Wichita education activist Cindy Duckett thinks social conservatives will retain their majority on the State Board of Education. “As we’ve seen before, I think conservative voters are motivated; moderates aren’t,” she told The Lawrence Journal-World. Why does she think that? “Where do conservatives gather? They gather in church,” she said. “They meet, they talk, they get motivated. Now, where do moderates meet? That’s just it. They don’t. They may go to church, but they’re not motivated by church.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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48 Comments
Tell Cindy we meet right here everday.
Had to run off her condescending ass because she wanted to scold us like misbehaving kids.
“Tell Cindy we meet right here everday.”
“We” might well meet here everyday, but you’d be hard pressed to call many of the writers here “moderates!!!”
What’s wrong GM, don’t you want to be known as moderate?
Moderates here? LOL
There may be one or two, but most of us here are as polarized as they come.
Okay, okay Nathan.So I’m moderately polarized.That’s all the concession I’ll make though.
Do NOT summon or invoke that name.
Like Tracy said, we had enough trouble getting rid of her last time!
She is a pedantic, self-righteous kook.
Oh come on JR.She really brought out the snarky in me.Does she look as snooty as she sounds?
I aint met her and that aint the half of it Tracy!
I think what is worrying JR is that there for a while he was her pet project. Am I remembering that right, JR?
Yup DD. I made myself her pet project by daring to poke holes in her enormous ego!
I’m even better at that now. LOTS BETTER.heh heh heh
DD, I had a few words with CKD right here also. She said I had a potty mouth and she would not tolerate that kind of language.
I thought she was the arrogant, but extremely amusing, diversion we’ve ever had here. But, I don’t want her back. Remember how long her posts were? That woman could take up some space.
Cindy is probably correct – but for a slightly different reason. Moderates tend to not vote in primaries – thus the far Right can get Republican nominations. Then the blue-dog Republicans tend to vote R regardless. For a Dem to overcome that the R must be really obviously horrible.
It is trash talking like in the initial post that WILL motivate moderates.
Hopefully, her pious attitude will backfire.
How many of even US have focused on Tuesday’s election?
You know what I’d like to see? Party affiliation posted on signs, in literature mailed out, and on websites. If you can’t post your party, I won’t bother voting for you, no matter which one you belong to.
I see you have some time to waste afterall RD…
In response to your post:
If you can’t take the little bit of time to figure out who is running and under what party then perhaps you shouldn’t vote.
Nathan is very wrong, RD, you need to vote. But if we lost his vote somewhere in transit, would that be terrible?
DD,
That seems to be the status quo for democrats when it comes to counting the military absentee ballots.
Nathan – I for one DO want your ballot counted – as well as my own.
Anyone holding moderate viewpoints on this blog are immediately excoriated, especially by those who identify themselves as liberal. “You must be a Rush Limbaugh fan”. There is no middle ground here.
So no, there aren’t many.
Anybody follow the link in the header? There is a blog there. LOL THEY don’t think much of Connie Morris!
When you get more in depth, the article the header mentions is a rather biased piece. Duckett is actually quoting about the moderates voting in the Republican primary. The winners there I HOPE are the nut jobs. Dems’l wipe the floor with ‘em!
I hate the belief that moderates don’t go to church (or synagogue, or whatever). My guess is the majority of church goers see themselves as moderates, not radicals.
But all religious radicals see themselves as church goers, That includes both Christians and Muslims.
They USED TO BE unmotivated.
Then they got Duckett-ed by the wack-os.
Now they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
I would call myself a moderate Republican, yes one of the problems within my party has been pointed out. Moderates in general do not think to vote in primaries, nor get wrapped up in the process to any great extent. That has allowed the extreme to take over because yes they tend to be more organized. Though moderate outnumber the extreme and need to take back the party and get real. This is all our country, not just those on the far left or right. One day is too long to allow the extreme to run this country.
This week I have seen some hopeful signs that the moderates on both sides are waking up. But I hope in Nov. I will owe an apology to the majority of Americans. I am still thinking that the majority are still asleep for the most part. Only to finally awake to find the country they went to sleep in is gone and resemble little the America we knew. Prove me wrong America! I await your answer?
Nathan, do you do the same? I can’t imagine you voting for anyone that’s not a republican.
We will see next week if the moderates are asleep.
