No surprise here: According to The Kentucky Gazette, teachers unions topped the list of the 155 political action committees that spent $2.8 million in 2010 to elect Kentucky politicians "friendly to their cause."
Editor Laura Cullen Glasscock combed through Kentucky Registry of Election Finance records and found that the Kentucky Educators Political Action Committee (KEPAC) -- the statewide teachers union -- spent more than $435,000 last year while the Better Schools Kentucky, a PAC of the Jefferson County Teachers Association "began the year with roughly $10,600 in its coffers, but raised more than a half million dollars. It spent more than $419,000 and ended the year with almost $130,000."
Glasscock also reported that: "direct contributions to candidates tallied $134,400 for KEPAC and $27,000 for Better Schools."
Is it any wonder that politicians "friendly" to the unions' cause are stubbornly refusing to allow reform measures that give parents a choice, hold teachers and administrators accountable, cut wasteful spending and demand measurable results from the bureaucracy?
Monday, January 31, 2011
Teachers unions top spending by Kentucky PACS
Part II of the 2011 Kentucky General Assembly begins with governor's speech
The second part of the 2011 session of the Kentucky General Assembly convenes tomorrow in Frankfort with the day being highlighted by Gov. Steve Beshear's State of the Commonwealth speech at 7 p.m. EST before a joint session of the House and Senate. KET will carry the speech live.
The last day for new Senate and House bills will be Feb. 11 and 14, respectively. The final two scheduled days of the Legislature will be March 21 and 22, during which time veto overrides will be considered.
Rewarding failure in Jefferson County Schools
Read the full "Rewarding Failure" commentary here.
According to superintendent Sheldon Berman's performance evaluation the 2008-2009 stated goals for Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) were:
"...to enhance effective teaching, enhance effective leadership, strengthen organizational culture and improve organizational effectiveness"Enhancing effectiveness is great. That sort of language makes people feel good. However, I hope there were some numbers associated with these goals somewhere because the following set of numbers is quite alarming.
"Dr. Berman is a knowledgeable educator who is committed to moving the district to higher levels. To meet this goal, the Board encourages Dr. Berman to work towards developing a relationship of mutual respect with district staff. The Board believes that by improving his relationship with staff, Dr. Berman will become an even more effective leader that staff will gladly follow"
"JCPS is a district that has not met the watered-down, basic requirements of No Child Left Behind for 7 consecutive years and has 47 schools that have not made adequate yearly progress in the last school year. To remedy this serious deficiency immediately, the Board demands that Dr. Berman establish bold, quantifiable goals to ensure that all schools in the district will meet these basic requirements in the next school year. The Board realizes that JCPS is about kids and not adults. As a knowledgeable educator, it is Dr. Berman's responsibility to take this problem head-on and get results."
Can they quit?
I read an article today about using MRIs to discern whether smokers are able to quit smoking. Whether they are able to depends on certain activity in the area of the brain responsible for behavior change.
Much more than an elementary school
J.B. Atkinson Academy in Louisville earning its name
It’s a traditional public school, more or less, that runs like it’s a charter school. And, much more.
Truly, it is an academy.
I had a chance to visit the J.B. Atkinson Academy in Louisville about ten days ago, and I can happily attest that this up and coming educational center in inner city Louisville is much more than an elementary school.
For example, several of the building’s classrooms are dedicated to the University of Louisville’s school of education. Student teachers from U of L take their classes in Atkinson, not on campus. This way, future teachers can learn a methodology one day, observe a working professional using the method in a real classroom the next day, and then practice it themselves with real students a day or so later.
U of L professors also hang out after class at Atkinson, doing research in a real school setting while meeting collegially with the regular teachers in the school. The chance for enrichment in both directions is paying benefits in Atkinson’s performance and the improved ability of U of L to provide a new, better prepared group of teachers in the future.
Atkinson’s guiding educational philosophy is ahead of the pack. Under Principal Dewey Hensley, the school started to focus its young students on college and careers long before Senate Bill 1 finally defined that as the proper statewide goal for all our schools.
This mural over the entrance to Atkinson’s gym makes it clear where Atkinson’s staff intends their kids to go: first to middle school, then to high school and – finally – College!
After kids walk under this mural to enter the morning motivation meeting with Hensley and his staff, the students get quizzed on what year their grade will enter college. Every year group, from kindergarten to the fifth grade, knows their answer.
Hensley runs those morning startup meetings like a sales manager psyching up his team to go out and really be productive. He talks about how important learning is, lacing the discussion with a vocabulary lesson on terms like “dendrites” and “synapses.” A kindergartener responds, talking about the occipital lobe in the brain, sounding like he really understands the term. Wow!
This school shreds the notion being pushed by some charter school opponents that regular public schools can’t do what charter schools do.
