MAXWELL MIGHT HAVE A PLAN

There are a lot of things to like in the new plan to abolish state aid to education announced this week by State Sen. Chip Maxwell of Omaha.

He would replace it with a new, 1.5 percent variable state tax on income and property. About two-thirds of this tax would come from property and one-third from income. That would keep the funding level relatively stable regardless of what happens with the economy and people's incomes. And it would be kinder and gentler to property-rich, income-poor citizens such as farmers and seniors, both of which groups grace Nebraska from the Iowa coast to the Wyoming shore.

On the down side, the plan would force wealthier citizens to subsidize poorer ones across the state. But that is already happening. And as a matter of public policy, that might be better than the alternative, which appears to be allowing the collapse of most of the state's rural schools, and unconscionable disparities in funding power between rich and poor urban neighborhoods, which appear to be widening the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

Another down side is that the Maxwell Plan would require a constitutional amendment to add the new state tax, and the special-interest groups, chiefly the teachers' unions, will fight it tooth and nail. But Maxwell is convinced that the plan makes enough sense economically and educationally that the silent majority will outshout the educrats at the ballot box.

State aid is a mess, everyone agrees, and so this plan comes at an opportune time.

Right now, sales and income taxes pour in to the state and are tweaked to kingdom come in a strange compendium of formulas and figurings before being regurgitated back to school districts in a goofy patchwork of amounts of state aid that make little sense.

Under Maxwell's plan, every child enrolled would bring in the same amount -- $5,500 per pupil per year in the first year of the plan, 2004-05. That state subsidy would go up or down based on the Consumer Price Index, but not much. Since enrollment doesn't change that much from year to year, districts would have a pretty solid idea of how much is coming, and that's a good thing.

Maxwell also would shift to 100 percent state funding of special education, which might help get a handle on that runaway train and start ''paying down'' the disgraceful overidentification of ''learning disabled'' kids that districts are doing just to get extra money.

He also would add a new institution – state-run alternative schools – for kids with serious behavior problems, drug addictions, difficult personal problems and so forth. Maxwell figures that something like 5 percent of the Nebraska K-12 student body would shift into these schools, or 14,200 kids statewide. As long as these schools are kept the Sam Hill away from becoming School-to-Work slave-labor training camps, and the focus is constantly on returning these children to academic soundness and their regular schools, then that would be a good thing, too. It might even be enough of a carrot to earn support of the state's educators, who are constantly complaining about the distractions and difficulties of educating kids who are besieged with ''issues'' too tangled for public schools to mend . . . and yet, who love the extra dough that comes with the ''at-risk'' designation and thus have disincentives to help these kids get strong.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the Maxwell plan is its very uniformity of school funding. It may drive the silk-stocking set crazy to think that their children get no more dough for fancy-pants activities that, by the way, do nothing to build their vocabularies and grasp of reality, but which sound really, really good when the parents brag about it on the cocktail party circuit. This plan would take away the ''edge'' the rich schools think they have over the hoi polloi.

That might drive people with means out of the public schools and into the private schools, where they can donate money to ensure that their child has access to a digital camera or a CAD/CAM lab, for example. There, they would see how much money the public schools are wasting on nonacademics far away from the classroom, and in contrast how efficiently and well the private schools are managing money and preparing young minds and hearts for life.

Now, think about it. A decline in enrollment in the public schools and a corresponding groundswell of public opinion that the private schools are doing a better job might be the only way to force the public schools to get better. Right now, they have no reason to: they ''get paid'' regardless.

But under Maxwell's plan, if there were an exodus of ''the beautiful people,'' the public schools would have a reason to get them back in order to rebuild their enrollment figures. And that might be enough to refocus them on academics, cut out the deadwood, stop the waste, get rid of the social engineering – all of which parents want. It would force them to treat parents as customers. That would be a good thing. It would force them to get rid of a lot of the costly, nonacademic nonsense that is not competitive with the private schools, which stick to business.

Competition would be good for public schools in Nebraska. They would get better. And that would be a very good thing.

Remember, Maxwell's a politician, so gentlepersons, start your grains of salt, but he had the Legislative Fiscal Office run numbers for him, and he's claiming there would be a 25 percent property tax reduction under his plan. That would be a very, very good thing.

He's calling for people to contact their state senators and talk up his plan among their friends and colleagues.

