Now that the school funding plan supported by House conservatives has failed, House and Senate negotiators need to responsibly reconcile their chamber’s funding bills. And unlike the Senate bill or the conservative alternative that lawmakers voted down Wednesday, the final bill needs to be based on the actual costs of educating our state’s students, as determined by the Legislature’s own auditors.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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62 Comments
No matter which side of the issue you’re on, I think we can agree that these twits need to DO THEIR JOB!
Looks like we can count on another extended session. It’ll wind up like last year. Why do we put up with these antics year after year after year?
I think it’s time to retire a bunch of legislators.
Time to think about school choice also.
Here’s my prediction, Joe.
Wider school choice, in some fashion, will happen. And we will find that it STILL doesn’t solve the problems we wish it would have. While certain elements of schools (the back office side of things basically) can be run business-like, the classroom itself is NOT a business.
So what I predict will happen is school choice and vouchers will come along and in ten or twenty years we will be searching for another solution, because ultimately you can’t force every child and every parent to CARE about their education.
Jeff, why does the classroom have to be like a business? And even if it was, what exactly would be wrong with that?
The benefits that widespread school choice would bring include greater variety and accountability. Accountability means that schools that fail to do a good job, as judged by parents (and maybe the children too) will either change or close. Public schools do not have such a powerful motivating factor. In fact, public schools, by nearly any measure you can find, are doing a terrible job, yet we are rewarding them with greatly increased spending.
The fact that some parents may not care as much about the education of their children as others is something that probably can’t be fixed. For them, I’m sure there will always be some remnant of the current public school system available.
If public schools are as good as their supporters claim, they should have no trouble retaining their students in the face of competition.
As long as it is FAIR competition KCL. Letting private religious schools operate under different standards, and letting them cherry pick the very best students is not a level playing field.
You want it both ways. If religious schools want tax dollars, they have to play by the same rules as public schools.
And you already have school choice. Local school board elections, private schools, and this little thing called relocation!
The taliban will never give up hating public education. They will NEVER give up trying to get the taxpayers, who already give churches tax exempt status, to pay for the religious indoctrination of children.
This has been going on at least since the scopes trial. How long will this vampire keep coming back? Forever, or until the religious right gets its way and all education is devoted to them.
Education? We dont need no stinkin’ education. We only need religion and indoctrination camps.
Ksfarmgrrl, I think you are letting your hatred of religion cloud your judgment. Why does criticism of public schools always come to this? When we look at the poor performance of public schools, is there a religious dimension to that measurement? It is entirely possible to be dissatisfied with public schools and to want something different without calling for religious schools to be the alternative. It is not accurate to frame the issue this way.
With vouchers, it is true that some families would get to pay for a religious education using tax dollars. Many other families would choose secular private schools. Other families would use their vouchers to continue in the public school system. What is wrong with that? If it’s what people want, what is wrong with that?
(Personally, I think it would be wise for churches to forego their tax-exempt status. They could then operate however they want, and the public in general would not be subsidizing them.)
The school choice options you mentioned — private schools and moving — are available only to those families who can afford them. That’s where a large dose of irony appears. Well-to-do families have school choice to some extent. Poor families don’t. What do you have against them? Why do you want to deny children who have the misfortune to be born to poor families the same choice that other children have? Is that a level playing field?
“Many other families would choose secular private schools”
Wanna provide some evidence or backup for that?
How many voucher advocates do you hear from in the secular community? You dont see that the VAST majority of people advocating vouchers want their kids sent to religious schools on the taxpayer dime.
Wanna provide some info on the secular private schools you speak of in the Wichita area?
How many of these schools exist? You keep talking about them, but do they exist now, or are you just waiting for the free market to create them AFTER vouchers destroy public education.
Where are these secular private schools located? Would choosing them involve moving or sending kids to boarding school?
what is the tuition at these private secular schools? Would the vouchers cover all the tuition? If not, who pays the difference? Parents?
I guess your plan doesnt give much choice to poor families either. And sometimes a move to a better school district is just across town, not across the country.
I am all for improving public education and innovation in education. You can improve public schools without vouchers. Why dont we try some of those methods?
Or would they involve even more tax dollars? Religion and tax dollars are the crux of this debate.
I dont like my tax dollars spent on wars either. Can I get that money redirected?
You’re right, there aren’t many secular private schools in Wichita. They’re expensive, and few can afford them. I don’t believe I claimed otherwise.
But wouldn’t that change if parents were armed with voucher money? I am sure that we would be amazed at the variety of private schools that would quickly open.
And you’re right again. We don’t know exactly what type of schools would open. I predict, however, that they would be the types of schools, offering the type of education, that parents want for the children. If not, they would either change or close.
Where would these schools be located? Where there is demand for them, wouldn’t you think? Where else would you put a school if you want to attract students?
It’s true that vouchers might not pay for all the cost of a private school. Even if vouchers don’t pay for the entire cost of a school that parents want to send their children to, what’s wrong with parents having a little at stake, a little skin in the game? One of the complaints we often hear is the lack of parental involvement; that parents don’t care. With some of their own money at stake, that might be a motivating factor for parents to be more involved in their children’s education.
If school choice through vouchers destroys public education, I would say that it wasn’t worth protecting in the first place.
Why do you mingle this issue with a war you don’t like paying for? How does one relate to the other?
So KCL, your last post pretty much proves the point that vouchers will not improve choices for poor families. I saw you use that “skin in the game” line before. Meme?
What if poor families cant afford skin in the education game, since they have so much skin in the “staying alive” game?
No comment from you on how the advocates for vouchers are also usually people who want their kids to have a religious education?
Choice is how I relate to the war. I could no more choose to have my tax dollars removed from war than you could choose to have your tax dollars removed from public education.
And no comment on the cherry picking that these private religious schools use to up their performance numbers? No comment on how you would level the playing field on that point?
Thanks for admitting that few if any secular private schools exist now. Thanks for admitting that you magically expect them to spring up after vouchers.
If secular private schools are the issue, and if they would spring up and be such a good choice, why do they not exist now? Couldnt the wealthy, who now send their kids to private school, have created them before vouchers? Why are the wealthy people not sending their kids to THOSE private secular schools now?
Could it be that most private schools are subsidised by some religious group? The ones benefitting from the indoctrination of young people?
Why do you think these non-existant private secular schools would spring up after vouchers? Do you have any evidence for that? Any polls, projections, any anything?
Nope. Just the taliban trying to get tax dollars for their religious indoctrination camps.
The more you post on this, KCL the more you make that clear.
“If school choice through vouchers destroys public education, I would say that it wasn’t worth protecting in the first place.”