One reason charter schools outperform with disadvantaged kids is that they run a longer school year. Hensley went out and got a grant, got support from his teachers and a progressively thinking union representative, and now he runs a longer year for kids that need it, too. He even runs classes through the summer for the most challenged kids, another charter school activity.
Stay tuned for more on this school. Atkinson is making strides in a number of areas and – perhaps even more importantly – is up front about looking at data and evidence to confront head on those areas where they still need more work.
Atkinson shows that ideas that improve regular public schools are available and can transfer from charter schools. Just as charter schools are proving, Atkinson shows that if a school gets the right leadership, staff, and support, that school can start to make it happen for kids. But, some tough decisions have to be made, and people must be willing to confront their short-comings to make it happen.
More on that later.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
More on where Kentucky really ranks in new federal science testing
Whenever I discuss how Kentucky ranks with other states in federal National Assessment of Educational Progress testing, I always point out that it isn’t appropriate to simplistically compare our scores for all students to scores for all students in other states. The reason is that Kentucky’s classrooms remain about 85 percent white, while most other states now have much higher percentages of minorities in their total enrollment figures. Because minorities score much lower than whites, simplistic comparison of overall scores just provides Kentuckians with a false sense of our real performance.
One way to get around this problem, which even NAEP publications discuss, as I mentioned several days ago, is to break out the NAEP scores by race. With so many whites in Kentucky, it is clearly important to see how our white students do against their peers. I showed you a map of that several days ago here.
However, whenever I show people such maps, they always respond that our whites are poor and want to see a comparison of scores for poor whites only. OK, here that comparison for proficiency rates in the various states for NAEP Grade 8 Science from 2009:
States in green (3) got scores that were statistically significantly higher than we did. States in tan got scores that the rules of statistics declare are basically tied with us. Those states in salmon color got statistically significantly lower scores.
A total of 46 states participated (Note: A news release from the Kentucky Department of Education had a misleading comment that all states participated in NAEP Science. That isn’t correct. All states participated in math and reading only in 2009).
So, given the statistical limitations of this sampled test, what do we know?
Kentucky’s poor whites were only outscored (with a high level of certainty) by three states on NAEP Grade 8 Science. That’s the good news.
Kentucky did outscore 13 other states.
The rest tied us, as close as we can tell with any level of statistical confidence.
So, what does that say about how Kentucky’s poor whites (those who qualify for federal free and reduced cost lunch) rank for grade 8 science as of 2009?
We placed somewhere between fourth and 33rd in the nation. That’s all we can confidently conclude. Anyone who tries to make more precise claims is simply violating the statistical limitations of this sampled testing program.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Survey says: Or, does it???
The headline of a Courier-Journal article about a survey on school diversity proclaims, “90 percent of JCPS parents favor diverse schools, survey says.”
You have to read down to the fourth paragraph before finding any hint that maybe the survey says quite a bit more. That’s the first time you learn that large percentages of the surveyed parents are concerned about the reliability of Jefferson County Public Schools' complex busing for integration plan.
Read father still, and you finally learn that the results of the survey were really contradictory.
Only at the 10th paragraph does the Courier finally admit of the survey:
“The results were sometimes contradictory — showing parents wanted access to neighborhood schools, diverse schools and school choice, which project associate Erica Frankenberg likened to parents wanting to ‘have their cake and eat it, too.’”
You must read all the way to paragraph 12 (pushed to page 2 in the on line version) to finally see this:
“For example, while many parents support diverse schools, almost 80 percent said children should be allowed to attend the closest school — even if it increases segregation.”
Most telling, the survey says of parent responses:
• 90 percent support family choice,
• 79 percent say their child should have the option to attend a neighborhood school, and
• Only 55 percent are willing to send their child outside the neighborhood just to increase diversity.
One thing you can find in this news article: evidence that Louisville is doing a great job of educating the next generation of its students in the art of denial that is so evident in some of the district’s adults.
In a summary of the survey findings, the Courier reports:
“Among high school juniors, 95 percent said they were prepared or very prepared to live and work in a diverse job setting.”
These kids are ignoring the sad message coming from the ACT PLAN test that they took in the 2009-10 school year as 10th graders. It shows very few of them achieved the Benchmark Scores that show the kids have received the educations they need for high levels of success in any sort of jobs, integrated or not.
That denial extends to the people who ran the survey, as well. Despite the fact cited above that 79 percent of the parents want the option to attend neighborhood schools, the consultant hired by the district summarized the results of this district-financed survey by indicating it would be a mistake to do major surgery on the busing plan.
Given the admitted contradictions in this survey, I’m not sure you can conclude much of anything with assurance, but when 79 percent of parents want neighborhood schools, you certainly can’t say this survey justifies that summary.
And, award a healthy portion of denial syndrome to the Courier editor who thinks the title on their article fairly summarizes what actually happened with the survey, or even what is written in the full article. Clearly, the Courier loves busing for diversity. It doesn’t seem much interested in what parents want or in the better educations students actually need.
