GoBigEd

Tuesday, February 28, 2006


ALL-DAY KINDERGARTEN IS A COSTLY BUST,
BUT NEBRASKA GOES FOR IT, ANYWAY

Funny. Our little Maddy, age 5, read aloud the word “construction” on a sign last August, a few days before she started kindergarten. We didn’t prompt her or anything; she just blurted it out. The other day, she asked me how to spell “stethoscope.” She is a happy, singing, joking, well-adjusted kindergartner who reads on about the second-grade level.

And imagine this: she “only” goes to kindergarten in the afternoons.

Now, it’s true that she’s growing up in a college-educated, highly literate home, with a mom for whom language education is a passion and a calling. But get this: I don’t spend any extra time with her in particular, drill her on the phonograms or anything like that.

I’m just being a mom – spending time with her, interacting with her, talking with her, asking her questions, and yes, every night at bedtime we read a book – but that’s all it took to bring her to a high level of literacy at such a young age.

Having talked to hundreds of parents and educators about what’s best for kindergarten, half-day or full-day, I can say without equivocation that the No. 1 thing that’s “best” about all-day k in their minds has nothing to do with building children’s literacy and numeracy. The No. 1 “draw” is that it saves parents money on child care.

And the main reason schools are falling all over themselves to add it to their offerings is out of peer pressure. It’s an expensive “loss leader” to bring in more market share and capture more enrollment, even though it’s clear that kids who have been in structured, out-of-home care since they were itty bitty do worse in school than their home-reared peers. Not only that, but they have significantly more anger and behavior issues than those whose parents resisted the temptation to neglect their proper development by putting them in so many hours a week of out-of-home care.

A public school that offers all-day kindergarten is enabling parental neglect the same way a spouse who keeps buying alcohol is enabling an alcoholic.

Doesn’t that make you mad, having your tax dollars used that way?

Since she’s our fourth child, and we’ve now had two who went to all-day kindergarten, and two who went half-days, I can say without hesitation: half-day is much better.

Why? Mainly because the child has more time for imagination, creative play, and pressure-free learning. And significantly, the child’s language model for most of the day is an adult – an adult who loves him or her. Once you get to organized preschool or kindergarten, your language models are mostly your classmates. Because of the wave of “child-centered education” in preschools and primary schools today, interaction with the teacher is minimized, and interaction with one’s age peers in maximized.

That’s why kids today can’t read, write or think as well today, even if they’ve been in full-time preschool and full-day kindergarten. They’re not hearing adult vocabulary words or sentence structure. They’re hearing baby talk and babble, for the most part. Monkey see, monkey do. Duhhhhh.

That’s why it’s so sad that public policymakers who should know better, such as State Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, are all for doubling the amount of time kids spend in kindergarten, even though readily-available evidence shows that it’s bad for them, both academically and attitude-wise.

Raikes gushed recently in the Lincoln Journal that “nobody” was opposing all-day kindergarten for Nebraska’s public schools any more, so that must make it a great idea whose time has come.

Omaha State Sen. Gwen Howard has made LB 228 her priority bill, saying, “I think this is something that everyone is excited about.” Yeah, well, reword that as “everyone who doesn’t know the facts.” The bill would allow districts to ignore the lid that’s supposed to be on operational spending to make arrangements to double the amount of time kids spend in kindergarten each day, at an estimated start-up cost of $28.7 million statewide.

Sigh. Every year that all-day k has come up for the last 10 years, activists – I guess that makes us the “nobodies” that Raikes mentioned -- have brought up those inconvenient little things called “facts” to show what a bad public policy move all-day kindergarten really is.

Like so many other costly changes being made in K-12 education, proponents of all-day kindergarten proclaim that “research” shows that it makes kids smarter. But they never quote studies, since those studies don’t exist. They just quote people’s opinions – the kind of people who think all-day k is “exciting” -- and that’s not what the “research” really says.

Consider this excerpt from Monday’s story on all-day k from the Arizona-based think tank,
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/905.html:

“By far the most comprehensive study of children’s educational growth is the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. This study tracks 22,782 students in 1,277 schools who entered kindergarten in 1998. The 2004 report found an effect from all-day K, but not the one advocates were expecting. Students who had attended full-day kindergarten actually scored slightly worse in reading, writing and science.”

The article links to that big, federally-funded study as well as other bona fide evidence that all-day kindergarten is a dumb, expensive, counter-productive idea.

Once again, the question comes up: if “nobody” activists like me can find the contradictory evidence so easily, how come the public-policy big shots can’t? Dumb question: they don’t want to find it out.

Is the push for what they now call “full” day kindergarten just one more example of how our state legislature, State Board of Education, State Education Department, and school district employees have just become Howdy Doody’s for the unions and educrats, their puppets and mouthpieces to get more money, power and jobs into the public schools, no matter what the impact is on kids?

Is that why they’ve suddenly changed the term “all-day kindergarten” to “full-day kindergarten”? So the public will think that anything LESS than “full-day” is closer to EMPTY?

Or is it because “full-day kindergarten” is actually “full-EMPLOYMENT kindergarten”?

I really wish our lawmakers would have some milk and graham crackers, get out their mats, and lay down quietly and think this one through. And they can take a FULL DAY OF THINKING . . . if that’ll help them get it right.

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Monday, February 27, 2006


COST-SAVING HERO: SHARED SERVICES

Q. The more we consolidate and centralize education, the higher our administrative costs are getting and the stronger the educational bureaucracy becomes. How can we enjoy the operating efficiencies of large organizations while still reaping the rewards of decentralized management and local control?

It used to be that more than 80 cents of every tax dollar allocated to public schools went to pay for the teacher and curriculum, and less than 20 cents went for overhead. But now that’s changed: in most states, somewhere around 60 cents or less goes for instruction, and 40 cents or more for non-classroom spending.
Nobody likes it, of course. Responsible school districts have long since looked into privatizing as many non-classroom functions as possible to save money. Since the lion’s share of district spending is in personnel, and for the most part those personnel have to be paid union wages and benefits, though, there’s not much more room for savings with that strategy, other than, of course, to try to reduce the number of people on your staff and make what everybody does more cost-efficient.
But there’s lots more than can be done with shared services – public school districts joining together to share various non-educational functions and split the cost.
With declining enrollment and budget cuts facing many districts today, and pressure from adequacy and equity lawsuits to spend even more money on instruction than before, smart school finance policy is to find new ways to manage the school dollar more wisely.
Shared services is anything but new: consider the one-room schoolhouse of decades ago, where families across a wide geographical area would all share one teacher. But it has taken center stage again as the easy-to-finance Baby Boom era, with its steadily increasing enrollment and tax base, passes by, and the growth of private schools and homeschooling causes school officials to hustle to find new cost-efficiencies because of stagnant or falling enrollment and revenues.
Two small, adjoining school districts may job-share a superintendent or collaborate to build a new gymnasium that both will use, for example. Several neighboring districts may pool their employees for health-care benefits and get better rates.
Transportation, especially for the escalating costs of special education transportation, is a natural candidate for multi-district cooperation, especially with today’s fuel prices.
Other likely categories include human resources, food services, information technology, building maintenance, general administration, and other support functions.
What works best is to work hard to create shared service contracts for all school district expenses that aren’t “mission-critical,” or affecting the educational process itself. And that goes far beyond toilet paper and lightbulbs.

