Unalottment: don't let this crisis go to waste

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." —Rahm Emmanuel, Obama White House Chief of Staff

In his July unalottment, Tim Pawlenty has an opportunity to put a nice bow on the signature education reforms of his two terms as Minnesota's governor. Although Pawlenty has been reluctant to cut education funding at all this biennium, holding education (mostly the teachers union) harmless will be problematic given that K-12 education consumes 39.1% of the state's $35 billion budget.

As detailed in an e-mail to supporters and their 2010-2011 budget recommendations, EdWatch sees unalottment as Pawlenty's opportunity to cut education programs that are ineffective and "undermine parental authority and autonomy."

Among the items on the EdWatch hit list are some programs that EdWatch has opposed for years:

Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) (Current: $51,850,000, Governor: $44,745,000, EdWatch: $0) - EdWatch reports that ECFE, "according to the Legislative Auditor, shows no evidence of developmental gains for children and only some increase in parental feelings of effectiveness."

Head Start (Current: $40,200,000, Governor: $40,200,000, EdWatch: $0) - This program is widely assumed to be effective, but EdWatch claims that "More than 600 studies show the lack of effectiveness of this program, there are several studies showing emotional harm to participants, and Minnesota already received $189.5 million in federal funds over the last two federal fiscal years for this."

International Baccalaureate (IB) - EdWatch would cut $2.7 million for IB tests and programs. It has long maintained that Advanced Placement (AP) programs are "locally controlled, prepare students better for college, comport with MN academic standards, and are far less expensive." In fact, some school districts have passed in adding IB course in favor of AP for these same reasons.

Kindergarten Readiness Assessment and Intervention Program (Current: $573,000, Governor: $574,000, EdWatch: $0) - According to EdWatch, this assessment "uses very vague and subjective criteria based on very vague, subjective, and politically correct outcomes, The Early Childhood Indicators of Progress. This ridiculous assessment gives fuel to the Nanny State falsely claiming that 50% of Minnesota children are not ready for kindergarten."

The EdWatch recommendations include a total of eight education items and eight health and human services items that are education-related. Governor Pawlenty and Education Commissioner Alice Seagren should seriously consider these proposed cuts as they work through unalottment.

House Ed Finance bill nixes Q Comp, Truth-In-Taxation meetings

In an e-mail to constitutents, Rep. Sarah Anderson (R-Plymouth) alerts us to a few troubling provisions in the House Omnibus K-12 Education Finance bill (HF2):

• Cuts education funding $1.9 million (14 percent) when shifts and one-time federal aid are excluded. According to Anderson, all revenue sources considered, this bill is $185 million less than the Governor's plan. So far, so good!


• Enacts a historic funding shift of 27 percent, thus delaying when schools get paid. Gyrations like this really play havoc with districts' financial operations. Just imagine if your employer tried this with your paycheck, or if your business payables got stretched out to 90 or 120 days. How would you like it?


• Repeals Q Comp program that rewards teachers based on performance. Repealing this popular and successful program is a bad idea!


• Eliminates Truth-in-Taxation public hearing requirement for property tax increases. Just what we don't need, less transparency in government.


• Imposes $5 billion school funding proposal in 2014 with no identified source of funding. Well, this seems to be the trend in government spending these days!

The bill and its Senate companion (SF1328) are currently in conference committee.

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Pardon our mess while SCHOLAR'S NOTEBOOK is under construction. All of our content should be available throughout our redesign. Thanks for your interest in SCHOLAR'S NOTEBOOK, integrated math, education reform, and school choice!

Senate DFL moves to kill charter schools

Over Republican minority objections, the Minnesota Senate Education Subcommittee on Charter Schools yesterday perverted Governor Pawlenty's charter school bill (S.F. 867) with several amendments that would strangle Minnesota's successful charter school movement. The bill passed out of the subcommittee and will be heard by the full Senate Education Committee.

One of the bill's co-sponsors, Subcommittee Chair Kathy Saltzman (DFL-Woodbury) offered the bulk of the amendments. According to the Minnesota Senate Briefly Daily Coverage and Jon Bacal of Minnesotans Against Banning New Public Schools, some of the stronger measures in the bill:

• Would cap the number of charter schools statewide at the current number (160) until at least the fall of 2011. If passed into law, Minnesota would also lose $15 million or more annually in federal charter start-up funds.
• Reinstates the ban on locating or relocating charter schools within one mile of a closed district property or within a consolidated school district, the identical provisions that were rejected in the House committee on Tuesday.
• Would prohibit nonpublic sectarian or religious institutions from sponsoring charter schools. Since three of the top charter school sponsors fall into this category, the seventeen schools they sponsor would be forced to close if they could not find other sponsors.