Cheers and jeers for parent choice positions in Harlan area dispute
Here’s a cheer for the Harlan Independent School District for not caving in to the Harlan County School District (which gets the jeers) over an attempt to reduce parent choice in the region.
The two districts are negotiating a renewal of a long-standing agreement that allows parents residing in one of the district’s jurisdictions to send their children to schools in the adjoining district. The Harlan Daily Enterprise reports the Harlan County system wanted to contract this option significantly.
Such transfer agreements, where available at all, represent about the only public school choice options available in Kentucky outside of some limited options when schools fail No Child Left Behind. These inter-district transfer agreements have been under attack by people in some school systems who want to treat children as some sort of negotiable commodities instead of the young citizens they actually are.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Democratic lawmakers living in a vacuum need to suck it up
School reform may once have been considered a Republican issue. That's no longer the case. Now, Democrats in other states are leading the charge for charter schools and other innovative policies. Kentucky Dems, who have steadfastly resisted supporting any meaningful education reform, should take a cue from their brethren in other states.
Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon
Knox County superintendent is "Too Trusting"
Recently, the Bluegrass Institute released a commentary on the performance evaluation process of superintendents in Kentucky. Knox County was one of four districts profiled in the commentary. Below is an image of part of the the actual evaluation...
BIPPS on proposed pseudoephedrine legislation
Rep. Linda Belcher and Sen. Tom Jenson are each sponsoring bills, HB 15 and SB 45 respectively, that would require a prescription for the drug, pseudoephedrine, which is a component in the manufacturing of methamphetamine.
On Thursday, Jan. 27, several opponents of the proposed bills held a telephone news conference to discuss the issue and Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communication, spoke with reporters on the issue.
Below is coverage from Fox 41 News
Click here to view WAVE 3 news coverage.
Taking liberty to the airwaves: Cold medicines, meth and your liberty
Jim Waters, vice president of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, will be discussing an attempt by some lawmakers to require prescriptions before purchasing cold and allergy medicines that contain ingredients used to make the drug methamphetamine on "The Joe Elliott Show" on 970 WGTK-AM in Louisville today at 2 p.m. (EST)
Listen live here and call in at 502-571-0970.
Jim will also be discussing how the 2011 session of the Kentucky General Assembly is shaping up as far as liberty-busting policy proposals is concerned on Newstalk93 WKCT-AM's "Drive Time" show with guest host Charlie Fortney today at 5 p.m. (CST) Call in at 270-780-9626.
Kentuckians’ opinions of charter schools: The Bluegrass Institute survey says…
Several years ago, the Bluegrass Institute surveyed Kentuckians about charter schools. Here are some highlights along with other information that might surprise you about charter schools.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Beshear isn't taking it any more ... or at least some of 'it'
Apparently it takes a threat to his ability to garner votes in eastern Kentucky and win reelection before Gov. Steve Beshear will even consider standing up to D.C.'s assault on Kentucky's coal mines, the jobs they produce and the families who depend on that employment.
Beshear issued a statement Thursday warning that rule changes by the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) "would have a devastating impact on Kentucky's economy."
These changes not only would affect Kentucky's economy, but could impact 7,000 jobs nationwide.
Beshear said he was determined to make OSM follow the law "and balance the economic impact of these changes with the supposed environmental good." He also warned that no longer can the OSM ignore Kentucky's "concerns."
Now, when is Beshear going to start standing up to President Obama and telling him that unless significant changes are made, his administration's health care fiasco also "would have a devastating impact on Kentucky's economy."
State of the Derby City: 'Average'
New Louisville mayor Greg Fischer, known for his business acumen and entrepreneurial abilities, noted in today's "State of the City" speech that his goal of taking Derby City to the next level without facing -- and fixing -- the failure of the Jefferson County Public Schools to adequately educate and graduate its students.
Fischer is asking Louisville business owners to give 1,000 low-income youth summer jobs. But company leaders shouldn't be asked to do this just out of the goodness of their hearts, should they?
Wouldn't a better approach be to apply proven incentives to address this issue, including eliminating minimum-wage requirements so unskilled youngsters from struggling families could gain badly needed work experience?
OEA report on teachers’ union contracts available in our Wiki
I wrote back in December 2010 about a new report from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability titled, “Analysis of Collective Bargaining Agreements in Kentucky Districts.” This is an extremely important report that legislators, local school board members and others interested in Kentucky education need to see.
Among other things, the report goes into considerable detail about how the Jefferson County Teachers Association union contract is having important and undesirable impacts on the Louisville area’s school system. There is even an indication that the law created by House Bill 176 from the 2010 regular session was violated in Louisville. That alone should make it mandatory reading for school board members in the city.
Other comments in the report have wider implications for all of the state.
However, there is a backlog at the editing function of the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, so this report’s release is delayed.