If Canfield, Carter, and Morris win, they are asleep.
I’ll tell you right here. If Canfield wins the Republican nominee, I’m completely done with the Republican Party in Kansas. I mean done!
The Far Right are kind of like the Shiite sect in Iraq, if their religious leaders tell them to go to the polls, and how to vote, they’ll damn well do it or face damnation.
steve, you are just as bigoted and ignorant as you are accusing them of being.
Cindy Duckett favors school choice. That’s a pretty reasonable proposition. In fact it is gaining a lot of traction in growing numbers of states. Colin Powell supports vouchers. Is he a right-wing fundamentalist whacko? I don’t think so. Neither is voucher-proponent Andrew Young, Atlanta’s first black mayor who was a key player in turning that once-backward burg into a world-class city. Steve Jobs has called for vouchers. He’s a pretty smart guy, no?
As John Stossel’s new book discusses, Belgium pays for children’s education wherever their parents and they choose: public, religious private or secular private. Vouchers there cause the Belgian public schools to perform better, in order to attract students in a milieu of open competition.
The nice thing about competition is that if you’re a product seller, it motivates you to continuously improve your product–or else you lose your customers. This requires work. If you don’t have competition, and you get paid no matter what you do, there’s no incentive to do the work necessary to continuously improve your product.
From Pat Hayes @ Red State Rabble:
MotivatedAn article by Dave Ranney in the Lawrence Journal World makes the case that “Conservatives may be tough to shake off” in the upcoming school board election.
Why?
In Wichita, Cindy Duckett is campaigning for the five conservatives on the Aug. 1 ballot.
“I don’t think we’re going to lose any seats,” she said. “As we’ve seen before, I think conservative voters are motivated; moderates aren’t.”
And why is that?
“Where do conservatives gather?” Duckett said. “They gather in church. They meet, they talk, they get motivated. Now, where do moderates meet?”
She paused.
“That’s just it,” Duckett said. “They don’t. They may go to church, but they’re not motivated by church.”
Are moderates motivated enough to take this election? That remains to be seen.
The election is now less than a week away. If the radical right’s demonstrated advantage in fund raising for the board positions is reflected in a greater number of motivated voters showing up at the polls, we will have lost a great opportunity to Take Back Kansas.
It’s not too late to make a contribution.
Don’t stand on the sidelines wringing your hands. Follow one of the links in the sidebar under the “Donate” header to lend a hand. Janet Waugh particularly needs your help right now.
“If you don’t have competition, and you get paid no matter what you do, there’s no incentive to do the work necessary to continuously improve your product.”
And your field is what? How do you continuously improve what you do because of competition?
Competition has given us Wal-Mart, massive pollution and global warming, outsourcing, and negative campaigning (c.f. swiftboating Kerry).
Excuse me if I don’t join in your idolization of competition.
Exxon agrees with you.
PP,
I agree with you that competition can be damaging. But competition always involves rules, and the kinds of outcomes achieved are very dependent on the nature of the rules. Wal-Mart was a limited-size chain when states had rules to protect locally-owned retail businesses, i.e. “Fair Trade” laws that established standing retail prices on many goods. In 1965, if you wanted a pair of Levi jeans, the price was $5. A Mitchell 300 spinning real was $25. Zenith 23 inch color TV was $595 (for the least expensive cabinet choice).
Strict retail pricing incurred benefits. It supported higher producer-labor wages. It made retaillers differentiate themselves from one another in areas like store-owners knowing their product lines well, clerks typically being knowledgeable long-term employees, customers receiving personal attention, quality of after-purchase repairs, and giving little freebies away that didn’t violate the retail-price rules, like free fishing line for the reel, or a nice set of rabbit ears for the TV. A lot of retailers were also quite willing to special order products that they didn’t have in their showrooms.
But then the Supreme Court voided fair trade by ruling it a violation of the Commerce Clause, and a restraint of free trade. The Manufacturer’s Retail Price became the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. The dynamics of retailing were completely altered, leading to the invention of “big box” stores, limited-product-knowledge staff, reduced choice–what’s on the shelf is all that you can get–having to search for repair facilities in many instances. The allowance of unrestricted price reduction has generated offshore production to get unrestricted manufacturing-cost reduction.
But, in the old days, there was still competition. It was different. It enabled families across America to be business owners, rather than corporate employees.