Homework: There is a lot of excellent information about school finance in the October 2005 article, “Driving More Money Into the Classroom: The Promise of Shared Services,” from the Reason Foundation and Deloitte Research, on
www.reason.org/ps339.pdf

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Friday, February 24, 2006


NEWS BRIEFS:
RETIRED OPS SPECIAL ED EXPERT DICK GALUSHA
TO RUN FOR STATE SCHOOL BOARD

Omahan Richard Galusha, 72, has filed for the Nebraska State Board of Education seat now held by Omahan Joe Higgins. Galusha is an Omaha Public Schools retiree, and Higgins is a Westside Community Schools retiree. Galusha is a Republican; Higgins, a Democrat, is former president of the Nebraska State Education Association

At OPS, Galusha was a teacher, counselor, administrator, principal of the J.P. Lord School, and head of psychological services. He also served on the OPS Board of Education for 10 years. His wife, Pat, also is an OPS retiree, and their son Wes is coordinator of student services for the district. Another son, Rick, recently sold Homer’s Music & Gifts.

In an interview, Galusha said he wants to serve on the state board to help resolve the school finance controversies and make some needed changes to the testing and accountability systems now in place in Nebraska. He said they are not of service to parents in evaluating educational quality, and not accurate and impartial since individual districts were allowed to devise their own assessments.

INNER-CITY OMAHA GIRLS
EXCEL IN ENGINEERING CONTEST

A team of nine girls from Girls Inc., the social service agency in inner-city Omaha, placed third out of more than 60 teams in an “Ocean Odyssey” competition in Ames, Iowa, sponsored by Lego, the building blocks company.

The Omahans were the only all-girls team. They used computers, robotics and blocks to illustrate a plan to place water jets at the bottom of the Missouri River to make the endangered pallid sturgeon believe it is the spring rise, so they would mate.

Neat, huh? See more about this great agency at
www.girlsincomaha.org

OMAHA LEARNING DISABILITIES GROUP
FOCUSES ON BULLYING PREVENTION

The Omaha Learning Disabilities Association met Tuesday for a 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. meeting on bullying prevention. The video, “Last One Picked, First One Picked On” by Rick Lavoie was shown, followed by a discussion.

Kids with learning disabilities are more susceptible to bullying, but there are strategies parents and teachers can use to help them respond assertively to bullies, according to the group.

It meets on the third Tuesday of the month at First Christian, 6630 Dodge St. Learn more about the group on
www.hometown.aol.com/omahaLDA or contact them, OmahaLDA@aol.com

QUOTE FROM A STAR TEACHER:
SCHOOL IS ‘A LIAR’S WORLD’

A reader sent in this quote from a book by John Taylor Gatto, who had been named the New York State Teacher of the Year several years ago, but resigned from teaching in disgust, on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Gatto’s comment:

"Our form of schooling has turned us into dependent, emotionally needy, excessively childish people who wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. Our national dilemma is that too many of us are now homeless and mindless in the deepest sense—at the mercy of strangers.

“The beginning of answers will come only when people force government to return educational choice to everyone. But choice is meaningless without an absolute right to have progress monitored locally, too, not by an agency of the central government.

“Solzhenitsyn was right. The American founding documents didn’t mention school because the authors foresaw the path school would inevitably set us upon, and rejected it. . . .

“School can never deal with really important things. Only education can teach us that quests don’t always work, that even worthy lives most often end in tragedy, that money can’t prevent this; that failure is a regular part of the human condition; that you will never understand evil; that serious pursuits are almost always lonely; that you can’t negotiate love; that money can’t buy much that really matters; that happiness is free.

“A twenty-five-year-old school dropout walked the length of the planet without help, a seventeen-year-old school dropout worked a twenty-six-foot sailboat all by herself around the girdle of the globe. What else does it take to realize the horrifying limitations we have inflicted on our children?

“School is a liar’s world. Let us be done with it."

-- John Taylor Gatto

The Underground History of American Education
NYC Teacher of the Year - Three Times, New York State Teacher of the Year

BLAIR READING TEACHERS
MAKE SOME ‘OOPSIES’

It sounds like a terrific evening: the Blair Parents for Education hosted more than 300 people at an informal pasta dinner followed by kids’ activities in the gym. Meanwhile, parents could attend three informational sessions led by K-2 reading teachers, according to an account in the Washington County Pilot-Tribune.

The problem was, the event was called “Noodle Nite,” not “Night.” And one of the three sessions was entitled, “Site Words, Comprehension and Vocabulary.” The word should have been “Sight.”

That’s what happens when you don’t know phonics. You spell like a beagle, and it shows. The number of reading teachers in the State of Nebraska who truly understand systematic, intensive, explicit phonics, and how to teach it, is tiny.

The reading teachers in Blair have probably never even heard of the phonogram / igh / much less know how to spell it. Excuse the expression . . . sigh. :>)

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Thursday, February 23, 2006


YOO HOO, MILLARD PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE TRASHED IN PITTSBURGH


One week ago today, Go Big Ed ran a story critical of the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs. Turns out that a school board in suburban Pittsburgh, Pa., just got rid of IB for many of the same reasons.

If you’ve ever wondered where all this barfy “world citizen” and “global interdependence” language came from in the mission statements of so many of our public schools, IB is it. It’s anti-American, anti-western civ, anti-knowledge, anti-business, anti-up and anti-down.

IB figures in the Omaha Public Schools takeover story, since Millard North High School is the only high school in the state that offers IB. So OPS thinks it would be getting a cool addition to its lineup if it gets to take over Millard. And Millard is crying foul that OPS would get credit for its big coup.

Some prize. Look at this report from Wednesday’s Issues and Action in Education, an e-letter from
EdWatch, an excellent education watchdog in Minnesota (www.EdWatch.org):

International Baccalaureate Voted Out

Suburban Pittsburgh School Board Ends K-12 Program
ACLU Threatens Lawsuit

By Julie M. Quist


Over the unruly objections of International Baccalaureate (IB) supporters, school board members from the Upper St. Clair, PA district voted 5 to 4 last Monday to end their K-12 IB program. Upper St. Clair is a top-performing school district in Pennsylvania with an IB program in place since 1998. The IB described the vote as the most significant challenge to come to IB, because it involves the K-12 curriculum. IB has been successfully challenged in cities which include Fairfax, VA and San Diego, CA.

Ironically, the qualities IBO describes itself as promoting, a "peaceful world" through "understanding and respect," were conspicuously missing from enraged IBO advocates in Upper Clair. For example, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 2/21/06 states:

As board members in opposition to IB stated their positions, the crowd in the high school auditorium became boisterous. Board members were met with boos and screams of "We're going to recall you."


The interruptions became so frequent and intense that board president Sulkowski requested police officers present come to the front of the auditorium.

Sulkowski also threatened to clear the auditorium if the interruptions did not stop.

Parents and students had been mobilizing to save the program since some board members labeled it anti-American last week. More than 300 people attended a meeting Thursday to organize their opposition and parents and students picketed in front of the district administration offices Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is threatening a lawsuit to force the district into continuing IB.


Opponents of IB cited concerns about IB's violation of local control, IB's endorsement of the radical Earth Charter, IB's promotion of the UN Universal Declaration of Independence, and its needless duplication of Advanced Placement classes. "Why do we not want to foster a strong Advanced Placement offering?" questioned board member David Bluey, who holds a master’s degree in education.

IB is an international curriculum out of Geneva, Switzerland. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review quotes IB's deputy regional director, Ralph Cline, as stating, "There's nothing in the curriculum of any of the programs that require any teacher or student to be taught about the Earth Charter or to support it." The IB publication "IBO: Myths and Facts," however, states that IBO "promotes the Earth Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the idea of multiculturalism."