Apparently Sen. Saltzman came to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Republcans Sen. David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) and Sen. Gen Olson (R-Minnestrista) tried to delete the first two provisions, but were defeated on voice votes.

Watch this blog, or the Facebook page of Minnesotans Against Banning New Public Schools for updates.

Not only math is "integrated" in Wayzata district

When I heard this year that the Wayzata School District had recently adopted the textbook, Vocabulary from Classical Roots by Norma Fifer and Nancy Flowers (Educators Publishing Service, Cambridge and Toronto), I was pleased.

I am a technical writer by profession, I love language, and insist that my own children learn to communicate effectively in writing and speech. So the study of Greek and Latin roots seemed to me a back-to-basics, classical approach to English instruction.

I was half right.

Classical Roots does indeed teach word strategies and etymologies, but I can also see how world views are being "integrated" into language arts as they have been in integrated math. These word usage examples are from the Fifer and Flowers Classical Roots book (the boldface word is the vocabulary word being studied):

• The perseverance and hard work of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants were responsible for the prosperous economy of the Southwest in the nineteenth century.
• History shows that although men have often expected women to be subservient, many women have resisted domination.
• Historian Elizabeth Longford writes that "as playthings or household slaves, women were distorted the world over."
• During his presidency, Jimmy Carter mediated disagreements between Israel and Egypt.
• Although twice elected prime minister of Great Britian, Sir Winston Churchill was considered an academic mediocrity as a schoolboy.
• Environmentalists say that at this juncture we must protect rain forests around the globe to prevent harmful atmospheric changes.
• Because of stringent budget cuts, some schools could no longer finance programs in music and art.
• The Jamestown settlers were long on visionary schemes but short on funds and common sense.
• The repertoire of folk singer Joan Baez includes songs in both Spanish and English.
• The Mexican rebel Emiliano Zapata advocated the rights of peasant farmers against powerful landlords.
• Recognizing the need to build new schools, the community assented to the higher property tax.
• Although the later works of the English writer John Dunne are sermons and serious religious verse, his youthful creations are witty and profane love poems.
• You profane a mosque by entering it with shoes on.
• Her friends and neighbors in the favelas, or slums, didn't realize that Carolina Maria de Jesus was a literary prodigy whose diary would become Brazil's all-time bestseller.
• Although she was a loyal Republican, her views on taxation differ ideologically from party policy.

We've come a long way from "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." These statements may be worthy of debate, but notice how they remain unchallenged since they appear in a language arts, and not a social studies textbook. Is the intent here to teach language, or something else?

Beacon Academy "bursting at the seams"

Beacon Academy, a Core Knowledge-based charter school, has outgrown its current building in Plymouth. I have been following the creation and evolution of this charter school since it was just an idea. Hearing about Beacon's growing pains and then growing successes from Beacon's director (and my friend), Jordan Ford, has been heartening.

As reported by the Sun Newspapers ("Beacon Academy interested in leasing Pilgrim Lane in Plymouth," February 12, 2009), Beacon is interested in leasing (or buying) Pilgrim Lane Elementary, one of three Robbinsdale District 281 buildings scheduled to close at the end of the school year due to excess capacity:

Tamara Harken of Crystal, chair of the Beacon Academy board of directors, sent a letter to District 281 Board Chair Tom Walsh on Jan. 9, expressing her school's interest in leasing Pilgrim Lane beginning this fall.

"Our five-year plan to mature into a K-8 school has come to fruition, and we are currently searching for a location to house our 2009-2010 student body of 400 children," Harken's letter stated.

"It's nice to be bursting at the seams versus dealing with declining enrollment," said Ford.

The Sun Sailor reported that "District 281's policy until 2007 was not to rent or sell its surplus buildings to other schools that potentially would compete for the district's students."

The attitude that puts protecting one's turf ahead of serving the families of our community could be one reason that enrollment in some school districts is declining, while enrollment in charter schools like Beacon Academy is rising. Public school districts should not be afraid of school choice. In Sweden, public education funding follows the child, with the support of even the Swedish Teachers Union:

Sweden's school choice system was introduced in 1992. It is based on a virtual "voucher" which is equivalent in value to the average cost of educating a child in the local state school.