Solutions to offshoring have been proposed, such as requiring all corporations that have their principal headquarters in America to be registered in America, not Bermuda, and requiring all their subsidiaries to be chartered in states here, and requiring all annual profits to be repatriated here and subject to U.S. taxes.This would incur competition, just a different kind than we now see.
We have passively allowed the importation of some 11-12 estimated million illegal immigrants, not all, but mostly from Latin America. This has created wage-depressing competition. Without this, we’d still have people competing for jobs, but at higher wage levels.
I believe that your concerns are the wealthy and powerful pushing the merely middle and working classes downward by setting a rule of: work more for less money, or we’ll find somebody else across the border, or overseas, who will; extracting and consuming natural resources rather than managing them sustainably; politics run by self-servers rather than servants of their fellow human beings.
These things being said, competition directed toward promoting human betterment is good. Education is a cornerstone of promoting human betterment. We need innovation in education. We need experiments because the future will be different from the present, and we need to enable today’s children to be productive in future lives.We need to develop many more kinds of education than we currently have.
We need to recruit and empower people to teach who come from different backgrounds. I’ve seen engineers teaching math and science classes in private schools. No teaching credential. But most of their AP physics, chemistry and calculus students get 5’s. They know how to construct lesson plans, compose their own exams, lecture, discuss and run labs. Now if you say to these people, “You don’t have an education degree, you’re not qualified to teach in OUR schools,” then perhaps YOUR schools need to learn to “think different”.
Why not have programs where talented musicians can spend their entire mornings making music? Where future farmers can spend entire mornings learning to produce high-value specialty crops, including horticulture. Where mechanically/technologically inclined teenagers can spend their mornings working with Habitat for Humanity building houses, crafting fine furniture, experimentally designing and building energy-efficient vehicles, robots and computer systems.
If you say, “These things would be impossible,” it would only mean they would be impossible for you to do. It doesn’t mean they are impossible for other people–if they are given the opportunities. Wichita has a large population of engineers and aerospace crafstmen. You don’t think that a lot of them could teach young people? Aviation is going to shrink here. It doesn’t mean that the talent base can’t employed productively for other purposes.
I was an anesthesiologist. Many people think that anesthesiologists “put people to sleep”. No we don’t. We put people into coma. That’s not hard. The trick is to bring them back with full restoration of their mental faculties.
I was one of the first people in the country, and possibly the first, to bring parents into operating rooms during their children’s anesthetic induction. (I was the first to allow mothers to hold masks delivering anesthetic gases and PERFORM inductions, not to be radically chic, but because children know and trust their mommies.) I did this for two reasons: 1. I had been terrorized as a 5 year old in the operating room, assailed by strangers in masks, and I believed that no child should ever have to experience that–certainly none in my care. 2. It was efficient. At Boston Children’s Hospital I was taught “preinduction” with parental attendance using rectally-administered Nembutol to induce sleep, at which point we carried or gurney-transported young children to the OR. But Nembutol administration greatly prolonged return to conscioussness for short operations, so intensive post-op care was required. It also took more time, up-front, than inducing general anesthesia from the fully-awake state, typically adding about 15 minutes. In private practice these matters were counterproductive.
So I proposed letting parents (usually moms, but sometimes both came) come in for anesthesia induction. I had no journal papers to support this. But I did point out that the hospital already let parents be with their kids in ER treatment bays, and fathers (and even friends) attend C-sections, which in my hospital were performed in the OR. Now if spouses and significant others could watch bloody surgery, why not bloodless anesthesia? I worked with some really smart, really progressive people, so a committee of them reviewed my proposal, and greenlighted a trial, which worked flawlessly, and then it was made a conventional practice.
I worked with two nurse anesthetists. One totally criticized my innovation, the other was neutral at the outset, in talking with surgeons who had to approve it. After it worked, the latter anesthetist adopted my practice. They didn’t work for me. We were in competition. That helped the anesthetists. For example, they didn’t know how to do epidural anesthesia. I could have said, “Sorry, I’m not teaching you, you can spend $5000 for a hands-on 5-day course in Mexico, and then apply for privileges here.” But that wasn’t my game. I taught them how to do them over a period of two months. I didn’t charge them anything. Maybe I should have. But it was wise. It assured the surgeons and staff that I was there to create better anesthesia services for our community, whether I was delivering them or somebody else was.