Because the findings are important to deliberations going on now in Frankfort, Louisville and elsewhere, I did an open records request for the draft document version of the report which was approved in December. As this approval draft version is unlikely to be changed much by final editing, and because the main messages are time critical, the report has been posted in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki site.
You can access the approval draft by clicking here.
Superficial superintendent evaluations
A new commentary released today by the Bluegrass Institute reveals how the evaluations of school districts’ highest paid leaders fail to hold them accountable for their districts’ poor academic performance. (See news release here)
“Rewarding Failure: The Rubber-Stamping of Kentucky Superintendent Evaluations,” profiles the superintendent evaluations for the school districts in Jefferson, Carter, and Knox counties and Newport Independent for 2009. The report points out glaring oversights and failures to address persistent underperformance in those schools.
The evaluations, which were obtained through open records requests, reveal an alarming lack of detail and rarely mention poor academic performance.
For instance, while the Jefferson County Public Schools board praised Supt. Sheldon Berman, whose salary is $260,000 a year plus benefits, for his talent as “an engaging public speaker” and in the area of labor relations, thousands of children are getting left behind in the district’s 41 schools that failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress in 2009.
Private sector job evaluations are usually based on measurable, quantifiable results. The same cannot be said for many of Kentucky's superintendent evaluations.
Download the commentary here.
Taking the wind out of a great hope for green energy
This latest surprise for global energy activists just arrived in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers on line journal, the IEEE Spectrum.
Quite simply, the IEEE cites a new report from France that indicates average wind speeds around the Northern Hemisphere are dropping.
Because wind energy varies as the square of the wind speed, when that speed drops even a small amount, the ability to extract energy from the wind drops much more. The article indicates new wind farms in China may produce 14 percent less than the original designs anticipated due to anticipated further wind speed decays.
Of course, experts have already indicated to me that Kentucky has few sites suitable for economical wind farm operations in the first place. So, Kentucky is already left out of this much hyped answer to our energy needs.
Now, it looks like the wind energy answer for a lot of other areas could be getting blown away, as well.
Maybe coal won’t be dead, after all.
Confused about charter schools?
Don’t feel bad, a lot of people in Kentucky don’t know much about charter schools. We think this roundtable discussion might help you get a handle on what these innovative schools can offer Kentucky.
The main speaker is Kenneth Campbell. He really knows charters in Louisiana, which is one of the places where charters really shine.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
U.S. slips again in the Index of Economic Freedom
Each year the Heritage Foundation publishes an informative report ranking the nations in the world based on their level of freedom.
The United States lost ground falling from eight to nine this year. This is a great way to compare nations across the world. Take a look!
Diagnosis of KY's Medicaid Program: Unhealthy
In order to cover this year's Medicaid deficit, Gov. Beshear proposes borrowing from the program's 2012 budget.
Interesting quote from the new federal science test report
In my blog yesterday on the newly released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science results, I pointed out that performance of Kentucky’s white students looks quite different from the state’s overall performance when all students’ scores are averaged together.
Apparently, I am far from alone in spotting this. As I read through the NAEP report itself, I found this comment:
“It is helpful to examine the differences between how a state performs overall and how students within a demographic group in that state perform. Some might assume that states that score above the national average would have student groups that exhibit similar performance, but that is not necessarily true. For example, 25 states scored higher than the nation. In 6 of those states, one of their racial/ethnic groups had scores that were lower than their peers nationwide (figure 35). For example, while the average score for Kentucky was higher than the score for the nation, White students (85 percent of the state’s eighth-graders) scored lower than their peers nationally (figure 32).”
Here is Figure 32 right out of the NAEP Science report that makes exactly this case about Kentucky’s eighth grade NAEP science scores in 2009.
Why does Kentucky outperform when all scores are added together? The answer is that whites score much higher than most other racial groups. So, states like Kentucky with a lot of whites get an unfair advantage when simplistic comparisons of only overall scores are made. Meanwhile, states like California, where high scoring whites only make up 28 percent of the school enrollment, suffer a terrible disadvantage when simplistic comparisons of overall scores are made.
It’s enough of an issue that the NAEP people took the time to make this clear with the comments and dedicated figure above.
School choice in other places: New York City
I wrote two days ago about how charter school performance over time in Boston really starts to outshine performance of students left in the traditional public school system.
Boston isn’t the only place where this charter school advantage has been discovered.
New York City charter schools also show a similar impact in another random sample like ‘lottery report,’ this one from Stanford University’s Professor Caroline Hoxby.
In “How New York City’s Charter Schools Affect Achievement,” Hoxby took advantage of the extensive lottery process in the Big Apple’s charter schools to develop a randomly selected comparison group of students who were in the traditional public school system. She created graphs similar to the one we looked at Tuesday in the Boston analysis.
Here is how New York City’s charter school students outdistance their traditional public school peers over time in mathematics. As was true with the Boston Foundation graph from two days ago, the blue horizontal line along the zero axix shows the traditional public school performance. The red and green lines show the relatively better, and growing over time, performance of charter school students as they spend more time in charter schools.