IB is coming under increased scrutiny across the country, largely because it is being expanded through additional federal grant money. A recurring criticism concerns IB's promotion of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics point out that students are not taught nor is the public informed that Article 29 of that UN document puts the United Nations in authority over individual rights -- unlike America's founding documents, which describe individual rights as "inalienable." Article 29 states: "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

Another frequent criticism is IB's emphasis on creating "world citizens." Former IBO Deputy Director General, Ian Hill states in the publication, Education for Disarmament, speaking to the Disarmament Forum, that "IBO seeks to develop citizens of the world." ["Curriculum development and ethics in international education," 2001] Whatever we are citizens of, we are governed by. Teaching "world citizenship" undermines our own American citizenship and the authority of our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. These documents describe the principles that make protect our freedom.

As opposition to IB gathers steam, a bi-partisan bill will be heard in the Senate next week, S 2198, which would provide even more federal money to implement the IB curriculum nationally. President Bush's American Competitive Initiative, introduced in January, also recommends more federal IB funding.

INTRODUCTORY IB SEMINAR

As an example of the political slant of IB curriculum, A.C. Flora High School in Richland, VA described the 2002 IB Introductory Seminar given in Danvers, MA "designed for schools from around the world interested in becoming part of the IB Program."

A. C. Flora's Plan for Integrating Global Concerns into the Curricula:

Math Studies curriculum explores problems concerning the weather, environmental protection, conservation, and energy.

In HL Math the students will look at the global population problem, regional population problems, and models for the spread of disease, using data from problem areas such as the African AIDS epidemic.

The statistics unit will examine a variety of problems from a global perspective, such as the disparity of wealth distribution between first and third world countries.

The IB Physics curriculum will integrate global concerns and perspectives in the following ways: when studying electricity and magnetism, students look at power production and the third world, the control of emissions from power producing plants, control of emissions from automobiles, non-point source pollution and countries right to defend against it (for example, Canada’s right for compensation from the US for the production of acid rain);when studying the law of conservation of energy, they will examine the oil reserves on earth and the rights of OPEC countries to control the production of oil;

Students will delve into some of the more pressing international pollution concerns, such as global warming, fossil fuels, heavy metals, and other waste products of an increasingly industrialized world.

Because science ... some examples include: environmental concerns (presently the honors level biology classes, which are pre-IB, are researching the Galapagos Islands oil spill from an Ecuadorian tanker. The students are writing persuasive letters to government officials. Worldwide environmental issues will always exist and can be integrated into the lessons.)

In Theory of Knowledge, students will frequently address issues from a multicultural perspective. For example, ethical topics must always be discussed from the perspective of different cultures, such as Muslim, Native American, Western European, African, and so forth. Also, students will seek to identify and examine the validity of cultural stereotypes, for example, the common assumption that Europeans use primarily linear rational thought, while people of the Far East think in non-linear, mystical ways.


Students will look at languages in translation and how misperceptions can arise from translation and social and cultural biases.

In Latin SL, an ancient language, students will examine the ancient world as a sounding board to measure and compare the global issues in a modern world. Students will discuss the impact on the Roman world, as well as their own, of such topics as women’s rights, slavery, and national imperialism.

At A. C. Flora the French classes have continuously integrated global concerns, such as pollution, endangered species, health issues (obesity, aging, AIDS, cloning), space research, human rights, and the death penalty.

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Wednesday, February 22, 2006


THE CRUEL AND EXPENSIVE MYTH
OF SMALLER CLASS SIZE

Happy George Washington’s Birthday! Remember how our first President could not tell a lie? That brings up the sad, strange story of teeny, tiny class size – the highly expensive and highly ineffective panacea that is part of the claim for needing more money by the Omaha Public Schools.

Through its equity lawsuit and its attempt to take over neighboring suburban districts, OPS claims disadvantaged kids need more adults per pupil in to learn to read, write and figure.

Go figure.

The evidence says otherwise. (See the link at the bottom of this story.) If little old moms and taxpayers like me can find that out easily, OPS has no excuse for pretending not to know.

It’s not more people. It’s the right teaching methods. OPS could easily switch to a back-to-the-basics style of instilling literacy and numeracy in disadvantaged kids, giving them the long-sought level playing field they deserve. But noooo. Instead, it just wants more and more money to keep doing more and more of the wrong-headed things, involving social engineering and Political Correctness, that have been demonstrated time and time again not to help a whit.

That’s why test scores in many OPS schools have actually gone DOWN despite markedly increased spending in the last few years.

OPS already has its smallest class sizes by far in the schools that are struggling the most. That means it has put much more staff in those schools than in the schools with better test scores. In the last five years, according to the OPS budget (
www.ops.org/budget), the OPS staff has grown from 5,866 people to 6,428, an increase of 9.5%. Most of that staffing increase has gone for services to low-income and non-English speaking kids, according to the district.

So now, if they get more money from the lawsuit or the consolidation try, no doubt they will use it to hire even more staff and make class sizes even smaller in the 23 or so inner-city, struggling schools. With average teacher salaries in OPS at $40,020 (2004-05 figure), adding still more staff per pupil can get mighty expensive in a hurry.

Yet what are we really getting for the extra expense, estimated based on a Coopers & Lybrand school-by-school study a few years ago at $1,500 more per pupil in the inner-city schools than in the rest of OPS? Ironically, the smaller the class size, the worse the test scores. Consider the standardized test scores and pupil-to-teacher ratios of the top five OPS grade schools in terms of test scores, and the bottom five:

1. Columbian 96th percentile 22.07 pupils per teacher
2. Fullerton 93rd percentile 22.58 pupils per teacher
3. Harrison 90th percentile 18.33 pupils per teacher
4. Dundee 87th percentile 20.83 pupils per teacher
5. Picotte 87th percentile 19.37 pupils per teacher

58. Druid Hill 33rd percentile 15.42 pupils per teacher
59. Liberty 33rd percentile 14.29 pupils per teacher
60. Kennedy 30th percentile 13.29 pupils per teacher
61. Wakonda 30th percentile 13.53 pupils per teacher
62. Miller Park 28th percentile 12.54 pupils per teacher

(California Achievement Test scores from the Aug. 8, 2005, World-Herald, and K-6 pupil-teacher ratio data from
www.ops.org/research/Class%20Size%2005.pdf)

Remember, what government funds, government gets. There’s not a shred of evidence that more money in general, or more staff in particular, will do a thing to help these disadvantaged kids do better in school. In fact, the evidence shows the opposite – the larger the class size, the better the test scores.

Yet OPS is duping and deceiving its own parents and patrons into thinking that throwing more money at the problem is going to solve it. No sale. It hasn’t anywhere else. It won’t here. And when more money fails to bring disadvantaged children up to speed academically, the parents and the public erroneously blame the children – rather than the ineffective, overly expensive system that is doing the wrong things for the kids.

That’s why we really, really need to get these kids into private schools, where – eureka! – class sizes are much bigger but test scores are much higher. Why? Because the right methods are being used. The OPS mindset is just too far gone to be able to give low-income kids what they need.

Of course it is true that children from more advantaged homes with more income and more stability, and higher-IQ parents who are college educated, come to school with bigger vocabularies and better social skills than their disadvantaged peers. And it is also true that it is much easier to teach the basic skills of learning in the early grades to smaller groups of children than larger ones.

But there are limits. Sometimes the big dollars obscure weaknesses in the methods being used. If they’re expensive, they must be the best, right? If they’re expensive and they don’t work, then it can’t be the program – it must be the teachers, or the students. Right? Wrong! Paradoxically, when it comes to teaching reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, the opposite is true. Cheaper is better. It’s the old “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” rule – and keep it cost-efficient, too.

What educators such as those who run OPS keep missing is that the specific learning advantages that middle- and upper-class kids come to school with do not cost a lot of money to provide to kids. Basically, they’ve been talked to and read to more, and interacted with more, by adults. Their experiences with language and meaning go beyond just a TV screen and the inside of a day-care center, and have had good nutrition and good habits in a peaceful home.