Those are very insightful posts, Hrtlndr. Thanks for that. I did not know about the fair trade laws getting overturned, but it does not surprise me in the least given that “equal time” laws were also thrown out by Reagan’s crew.
I would have to respectfully disagree that you were in competition with your medical colleagues, though.
When you teach them a new procedure for free, you co-operating, not competing.
Of course schools could do a lot of things better. I agree that co-operation could make them better. I’m still not convinced with that free-market competition could make them better.
You can have friendly competition. Look at Chamber of Commerce. Competitors get together.
Education choice invokes competition. But smart people will look at things that their competitors are doing better than they are, and learn. Belgian public schools are chosen by parents who have government vouchers that will pay for private education, but these parents don’t want private education, because they think the publics are equivalent or better for their own kids.
I just think we need a lot more educational variety. If Wichita could depend on aviation for the next 100 years to undergird the local economy, then educational homogeneity would work. But this community can only prosper if it develops diverse enterprises to bring outside-world-source dollars in. Their people are going to have to think differently from people in the past.
I majored in molecular biology and biochemistry in college at Berkeley. It shaped my thinking in peculiar ways. Could I set up a new school system? No. Could I set up much better math and science programs than we currently have? Working with other intensively scientifically-educated people, I think I could. The trick is that you need to give math-and-science-interested students A LOT MORE TIME studying math and science. And teachers who know the subjects. In science, for example, you can’t teach it well unless you have done research. Conducting experiments with hoped-for results that sometimes fulfill expectations, sometimes not. Then you have to figure out why the latter ones didn’t fulfill expectations. Were they incorrectly performed, or have you made a new discovery? If the latter, what are the potential ramifications?
State-licensed teachers are subjected to a regimen that shapes their thinking in peculiar ways. The reality is, the schools that teach tomorrow’s leaders are experimental. Like when Lakeside Academy made 16-year-old Bill Gates its computer science teacher. (Don’t even think about trying this in public, or most private schools.) I have a friend on the staff at WSU. She could teach music, writing or horticulture. What you really have to do is attract talent, and relax education degrees and state certification requirements. Measure teachers by their students’ success.
The reason for Cindy’s self-righteous, condescending attitude? SHE IS A “CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN REPUBLICAN.” She knows that no amount of reality, facts, or shame and ridicule brought on our fair state by the wingnuts on the state BOE will deter the other brainwashed GOP sheep from dutifully casting their ballots for whoever Jesus “endorses” (read: every far-right Republican in Kansas). These people would vote Republican even if Bush and the national Republican Party came out and admitted that they hate everyone who is not a multimillionaire, and that they are secretly homosexual pedophiles. “Well, they’re still better than the libruls!”
“Conservative” Republicans = ignorant sheeple.
Hmmm . . . I agree in principle but the problem is how do you determine who’s qualified and who’ll be successful without credentials?
I think there’s probably a lot of good doctors out there that didn’t pass Kansas state boards. Do you want to go to one?
I don’t.
And I don’t want my child taught by somebody who doesn’t have a teaching certificate either.
Yes they do have an advantage with the unity of their churches as a political tool. They can coordinate untold number of right-wing religious zombies to vote for those who appoint complete idiots to office, such as Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins. Then elect such dumb asses as Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who has wasted countless hours trying to arrest underage teens for having sex and lets not forget Todd Tiahrt, whos only skill as our representative in the US Congress is to get around campaign finance laws so he can fleece us till we bleed. These conservative voters have made fools of us, destroying our education system, and passing unnecessary laws to push their religion down our throats.
But there are plenty of people in Kansas who are sick of these people, whether they use their churches as a political tool or not.
This shows once again, why we should make every effort to confront and try to expose the mythical nature of far-right evangelicalism. It is backward superstition that is used to replace science in the schools and common sense in the legislature.
AMEN Otto!
I’ll tell you there are not a lot of good doctors out there who didn’t pass National Board of Medical Examiners I , II, and III (in 2nd-year of med school, 4th year, and during internship) if they attended med school in the U.S. outside of Texas, because you can’t get licensed without this. For Texans and foreign-MD recipients (including Americans who went to offshore schools) they take the post-med-school FLEX exam. (I don’t know if Texas devised the FLEX because too many of its med students and interns didn’t do well on the National Boards, or what.)