Get in touch with him and get a copy of his plan, entitled ''Budget Proposal,'' via email at cmaxwell@unicam.state.ne.us

Let Go Big Ed know what you think of this, too. That would be the "goodest" thing of all.


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Friday, April 11, 2003


YOGA IN YORK, ACTION IN ALLIANCE, AND AN END IN ELKHORN

Here’s a look at three education issues around Nebraska:

Children’s Yoga Program in York Points Up Problems

An alert reader in York, Neb., sent in a notice about a children’s yoga program scheduled for Saturday as part of the Week of the Young Child celebration in that town.

Children from ages 4 to 10 are invited to the free event.

The reader said that yoga has been taught along with meditation and relaxation techniques across the state as part of physical education or regular classroom relaxation exercises. An Internet search showed that at least one yoga instructor says that she has taught yoga in the Omaha Public Schools and in District 66, for example.

But the reader wasn’t aware of yoga for children as young as 4, and wondered if yoga was spreading as part of the school curriculum.

Well, if it is, parents shouldn’t be happy about it. Experts on New Age religions such as Marcia Montenegro, a guest on Omaha radio station KCRO’s Paul & Marty talk show recently, warn parents that yoga is not good for kids. See her yoga article on

http://cana.userworld.com/cana_yoga.html

She says yoga postures combined with breathing and relaxation techniques can and do produce a light trance state -- an altered state of consciousness -- especially in vulnerable young children who lack the reasoning powers and ego defenses that could prevent such a change in consciousness.

This is dangerous for several reasons. Not the least of them is that yoga conditions children to seek to lose their self-awareness, define their own reality, and empty their minds –- all of which are anti-intellectual and may contribute to later use of drugs and alcohol to induce that lesser state of consciousness. That would seem to be the opposite of what a solid education is supposed to be about.

According to Ms. Montenegro and other yoga critics, yoga comes from the Sanskrit term to “yoke” or “unite” with the divine, impersonal, unknowable, inexplicable force that the Hindus describe as “God” or “Brahman.” That’s in direct contradiction to the Judeo-Christian concept of “God,” described in the Bible as personal, relational and knowable.

Further, yoga postures honor Hindu deities such as the sun, tiger, tree and snake. So the idea of instructing young children to arrange their bodies to resemble those Hindu deities is problematic.

Hindu documents show that the purpose of yoga is for the imaginary union of the coiled serpent they believe is lying at the base of one’s spine – “the goddess Shakti” –to unite with “Shiva,” her “consort,” who resides at the center of the forehead between the eyebrows. Yoga arouses the serpent power of Shakti so that this can happen, and supposedly provides the yoga practitioner with special psychic abilities and sinless perfection.

Even if yoga instructors don’t know a thing about the background of yoga and aren’t teaching all of that to the kids, that doesn’t excuse or justify what they are doing.

Also problematic is the fact that all physical yoga exercises are acknowledged precursors to the spiritual exercises of Hinduism. The whole idea is to deny your individual identity and “lose yourself” – and presumably your “stress” – by melting in to the “God” that the Hindus say is in everything and everybody.

That’s also in direct contradiction to the religious beliefs of the vast majority of the children who would be involved in the yoga activities.

Last, but not least, if yoga is taught in school, it constitutes the use of the public’s tax money to teach and promote the religious practices of one particular faith – obviously a violation of the First Amendment.

Whether it’s in a preschool setting or a public school classroom, a community program or a private class, wise parents and educators will investigate yoga thoroughly before they ever expose young children to the activity.


Alliance Parents Jam School Board Meeting Over K-4 Split

So many parents crowded into the recent school board meeting of the Alliance (Neb.) Public Schools to protest a planned split of the grade schools that the school board tabled the change and scheduled another public meeting for later – a classic defense maneuver by a school board that realizes it has made a boo-boo.

According to the Alliance-based online newspaper, www.Xpressnews.com, the school board sought to divide the two grade schools in Alliance, Grandview and Emerson, into one school that would hold grades K-2, and another that would hold grades 2-4.

Past news stories have indicated that there is more poverty among the children in one of those schools than the other, and low-income children have more intense learning needs than others. So it was proposed to mix the low-income learners with the middle- and upper-income kids to try to offset those problems.

The trouble is, that is perceived as improper social engineering by many parents. They packed the school board meeting to share concerns about safety, busing, supervision, splitting families, halting cross-grade interaction, academic setbacks caused by frequent school changes, and so on.