The implication is that a lot of vocabulary gain missing from poor kids’ home lives can be made up in language-rich and text-rich preschools and early primary grades. But instead, OPS and other public schools are in to “discovery learning,” “process,” “child-centered learning,” and “best practices,” which are basically nonverbal free-for-alls for young children where their language “teachers” are other illiterate young children and the teachers don’t think it’s their job to directly instruct, but just to guide and hope the kids catch on to language skills through their own play.

It’s so obvious. Highly-structured classrooms, direct instruction by the teacher, and systematic, intensive, explicit phonics for reading instruction, would do tons more for the underachieving schools than hiring even one more person. Only a small handful of OPS schools have teachers who even know the difference between phonics and Whole Language reading instruction, though. The University of Nebraska doesn’t even teach phonics instruction in its teachers’ colleges. The situation is nigh on hopeless.

How do we know that cheaper is better, and class size doesn’t matter? From mountains of research on what works with low-income kids. One repository of hot tips on that very subject is the book No Excuses: Lessons From 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools, by Samuel Casey Carter (Heritage Foundation, 2000). Here are the seven traits of these heroic schools who have done so much with the most challenging student groups:

1. Principals are free.
2. Principals use measurable goals to establish a culture of achievement.
3. Master teachers bring out the best in a faculty.
4. Rigorous and regular testing leads to continuous student achievement.
5. Achievement is the key to discipline.
6. Principals work actively with parents to make the home a center of learning.
7. Effort creates ability.

Did you catch that?

Did you notice?

Not a word about smaller class sizes . . . more staff . . . more money.

Sigh.

For plenty of evidence about the folly of expecting smaller class sizes to vault low-income kids skyward academically:

http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/topic/topic.cfm?topic_id=17

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Tuesday, February 21, 2006


COULD THE SUBSIDIZED LUNCH STATS FROM OPS
BE PHONY BALONEY?

A centerpiece of the claim for more funding by the Omaha Public Schools is that their students are more impoverished and so it costs more to give them equal educational opportunities with richer kids.

OPS paints a picture of thousands of its inner-city pupils trudging to school across the snow in tattered rags tied around their feet, with nothing but cracker crumbs in their pantries, and days, even weeks, going by with no meals served in their homes.

Well, maybe they’re not THAT melodramatic. But they do bring up the fact that they have more kids whose family incomes are low enough to qualify them for free or reduced-price lunches than kids in the suburban districts OPS is trying to take over.

OPS is reporting that 20,043 pupils, or 42.9% of the total student body, qualify for free school lunches this school year, and another 4,780, or 10.2%, qualify for reduced-price meals. That’s over 53%. So yes, it does sound like there is widespread poverty in OPS.

But here are two points to ponder, that might be worth investigating:

1. OPS’ level of poverty may be nowhere near as severe as the numbers imply.

The federal poverty guidelines that are used to determine which children get free or partially-subsidized school lunches set the same income ceilings for every school district in the country. Local differences in the cost of living aren’t factored in. So even though Omaha has a substantially cheaper cost of living than, say, New York City, the income guidelines are the same here as there. And here they are: a family of four making $35,798 per year or less gets reduced-price school meals, and a family of four making $25,155 or less gets free meals. You can see the chart from the Federal Register on
www.usoe.k12.ut.us/curr/ap/test_fee/Eligibility.pdf Somebody making $35,798, working 2,000 hours a year (40 hours a week x 50 weeks), is making $17.90 an hour. It’s just hard to believe that we taxpayers are supposed to consider that person in poverty.

2. It is possible that half or more of the $26.5 million OPS spends on free or reduced-price lunches is going to people who make more money than the guidelines allow.

An excellent report on school lunch fraud in South Sioux City, Neb., by NETV’s Statewide Interactive report a few years ago revealed that in OPS, a random spot-check of parents who’d claimed income levels qualified for free or reduced-price lunches revealed that 59% of them couldn’t, or wouldn’t, prove they qualified.
(See
http://net.unl.edu/~swi/pers/lunch.html)
The implication was that they were fibbing to get the freebies. At the time, OPS listed 20,000 students with the subsidies. Since 8,000 of them were in families that were already receiving food stamps, those applications for school lunch subsidies were automatically qualified as truthful, since they’d already jumped through governmental hoops to get the food stamps. Of the remaining 12,000, the feds required OPS to spot-check audit 3% for accuracy, so OPS sent that 3% a letter asking them to prove, or confirm, that they met the income guidelines. The letter went to 370 families. Of those, 217 did not respond, implying that they were fudging, and were taken off the rolls. That’s 59% of those questioned. Now, of course, they might never have gotten the letter, could have been scared, or could have made honest mistakes. But if that 59% figure held up across the board, then more than 7,000 children might be receiving the subsidies unfairly. According to
www.ops.org/budget on p. 108, OPS budgeted for more than $7 million in local funds and $15 million in federal funds to meet overall projected expenses of $26.5 million for the school food program this school year. Remembering that about one-third of the kids are getting food stamps and are prequalified as bona fide recipients, and that OPS gives a free breakfast to any child who seeks it regardless of income guidelines, if you really put a sharp pencil to it, that’s more than $10 million worth of food that may be given free or at reduced prices to children whose parents might really be able to foot the bill.

I sure hope that isn’t true. Far be it from me to snatch food from the mouths of innocent children. It’s not fun to be so Grinch-y and Scrooge-ish as to point this out. But the school lunch numbers are so consequential in matters of winning federal grants . . . and school-finance equity lawsuits . . . that it just cries out to be thoroughly investigated.

What’s that they say? There’s no such thing as a free you-know-what.


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Monday, February 20, 2006


NEWS BRIEFS:
AUTISM PREVENTION BILL KILLED,
ANOTHER GO BIG ED HALL-OF-FAMER NAMED,
AND HOW TO FINISH 1st OR 2nd IN A SPELLING BEE

The Legislature’s Health Committee killed LB 790 last week. It was a blow to all those who are convinced that Thimerosal, the mercury-containing additive in childhood vaccines, is behind the atrocious and horrendously expensive increase in autism and other developmental delays, learning disabilities and behavioral disorders with which our schools are trying to cope. The bill would have banned it. Seven states have already done so, and similar bills are pending in 25 more states.

At the hearing, Sen. Joel Johnson of Kearney reportedly trashed the credibility of the people who came to Lincoln to testify for the bill, or wrote in support of it, including Rep. Tom Osborne and Sen. Chuck Hagel. Johnson reportedly said that, while he respects them, they aren’t M.D.’s . . . the implication being, so what do they know?

Interestingly, our neighbor Missouri recently banned Thimerosal, and there are seven doctors on the legislative health committee in Jeff City, LB 790 proponents told Go Big Ed.

Proponents gave the Unicam’s health committee two-inch files of background with statistics such as autism’s explosive increase correlating to the increase in childhood vaccinations: one child out of 10,000 had autism 20 years ago, but now the ratio is 1/166.

Former Nebraskan Linda Weinmaster, who helped prepare for the hearing, said those in attendance felt that Sen. Johnson “bullied” the other senators, except for sponsor Arnie Stuthman, into killing the measure. “It’s very disappointing that they did not take the time to look at the science and instead took the word of the agencies that are conflicted by, and profit from, vaccinations.”

But for reasons closer to home, this may get itchy for Sen. Johnson. He has provoked some rather distinguished and powerful Nebraskans, including Sen. Hagel, and Congressmen Tom Osborne, Lee Terry and Jeff Fortenberry, who all supported the bill.

One of the people who testified for LB 790, whose opinion was negated by Sen. Johnson because he’s not a doctor and can’t POSSIBLY understand complex subjects, was Robert Julian, a retired executive from Peter Kiewit Inc. in Omaha, one of the most generous philanthropists in the state.