On American Board of Medical Specialties exams, which involve a written test taken at the end of residency, and an oral test after two years of practice, I’d want to see board certification, not because it is a guarantee of physician quality, but its absence suggests that a person has probably taken, but failed either the written or oral exam.
During the past 30 years, medicine has developed remarkably high levels of quality control, much of which can be attributed to lawyers who have filed malpractice suits, but more than this, they have readily found conscientious physicians who have been willing to testify that other physicians have made errors, ignored modern practice standards, failed to timely respond to nurses’ calls to address problems observed by nurses, et al. This constitutes external review and evaluation by ordinary public citizens (jurors), and a powerful force for beneficial change that reminds not-fully-conscientious doctors that the bottom line of their profession is serving their patients’ interests.
A major difference between medicine and K-12 education is diversity. Surgeons receive very different educations from internists. Then they collaboratively combine their knowledge bases. More Ph.D.’s are involved in biomedical research, in fields ranging from neurosciences to microbiology, than M.D.’s. In the development of diagnostic and therapeutic radiologic technologies, physicists have played key roles. As well as computer scientists, electrical and mechanical engineers. Drug development requires molecular and cell biologists, chemists and chemical engineers, and statisticians. It is important to note that these non-physicians are often leading medical research efforts, and then convincing physicians to get on board. Doctors used to have a “Not Invented Here,” ethos. If it wasn’t their idea, they weren’t interested. That’s dramatically changed. Forty years ago when basic scientists and engineers invented CAT scanning, and twenty-five years ago when they invented MRI, doctors didn’t say, “We’re not interested.” They said, “Wow! How can my community get one of these?” Same for genetically-engineered drugs. The ancient medical prejudice of exclusive expertise has long evaporated. We now have wide-multidisciplinary collaboration.
American medicine, like American higher education, is the best in the world. It is why foreign leaders and executives come here for medical care. It is why America hosts more international biomedical conferences than any other nation. It is why the best young scientific minds come here for graduate and postgraduate study, as well as research sabbaticals.
American K-12 education is not the best in the world, far from it. In internationally used math and science exams, American kids do well in elementary school. But their performance plummets in middle- and high-school exams. This is extremely problematic, because other nations recognize the connections between childhood math and science education, college and graduate math and science education, and ultimate useful applications of knowledge. We are starting to see not only talented young adults staying home, where their predecessors came to America to study, but even top-notch American scientists taking university positions overseas.
In many medical fields, it has been said that the halflife of useful knowledge is less than 10 years, which is to say half of what was considered appropriate medical care a decade ago or less has been replaced by new knowledge. Human lifespans are continually increasing, and more importantly, people are living longer active lives.So medicine is succeeding. And the truth is, most doctors today like change. They relish having the ability to offer their patients much better care than was possible a decade, two decades, three decades ago, due to scientific knowledge advancement.
In essence research generates tentative improvements that are rigorously tested through clinical trials. Improvements become new standards of care for non-research-performing medical care providers. But as this standardization occurs, new research is testing even newer improvements, and so continually evolving standards of care result. In essence, the standards themselves are becoming increasingly short-lived.
I think that secondary-school teacher training should require completion of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences bachelor’s degrees, with 3.5 GPAs for upper-division courses, then master’s degree work in subjects incorporating research projects, then M.A.T.’s. That would be 7 years of postsecondary training. That may sound like a lot of educational effort, but 50 years ago, the average physician postsecondary medical-education duration was 9 years. For today’s physicians-in-training, it is 13 years.
In the late 1800’s, grammar school teachers had -3 years of postsecondary (normal school) education. High school teachers had +4 years of college/university education. They didn’t actually receive formal teacher training, but “only” academic-subject education. High school academic coursework and grading were more rigorous than today. We need to reinstitute academic rigor for kids who want to go to college, and we need to expand schools’ curricula for kids whose talents are not academic.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the American Board of Medical Specialties is an umbrella organization comprised of more than 20 residency-training-based boards, and as many post-residency “sub-boards”. Each of them defines its own physician-training regimens and exams. This represents diversity in the preparation of physicians whose work ranges from treating minor illnesses to performing critical life-saving work.