Here is the same depiction, but this time for English Language Arts (ELA). Once again, the steady gain in performance over time of the charter school students is unmistakable.
So, once again, as The Boston Foundation and the CREDO studies show, when researchers consider charter school performance over time, charter school students come out strong winners.
By the way, Hoxby also found that:
“Charter schools have about the same effect on achievement regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, or gender.”
In other words, they work well for all students.
Wanting to get bold in Louisville
(It’s about time)
Carol Ann Haddad had an interesting quote in the Courier-Journal on January 21, 2011.
Haddad, a member of the Jefferson County Board of Education, says of education operations in Jefferson County:
“All I keep hearing is, we have programs in place, we have programs in place,” she said. “But they've not been doing the job (emphasis added). We need to try taking a bold step.”
Given Louisville schools’ low performance, I could not agree more.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
New federal science test results are out: BUT???
The results from the 2009 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in science released today, but I’m really not sure what to make of the results.
The BIG problem: unlike the NAEP results for math and reading, which I reported on earlier in this freedomkentucky.org Wiki article, the eighth grade proficiency rates from the new science NAEP differ sharply from information on science performance that Kentucky has been getting from the ACT’s EXPLORE test, which is given to all eighth grade students in the state.
According to the new NAEP results, 34 percent of Kentucky’s eighth grade students tested Proficient or Above in science in the late winter of 2009.
The EXPLORE results for the same, 2008-09 class of eighth graders, show only 10.48 percent of Kentucky’s students met the Benchmark Score that indicates those students are on track for eventual success in a college science course.
The difference is clearly quite pronounced.
The EXPLORE test has good linking to the actual ACT college entrance test, which in turn does a worthwhile job of indicating real college preparedness.
The justification for the new NAEP science scoring scale is not so straight-forward, and it now comes into considerable question.
All that said, Kentucky’s white students, who make up about 85 percent of our school enrollment, scored somewhere between fifth from the bottom and 20th from the top on eighth grade NAEP science in 2009, as this map (click on it to enlarge) from the NAEP Data Explorer, which covers white students’ NAEP proficiency rates, shows. 
White students in states shown in green got statistically significantly higher scores on science than our kids (19 states). Those in tan tied us (22 states). The four states in salmon color scored statistically significantly lower. Five states chose not to participate.
Despite some inappropriate, ‘mathematically challenged’ comparisons you will undoubtedly get from others, the NAEP does not support a finer ranking for Kentucky due to the fact that this federal assessment is a sampled test. Thus, the scores have plus and minus errors that blur small differences in performance.
Basically, Kentucky scores somewhere in the enormous middle of performance.
BUT, we still don’t know if the NAEP is just too easy. Unlike the very consistent message we get from NAEP math and reading and EXPLORE, the new science results show NAEP may have some very serious scoring inflation in this subject.
Charter schools: Don’t reports show they are no different from regular public schools?
The opponents of charter schools can point to studies that show charters have little or no advantages over regular public schools.
However, those opponents of charters don’t tell us that there often are major problems with those negative studies.
In fact, many charter school opponents have badly exposed their lack of objectivity in regards to one, specific report from a group at Stanford University known as the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO).
CREDO released a report in 2009 titled “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States” that does list findings such as:
• Of the 2403 charter schools reflected on the curve, 46 percent of charter schools have math gains that are statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their TPS comparisons.
• Charters whose math growth exceeded their TPS equivalent growth by a significant amount account for 17 percent of the total.
• The remaining group, 37 percent of charter schools, posted math gains that were significantly below what their students would have seen if they enrolled in local traditional public schools instead.
However, these findings are based on a dubious student matching system that attempts to fabricate “virtual” public school students to use in the charter school comparison.
Even more important, these findings are largely drawn from charter school samples that include many students who spent only limited time in charter schools. As mentioned yesterday (and to be reinforced tomorrow), that can lead to very inaccurate conclusions about charter schools.
The way to overcome the problem is to examine student performance as they spend more time in charter schools.
Surprisingly (because charter school critics always ignore this when they cite the CREDO study), CREDO did look at the performance of students who spent more time in charters. However, the report largely buries this very important finding.
Here is how that appears in the Summary of Findings section of the report (largely downplayed by being listed as the very last finding).
• Students do better in charter schools over time. First year charter students on average experience a decline in learning, which may reflect a combination of mobility effects and the experience of a charter school in its early years. Second and third years in charter schools see a significant reversal to positive gains.
Many charter school critics in Kentucky, including union heads and certain legislators, have selectively publicly cited results from this CREDO study to support their contentions. Those critics have never acknowledged the key CREDO finding that charters do out perform after students have spent some time in them.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Quote of the day: Apply this to government-mandated smoking bans
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." --C.S. Lewis
Subjective, destructive smoking ban bill gets torched on KET
"Trust, but verify" worked for President Reagan. It also works to expose and defeat big-government nannies' propaganda, er, legislation.