He is past chairman of the Hastings College Foundation, a member of its Board of Trustees, and past chairman of its investment committee. He has received the college’s highest honor, the “Pro Rege Society.” He also has been a mainstay on the board of Childrens Hospital in Omaha, which knows a little something about children’s health issues.

Sigh. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

GAIL WERNER-ROBERTSON
JOINS GO BIG ED HALL OF FAME
FOR AUTISM ADVOCACY

Another distinguished Nebraskan who supported LB 790, Gail Werner-Robertson, has been named to the Go Big Ed Hall of Fame. She is honored for raising $700,000 to help the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s autism efforts at its Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders. She has organized an annual benefit dinner and golf tournament; this year’s event is scheduled for June 3-5.

Ms. Werner-Robertson, whose family owns the Werner Enterprises trucking firm, holds a law degree from Creighton University, serves on Creighton’s Board of Directors, and is one of the nation’s most important wealth managers through the company she founded, GWR Wealth Management LLC.

She also has two sons with autism.

HOW TO FINISH 1st OR 2nd
IN YOUR COUNTY’S SPELLING BEE

Two handsome eighth-grade lads were pictured in an online newspaper for taking first and second in the McPherson County Spelling Bee. What makes it delicious is that they’re the ONLY two eighth-graders in McPherson County. Congratulations, boys, and many thanks to the good people out there who organized and staffed this event. We all know that spelling bees are important, even if there aren’t that many “bees” in the hive:
http://www.greatplainstoday.com/npps/story.cfm?ID=1386

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Friday, February 17, 2006


HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL:
GREAT CANDIDATES EMERGE
FOR STATE SCHOOL BOARD

It’s a great day in Nebraska when wonderful candidates like these come forward to run for the State Board of Education.

Names in boldface, below, are challenging the incumbents in each district. Jacobsen, Mrs. Carpenter, and Mrs. Pfister all have experience in elective office and are solid, conservative, intelligent citizens who’d do a tremendous job in those important seats.

Which brings up District 8, the southwest Omaha spot. So far, no one has filed against the incumbent, Joe Higgins, a retired District 66 teacher who has been active in the Nebraska State Education Association on the state and national levels.

Surely there’s somebody else out there with some fresh, new ideas, and a desire to serve the voters and the children on the key educational issues of the day, rather than rubber-stamping the status quo, and doing a lot of union featherbedding.

Filing deadline is March 1! We know you’re out there. Just doooooooo it!

(Go Big Ed picks in boldface)

District 5

Patricia H. Timm
1020 North 21

Beatrice, NE 68310

Alan Jacobsen
5649 SW 112th Street

Denton, NE 68339

District 6

Fred Meyer
1580 Hwy 281

St. Paul, NE 68873

Marilyn M. Carpenter
3211 West 18th

Grand Island, NE 68803

District 7

Kandy Imes
1850 20th Street
Gering, NE 69341

Paula S. Pfister
512 Oak
Lexington, NE 68850

District 8

Joseph Higgins
5067 South 107th St
Omaha, NE 68127

VOTE IN THIS POLL:

ACADEMICS, OR MORE KUMBAYA?

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) has an unscientific poll going that poses the question of whether the United States should refocus its schools on math and science instruction, or on “the whole child,” which is code for all that social engineering stuff that has nothing to do with REAL engineering and wouldn’t turn out a child educated well enough to BE an engineer.

The “Kumbaya Crowd” was winning when I looked last, though. Sigh:

www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.b3130849b563ef5ccb6a7210e3108a0c/


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Thursday, February 16, 2006


WHAT'S WRONG WITH AP AND IB?

In the news recently: Nebraska ranks 49th in the percentage of high-school students who take Advanced Placement exams . . . President Bush proposes a 73% increase in funding for AP and International Baccalaureate programs for low-income and minority students . . . and complaints circulate in the ongoing Omaha-area school consolidation controversy that the Omaha Public Schools doesn’t have the “cutting-edge” program, International Baccalaureate, offered only at Millard North High School so far across the state:

Balderdash on all three counts.

Advanced Placement tests are nothing more than window dressing for a nationalized curriculum controlled by the federal government. The dumbing down of the AP tests to get more schools and kids signed up has been well documented, with the quality of the higher-level courses in many American high schools now compromised.

The big push in recent years to get all kinds of kids signed up in AP courses has nothing to do with improving their educations, and everything to do with “spinning” their attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors toward the standardized specifications of the educrats.

You don’t believe me, do you? Consider this item from November 1997 from Eagle Forum,
www.eagleforum.org/psr/1997/nov97/psrnov97.html:

How tests can be used for political indoctrination is further illustrated by the latest College Board Advanced Placement Examination in United States History. It requires the student to spend 45 minutes writing an essay based on six reading selections, two pictures and two cartoons, all of which toe the feminist line about how badly American women were allegedly treated from 1890 to 1925.

One of the cartoons shows a woman on the ground chained to a large ball labeled "Unwanted Babies." The other cartoon depicts a bunch of cigar-smoking, pot-bellied men saying, as they point to a group of women going to church, "Let 'em sing an' pray -- we got th' votes and make th' laws."

The test booklet makes it clear that "high scores" will depend on the student citing what the instructions call the "evidence from the documents." It is obvious than any student so foolhardy as to advance an opinion contrary to this so-called "evidence" would not receive a good score.

Now, the hard sciences and math AP tests aren’t as politicized. But just you wait: the fix is on to replace AP programs nationwide with the much-scarier International Baccalaureate program, which is even more like Socialism 101.

The IB program (
www.ibo.org) is supposed to be world-class, high-octane learning that can position a student to be competitive with the brightest kids from around the world. It’s supposedly the knockout punch for getting in to a top college. At least, that’s what parents and school boards think when they undertake to add the program, which can cost an additional $200,000 over the regular education program, more than twice as costly as an AP program, according to PABBIS (Parents Against Bad Books in Schools).

But also according to
www.PABBIS.org, the multicultural literature selections in IB programs can be downright disgusting. Examples: a 9-year-old girl encounters her teenage counsin’s genitalia and is propositioned by him for oral sex (Cracking India) . . . a 12-year-old Japanese boy spies into his widowed mother’s bedroom and sees her having sex with her sailor boyfriend, then talks with his friends about how much they hate “fathers,” torture a kitten, and are getting ready to murder the sailor as the book ends (The Sailor Who Fell From Grace). . . .

And according to
www.EdWatch.org, IB programs push world government, relativism and socialism over an alignment to key American principles such as national sovereignty, individual liberty, and Judeo-Christian values such as inalienable rights. IB fits in with the United Nations educational model from UNESCO and gives minimal attention to, or actually contains content hostile to, the United States.

Now, those familiar with the curriculum say it doesn’t come right out and say communism is best or to ignore the values of past generations. The approach is much more subtle; you can tell what it’s all about much more by what is NOT in the curriculum, than by what IS included. But by the time parents figure that out, their children are out of the two-year program in most American high schools and literally don’t know what they missed.

You know, Ben Franklin said that half the truth is often a great lie. That’s what’s wrong. The curriculum and assessment decisions are out of the hands of local parents and teachers, and given over to foreign officials who know or care relatively little about American principles.

Time on task is also different. IB may seem more challenging and time-consuming, but the knowledge gain per student is actually less than with a traditional college-prep course of action. IB requires a huge amount of community service by the students, for example, and long, subjectively-graded essays rather than easily-scored, objective, fact-based tests.

IB also usually pushes out the AP courses, because schools can’t afford both. But the IB has much less focus on advanced math and science, and pushes much more of the social-engineering type, politicized, global education concepts such as sustainable development, population control, global warming and other left-wing, New World Order type fare.