Of 24 parents who testified, 20 favored keeping the grade schools as they are, one was for the school board’s proposal and the others were neutral.

It is believed to be one of the largest turnouts of parents at a school board meeting anywhere in Nebraska this year.


Elkhorn High School Solves First Amendment Conflict

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at Elkhorn (Neb.) High School is one of the most popular student activities available. As many as 100 teens gather on Wednesday evenings at school to shoot hoops, do good deeds and talk about how their faith shapes everything they do. There are adult chaperones present, but it’s the kids’ gig and they set the agenda and plan the activities. They play together . . . and they pray together.

But complaints were lodged by a local woman with a daughter at the school who has been on record against any mention of religious activities or opportunities in the schools because her family does not have a religious faith and she feels the girl is being isolated and diminished by school offerings in which she will not or cannot participate.

The woman said it could be misconstrued that the school was sponsoring the FCA because the FCA’s activities, although held in the evening, still took place in the school building, and were promoted at school, including posters and published articles about upcoming FCA events in the student newspaper.

Reportedly, the school was about to censor all mention of FCA in that newspaper until another parent stepped in with journalistic and legal evidence that showed that censorship would be wrong.

Ironically, the clincher was a nationally famous First Amendment case stemming from a conflict at nearby Omaha Westside High School. A dozen years ago, a student there wanted to have an after-school Bible Club with the same access to the school paper and other support and promotional services as other student clubs that are for kids but are not curriculum-related, such as the chess club and the pep club. School officials wouldn’t allow it and fought her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court eventually ruled against Westside officials, saying that student-initiated and student-run clubs must be allowed at public schools as long as they don’t disrupt the educational process, and neither treated with favor nor hostility in comparison with other noncurriculum clubs (Board of Education v. Mergens, 1990). Anything less than that is a violation of the students’ free speech rights and freedom of assembly.

In response to the FCA matter, Elkhorn officials decided against censorship, and for allowing FCA articles in the student paper under the heading of “Student Sponsored Groups” instead of “Club Hubbub,” the heading for official school-sponsored clubs.

Journalism advisor Judy Obert called it “a very workable solution.”

For more on religious freedoms in public schools, see the U.S. Department of Education’s manual.


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Monday, April 07, 2003


BOTTOM LINE ON HEAD START AND OTHER FORMAL 'PUBLIC PRESCHOOLS'

If your school district or attached foundation wants to use tax dollars or contributions that provide tax writeoffs to start or expand a pre-kindergarten program, listen up: there's a big, fat hole of the bottom of that preschool sandbox that, financially speaking, is a lot like a rathole that will waste that money and potentially harm children.

Many Nebraska school districts have started pre-kindergarten preschools and child-care programs on school property, and most Nebraska taxpayers think that's dandy. Most taxpayers think Head Start programs, using tax dollars to presumably give disadvantaged preschoolers a boost to get them ready for school, make a lot of sense, too.

But research is showing that these programs waste money and don't help kids in particular or society in general.

Research is showing that even the highest quality, most expensive formal preschool programs have little or no effect on children's intellectual development or school performance . . . and indeed, may have negative behavioral consequences on down the road.

Prudent public school districts would cancel their preschool and child-care operations immediately, if they were really serious about doing what is best for children . . . and not just interested in bringing more money into their own coffers.

There have been several large-scale, randomized trials over the last 40 years in which high-quality preschool's impact was measured on the intellectual, academic and behavioral development of children. All have shown that children who spent a lot of time in child-care centers had significantly more behavior problems in primary school than children of similar demographics who spent most of the their preschool time in their own homes.

As for claims of intellectual or academic benefits from programs such as Head Start for low-income children, empirical research is showing that those claims are untrue. Results have been distorted by major problems with the study design models, and many of those used by the pro-child-care industry to justify additional expenditures actually lacked the quality controls of peer review. In other words, they were "spin" that public education bought as fact.

In truth, there is no difference in intellectual functioning or school performance that could be attributed to participation in out-of-home child care in the preschool years.

The disputed studies were the Abecedarian Project (Ramey & Cambell, 1984), the Houston Preschool Project (Johnson & Walker, 1987) and the Perry Preschool Project (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart et al., 1984).