It isnt vouchers that would destroy it, it is the lack of funding, exacerbated by vouchers, that would destroy it.
Wanna see how absurd that statement is in other context?
If no vouchers means the end of private religious education, I would say that religious education wasnt worth protecting in the first place.
If gay marriage destroys straight marriage, I would say straight marriage wasnt worth protecting in the first place.
If providing a constitutionally mandated suitable education for kansas students destroys the taxpayers of kansas, I would say the taxpayers werent worth protecting in the first place.
Keep ‘em coming KCL. You are the best example for no vouchers on this blog. Other than ruby of course.
Hmmm, I havent heard KCL list ANY private secular schools in Wichita. Not being from there, could someone else list them? Or provide a link so we can see the list?
Or do they just not exist?
KCL
I’ll take competition any day if the rules are same. The governmental rules are what makes schools struggle. In an effort to educate every child the govt has constrained schools to the point that they struglle to educate.
It is next to impossible to remove a disruptive student especially if that student is spec. ed. Nor are we allowed to remove kids simply because they don’t want to work or even come to school, something private schools can do.
I agree the education system needs to evolve and change, unfortunately vouchers is not how. I would be for tieing a childs ability to comew to school and perform to their ability to get fedral help, or putting drop outs into some form of military or peace corp service if they don’t want to go to school. I think we need to bring tech ed back to schools as every kid is not college bound, material or interested.
Kids aren’t widgets, and to believe that by giving away funding from public schools kids will perform better is simply a bad idea. Kids get out of it what they put into it simple as that. The ideallic view that all kids want to learn at the same time and even way is wrong. In order to help all the kids in the present system we need more teachers so we can make more connections, you just don’t open up their heads and pour the info in. They hav eto want to be engaged and have a connection to school to learn.
Yeah hawkeye. I guess giving the schools LESS money is a BETTER way to solve the problem?
Surely a smart guy like KCL can come up with some ideas for improving education that DONT involve vouchers.
If he is really looking to improve public education.
Giving public education inadequate funding until it improves reminds me of the saying that “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Would you explain how vouchers would lead to defunding of public schools?
To my knowledge there are two private secular schools in Wichita, Wichita Collegiate School and Wichita Independent School, with annual costs ranging from $5,000 to something over $10,000. The fact that there are only two, what does that prove one way or the other, except that education — public or private — is expensive to provide?
I just don’t understand the analogies you make. The alleged potential of gay marriage to destroy straight marriage has relevance to school choice? How is one analogous to the other?
I think you misunderstand me, ksfarmgrrl. I voted against the marriage amendment last year because I believe that government shouldn’t have a role in dictating who we may or may not marry. People who love freedom and liberty could come to no other conclusion.
I am surprised that a person such as yourself who seems to promote liberty and freedom of choice would be so opposed to choice in education.
I have a simple way to make the current dollars stretch a lot further than they do now.
Have school be for school only. No athletics or extracurricular activities. You would still have PE, music, art and such, except they would only be classes just like a core academic class.
No music contests or trips or art festivals under the school’s flag.
No expenditure for expensive athletic facilities or fields would be necessary, a basic gym with no bleachers would suffice for PE and a playground field would be good enough for some outdoor activities. No expediture for a bunch of uniforms for teams, no travel costs, no referee costs, no utility costs for athletic facilities.
Activities could be offered by outside organizations. School would end early enough in the day for kids to do this if they so choose.
Isn’t this how western European high schools operate? School for school and clubs for athletics and activities?
It will never happen here.
Hawkeye, you say you’ll take competition if the rules are the same, and then you tell us how the rules make schools difficult to run. How does this make sense, to make private schools as bad as public schools?
The rest of your post seems to promote greater flexibility and choice in education. Isn’t that what I promote? It’s just that I want to let individuals choose, rather than government making those choices for us.
If it was real choice, IN the public sector it would be different. It isnt. It is pure taliban demanding that they be allowed to take over public education, or they will pick up their toys and their tax dollars and go home.
Taking the share of tax dollars that go to educate a particular student, and then removing those dollars from public education and spending them instead on religious schools will result in reduced funding for public education.
How could vouchers result in anything else? Unless the state tax payers will pay for the voucher going to religion AND make up the difference in public school funding. Is that what you want?
I thought “choice” would be the stick used to reduce funding and FORCE schools to improve or be closed. Hence the “beatings continue until morale improves” analogy.
Isnt that what you said here?
“Accountability means that schools that fail to do a good job, as judged by parents (and maybe the children too) will either change or close. Public schools do not have such a powerful motivating factor.”
KCL, my point way back at the beginning is that I do NOT believe that expanding school choice will solve the problems in the long run. It may effect some short term gains, but its the equivalent of putting a band aid on a major bleeder.
The key is how do we get the vast majority of our young people to WANT to learn, to be engaged in their education, to truly seek to better themselves.
The current high-stakes standardized testing paranoia makes schools unwilling to be daring and actually try some new approaches to instruction, because they can’t risk trying a concept that might fail. So, we stick to the old tried and true industrial era methods so we can regurgitate facts for the almighty test. And part of the reason politicians and the public glom onto test numbers is because they are EASY. Actually assessing if individual improvement is being made is more tricky and nuanced.
For example, lets say you see someone who weighs about 400 pounds, and your first reaction is “what a fat so-and-so”. But what if that person used to weigh 1200 pounds? They are still considered morbidly obese based on the “standards” but have made incredible personal progress.
In addition to Independent and Collegiate, Northfield Academy would also be considered a “secular” private school. In the private school world, the term is “non-affiliated”.
“It’s just that I want to let individuals choose, rather than government making those choices for us.”
KCL, individuals CAN CHOOSE now. They can home school. They can send their kids to private schools NOW. (We already addressed the “poor poor folks meme)
They can also reform their local schools. Run for school board, run for other state and national office, go to meetings, volunteer in the schools, endow scholarships to teacher training groups, write letters to the editor, etc.
Those are the ways all taxpayers can reform the system. Again, I’d like choice on lots of things too, like my tax dollars not supporting the war in iraq. like whether my kids get subjected to military recruiters in public schools.
The only way to create choice on those matters is…. run for office, write letters to the editor, etc. All the things I listed above. No one suggests I can take my tax dollars and support a DIFFERENT and private military.
Why do I have a feeling that NO analogies are appropriate for you?
And about those “private secular schools” that parents can choose, you said: “The fact that there are only two, what does that prove one way or the other”.
uh, yes it does KCL. It proves that the religious schools are the ones who benefit from vouchers. If private secular schools were the preferred choice, there would be more of them now.