IB courses result in no college credits. And worst of all, according to EdWatch, IB tests are sent to Geneva, Switzerland, for scoring. That raises huge red flags about the personal, values-laden data on each student that comes along with test answers, and now is being collected and stored in a foreign database.

AP? IB? Nooooooo. EW!!!!!!!


Ponca Could Learn From Aurora, Elkhorn

Besides Tuesday’s $250 million school bond OK in Lincoln and the $10 million turn-down in Ponca, voters in Aurora passed a $6 million bond issue to provide new construction at all three building levels and significant remodeling of the middle school and high school. The margin was nearly 75%, with a 44% voter turnout.

Community involvement in the planning every step of the way is the reason given for the “landslide” victory, according to an article in the Aurora News-Register (
www.auroranewsregister.com/215News4.html). Three previous bond issues had failed, but apparently the more inclusive, unified approach with a more modest pricetag convinced the voters at last.

Here’s hoping the folks in Ponca could learn from that. According to articles on the grassroots website,
www.abcscommittee.org, there have been some rather nasty doin’s and difficult politickin’ surrounding that community’s three tries and three turn-downs at a school bond in recent years.

But there’s hope: the leader of the “no” group, Michael Brannon, indicated that better communication between school officials and the public on a more realistic scale of a project would provide the missing link for Ponca just as it did in Aurora.

Brannon said, “We are, of course, pleased with the vote and the high voter turnout. We now hope that the school board will look at new options in light of the voters rejecting essentially the same plan THREE times. Victory will not be achieved until a consensus is built within the six-member school board that a sizable majority of the district voters can support.”

There are two models the Ponca people might want to consider:

-- Float a more modest bond issue to repair and remodel the existing school instead of building a whole new one, and since recreational facilities, especially gyms, are deemed to be needed, why not put together a package with tax incentives for a private developer to build a recreational facility that could be used by all ages for a user’s fee, with priority scheduling for school teams. District expense for what would amount to a rental fee would be a minute fraction of the cost of building such a recreational facility and making taxpayers incur 30 years of debt service to pay for it.

-- Or do what Elkhorn did: form an interlocal agreement between the school board and the city government of Ponca, or other nearby governmental entities with taxing power, for that matter, to build the recreational facility together. It would be an intergenerational community recreational center, with retirees and working people using it during school hours, and youth sports of all kinds playing official school games and youth leagues in basketball, volleyball, indoor soccer . . . the sky’s the limit. It would charge user’s fees, and pay back the bonds through a combination of user’s fees and property taxes. Elkhorn now has a gorgeous competitive swimming pool, two basketball courts, an indoor track, and all the bells and whistles, for a $4.5 million bond issue through the City of Elkhorn, and $2.9 million through school district taxpayers. Ponca’s wouldn’t have to be as grandiose – perhaps skipping the indoor pool -- since Ponca doesn’t have the population base that Elkhorn does. But it’s grist for the problem-solving mill. For more, see:
www.elkhorncommonground.com

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006


LOW VOTER TURNOUT, LINCOLN BONDS PASS;
HIGH VOTER TURNOUT, PONCA BONDS FAIL: HMMMMMM

A mere 24% of the voters in the Lincoln Public Schools came to the polls Tuesday to vote by a 63% to 37% margin to plunge the state’s second-largest district into $250 million more debt with a range of school building and remodeling projects.

The victory was expected, after a $116,000 campaign by pro-bond forces, overwhelming a $3,000 effort by opposition led by former LPS board member Peter Katt. The pro-bond vote reportedly was aided by the exercise of a new state law that allows 17-year-olds to vote, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star, with more than 750 of them registered at school days before the vote.

Meanwhile, a few miles west of Sioux City, more than three-fourths of eligible voters showed up Tuesday to defeat a $10 million bond issue for a new secondary school by a narrow margin, 633 for and 659 against. Voter turnout was 78.5%. It was the third time the district had attempted to get the new school indebtedness through.

A local citizens’ group,
www.abcscommittee.org, retained Iowa consultant Paul Dorr to help get the facts and figures out to make the case for a less costly solution for the district. Dorr, of Ocheyedan in northwest Iowa, has helped close to 30 such committees turn aside big-dollar school bond issues and tax-lid overrides in recent years.

Dorr said, "It remains heartening to see the common sense people of Nebraska respond to authoritative information and turn out in large numbers to protect their small town, their school and their children from the hucksters in the financial realm, architects and local media who routinely prey on such communities and their taxpayers."

A Shot in the Arm
For Math and Science Teachers

Wish this were the Nebraska Legislature, but noooo. It’s the Idaho Legislature that’s considering authorizing “pay differentials” for teachers of math and science. It was voted out of the Senate Education Committee by a 7-2 margin, with only 2 Democrats opposed, according to education activist and retired economics professor John Wenders,
www.uidaho.edu/~jwenders.

Wenders said it’s a very modest start, just a 3.75% increase, or $1,125 on a $30,000 salary. Total cost: $2.8 million.

What a good idea: pay a little more to teachers whose knowledge and skills are scarcer, and whose alternative job opportunities are much vaster than most of today’s teaching corps. What’s keeping them back? The teachers’ own union, of course. They say it would cause “discord” among teachers if some got more money than others.

Wenders reports, “The teachers’ union will do anything to stop the whole idea of teacher pay differentials based any factors other than accumulated birthdays and seat-time in education courses. But the IEA is in a real political bind on this one. On the one hand, it constantly whines for more money, but when some incentives that would improve education come with the money, they are against it. This exposes the IEA's single-minded agenda: more money, period. Anything that smacks of merit will be bitterly opposed.”

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Tuesday, February 14, 2006


GO BIG ED HALL-OF-FAMER PAUL FILIPI
SENDS KIDS A $$$ VALENTINE

Omahan Paul Filipi, 88, has donated $10,000 for students who attended the low-income Conestoga Elementary School in inner-city Omaha who need scholarship assistance to enroll at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

For his generosity, he joins the Go Big Ed Hall of Fame. See the list on the left-hand column of the Go Big Ed homepage,
www.GoBigEd.com

Filipi, retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has been a volunteer reader for third- and fourth-graders at Conestoga for six years. His gift, the Golden K-Conestoga Scholarship Fund, is through the University of Nebraska Foundation.

“I want the children to realize that someone cares about them,” he said. “Some of these kids really got to me.”

On this Valentine’s Day, it’s heartwarming and inspiring to know about this 88-year-old, who sets such a great example for us all.

Homeschooling Bill
Encourages Single Parents

What happens in a divorced family when one parent wants to homeschool the child, and the other one is hostile? Right now, a family mess. But with LB 1213, proposed by State Sen. Adrian Smith of Gering, up for hearing before the Legislature’s Education Committee today, it would be straightened out.

It’s an equal protection problem: why should the state require the signatures of both biological parents authorizing homeschooling, but not public-schooling?

It’s hard enough being a single parent these days, being a diligent advocate for your child’s optimal education, and wanting to live out your conviction that homeschooling is best for your child, when the state stacks the deck against you.

Here’s hoping the senators will give thumbs up to this bill. For more information on it, see this page from the Home School Legal Defense Association:

http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/State/ne/2006/NELB1213/default.asp

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Monday, February 13, 2006


TWO 'PAPER-RUSTLING' COMMENTS
BY ED BIG WIGS WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER

I gave my daily paper a workout over the weekend, rustling it in consternation over scary comments by two of the most important figures in Nebraska education.

In an op-ed in The World-Herald on Saturday, Sandra Jensen, president of the Board of Education of the Omaha Public Schools, wrote this head-scratcher:

“The goal of OPS is racially and socioeconomically integrated schools, with tax equity, across the city of Omaha.”