I don’t have a teaching certificate. But I home-educated two kids to score 700 to 800 on five individual-subject SAT exams. I took a sixth grader, and with the help of a progressive private school principal who allowed me to teach him two hours daily and assign 12+ hours of weekly homework, he went from struggling in prealgebra to a 26 ACT Math score in mid-seventh grade, and he’ll start studying calculus in 10th grade, or possibly late 9th grade. We calibrated my work. I gave him a practice ACT shortly after starting teaching: 13. In his last month of 6th grade, he scored an 18. We used objective metrics-testing. So he won a Duke Talent Search Award, and qualified for a 12th-grade first-semester-equivalent physics course at Northwestern. He is so brilliant. But he also has ADD. Teaching him is a major challenge, but if I was able to put people into coma, and bring them back unscathed, I think I can figure out how to do this teaching job well, difficult as the prospect is.
Teachers created the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. After some 15 years, fewer than 3% of teachers are now NBPTS certified. Here is your dilemma: you can’t create your own professional-standards organization, but you refuse to participate by undergoing the qualification procedures, which are difficult, to be sure, then you are utterly discrediting yourselves.Passing three National Board of Medical Examiners exams, and before that, getting good Medical College Admission Test scores to qualify for med school, and after that, passing ABMS exams to become board certified, are really HARD endeavors. They require A LOT OF STUDY. If you give exams to students, you should be willing and able to submit yourselves to difficult examinations. If you aren’t, then you aren’t qualified to give exams to students, and by their performances, determine their educational futures.
My last student was thinking about nuclear-reactor-powered interstellar spaceships at age 11. Now string theory at age 13. I think I am good at teaching “far out” minded kids. Maybe this would be good for Wichita. If it doesn’t want to implode as an obsolete city.
Otto, YOU ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just for the record, the following is a more accurate and complete account of my “predictions.”
CKD
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/mar/28/conservatives_face_full_slate_opponents_elections/?print
Conservatives face full slate of opponents in electionsBy Dave Ranney
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Conservatives on the State Board of Education up for re-election this year now face opponents in the primary and general elections.
The latest candidate to announce is Jack Wempe, of Lyons, a Democrat and former chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents. Wempe also is a former legislator and school superintendent.
Wempe will seek the seat now held by Ken Willard, a Hutchinson Republican who represents District 7, which includes all or parts of 20 south central counties.
“I’ve had concerns about the direction the board has been taking,” Wempe said. “I’ve voiced concern about it. I’ve attended meetings about it. I’ve been encouraged to run. So I decided to do it.”
Challengers welcome
Conservatives said they welcomed the challenge. And board opponents disgruntled by recent board decisions dealing with evolution, sex education teaching and other board controversies also welcomed news that there are a full slate of challengers.
Kansas Board of Education seats sometimes have had trouble attracting candidates.
“For those of us who are looking for a change, it’s encouraging,” said Boo Tyson, a Lawrence resident and executive director of the MAINstream Coalition. “It means we’ve got a shot at them (conservatives) in the primary and a shot at them in the general. If you’re a moderate — Republican or Democrat — it’s great.”
Terms for four of the six conservatives on the 10-member board draw to a close this year.
Wempe’s candidacy means three of the four conservatives will have opponents in both the primary and general elections. Conservative board member Iris Van Meter has said she would not run again.
Cindy Duckett, a conservative advocate in Wichita, took the news in stride.
“It’s to be expected, really,” Duckett said. “The things the board has been dealing with — sex ed, evolution, vouchers — are controversial. And any time you take on controversy, you’re going to hear from the other side.
“Quite frankly, I think it’s a good thing,” she said. “I think it’s healthy. Let’s get the opinions out there, let’s let the people speak, let’s see what happens.”
Duckett predicted at least two of the three conservative incumbents would retain their seats.
“I think Ken Willard will win. I think John Bacon will win,” she said. “If anybody’s vulnerable, it’s probably Connie Morris, but she could pull it off. I wouldn’t bet against her.”
Morris, a conservative from St. Francis, will be opposed in the primary by Sally Cauble, a former elementary school teacher and a former member of the Liberal school board.
The winner will meet Democrat and former Garden City mayor Tim Cruz.
Bacon, a conservative from Olathe, will be opposed by Harry McDonald, a biology teacher at Blue Valley High School and a member of Kansas Citizens for Science board of directors, in the primary.