Let’s see….2 private secular schools, and how many religious schools exist? Who would benefit here? Still no cite about those private secular schools springing up AFTER vouchers are in place?
Your arguments that this is NOT a tax dollar subsidy for religious schools jsut doesnt wash KCL. The more you post, the more clear it becomes.
I’m sorry I can’t provide a citation proving how secular private schools would spring up if there were vouchers. How can we predict the future in that way? Do I ask you for some contrived proof of the ridiculous analogies and arguments you make? I’m not surprised when you choose to ignore them.
The fact is you prop up a failing system. You are so determined that a single dollar of yours might go to support something that you don’t personally believe in that you doom all children to failure. How selfish of you is that? I don’t think that I have ever claimed that parents of children in religious schools would not benefit from vouchers. They will. So will everyone else. Who is harmed by greater freedom and choice?
Poor people don’t have school choice. They can’t afford private school or even religious school tuition. They can’t move to new suburban school districts. Parents who themselves are not educated can’t homeschool. Yet you say these people have choice?
People have been doing they things you mention to improve public schools for a long time. Their record of progress and improvement is not good.
As far as the mathematics of school finance goes, when a student leaves a public school for any reason, whether it be to move out of state or to attend some other school in Kansas, that public school receives less funding, doesn’t it? Should we have laws prohibiting Kansas families from moving out of state so that Kansas schools don’t lose funding? Wait, that’s the type of absurd argument you would make. I must take a nap.
Heheh. Thanks once again for making my points for me.
“I’m sorry I can’t provide a citation proving how secular private schools would spring up if there were vouchers. How can we predict the future in that way?”
My point exactly KCL. You cant say that they will be created after vouchers, even though you did here:
“But wouldn’t that change if parents were armed with voucher money? I am sure that we would be amazed at the variety of private schools that would quickly open.”
and here:
“Many other families would choose secular private schools.”
They cant choose them if they dont exist, or they wont spring up after vouchers are in play. They dont constitute real choice, as you mentioned here:
“You’re right, there aren’t many secular private schools in Wichita. They’re expensive, and few can afford them.”
You say over and over again that poor people have no choice in the current system. But they dont in your system either, as you mentioned here:
“It’s true that vouchers might not pay for all the cost of a private school. Even if vouchers don’t pay for the entire cost of a school that parents want to send their children to, what’s wrong with parents having a little at stake, a little skin in the game?”
As I mentioned KCL, your plan doesnt work either for the “poor poor people” whose “skin” is already in the game of rent, food, healthcare, taxes, etc. Show me how vouchers help the poor have choice if they cant afford the tuition difference.
“I don’t think that I have ever claimed that parents of children in religious schools would not benefit from vouchers. They will. So will everyone else”
You have not proven that ANYONE will benefit from this “choice” other than the religious schools.
Wanna PROVE the “so will everyone else” part? I dont think asking for proof is that outrageous. You make wild claims, be prepared to back them up. How will everyone else benefit?
HOW WILL VOUCHERS IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION?
KCL, the following is SO STUPID as to be sad:
“when a student leaves a public school for any reason, whether it be to move out of state or to attend some other school in Kansas, that public school receives less funding, doesn’t it? Should we have laws prohibiting Kansas families from moving out of state so that Kansas schools don’t lose funding?”
Stupid KCL. The difference is that they didnt take my tax dollars with them when they moved out of state. We didnt give them a VOUCHER before they went out of state.
I see why analogies confuse you. That is obvious here. The above is indeed the kind of absurd argument YOU made.
Your kids are free to leave the public education system NOW. They just cant take my tax dollars with them.
And lastly, this? “Who is harmed by greater freedom and choice?”
Shouldnt you have said “freedom of choice for those who can afford private religious school tuition over and above what the vouchers cover”?
Vouchers MIGHT result in greater freedom and choice for those who can afford the difference. The choices will largely be between religious schools and public schools since you admit there are not enough secular private schools to accomodate demand and there is no guarentee such schools will be created after vouchers.
The people harmed? The entire state when students receive religion in lieu of education. When those tax dollars leave public education, the taxpayers will have to replace them. Adding to the tax burden, not subtracting.
You contradict your own arguments KCL. You prove nothing except that you have opinions on the subject. And when those opinions are shown to be false, and even you admit it, you just recycle them again.
You are gonna have to have better talking points if you are gonna sell the voucher idea as anything BUT religion in education.
Vouchers can not help but reduce public school funding. Can you show how vouchers will NOT reduce school funding?
Funny how proof just eludes you. You wanna spout the talking points as facts. Be prepared to substantiate those facts, otherwise, acknowledge this is all conjecture held together with your opinion.
What do you want to see in terms of backup for my posts?
So because I can’t precisely predict the future, we shouldn’t try it? If I were to ask you for proof of your claims, I might ask how can one prove that the extra spending in Kansas schools will improve them?
Yes, there is no guarantee that private secular schools would be created after vouchers. If none were created because parents didn’t want them, that would be fine with me. Or if some were created and it turned out they were worse than the public schools and no one chose them, that would be fine with me, too. Because that would mean that parents have made a choice that they like the public schools better than whatever other options become available. That’s what I want. A real choice for people. You deny them that choice simply because some may make choices you don’t agree with.
If a private school that a parent wants to send their children to costs X, and the voucher amount is Y, then the parent has to pay only X – Y. As long as Y is greater than zero, doesn’t that make the school more attainable? Doesn’t that increase the choice they have?
Did I claim that vouchers will not reduce public school funding? To the extent that people choose something other than the public schools, they will receive less funding. I don’t think I ever claimed otherwise.
It’s funny about what you called so stupid to be sad. That was me making the type of absurd argument you have been making. I said so, but you didn’t include that in your quotation. I think that’s dishonest.
Meme: is that anything like repeating “taliban” over and over and insisting that it’s only religious people in favor of vouchers?
You are right in one thing, ksfarmgrrl. We can’t prove what would happen if there were widespread school choice in Kansas. I have told you what I believe would happen, and you take that to be proof of what would happen, and because there is no such proof possible, you use that as evidence that no good could happen.
We would be taking a risk. In places where there has been school choice, some of the newly-opened private schools don’t do well and have to close. That’s markets and choice at work.
Prove to us, if you want to, how this increased spending will improve the education of children in Kansas. Give us something to hope for other than the continued downward spiral of achievement as costs go up and up.
I am still surprised that a person such as yourself who seems to promote liberty and freedom of choice would be so opposed to choice in education. Even if people choose something you’re not in favor of, aren’t you willing to let them make that choice?