Take, for example, House Bill 193 -- debated on "Kentucky Tonight" tonight. Yours truly joined Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, to shine the light brightly on this bill, which is one of the worst-written, subjective and liberty-destroying pieces of legislation -- proposed or passed -- that I have ever had the misfortune of reading.
This bill includes "sole proprietorship" and operations with as few as one employee among businesses that could be Nanny-whacked if they don't ban smoking. So..............................
What about the Kentucky tobacco farmer who owns a farm and he's the only employee. According to this bill, if he has the bad luck of the Health fascists showing up and catching him smoking a cigarette in his tobacco barn, oh well -- too bad, so sad.
You want to see something sad? Be sure to watch the health nannies twist in the wind as DeCesare completely tore apart this bill on statewide TV. It should be on KET.org soon.
Read more on this in my recent column on unelected bureaucrats enforcing health laws against private business owners here, and the top 1o reasons why smoking bans are unhealthy public policy here.
Finally, I appeal to all legislators -- Republicans or Democrats -- please resist the urge to support such idiocy before reading the bill. Read the bill here!
Photo by Nick Oberg
Monday links
Monday links!
- The Health Care Reform page on FreedomKentucky.org continues to be updated with useful information about recent health care legislation. The information is presented in a simple and easy to understand format!
- Jim Waters will be discussing the proposed government mandated smoking ban on KET Tonight this evening! Don't miss it!
- Are you a fan of The Bluegrass Institute on Facebook!? Click here to join us!
National School Choice Week: Not much to celebrate in Kentucky
Hundreds of groups nationwide will celebrate the benefits of educational freedom this week (Jan. 23-29) as part of National School Choice Week.
Unfortunately, there’s not much to celebrate in Kentucky, one of only a handful of states without public charter schools.
Click here to read the rest of the News Release.
BIPPS to oppose government-mandated smoking bans on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'
Jim Waters, the Bluegrass Institute’s vice president of policy and communications, will appear on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" at 8 p.m. (EST) tonight (Jan. 24)to debate a proposal to enact a government-mandated statewide smoking ban.
The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET and www.ket.org/live, and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (EST).
Waters will be joined in his call to protect individual liberty and the property rights of business owners by Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, who is leading an effort in the Kentucky House of Representatives to make government more transparent and accountable to citizens.
During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by calling 1-800-494-7605 or by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org or use the message form at www.ket.org/kytonight.
Other panelists include Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, the primary sponsor of the smoking-ban legislation--House Bill 193, and Amy Barkley, advocacy director with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
School choice in other places: Boston
There has been a lot of discussion about whether charter schools do, or do not, work better than public schools.
Part of the confusion has been a result of the difficulty in finding a fair comparison group of students in the traditional public school system to compare to students in the charter schools.
All sorts of methods have been concocted to generate suitable public school comparison groups to lay beside charter school data. So far, the best method we have seen takes advantage of the fact that in some areas charter schools are so desired that they have to conduct random lotteries to select students. Those students who don’t win the lottery wind up in the traditional system, and they are indeed a randomly selected sample that can be compared to the students who do get accepted to the charter school.
One of these ‘lottery studies’ was released by The Boston Foundation in 2009 and is titled: “Informing the Debate, Comparing Boston’s Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools.”
The findings from The Boston Foundation’s team of Duke, Harvard and MIT researchers are unequivocal. Both charter middle school and high school students performed notably better than their traditional public school lottery losing counterparts performed. For middle school math, in particular (a weak area in Kentucky), the report says:
“The estimated impact on math achievement for Charter middle schools is extraordinarily large. Increasing performance by .5 standard deviations is the same as moving from the 50th to the 69th percentile in student performance. This is roughly half the size of the black-white achievement gap.”
This graph, taken from the report, shows the dramatic increased performance of charter middle school students in Boston over time. Note that initially, there isn’t much difference between charter school students and traditional public school students who lost the lottery. But, as charter school students spend more time in those charters, their relative performance in both math and English Language Arts (ELA) starts to really stand out, rising well above the performance of the lottery losers who were trapped in traditional public schools in Bean Town.
This brings up another important point about charter school research. If that research largely looks at students who have only spent limited time in a charter school, it isn’t going to very fairly show how charter schools really perform.
It simply takes time for charter schools to work. It is unfair to expect them to create miracles in only one or even two years.
This issue of time in charters helps explain why some reports don’t show much of a charter school impact. Such findings often are due to the report taking an inadequately long look at what is happening. More on that tomorrow.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
BIPPS to oppose government-mandated smoking bans on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'
Jim Waters, the Bluegrass Institute’s vice president of policy and communications, will appear on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" on Monday, Jan. 24, at 8 p.m. (EST) to debate a proposal to enact a government-mandated statewide smoking ban.