Parents can use this "voucher" to "buy" a place at the school of their choice. The idea is that funding follows the pupil and, in this way, the state supports the schools that are most popular with parents.

—"Swedish parents enjoy school choice," BBC.com

Beacon Academy's success glossed over

If you were looking for mention of the Beacon Academy charter school of Plymouth, Minnesota on a recent KSTP-TV "5 Eyewitness News Investigates" segment about charter schools, and if you blinked, you may have missed it.

That's because the story focused on various charter schools that are violating Minnesota law, and on calls to overhaul those laws, so the story mentions Beacon Academy by contrast as a success story. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, their teachers are 100% licensed and 100% Highly Qualified per federal standards. They're playing by the rules, and must be doing something right, if the portable classrooms and waiting list are any indication.

Beacon Academy is a fast-growing, K-8 charter school, opened in 2004, with a current enrollment of about 400, with two sections per grade. Beacon Academy is based on the Core Knowledge Sequence and Saxon Math. Beacon's sponsor is Friends of Ascension, which sponsors over a dozen charter schools in the Twin Cities area.

Beacon provides a traditional math alternative to the integrated math delivered by local public school districts (Wayzata Central Middle School was a field test site for Connected Mathematics 2). Its Core Knowledge Sequence is a knowledge-based alternative to public school curricula that still contain remnants of the process-based, "fuzzy" Profile of Learning state standards that were repealed in 2003.

In short, Beacon strives to provide the kind of private school, classical education promoted on this blog, but at public school prices (that is, no tuition — charter schools are public schools).

Beacon Preparatory School, the grades 9-12 charter school I reported on a couple of years ago that was related to Beacon Academy, is now connected with Seven Hills Classical Academy charter school in Bloomington.

Beacon Academy's director, Jordan Ford, is a friend of mine. He has extensive experience as a public school teacher and curriculum director, and as a private school principal. Ford has the heart for kids and learning that you would want in your child's or grandchild's principal. Beacon's detailed 2007 state report card is available on the Minnesota Department of Education web site.

John McCain on school choice

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I’m President, they will.

—John McCain, acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for President, September 4, 2008

Minnesota Education Reform News (1999-2008)

I have shut down Minnesota Education Reform News, the web site that existed at various URLs and on various web platforms since about 1999. I will continue to maintain this blog, but my main blog has been and will be North Star Liberty. Thanks to everyone for your support, particularly of my popular articles on integrated math.

If you have any bookmarks that point to scholarsnotebook.info, they will no longer work.

Regards,

Matt Abe

P.S. A side effect of this is that the URL is incorrect in the banner at the top of this blog. I will correct it soon.

Free speech, at least when we agree with it

It's the end of the school year, and at high schools in America, teachers, administrators, and staff — God bless them all — are enduring Senior Prank Day. At Bloomington Kennedy High School, three senior boys were barred from participating in Class of 2008 commencement exercises for waving the so-called "Confederate Flag" on school grounds, in violation of school policy.

Considering the fact that Principal Ron Simmons is African-American (and incidentally was principal at Minneapolis North High School for four years), and we presume that unless they skipped U.S. history the trio was aware of the flag's controversial meanings, this senior prank showed an incredible lack of judgment and sensitivity. Like all senior pranksters, they were looking for trouble, and they found it.

The most fascinating quote of the Strib coverage was from the liberal ACLU, which shrugged at the Bloomington case:

On Wednesday, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Minnesota said any legal challenge put up by the suspended students' families would have a "very, very slim" chance of succeeding.

"If, in the opinion of the administration, your speech carries the possibility of a material disruption of the educational process, they can censor it," said state ACLU Executive Director Chuck Samuelson. "I wish students had more rights, but they have no rights."

That is, unless you're vigorously defending, before the United States Supreme Court, the students who displayed a pro-drug, anti-Christian message like "BONG HITS 4 JESUS" (Morse v. Frederick). According to an ACLU press release:

"We are disappointed by the Supreme Court's ruling, which allows the censorship of student speech without any evidence that school activities were disrupted," said Douglas K. Mertz, an ACLU cooperating attorney who argued the case [Morse v. Frederick] before the Supreme Court.