KCL,
i am for getting rid of those rules and making students, parents and schools as a whole accountable. The point is its not competition if all do nopt play by the same basic rules. It becomes a fixed game. Unfunded mandates and well intentioned but poorly thouhgt out laws hamper the educational system now. If you don’t change the rules then public schools need more money to deal with all the issues they have to deal with by law. Or change the laws and lets educate those that want it and scores etc. will go up. Its a simple fact that a percentage of kids don’t want to be in school and have no use for school at the time they are mandated to go. Yet schools are held acctountable for these non achievers. I want them all to learn, but some simply won’t even when given multiple chances. We need to change our paradigm of thinking true, but vouchers isn’t the change needed.
Jeff,
I’m all for removing extracirriculars ( i also coach ) but the fact is that athletics in 259 are one half of one perecent of the budget. You are talking miniscule dollars even if we did not build anymore facilities and some of these sports actually generate revenue and pay for themselves. Over 80 percent of the budget goes to teacher and staff salaries and benefits. Not much extrar money
Understand we need to be able to serve everybody and that is not being allowed because we refuse to give parents and students the right to fail. They can fail but then schools are criticized for them not passing. its a fixed game
KSFG,
You never cease to amaze me. You talk about hatred and yet you seem to have so much hatred for religion. Why? You get so defensive when anyone has a different view than you on public schools. Have you ever looked at their graduation rates? They are pathetic. But you seem fine with that. Why? Is failing ok with you? I would think that you would be outraged by this. Instead you have nothing but praise and glory for the public schools.
At least be willing to have an honest debate instead of just your usual hissing.
I actually should have clarified that I was being a bit toungue in cheek, hawkeye, as I also do extracurriculars and am fully aware that they are pretty small change in the grand scheme.
If such a notion were even presented in the legislature, it would really raise a ruckus. Imagine a state legislator rolling out a bill that calls for the elimination of football and basketball in all public schools! Boy that would get people talking… off with his head!
Ruby, according to the latest figures from the Kansas State Dept. of Education, students pretty much across the board are improving. Could the numbers go higher? Of course. As for graduation rates, they went up, though on the surface it doesn’t appear that way. The 2003 numbers, when calculated the same way that the 2004 numbers are done, show that the graduation rate in Kansas went up from 86.1 in 2003 to 87.7 in 2004. Standarized test scores are trending up pretty much across the board. So is the improvement just not happening fast enough for you, or do you normally call improvement “failing”?
Private schools aren’t subject to the same regulations and accredation standards as public schools. More of that inconvenient “level playing field” stuff. Why should private schools escape the more egregious rules that public schools have to put up with?
And how can you classify a school as “private” if they’re getting my tax dollars?
Ruby, you are making some real leaps here.
Show me on this thread where I heaped praise and glory on public schools. Show me on this thread where I have said I am fine with their performance. Show me where I said I think failing is fine.
An honest debate? When you say things like that? I’m the one who’s hissing?
Show me my hatred of religion on this thread. Why is it that when I want the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state honored, I am hating religion?
In fact, it is YOU who is defensive every time religion is mentioned. You are just making it clear, with every education post, that this IS indeed about using tax dollars for religious education.
Isnt using tax dollars for religious education something that has consistantly, over 230 years, been held to be unconstitutional.
I could just as easily ask why do you hate the constitution? Why do you hate public education?
Why do you want to conduct a jihad on the public schools?
You all are just ignoring the posts that point out how cherry picking, and leaving public schools the hardest cases to educate, does not constitute a fair “choice”. Both Jeff and I have said a level playing field MIGHT be worth talking about.
But taking the best students, and the tax dollars that support them, and playing by different rules than the public schools and calling it choice and something that is good for POOR people?
Oh yea, that is a fair deal. Fair for NO ONE but the religious schools. And even KCL admits it wont lower our tax bills.
You and your buddy KCL have proven nothing here. No links, no evidence, and you contradict your own arguments and blow the smoke of false “choice” up our noses.
And then you want ME to prove that more money will equal higher graduation rates? I am damn tired of doing research for people who post no links and do none of their own. Ruby, I have yet to see you post one link ANYWHERE on this blog.
I do know one thing for sure even without doing research.
Giving public schools LESS money and cherry picking the top students out of the system will NOT improve education in Kansas.
Thanks for posting some research Jeff. You will soon find these guys are sinkholes for research.
So Ruby, where are your numbers for your claims? KCL, show us where vouchers have been good for secular education.
KCL
“Meme: is that anything like repeating “taliban” over and over and insisting that it’s only religious people in favor of vouchers?”
If you dont know what meme means, I am not looking it up for you.
Yes, I am going to stand by my position that the only people in kansas advocating vouchers are the religious wingnuts and the anti-tax and tabor supporters. The both have a war on public education, but for different reasons.
Could you possibly post a quote, a link, or something from some SECULAR education person in kansas who thinks vouchers are a good idea? And one who isnt a tax wingnut?
That would sure help dispell the idea that voucher proponents in kansas are religious school advocates and tabor supporters.
ksfarmgrrl, you said you’d post some evidence for your claims, didn’t you?
I haven’t seen any research from you, despite your claims. Maybe I haven’t paid attention. Bit if you are willing to dismiss my opinions on your say-so, aren’t others entitled to dismiss yours?
Shouting in capital letters, by the way, doesn’t count as persuasive argument, much less evidence.
I wonder, XXX, about these “egregious rules” you mentioned. If they are that, why do we insist that public schools be subject to them?
You’re right, too, when you wonder what’s “private” about schools that accept “public” tax dollars. Some private schools probably won’t accept them if they come with restrictions. There is at least one college that doesn’t participate in federal loan programs because of the restrictions that follow.
I doubt anyone will find a quote from an “education person” in Kansas wanting anything other than increased spending on Kansas schools. The motivations of the education establishment are clear: more funding for education. That should surprise no one.
As far as Kansas student assessment goes, the National Assessment of Educational Progress test results don’t paint such a rosy picture. With the exception of fourth grade mathematics, the performance of Kansas students is unchanged or falling. Look it up on your own, if you want.
By the way, if Kansas schools are funded inadequately, they have been for some time. The present school finance case was filed some seven years ago; presumably the conditions that lead the plaintiffs to sue were present for some time before that. Only now is the government fixing this, and it appears they are not willing to do everything that the Kansas Supreme Court says is necessary. To me, this is a reason why we are unwise to rely on government for education.