The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET and www.ket.org/live, and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (EST).
Waters will be joined in his call to protect individual liberty and the property rights of business owners by Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, who is leading an effort in the Kentucky House of Representatives to make government more transparent and accountable to citizens.
During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by calling 1-800-494-7605 or by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org or use the message form at www.ket.org/kytonight.
Other panelists include Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, the primary sponsor of the smoking-ban legislation--House Bill 193, and Amy Barkley, advocacy director with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
It’s National School Choice Week
Except, Kentucky isn’t a player
This week parents, students and schools around the country are celebrating National School Choice Week.
Except in Kentucky
Our state really doesn’t have school choice: no charter schools, no voucher programs, no special scholarships for learning disabled students to go where they can get the best support. Basically Kentucky offers nothing except for a few, ever decreasing options to send children across school district lines or to ask (with no guarantees) that a child be accepted in a magnet school (generally, only an option in our very biggest school districts).
That’s really sad. Kentucky trusts parents to find the right doctor for their children; but, our state’s leaders have convinced themselves that faceless bureaucrats – who often don’t even know the child – are somehow better equipped to mandate where a student will attend school.
There are consequences for such closed-mindedness.
About 85 percent of Kentucky’s school population is white, so it is very relevant to see what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows about how our white students compare to whites elsewhere.
In math, the answer is: not very well.
This map shows states in green where white fourth grade scores were statistically significantly higher than Kentucky’s in the latest NAEP math testing. There are a lot of states in green, including many in the South. Only two states, West Virginia and Alabama, got statistically significantly lower scores than Kentucky’s whites.
Things look even worse when we examine the eighth grade math results for whites. Now, only one state got scores that were statistically significantly lower than Kentucky’s.
Could more school choice options help improve this picture?
We hear a lot from Kentucky educators that parents are not engaged in their children’s schools. I think there is something to that, but there are reasons for parent disengagement that our educators either don’t understand, or don’t want to admit.
There is evidence that a lot of Kentucky parents feel disconnected from their schools. But, consider this from the parents’ viewpoint.
Other than by moving a residence into a desired school zone, an expensive proposition for some, parents everywhere in this state have virtually no ability to change where their child goes to school.
In Louisville, parents don’t even get the choice-by-real-estate-selection option. This option has been overruled as faceless bureaucrats dictate to parents where their kids will attend school, even if that school winds up being over 25 miles away. It’s a ‘no-brainer.’ Louisville parents living so far from their children’s school have limited opportunities, in many cases, to do anything meaningful in their child’s school.
Aside from limited or no ability to choose a school, parents across Kentucky have no real say about what happens in their child’s school.
Schools in Kentucky are ruled by School Based Decision Making Councils or SBDM. Those councils are firmly controlled by teachers and the school principal. Although two parents do serve on each council, they always have only a minority vote and cannot prevail in any decision.
The usually very low parent turnout for SBDM parent member elections provides stark testimony that parents are not fired up about this mirage of parent control in schools.
For example, consider the latest data for the highly selective Dupont Manual magnet high school in Louisville. The school’s 2008-2009 Report Card (get from menus here) shows that a grand total of 28 parents voted for the parent SBDM members in that school term. The school enrolled 1,870 students that year (Data from the ‘Growth Factor Ethnicity Report for School Year ending 09’ from Kentucky Department of Education, not available on line). Only 28 of the parents showed up to vote for SBDM representatives. Even if each student only has one parent, that would be a voting percentage of just 1.5 percent.
Basically, with the SBDM scheme, schools are run at the convenience of the staff, not parents or students. Even the locally elected school board cannot override the SBDM on most important matters. It’s not the kind of situation to encourage parent involvement, and the results are almost inevitable.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Right now, the Kentucky Senate has already passed Senate Bill 3, which will allow charter schools to form in Kentucky and will also permit parents to choose to send their child to the closest neighborhood school (a right currently denied by those faceless bureaucrats in Louisville). These charter schools would not have to follow some of the parent-restricting rules such as bureaucrats selecting schools and mandatory, teacher-dominated SBDM governance.
By creating parent choices, parents will have to get more involved in their student’s schooling. That can’t help but improve the sorts of statistics shown on the maps above.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
More information surfaces on ACT test cheating in Perry County schools
The Hazard-Herald reports on new details in the cheating scandals at the Perry County Central High School and the Buckhorn High School in Perry County.
According to a letter from ACT to Perry County school officials, ACT found evidence that answers on the multiple choice test were erased and then changed by persons other than the students. The answer sheets also apparently had evidence of multiple persons’ writing on them. Finally, ACT talked to students, as well.
ACT found problems on both the ACT college entrance test and on the ACT PLAN test, which is given to all 10th grade students in Kentucky.