Duhhhh! What have good mothers and fathers been TELLING the politicians and the schools about what a waste of money free child-care is? The fact is, paying strangers and outsiders to do the job of moms and dads has never worked, and is never GOING to work. What WILL work is to cut taxes so that more moms and dads can afford to work fewer hours and have more time with their kids, where they should be, providing the only real advantage that is indisputable. And what will do THAT -- cut taxes -- is to get rid of bogus school-spending programs such as pre-K, which never should have been funded in the first place.

You can read the research yourself on the Eagle Forum's Education Reporter newspaperin the article, "Do Pre-K Center Care Programs Work?" by Verne R. Bacharach, Ph. D., Alfred A. Baumeister, Ph.D., and Jaimily A. Stoecker, M.A., C.A.S.

Their conclusion: "(I)t is obviously foolish, at best, for states to develop expensive pre-K programs in anticipation of some type of payoff 15 to 20 years down the road when there is no consistent scientific evidence for the efficacy of these programs."

That means any educator who still thinks it pays to offer free "sandbox school" at taxpayer expense in direct competition with the private sector, causing apparent harm to young children who would be better off in their own homes, doesn't have the brains to . . . pound sand.





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IS SCHOOL CHOICE GETTING THE BIG MO?

Colorado lawmakers last week enacted a way for disadvantaged kids to afford private school and avoid lousy inner-city public schools with a voucher program heavily supported by Republican politicians and pro-minority Democrats. It will offer tuition reimbursement to an estimated 17,500 students in 11 large school districts, mostly in Denver, by the year 2007.

According to Monday's Wall Street Journal (p. A15), the program joins existing school-choice options in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida, while similar moves are under consideration in Texas, Louisiana and Washington, D.C. The Lone Star State proposal alone could involve as many as 600,000 students, evidence of momentum that may be building nationwide as the benefits of school choice are exposed, discussed and promulgated.

Will Nebraska be far behind? Probably. But let's keep this in mind:

School choice programs are only as good as the lack of governmental interference that is allowed to be tied to them. Those who are skeptical that government will be able to keep mitts off private schools even if public funding is going in to them should remain skeptical of school-choice programs. They do look an awful lot like a governmental foot in the door of private education.

That's how I stand, and will probably continue to stand. I think it makes a lot more sense to stay away from putting tax dollars into school choice programs. Instead, we should encourage private donations to private children's scholarship funds to keep the entanglement of state and federal regulations out of the private schools as much as possible while still offering equal educational opportunity to poor kids.

If Nebraska enacts a vouchers proposal, it will wind up doing more harm than good if the education establishment -- the unions and the edu-bureaucries -- are allowed to interfere, and changes are they will. It will take shape as the state education department attacking the autonomy of the private schools that receive the vouchers income with harmful accreditation and assessment requirements. They'll do it in the name of assuring the public some accountability -- but the net effect will be to morph the private schools into carbon copies of the public schools. See? A vouchers proram, in other words, has real downside potential to destroy the very alternatives -- private schools -- that make them so attractive.

The only vouchers proram that should be permitted and espoused is one modeled after the GI Bill of the post-World War II era.

When we hear politicians promise that style, then maybe we should listen.

That is, the vouchers should be given to the parents to be spent where they think best -- with no governmental strings attached on the schools that enroll those students, other than assuring that they meet the basic health, safety and statutory requirements that already are, presumably, monitored and regulated, and properly so.

Let's bring school choice to Nebraska. Let's bring free enterprise to education. But for heaven's sake, let's not allow the unions and the bureaucrats to shape it. Let's keep that role where it belongs -- in the private sector.


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Friday, April 04, 2003


HOW TO BEAT BACK YEAR-ROUND SCHOOL IN RALSTON

Here we go again: the Ralston Public Schools are attempting to jam year-round education into that cash-strapped district. They're pitching it as a way to help students avoid "backsliding" during the long summer breaks. This is even though there is no evidence that Ralston students "backslide," and even though there is no evidence that the nine weeks on, three weeks off calendar as proposed for Ralston makes a particle of difference to educational quality anywhere it is being tried in the world.

Indeed, an assistant superintendent of the Los Angeles public schools recently admitted that the nontraditional school schedule employed there because of massive overcrowding in LA has "hurt students badly." Year-rounding has been tried, and dumped, everywhere from LA to Denver to Miami, and Ralston voters deserve to know why.