The real numbers on student performance trends
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/2005/2005464.asp
And how about this: There is a proven correlation between increased education funding and improved academic performancehttp://www.investintexasschools.org/
Here is a GREAT link to how the right distorts public school performance. Lots of links inside too:
http://www.progressivestates.org/content/152/03202006-stateside-dispatch-the-rightwings-war-on-public-schools
And a great link explaining suitable funding
http://www.cheney268.com/BOE/SuitableFunding.htm
And a link addressing the question “do private schools force public schools to compete”.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224(199602)61%3A1%3C29%3ADPSFPS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T
want more research?
“National Assessment of Educational Progress”
KCL, that is debunked in one of my links if you care to check it out.
I didnt ask for a quote from an education person who didnt want more funding. I thought you implied vouchers wouldnt reduce funding?
I asked for a quote from a secular education person who thought vouchers were a good idea.
It was the “good idea” part I was after. But still, if the only people supporting vouchers are religious schools and their patrons, and the tabor guys and their patrons…
I think that makes this war on public education clear.
“There is at least one college that doesn’t participate in federal loan programs because of the restrictions that follow.”
Isnt that jerry falwell’s univerity? Or is it bob jones university?
Both bastions of secular education. NOT
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
Public schools are valuable because they have ALMOST reached the point of preparing kids to be part of a diverse society. Privitization and vouchers can only reverse that long fought for and worthy accomplishment.
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
Public schools are valuable because they have ALMOST reached the point of preparing kids to be part of a diverse society. Privitization and vouchers can only reverse that long fought for and worthy accomplishment.
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
Public schools are valuable because they have ALMOST reached the point of preparing kids to be part of a diverse society. Privitization and vouchers can only reverse that long fought for and worthy accomplishment.
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
Public schools are valuable because they have ALMOST reached the point of preparing kids to be part of a diverse society. Privitization and vouchers can only reverse that long fought for and worthy accomplishment.
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
Public schools are valuable because they have ALMOST reached the point of preparing kids to be part of a diverse society. Privitization and vouchers can only reverse that long fought for and worthy accomplishment.
I can’t post links either KFG.
KCL I’ve seen enough of your posts elsewhere to speculate that your REAL aim would be to take the government competely out of education. If I’m wrong tell me so. If not why the coy dancing? If you want public education dead say it.
A good book on the subject of vouchers and prvatizing education is Molly Ivins’ “Shrub” (Yeah I know I know she’s no fan of bush)
But the book does go in depth into the disastrous failure and fraud Texas education suffered with privitization.
KFG is correct. The voucher crowd is almost entirely composed of the same folks as the fundamentalist crowd. But not every voucher advocate is a “fundie”. Some voucher advocates just share the same politics as the “fundies”. I think someone like KCL may be a good example here. He just wants to kill public education not “necessarily “sanctify” it. What I post next won’t matter much to him. But if there are any fundies reading…….
One thing that is good about public education is that there are at least some standards of accreditation.Consider what happens if you privatize education with vouchers to those standards. A school can be anything it wants to be. That would include folks of the any faith or no faith opening schools.Fine so far? It would seem so.
Now stop for a moment. On another thread the subject is how our high school experiences color us for the rest of our lives.That’s worth thinking about here. What happens to society at large if the atheists have a school and the Muslims have a school and la Raza has a school and the Ku Klux Klan has a school and (insert name of any entity that can win accreditation here) has a school? Wouldn’t you end up with a society some better educated some less so but ALL with their only experience in socialization with folks who think just like them? How do these disparately socialized/indoctrinated folks interact with one another?
JR,Some of what you write, I agree with and some I don’t.
For instance, not all people who believe in the voucher system have politics in mind. Nor do all have any religious agenda in mind. I went to Catholic school for 12 years. They did an excellent job in preparing me for the outside world. While I was going to school, I knew it was a Catholic school, and there were certain rules to follow that wern’t a part of public schools, but my contact with kids my age going to any number of public and private schools gave me anything I needed.
If the public schools are failing to teach our kids, and the government won’t do anything about it, what, exactly, should the parents of those kids supposed to do? For example, Kansas is planning on teaching ID in public schools. Not a viable science program by any definition. There are private schools, including religious, that will NOT teach ID, but evolution, as it should.
The Catholic schools I went to did not teach ID. They taught evolution. And not all the kids at school were Catholic. Their parents knew their kids would get the best education at the schools. I do know that the schools I went to weighed more towards a college enterance than did the public schools.
I think there is some really bad info concerning private schools out there. Sure there are bad private schools. There are bad public schools as well. If there is to be no voucher program, then government needs to step up to the plate and make damn sure the public schools can teach our kids what they need to survive.
Obviously a major malfunction on my part.
Sorry ’bout dat!
That post wasn’t even that good!
I read the page from NCES that you cited, and to me, it paints a mixed picture. I see this pattern: “increased” … “No measurable changes” … “scored higher” … “No measurable differences” … “still higher.” A mixed bag, wouldn’t you say? And some things are down. These are national statistics. I mentioned statistics for Kansas earlier, and they are definitely not as good as the national picture.
Now at the Coalition to Invest in Texas Schools site, what is it I am supposed to see? All I see is a list of the members of this group, and if I may say so, this membership list reads like a roll call of education bureaucrats. If you are going to discount information based on the predilections of its source, this source is a candidate for that.
The Rightwing War on Public Schools has some good points. It talks about the disparities in funding between poor school districts and wealthy school districts. That parallels a point that I have been stressing: that well-to-do families already have a form of school choice, as they can move to those wealthy school districts. Poor families don’t have that choice, or they would move, and there would be no more problem.
I have never advocated laws like the “65% solution.” I would rather let school administrators who are accountable to parents – not bureaucrats — decide what form of school organization and resource allocation works best.
The Cheney 268 page highlights some statistics about how Kansas education is of high quality. If so, why are they afraid of competition? Their funding data selectively omits some important sources of funding in order to present a bleak situation. It is true that “state aid” for education sometimes hasn’t kept up with the pace of inflation. But that’s only a little more than half of the total spending on education in Kansas. Total spending after inflation, both in total and per student, has increased. Education spending in Kansas can be found at http://www.ksde.org/leaf/data_warehouse/total_expenditures/d0Stateexp.pdf. I though this was cute: “This does not come cheep.” Not that that means much one way or another.
The college that doesn’t accept federal funds is Grove City College, and yes, I believe it is a Christian institution.
Here’s what Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby said about vouchers in an interview at http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10212:
“From 1998-1999 onwards, the schools that faced the most competition from the vouchers improved student achievement radically–by about 0.6 of a standard deviation each year. That is an enormous, almost unheard-of, improvement. Keep in mind the schools in question had had a long history of low achievement. Yet they were able to get their act together quickly. The most threatened schools improved the most, not only compared to other schools in Milwaukee but also compared to other schools in the state of Wisconsin that served poor, urban students.