Ohhh! So THAT’S the goal! And we knucklehead voters and taxpayers thought the goal was educating children in the most cost-efficient manner possible. Silly us.

Then on Sunday, Doug Christensen, the state’s education commissioner, had me rustling it again over this eye-popper. He says we need to quit fussing over minute details like delivering quality “content” in education. Instead we need to make sure that kids are ready for real life:

“Do they have a good understanding of global citizenship?”

Ewwww! “Global”? Whatever happened to “American citizenship”? What is this, “We Are the World”? So American sovereignty is a minute detail, too, that we can back-burner, just like literacy and numeracy?

Yikes.

BIG BOND VOTES IN LINCOLN, PONCA TUESDAY:

IS THE WORM TURNING?

Despite scattered opposition and some negative letters to the editor, the $250 million bond issue in the Lincoln Public Schools is expected to pass handily Tuesday. The formula has mostly worked all over the state: schedule the vote during lousy weather season with nothing else on the ballot, and all you’ll get at the polls are the rah-rah’s with kids in school right now.

There’s been some good information on a blog set up by a former LPS board member, Peter Katt, on
www.lpsbonds.blogspot.com He opposes the measure because, he says, most of it is for “wants” rather than “needs.” He says LPS is now utilizing just 94% of its elementary classroom capacity, and with prudent boundary changes, could manage the projected enrollment increase of 1,000 over the next decade without building pricey new buildings, or at least so many.

A big sticking point for many voters has been the $31 million pricetag for a new middle school that’s part of the bond package. That compares to $13.5 million spent recently for a middle school in Waverly, Neb. Katt points out that the Waverly school is for fewer kids – 750 vs. 900 – but LPS would allocate 211 square feet per student vs. Waverly’s 139 or so.

Katt quotes the Tenth Annual (2005) School Construction Report published by the magazine School Planning & Management as stating that the national median cost for a middle school is $15 million, with a Midwest regional median cost of $8.6 million. So LPS looks to spend about 3½ times more than the regional median.

The $250 million in new debt amounts to $7,812 per pupil in LPS, and that’s not counting the 30 years of debt service and increased operating costs associated with the new space. LPS spent $7,686 per pupil in 2004-05.

But will the voters rise up and say “enough is enough”? Note that the Omaha Public Schools got a $254 million bond issue through its voters a few years ago, but came back for another $100 million, which was nixed.

Slowly, in big cities and small towns, we’re seeing more and more turn-downs on increased indebtedness. In relatively wealthy Carroll, Texas, last week, voters defeated a technology bond issue worth $19.5 million that would have given every teacher in the district a wide-screen laptop computer that cost $1,750 each, among other techno purchases. An unrelated construction bond issue did pass, barely. See:

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16092746&BRD=1426&PAG=461&dept_id=528212&rfi=6

As for the $10 million bond issue that’s on the ballot in the Ponca, Neb., area also on Tuesday, related to a proposal for a new secondary school, previous attempts in September 2004 and June 2005 failed by close votes. Proponents say the old school is beyond fixing and a new school with lots of amenities and parking would attract new families to the area. Opponents of this proposal say there just aren’t enough people shouldering that amount of debt to make it sensible. They say they would be for remodeling and perhaps adding on to their existing high school. See
www.abcscommittee.org

They might want to check out a cool new trend that might make these huge bond issues a thing of the past: public-private partnerships are building new school buildings and operating them on a long-term lease as government schools and developers work together so both get what they want at less cost to the taxpayers. See
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7511 for a model that could have made Tuesday’s votes in Lincoln and Ponca a lot more pleasant for taxpayers.

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Friday, February 10, 2006


News Briefs:
Class I Barristers, Bonds,
Booze and 'Black Flight'

The Nebraska Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday on whether or not to let education officials continue the process of consolidating the state’s 205 elementary-only, Class I country schools into neighboring K-12 districts, or come to a grinding stop. A ruling is expected in two weeks.

Class I’s United leader Mike Nolles of Bassett praised the job done by his group’s attorney, senatorial candidate and former Nebraska attorney general Don Stenberg.

At issue is LB 126, passed last legislative session mandating the change without a vote of the people affected. Enough citizens statewide signed a petition last year to force the issue onto the November ballot rather than letting the schools die by regulation.

Now the group is hoping the Court will make that vote unnecessary by declaring the law unconstitutional. The Court also could grant a permanent injunction that would make the educrats wait for the people’s will to be voiced in November before going ahead with consolidation plans. Or it could rule that consolidation could go ahead, and if the vote goes the Class I group’s way in November, education officials would have to put everything back in place.

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

Nolles also said the response has been “phenomenal” to his group’s booth at the Omaha Home and Garden Show downtown at the Qwest Center. Nebraskans have an opportunity to sign a petition that would require a vote of the people affected before any school consolidation could take place. The show continues through this weekend.

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

Lincoln Bond Issue Vote
Poses $250 Million Question

A review of the $250 million bond issue that’ll be up for a vote by citizens of the Lincoln Public Schools on Tuesday:

-- The actual construction total would be $314.6 million in projects, adding $64.6 million already in LPS’ hands.

-- Much of the cost is to update heating and air conditioning systems in schools that already have air conditioning, including 10 elementary and three middle schools, and Bryan Community.

-- Building two elementary schools and replacing Arnold Elementary

-- Renovating Lincoln High, Southeast, Northeast and East

-- Adding to and renovating numerous other schools, including work to make grade schools able to accommodate all-day kindergarten

-- A new elementary school in southeast Lincoln and additional elementary classroom space

-- A new middle school in south Lincoln

And On the Ballot in Ponca:

A proposal to build a new secondary school serving Grades 7-12 on a new site in Ponca, Neb., for $10 million, will also be up for a vote Tuesday. The fur has been flying, as a citizens’ group --
www.abcscommittee.org – has calculated that with interest and other costs, the actual cost to local taxpayers will be close to $20 million over 30 years. They’re on record pleading for a “no” vote and a return to the drawing board for a more modest remodeling of the existing school.

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


Bragging on MySpace.com
Nails 7 Lincoln East Students For Boozing

According to a techno education website, seven Lincoln East varsity and JV basketball players were suspended from school for two weeks when a school staff member saw their posting on the diary-style personal website,
www.MySpace.com The post discussed their students’ experiences while drinking alcohol. Read about the hazards of electronic self-expression on:

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstoryts.cfm?Articleid=6104

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The Scoop on Advanced Placement
And International Baccalaureate Programs

The World-Herald played the story of Nebraska’s second-to-last ranking in the percentage of high-school graduates in the various states who take Advanced Placement tests on Page One, with a Chicken Little headline: “Nebraska Teens Lag on Difficult AP Tests.”

See
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=1640&u_sid=2112861). But is the situation really that grave?

Nah. All over the country, folks are up in arms over how the College Board is dumbing down the AP classes to induce more schools to buy into the program and “look good on paper” to parents and the public. Selective colleges are beginning to not even accept AP credits any more. High schools are labeling courses as AP quality when they shouldn’t, as measured by the fact that not all and sometimes not most of the students enrolled in those courses actually take the exam at year-end, and fewer still score a “3” or higher and obtain college credit.

Nebraska looks bad because only 4.4% of our 19,093 graduates in the Class of 2005 got a “3” or higher on last year’s AP tests, above only Louisiana. Ah, but that’s not the whole story. The real statistic, which The World-Herald and many others missed, is the percentage of kids who took AP tests and got the “3” or higher. In that measurement, Nebraska looks OK: 61% of those who tried got the college credit. That’s right at the national average.