If Ralston educators and school-board members don't acknowledge the "con" side of this issue, that's a red flag to Ralston voters that they'd better stay away from this change with a 10-foot pole. If the Ralston educrats did supply the "con" evidence, though, there might be a move to fire them for even suggesting this boneheaded change that has been so discredited nationwide.

Parents in Ralston need to be alerted to an excellent website with tons of documentation for why year-round education is a bad idea. It's from education activist Wes Walker, who advises parent groups coast to coast on this issue and would be well worth contacting on behalf of the Ralston community:

Wes Walker's Year-Round Education Website

Ralston officials also should be asked:

1. What hard evidence (quality, reality-based research, not people's opinions) is there that the nontraditional calendar is better for the specific Ralston academic community than the traditional school calendar?

2. Since there isn't any evidence that nontraditional calendars are better, why shouldn't Ralston go back to the Labor Day to Memorial Day calendar with a nice Christmas break and a nice Easter break, instead of the goofy half-day on, half-day off, start in mid-August calendar that people hate and that has demonstrably damaged and distracted learning efforts over the past few years?

3. How come Ralston voters are being told that year-round education implementation would cost from $12,895 to $23,659 per school, when national authorities such as Governing Magazine estimate the average implementation cost as $100,000 per school, and that doesn't count ongoing higher costs for such items as air conditioning, other utilities, transportation, and additional teacher pay and benefits?

---------------------------

Here's my educational advice column on the topic from my upcoming series, "Show 'n' Tell for Parents":

Year-Round Education

Q. What are the pro’s and con’s of year-round school?

The pro’s are available from the National Association for Year-Round Education, www.nayre.org

The con’s are documented on the website of education activist Wes Walker, www.geocities.com/weswalker99/

Year-round schooling is generally composed of nine-week quarters with two or three weeks off, and an abbreviated four- or five-week summer break. It is associated with the school management fad, “Total Quality Management,” with its mantra “continuous progress.” It’s also linked to the job-training systems and student apprenticeships of School-to-Work programs that require year-round student workforces.

Bottom line: there’s a glaring absence of evidence that changes to school calendars produce academic gains for the vast majority of students. YRE is hard on family life. And while a shorter summer does reduce backsliding among at-risk, impoverished children, their needs can be met with far less disruption and cost than radically changing the school calendar.

Year-round education has been dumped in so many locations that it is perplexing why educators still attempt to put it in place. Parents usually have to research YRE’s track record for themselves in order to learn the truth about it. It appears to be an attempt by educators to gain more income stream for the public schools and to justify higher salaries for educators in 12-month jobs that the public intends to be 9-month jobs.

Homework: “Academics, the Year-Round Calendar, and the Color of the School Buses,” Christopher Newland, Ph.D.
www.auburn.edu/~enebasa/html/Newland_article.pp.html

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ODE TO YEAR-ROUND SCHOOL

(to the tune of "The Caissons Go Marching Along")

School all summer!
School all winter!
So much seat time, get a splinter
As the endless school year rolls along.

From my birth
To 18
'N' every moment in between,
I am tied to my school my life long.

I'm no longer free;
No individuality.
'Cause they have to make sure
That I conform!

Parents ask:
"What's next?"
School's building an annex
So we kids can live year-round in dorms.




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Thursday, April 03, 2003



HOPE FOR KIDS WHO CAN'T READ, AND SEND THE BILL TO YOUR SCHOOL

If your child has been enrolled in the $7,000-plus-a-year public schools and still can't read at grade level, quit spinning your wheels expecting people who have shown that they can't teach your child how to read to somehow be able to do the job even though they insist on using the same old, failed methods.

Instead, enroll your child in the excellent summer reading program at Creighton University . . . and send the bill to your public school.

Creighton annually invites the Institute of Reading Development to teach the summer weekend classes as a community service, with tuition at $289 for five or six sessions, a fraction of the expense of reading remediation in the public schools.

For children ages 4 through entering fifth-graders, there is a reading class with phonics, comprehension and fluency.

For 6th to 8th graders, and 9th to 11th graders, there is an advanced program said to more than double reading speed and to improve reading comprehrehension one to two grade levels, adding study skills.

For adults, entering high-school seniors, and college students, there is speed reading, which is claimed to improve reading speed by three to four times for light reading and two to three times for professional material, with comprehension, concentration and retention techniques.

For more information, call (800) 979-9151, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.




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