Milwaukee shows what public school administrators can tell you: Schools can improve if they are under serious competition.”
I don’t know anything about Dr. Hoxby’s religious feelings. Or Milton Friedman’s either, and he has long advocated freedom of choice through vouchers.
For those who sense that I would like to see public schools disappear, that’s quite perceptive of you. Does that mean I don’t value education? On the contrary. If you knew how much I spent on my own education, you wouldn’t think that. Education is what makes us whole as a person. It’s what lets us appreciate art, music, and literature. It’s what allows us to increase our standard of living as we learn to do more with less effort. That’s why education is too important to leave to the government.
Now go find something to selectively quote so you can call me stupid. How desperate is that?
When studying the history of world cultures, it is only fitting to study their religious beliefs academically so that students will understand the impact of a culture’s religion on that culture’s past and present way of life. Now, it would be wrong for public schools to indoctrinate students as teaching particular religious beliefs as true, but there is nothing wrong with teaching religion within a cultural context objectively.
KCL
Had a feeling the truth would out.
You really might have saved yourself several long and I might say well worded posts to get to your real point.A few sentences from your last truly say it all.
“For those who sense that I would like to see public education disappear, that is very perceptive of you.”
So why not admit that in the first place? It’s intellectually dishonest not to. Your interest is the elimination of public education. So any “improvements” you suggest must immediately be seen with a skeptical eye. They would seem to be geared less to any real improvement and more to advancing your agenda. So as you are for vouchers and private schools, your advocacy is not the betterment of public schools but the elimination of them. Pretty much as I expected.
“Does that mean I don’t value education? On the contrary. If you knew how much I spent on my own education, you wouldn’t think that.”
I’m glad you could do that for yourself KCL. How about folks who can’t spend a lot on their education? What about them? If I were to take your other posts on other threads as guidance, I’d speculate your answer would be, “I’m sorry, that’s not really my problem.”
But I won’t presume to speak for you.
Well, JR, the folks who can’t spend a lot on their education need to get the very best value for what they can afford to spend. Our public schools aren’t doing a very good job delivering that value.
The goal of eliminating government involvement in education seems so far away and so unlikely that school choice through vouchers seems like a reasonable compromise. I don’t think I was being dishonest. You were able to figure it out, weren’t you? I suspect that those who are opposed to school choice aren’t being truthful about their real motives.
And haven’t I said that my main goal is empowerment through choice, and if it turns out that parents, once they have meaningful choice, still prefer the current public school system, that would be fine with me? Because I believe in liberty and freedom, and that means letting people choose for themselves. Even if they choose something that I might not choose for myself, it is still for them to choose. We don’t have that in education today.
For those satisfied with the pesent state of schools, here’s something I wrote in a different forum:
A recent study by the American Institutes for Research (“AIR”) contains what should be very unsettling news. The study, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, surveyed the literacy skills of graduates of four-year colleges and two-year community and junior colleges. The ability of the students to analyze newspaper stories, comprehend documents and balance a checkbook was assessed. Over half the graduates of four-year colleges and three-quarters of the graduates of junior and community colleges could not be categorized as possessing these “proficient” skills. A link to the press release announcing the study is at http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200601pew.htm. Here are a few of the findings:
“More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
Students in 2- and 4-year colleges have the greatest difficulty with quantitative literacy: approximately 30 percent of students in 2-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in 4-year institutions have only Basic quantitative literacy. Basic skills are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.
Students about to graduate from college have higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education; for quantitative literacy, differences between current and former college graduates are not significant.
There are no significant differences in the literacy of students graduating from public and private institutions. Additionally, in assessing literacy levels, there are no differences between part-time and full-time students. No overall relationship exists between literacy and the length of time it takes to earn a degree, or between literacy and an academic major.”
What does this tell us about the state of our schools, especially public schools and universities? When the majority of college graduates — presumably having learned at least something more than what they knew when they graduated from high school — aren’t considered proficient at basic intellectual tasks, how can we have confidence in the quality of our schools? For those who believe our schools are performing well, I would ask what they make of these findings.
More evidence on the quality of schools from an article published by the Free Congress Foundation:
“… a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (“AACU”) which reported a disparity between what students believed they were learning in college and national studies that measure their writing, mathematical and critical-thinking skills. An AACU press release issued in conjunction with the report states, “While 77 percent of students report significant improvements in their writing skills in college, standardized tests show that only 11 percent of seniors scored at a ‘proficient’ level in writing. Standardized tests results indicate that only 6 percent of seniors graduate at the ‘proficient’ level in critical thinking skills, while 87 percent of students believe that college contributed a great deal to improving their skills in this area.”
A significant point of the AIR study is that “rapid changes in technology make it necessary for adults of all ages to use written information in new and more complex ways.” Higher levels of literacy are needed to enable workers to adjust to increased demands. “
KCL this tired old canard about vouchers is going no where. It was a high school debate topic in 1973 for crying out loud, and it is still walking dead like a zombie.
We are no closer to vouchers now than we were then. Why? Because they are just a transparantly bad idea, as the posts here have shown.
Your cites above could be taken apart, like I guess an association of colleges would have NOTHING to gain by saying students arrived dumb and left smart. But why bother.
The truth about vouchers is just as I said. A war on public education (as you have shown) an effort by the taliban to get their kid’s religious studies paid for by the state, (as ruby has shown) and a way for the anti-government TABOR crowd (as their letters to the editor have shown) to stop paying taxes for ANYTHING.
The longer I post here, the less I feel compelled to run down every point on every thread, long after the points have been made. Feel free to post more of your objective research. I still havent seen ruby post any facts.
Like I have done with blowjob and others, I think I will just let my posts stand. The people who read them get my points, the people who read them get YOUR points.
They can see the truth, in the research and the posts, for themselves. If not, they can pour themselves another big glass of kookaide.
OK, I cant resist one more. Your own post tells the truth.
“There are no significant differences in the literacy of students graduating from public and private institutions.”
Is this about K-12 or about colleges? If K-12, (the subject here) I rest my case. If it is about colleges, why are you posting it? To confuse the readers?
Why bother with supporting private schools with tax dollars if they do not produce better results than “public” institutions?
Are you really wanting to improve the quality of public education?
Then once again, how about some suggestions to improve education without vouchers. If you cant find any that dont include vouchers, I think what you want is not improvement. You want vouchers, no matter what.
The technical term for that is “one trick pony”.