The winner will run against Don Weiss, an Olathe Democrat.
Wempe’s background
Wempe was appointed to the Board of Regents in 1999 by then-Gov. Bill Graves. He served as vice chairman in 2001 and 2002; and chairman in 2003.
Wempe said he was “disappointed” in the state board’s push to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution.
He declined comment on board decisions to require students to get their parents’ permission before taking sex education, and to hire Bob Corkins as education commissioner despite Corkins’ having no administrative or classroom experience.
“I’m trying not to get into too many specifics until after I find out what’s going on in the trenches,” Wempe said.
Wempe, 71, said he planned to visit each school district in District 7 before the Nov. 7 general election. He campaigned Monday in Hutchinson.
“I sense that there’s a dissatisfaction with the direction the board is taking,” Wempe said. “The problem is, this district is so big, I have no way of knowing what people are thinking 100 miles south of here. That’s what I’m going to find out.”
A former Little River school superintendent, Wempe served eight years in the Kansas House of Representatives.
Willard, a Republican from Hutchinson, spent six years on the Nickerson-South Hutchinson school board, including two years as vice president, one year as president. He has filed for re-election.
In the Aug. 1 GOP primary, Willard will be opposed by McPherson school board president Donna Viola.
Incumbent Janet Waugh, a Democrat from Kansas City, has filed for a third term. As yet, she has no declared opposition.
More interest
The filings mean that in 2006, there will be at least three primary races and at least four general-election races involving state board candidates.
In 2004, there were two primary races, one in the general. In 2002, there were five primaries, one in the general.
Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University, said the four-fold increase in school board races on the general election ballot likely signaled a long-anticipated change in voter sentiments.
“Kansans aren’t happy with the image that’s being projected for the state, whether it’s evolution or gay marriage or the Fred Phelps protests,” Beatty said.
“Now those aren’t all State Board of Education issues, obviously, but they’re pushing candidates to run,” he said. “And what candidates are finding out is that Kansans love Kansas; they think this is a great state — a great state that’s headed in the wrong direction. It’s an undercurrent that I think is going to show itself in a lot of races this year.”
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http://mobile.ljworld.com/news/2006/apr/02/conservative_kansas/
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Conservative Kansas?This year’s Kansas Board of Education election may offer some insight on just how conservative Kansans are.
J-W Editorials
Sunday, April 2, 2006
Does the conservative majority on the Kansas Board of Education truly represent the voters of the state?
With a full slate of candidates already committed to run in four state school board races in November, Kansas will have a real opportunity to answer that question.
In relatively liberal Douglas County, influenced greatly by Kansas University, much criticism has been leveled at the board for its controversial decisions to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution in Kansas schools and to require parents to give signed permission for their children to be included in sex education classes. But what about the rest of the state, which tends to be more conservative on many issues?
We now know that at least a few Kansans take exception to the actions of their elected representatives on the state board. That is illustrated by the fact that all four conservative members of the board facing re-election this year already have announced challengers. Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat, is unopposed so far.
One of the conservatives, Iris Van Meter of Thayer, has decided not to run again, but two Republicans and a Democrat already have filed for her seat. The other three conservative board members — John Bacon of Olathe, Connie Morris of St. Francis and Ken Willard of Hutchinson, all Republicans — have opposition in the Aug. 1 primary races, as well as announced Democratic candidates waiting to challenge the primary winners in the general election.
The level of interest in the races suggests that the board members’ constituents aren’t entirely satisfied with their elected representatives, but time will tell. Cindy Duckett, a conservative advocate in Wichita welcomed the competition saying, “Quite frankly, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s healthy. Let’s get the opinions out there, let’s let the people speak, let’s see what happens.”
Absolutely. That’s what democracy is all about. Many Kansans have expressed dissatisfaction with the current board, but will that dissatisfaction drive moderate and liberal voters to go to the polls in sufficient numbers to counter the turnout of the state’s highly motivated conservative base, which may become even more energized by the increased effort to oust conservative board members? And, even if moderates and liberals are motivated enough to alter the membership of the state board this year, will they be able to sustain that level of interest in future years, or will their interest wane, allowing conservative voters to reign again two years from now?
Are Kansans as conservative as the State Board of Education that represents them? A high voter turnout in races that offer clear philosophical choices should help answer that question this year.
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