You might want to check out the debate on our Opinion pages today between Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins and myself. The Eagle editorial board wrote an editorial in January that looked at the question of whether charter schools in Kansas are performing better than public schools. What we found out from Corkins’ assistant commissioner was that charters aren’t getting better achievement results and aren’t any more efficient than public schools. Corkins’ response accuses the editorial board of not wanting innovation in schools and wanting to throw away at-risk kids. My column asks: Huh? Just because we point out that the reform he has been pushing doesn’t seem to be getting better results, we hate kids? Such muddled reasoning would be laughable if Corkins’ job weren’t so important.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
President Bush must know he would be better off if the American people would forget the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. That may be why, as Emily Messner of The Washington Post pointed out, Bush only referred to Katrina three times in his State of the Union address, and never by name. She writes: “For such a huge disaster — one that destroyed an entire city, killed more than a thousand people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, and exposed a big pile of underlying societal problems that this country must address — eight sentences and two clauses out of a 5,000-word speech seems a bit slim.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
A new report released Thursday found that medical debt is a big problem with low-income Kansans. The study by the Access Project, a national research and health advocacy organization, and Brandeis University surveyed 1,000 people with incomes of less than $25,000 from four community health centers in Wichita, Garden City and Emporia. It found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents had medical debt, and that debt was hindering them from getting additional medical treatment and was causing credit problems.
Among the report’s recommendations were expanding “safety-net clinics,” restricting the reporting of medical debt to credit agencies, and providing financial counseling. But that sounds like more Band-Aids on a dysfunctional system.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
You’d like to think that breast-feeding in public places could be governed by common sense rather than state law. But an anecdote in Thursday’s Eagle illustrated why a law is needed: A young mom said she was nursing her 4-week-old son in a restroom (ugh) at the Hutchinson Mall when a woman denounced her not only for being offensive but for breaking the law. The breast-feeding woman was no lawbreaker, but neither does current law protect her rights. Legislators should go on record as supporting a Kansas woman’s right to breast-feed “in any place she has the right to be,” in the words of the bill that would also rightly excuse nursing moms from jury duty. As for last year’s flap over the word “discreetly” –most women don’t have to be told, by statute or otherwise, that just as breast-feeding is best for their babies, discretion is best when it comes to breast-feeding in public.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Kansas House Republicans’ newly announced agenda for the session includes one modest measure we’ve proposed before that would mean a lot to cash-strapped parents come August: a three-day sales-tax holiday on clothing and school supplies. A dozen or so states have these holidays, which can have a Christmas-like effect on store sales. And as targeted tax cuts go, it’s one with an immediate impact on consumers’ pockets.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