As I’ve said repeatedly, due to current political climates, I fully expect to see wider school choice, quite possibly even under the voucher system, in Kansas.
And we will find that it is NOT a magic bullet solution. School choice/free market will not solve the real problem – we have become an educationally/intellectually lazy country. Visit a high school or college class and see how many/few kids are really engaged in the classroom. Now yes, a good teacher helps in engaging the class, but in our current “teach to the test” climate creating lessons that are really enjoyable is a challenge, because creative, innovative lessons are RISKY. They might not work as well as planned, and time is so precious in the zeal to pound facts into their heads for test.
By the way, its entirely possible we will improve greatly in the US as test takers, but when it comes to higher level thinking where you have to synthesize and apply complex thoughts and concepts, we will be woefully behind the world. We’ll moan about where our creativity and innovative spirit went – it went down the toilet when we decided standardized tests were the be all, end all measure of success.
Out.
Wow, if anyone thinks this “nuss fuss” is about ANYTHING other than the governor’s race, check out these comments from a Robin Jennison mass email.
You know robin, he’s the guy running against big jim barnett, the guy who is having the biggest fit.
Heheh. Alllllll about the governor’s race and they get a twofer by trashing the courts. Just like rove probably suggested.
Robin sez:
“What about the court’s encroachment on a coequal branch of government, the legislature? This situation exists because of one simple fact, the Governor did not lead.
When the legislature passed a bill she did not like, instead of using her veto power, the Governor sent the bill straight to the Supreme Court, begging their involvement. Kansas elects 165 legislators to represent their districts, districts as diverse as the state itself. Kansas elects one person, the Governor, to represent the state as a whole. On difficultissues, like school finance, it takes someone with the authority and power of the governor to focus the attention on the state as a whole. Governor Sebelius continues to neglect that responsibility.
(snip)
For too long Governor Sebelius has been getting a free pass for asituation that is ultimately her fault. The Legislature is working very hard under unfair circumstances. We need a governor who will stand up anddemand that the Legislature be treated as a co-equal branch of government, not one that is inferior to the Supreme Court.”
Um.. robin neglects to mention that it is the LEGISLATURE’s constitutional responsibility to fund education, not the governor’s job.
But nice try anyway.
Seems that the investigative committee on the nuss fuss is also being stacked with republicans, including a chairperson who is himself likely to be a witness.
From Harris News:
Six House Democrats, including Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, called Wednesday for House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, to remove Rep. Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson attorney, as chairman of a special investigative committee.
Mays created the panel to probe whether a discussion over lunch between Nuss and two Republican senators provided inside information that’s tainted legislative discussions on school finance. Lawmakers remain under a court order to increase school funding.
The inquiry would begin after the Legislature adjourns.
In a letter, Democrats said that because O’Neal had some involvement in the chain of events being investigated, it could jeopardize the committee’s ability to take an “impartial and extensive look” into the issue.
But O’Neal, who continues to have Mays’ backing, said he planned to remain the committee’s chairman.
“It’s kind of silly,” he said of the Democrats’ complaint. “I don’t get
what their beef is.”
After being named to lead the panel Monday, O’Neal disclosed to reporters that he had known for weeks about Senate President Steve Morris’ conversation with someone from the court. O’Neal had advised Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, who lodged a complaint with the attorney general about such backdoor contacts with the court.
Pauls said she was concerned that O’Neal’s involvement would make him a witness in the committee’s investigation.
“That would make it difficult to chair the committee,” Pauls said.
A number of senators, mostly Republicans, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could be called to testify before the panel on what they knew about contact between the court and legislators.
Nuss removed himself from working on the school finance lawsuit against the state after acknowledging he had discussed school funding matters with Morris, R-Hugoton, and Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, during a March 1 lunch.
Barnett heard of the lunch from Morris March 31, although the president said he didn’t name Nuss, but simply said it was a court employee. On O’Neal’s advice, Barnett pulled other senators into meetings with Morris to confirm the story of contact with someone linked to the court.
The letter Democrats wrote Wednesday also questioned whether O’Neal should have reported allegations of inappropriate court contact to the state’s Commission on Judicial Qualifications, which evaluates potential judicial ethics violations.
O’Neal said earlier this week that he didn’t have enough information to do so.
Some Democrats also have expressed concern that O’Neal is harshly critical of recent court decisions, including the high court’s school finance ruling last year.
Although Mays declined to remove O’Neal, House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney, D-Greensburg, said Mays offered to appoint a Democrat as the panel’s deputy leader to appease critics.
The nine-member committee will include six Republicans and three Democrats. Panelists haven’t been named.
McKinney said he appreciated the offer from Mays.
“It’s a positive step,” McKinney said.
O’Neal did relinquish his position as a negotiator on a conference committee that began negotiations on a school finance package with the Senate Wednesday.
He said he left the panel because “his hands are full right now.”
Oh yeah, all about politics, not about education or the best interest of kansas.
Taliban. That’s cute. I suppose if you keep repeating that often enough, you might get people to believe it. It might even become an idea that propagates from person to person. Parasitic, even. Not that I think it’s a meme or anything like that.
Kookaide. Even cuter.
By the way, isn’t it mean to selectively misquote me just so you can have the pleasure of calling me stupid? If you think I’m stupid, just say so. It doesn’t hurt my feelings more than a little bit.
I say it hurts my feelings a little bit, ksfarmgrrl, because I had hoped that you were someone who values and appreciates freedom and liberty. I am disappointed that you don’t believe in that when it comes to schools.
The association of colleges article said that the students thought they were doing well and learning, when according to the tests, they weren’t. What do colleges have to gain by revealing this?
Public schools are failing us. The things often mentioned to improve schools — spend more money, run for school board, write letters to the editor, hire a better superintendent, volunteer — all that is within the context of the present system. Some of those things might work. We should hope, for the sake of children, that they do work and work well, because the present system is sinking fast.
I believe, however, that these reforms will not work well enough to change the course of public schools. Why? These types of reforms are continually being proposed and some are implemented, but we find ourselves falling behind other nations. The present system just has too much inertia behind it. The education bureaucracy is too entrenched to give up anything without a fight, and they fight — in the arena of politics, I might add — very effectively.
The present system especially fails poor and minority families. I do not understand why those politicians and leaders who claim these as their constituency do not realize this. (I have a feeling they do because the evidence is undeniable, but their true goal is something else.) This should especially bother those who want greater equality in our country. Education, we are told, is the best way to increase one’s lot in life. It is the way out of poverty. Our present system, however, fails those who need it most. Poor people trapped in bad schools don’t have the same choices that wealthy or middle-class families do. If they want a good education and don’t want to submit to the “taliban” schools with their “indoctrination,” they don’t have much choice at all.