The point is, Advanced Placement is just one of a wide variety of academic programs intended to enhance student opportunities. Many Nebraska high schools would rather keep control over their curriculum and give their teachers wide latitude to teach the way they want to, rather than knuckling under to the AP way. It could become a de facto national curriculum, which would defeat local control, and that’s a big uh-oh. Considering that Nebraska’s average ACT score ranks 12th in the nation, it wouldn’t do to get too worked up over this.

As for President Bush’s call to increase federal funding for more AP courses and more promotion of the no-good, very-bad International Baccalaureate program – also known as “Socialism Prep” – here’s hoping Nebraskans can keep a wary eye, and dance with who brung us – local control.

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

Is OPS Making Omaha
Ripe For ‘Black Flight’?

Minneapolis school superintendent Thandiwe Peebles resigned recently in the wake of bad news about minority test scores and graduation rates – bad news that mirrors what is going on in the Omaha Public Schools.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that last year, 28 percent of black Minneapolis eighth-graders passed the state's basic skills math test, and 47 percent passed the reading test. In 2004, the black high school graduation rate in the district was 50 percent.

Those stats aren’t all that different from what we see in OPS.

In response to the dismal academic track record, families are fleeing inner-city Minneapolis. Now "black flight" is a serious and growing problem for the Minneapolis district, contributing to cuts in funding and staff, and leading to shuttered classrooms, the newspaper reported:


”In 1999-2000, the district had about 48,000 students. Enrollment in 2008 is projected to be only about 33,400. Part of the loss is caused by lower birthrates. But in the early 1990s, district kindergartens were capturing around 70 percent of kids born in Minneapolis. Today, it's only about 50 percent.”

The bulk of departing students are choosing charter schools, which are opening in Minneapolis at a rapid pace. In a 2003 Minneapolis district survey, black parents were noticeably less satisfied with district schools than other parents. But charter-school parents were very satisfied with their schools.

”Black leaders predict that the next superintendent in Minneapolis is going to have to shake up the entrenched system, changing union rules and other obstacles to meaningful changes in the way schooling is delivered in the city’s most challenging environments.

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

A $9 Million Theater in Lincoln Public Schools
Is a Dramatic – Even Tragicomic – Example
In the Upcoming $250 Bond Issue


Lincoln Public Schools officials had to be wincing when a senior at Southwest High School said in a Lincoln Journal article the other day that her school’s theater cost $9 million and she gets to “play” in it every day after school.

That’s a dramatic revelation. Is it tragedy? Is it comedy? Depends on your perspective.

Since LPS has a $250 million bond issue on the ballot Tuesday, the timing of that little bombshell exploding onto taxpayers’ already-frayed nerves has to be upsetting for them. The whole point of that quarter-of-a-billion dollar debt is supposedly to improve academics, especially for low-income and minority children in Lincoln. But you could buy 900,000 paperback books at $10 apiece and give each child in LPS 30 good books each for $9 million.

Read the interview on:
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/02/06/homeroom/doc43e68fb89ef4a511478757.txt

The person who answered the phone at Southwest said that the $9 million figure is the one she had always heard around school for the 600-seat theater, but suggested I check with the district. A call to Dennis Van Horn, LPS associate superintendent for business, revealed that the official district stance has never been to separate out the cost of individual sections of the high school, which was finished in 2002 at a cost of $45 million, including furnishings and equipment.

When asked if he saw the article, Van Horn said he did, and that the $9 million figure seemed too high, but didn’t take action to clarify it because he’s got his hands full managing the $250 million bond issue proposal.

Whatever. I just compare pictures of it to the theaters I’ve attended in Omaha. The only one that seems fancier is the new Holland Center. And that’s for Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, not high-school kids.

For a grand finale to this story, visit
http://teachers.lps.org/bhenrich/stories/storyReader$25 and see if somebody ought to be doing a little rescripting for the Southwest drama teacher. Look at the misspelled words, grammar errors and inappropriate language on this page. I’m sure he’s a ton of fun and it looks as though he works hard to relate to the kids on their level. But it’s a bit disconcerting to remember that he’s in charge of this lavish, state-of-the-art, taxpayer-funded theater:

“knarley” for “gnarly”
“excercises” for “exercises”
“gawd” for “God”

; instead of :
missing the word “have” in “If you questions”
inappropriate expression: “shot in the buttocks”
missing apostrophe in “someone elses”

Yes, the Bard said, “All the world’s a stage” . . . but honest to goodness, how are taxpayers supposed to keep paying for it?

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

Local Control of Public Schools:
Use It Or Lose It!

Sign the Petition to Protect Schools
From Unwanted Consolidation at the
Qwest Center Home & Garden Show This Weekend

Please stop by the Nebraskans for Local Control booth and sign the petition.

Hours: Thursday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Home show cost: $6 for adults; children ages 6-12 $3; 5 and under free.

If you can help staff the booth, won’t be in downtown Omaha this weekend but still want to sign, or want to help the petition efforts in any other way, please contact Cindy Carlson of Holdrege.
Email is tycync@atcjet.net and cell phone number is (308) 991-2420.

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

This whole school consolidation thing is beginning to look very fishy. The way the superintendents are whoopin’ on each other, raining blows right and left, and yet in the end everything they’re fighting for will wind up costing us more money, reminds me distinctly of the fake body slams put on by the bulbous participants in the World Wrestling Federation.

Could this all just be a show?

Could this be a fake crisis that’s being used to stir people up in one direction, so that the REAL goal can quietly be inserted behind our backs?

I mean, could the Omaha Public Schools and Class I consolidation crises be a manufactured, manipulated distraction so that the powers that be can usher in what they REALLY want, but which we citizens would never otherwise have accepted – county-wide school consolidation?

John Bonaiuto, executive director of the Nebraska Association of School Boards, was quoted last June 8 in The World-Herald as saying: “It would not be a stretch to see legislation that looked for one school district per county.”

For the last few decades, the push by the teachers’ unions and the educrats has been to wrestle away local control and voting rights by the people, and replace it with “governance” and collective bargaining and interlocal agreements. Why? Because it’s so much easier to get your own way when you don’t have to mess with those pesky citizens and taxpayers. Just take their money . . . and run with it.

The whole Outcome-Based Education thing, and Goals 2000, which has morphed into No Child Left Behind, are targeted toward nationalization of our schools. What’s blocking it? Local control.

Well, thank goodness for Nebraskans for Local Schools (
www.nebraskansforlocalschools.org). They are running a petition drive to try to get a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would protect local control of schools. If it passes, then there would have to be approval by the majority of voters in any school district before it can dissolve, merge or affiliate with any other school district.

The best defense is a good offense. If this had been in place before the OPS and Class I messes, then we’d never have scary legislation like LB 1050, the countywide school consolidation bill.

It would make Nebraska into a mini-Soviet Union with schools run by educrats instead of a beautiful patchwork quilt of democracy knit strong with lots of stitches representing lots of locally-elected school boards.

I mean, trust me: it’s hard enough to get listened to in today’s moderately-sized school districts. Just imagine any education decision-maker giving a rip about what you think if the district goes countywide in the future.

You could try all the body slams, half-Nelsons and over-the-head spins you want. But it’d be just like WWF: it’d all just be for show, and you couldn’t ever really win.

Get behind this petition. They need something like 30,000 more signatures. Hop to it!

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Thursday, February 09, 2006


THE BLOG IS BACK!

Here's the place to look daily for Nebraska education news from now on. I'll update this blog with short takes frequently.

Back on www.GoBigEd.com, the website is taking more of a public service direction now, with seven daily features aimed at parents and teachers who want to maximize children's reading, writing and thinking skills, at home, in school and in all other kinds of settings.

The website will still link to this blog, of course, and once a week, I'll run a Nebraska-related education feature story on there.

But here's where we'll get down to brass tacks on K-12 issues in the Cornhusker State.

Check in regularly, and . . . Go Big Ed!

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