Instead, they have to submit to failing public schools and their own form of indoctrination, attendance at such being enforced by law.
How bad are schools today? According to the report “Reading Between The Lines” issued by ACT earlier this year, only “51% of ACT-tested high school graduates met ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark for Reading, demonstrating their readiness to handle the reading requirements for typical credit-bearing first-year college coursework.”
Furthermore, “More eighth- and tenth-graders are on track to being ready for college-level reading than are actually ready when they graduate from high school.” The report calls this “losing momentum.”
If that’s not bad enough, only 21% of African-American students are ready, and 33% of students from low-income families are ready. The trend as a whole and for most subgroups is down.
The poor schools harm not only college-bound students. They hamper all workers. As reported in the San Jose Mercury News in 2005, Toyota chose Canada over the U.S. for a new plant. Why? “Several U.S. states offered Toyota more than double the Canadian incentives, ProLiteracy Worldwide said. Yet Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, said Toyota hoped to avoid the expensive training faced by Nissan and Honda, which had to use pictorials when training workers to use high-tech equipment in their Alabama plants.”
How many letters have to be written, how many school board elections must we hold, how much money will we spend, and, most importantly, how many young minds will we waste before we try something that has been shown to work? If it should turn out not to work in Kansas, it will die on its own as people choose something else. That is, if we allow them to choose.
As reported in the Minneapolis Star Tribune earlier this year, “African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.”
Further on: “The city’s experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children’s education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.”
Vouchers systems are in place and successful. Some countries in Europe have the ‘money follows the student’ model. Look into education in Belgium if you want to research an implemented voucher system. We don’t have to discuss what ‘might’ happen.
As usual, voucher opponents are actually concerned about reversal of their political gains in the classroom. More concerned about what the legislature/judiciary/school board can force into a curriculum or empowerment of a very politically active union. After all, recruitment for your cause is so much easier when children are educated with that cause in mind. How many evolution/intelligent design debates do we have to go through before we realize the modern purpose of a government education?
“How many evolution/intelligent design debates do we have to go through before we realize the modern purpose of a government education?”
I dont know. How long WILL it take for voters in kansas to realize the taliban wants to indoctrinate their children? Seems that is the purpose of this war on public education.
Heheh. So how are all those arguments working for you all when the taliban contols the legislature, the state board of evangelicals, and most local elective offices?
Do you suppose, with all those right republican wingnuts in charge and all, that there is a REASON vouchers are not implemented?
Could it be that vouchers are a bad idea and voters generally know it is a taliban trick to control yet ANOTHER function of government?
And you want to hold school funding in kansas hostage while the taliban stomps its feet and holds its breath until we all bow down to their demands?
Yeah. I see how you have the best interests of education at heart.
KCL, go aheahd and wrap yourself in those words of freedom, liberty and choice. How is that working for you and yours? It is still plain as day that this is a christian taliban war on public education.
I support the constitution. I believe the LEGISLATURE, (and did I mention republicans control both houses?) has the constitutional duty to fund a suitable education for public school students.
I believe in the u.s. constitution and the separation of church and state. I believe it also grants us freedom FROM religious domination.
I also support strong public education so people who DONT want their kids educated by the evangelicals ALSO have the choice of good schools.
And we already proved up thread that vouchers offer no real help to poor families who cant pay the spread.
So knock yourself out here trying to couch this as a freedom and liberty issue. It is a taliban grab for more power, more control of our taxes, and eventually control of the children of kansas.
Why do you hate both the kansas constitution and the u.s. constitution? If you want them changed, change them. Otherwise, be a good american and support the constitution!!!
“the state board of evangelicals.” That’s cute. From time to time — out of morbid curiosity, I suppose — I listen to Rush Limbaugh, and he uses the cute turn of a phrase just like that all the time, passing it off as meaningful evidence and persuasive argument. Who knew you and he had so much in common?
I saw no proof that vouchers don’t help poor families who can’t afford the spread. Wouldn’t many families be able to afford the spread, assuming there is one? If the spread is smaller, might it motivate some families to do something in order to afford the spread? If you can convince us that there will be no more demand for private school educations that cost $4,000 (or less, if the state were so bold as to provide vouchers worth as much as it presently spends on students) than for ones that cost $8,000, you’ve discovered something about economics worthy of the Nobel prize.
Believe it or not, and I imagine you will have trouble believing this as you seem to have pigeonholed me into a category of your own making, I share your concern about the present direction of the state board of education. You are concerned, it seems, that a group whose beliefs you oppose are becoming more powerful and may impose their agenda on public schools. You mentioned “control over the children of Kansas.” That’s exactly the problem. Public schools, isolated from meaningful competition and backed by the force of the state, have too much control over children. And if people whose beliefs a person opposes are successful in gaining power and imposing their agenda, what then does one do? Changing things through the existing political process takes too long. Even if one is successful in changing the system to suit their beliefs, what then about those who don’t share these beliefs?
Political solutions produce winners and losers. The losers have to submit to the will of the winners. If one is on the winning side, that’s a pretty good place to be — as long as you think it’s acceptable and moral behavior to impose your will and your beliefs on others through the force of government. Most politicians on both left and right seem to think this is okay. I think that’s why they’re in politics.
It’s not so good to be on the losing team. Especially today, as politics is often bemoaned as being too partisan, with too much power over us, with winners quite intent on imposing their will on the losers.
Maybe, and I don’t know this one way or the other, that is why with the “right republican wingnuts in charge” we don’t have vouchers. Perhaps they want to impose their will on their subjects, just as the other side does when they’re in charge.
With solutions based on markets instead of government, people are able to choose what they want based on their own preferences, without coercion from others. No matter how unpopular a person’s preferences are, there will probably be something for them in the market. If you want a “taliban” education, you can have it. If not, you can choose something else. If the “taliban” is successful in imposing their will on our public schools, a lot of choice will have been eliminated, and we have less freedom and liberty as a result.
As I’ve said before, if it is true that Kansas schools are underfunded, they have been for seven or more years (based on Montoy vs. State, which is the law in Kansas), and the legislature is resisting the full remedy that the Kansas Supreme Court ordered. The Eagle editorializes over and over about the legislature “not doing its job” and “playing games on schools” (yesterday’s editorial). It now seems possible that a child who entered public school at the time the problems with funding were noticed will have graduated from high school (maybe even college, who knows) by the time things are “fixed,” and that assumes the state will apply the fix that’s been mandated, and that the fix works.
That’s the reality of government. All this is reason why we should reduce the control of government over schools.