The Perry County Superintendent, John Paul Amis, is still denying anything is wrong. The Hazard-Herald outlines his comments in some detail. Somehow, those comments don’t seem very convincing.
The facts are that once the Perry County students were retested, significant numbers of them had notable drops in their scores.
ACT says they don’t engage in punitive action (other than cancelling test scores) when testing abnormalities are discovered. However, that doesn’t mean Perry County educators are off the hook. Apparently, the Kentucky Department of Education forwarded the ACT findings to the Kentucky Attorney General, the Office of the Inspector General and the Kentucky Educational Professional Standards Board. The latter office could take actions against the professional certificates of teachers and principals if misconduct is found.
Friday, January 21, 2011
BIPPS on WAVE 3 TV: Charter schools work
LOUISVILLE --The Bluegrass Institute continues to make the case in the media for education reforms that get results -- including more school choice for Kentucky families .
Today, I taped an editorial on charter schools for WAVE 3 television here. For BIPPS friends in Louisville, you can see it this evening during the upcoming 5:30 p.m. newscast and then again during the station's 7 p.m. newscast. The editorial also will be broadcast during Monday's 6 a.m. and Noon newscasts. All times are EST.
For those outside the WAVE 3 viewing area, check out the editorial here.
This editorial kicks off the first-ever National School Choice Week. Hundreds of groups across the country, including BIPPS, are using the occasion to expand educational freedom for parents so our most at-risk kids have a chance.
Look for a series of blogs by education analyst Richard Innes on the impact of school reform efforts around the country all next week on the Bluegrass Policy Blog.
Big-government addicts can't solve the meth problem
House Bill 15, which was introduced by Shepherdsville Rep. Linda Belcher, would require prescriptions for simple cold medicines just because they happen to contain ingredients used to make the drug methamphetamine.
Bluegrass Institute columnist Jim Waters writes: ''Such sensational bills allows politicians to feign doing something meaningful while avoiding real action on tough issues.''
Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.
General Assembly watch: House Democrat's resolution urges repeal of health care act
While we wait for the General Assembly to reconvene on Feb. 1, Kentuckians who support and defend constitutional principles should watch two important legislative items.
On Jan. 4, Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, and Rep. Addia Wuchner, R-Florence, introduced House Joint Resolution 8 which "urges Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act of 2010."
Sponsors of the joint resolution were the first in the nation to file resolution for repeal at the state level. In light of the U.S. House voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, Kentucky's own health care debate could have a significant impact nationally if the legislature passes this resolution.
In addition, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul will testify in Frankfort before the Senate State and Local Government Committee on Feb. 22 in support of the balanced budget amendment. This amendment could lead to a constitutional convention if two-thirds of state legislatures ask for one, as the U.S. Constitution requires.
"Congress has not acted on a balanced budget amendment, despite the overwhelming feeling of the American people that it would help put our nation's fiscal house in order," Paul said.
Check back for continued legislative updates during this year's session, as we work to provide you with important information about the impact Frankfort's decisions have on your constitutional liberties.
‘Bang for the buck’ report shows poverty is no excuse for low school efficiency
I wrote yesterday about a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which does a ‘bang for the buck’ comparison of test score proficiency versus per pupil spending in Kentucky school districts. This is similar to a discussion we started in Kentucky years ago with our own “Bang for the Buck” report.
Today, let’s look at some interesting evidence that poverty isn’t an excuse for low educational efficiency in schools. The CAP’s web site has a neat mapping tool which I used to assemble this table (click on it to enlarge, if necessary).
In this table, each district’s Return on Investment (ROI) is color-coded for high or low ‘bang for the buck.’ I don’t show all districts here, but I do select from those with high percentages of low income students to show that some get good test scores (shown by a higher State Achievement Index) with relatively low amounts of funding.
For example, Harlan Independent Schools has one of the lowest per pupil funding rates in the table, but its dark green ROI code shows Harlan has one of the very best ROIs in Kentucky.
On the other end of the scale, note that both the small Berea Independent Schools and the enormous Jefferson County School District have some of the very highest per pupil funding levels, but some of the lowest Achievement Indexes and therefore some of the worst ROIs, as well. Of note, both of these low ROI districts also have the lowest poverty rates in the table.
So, poverty is no excuse. Let’s get over that in places like Berea and Jefferson County.
BIPPS to oppose government-mandated smoking bans on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'
Jim Waters, the Bluegrass Institute’s vice president of policy and communications, will appear on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" on Monday, Jan. 24, at 8 p.m. (EST) to debate a proposal to enact a government-mandated statewide smoking ban.
The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET and www.ket.org/live, and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (EST).
Waters will be joined in his call to protect individual liberty and the property rights of business owners by Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, who is leading an effort in the Kentucky House of Representatives to make government more transparent and accountable to citizens.
During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by calling 1-800-494-7605 or by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org or use the message form at www.ket.org/kytonight.
Other panelists include Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, the primary sponsor of the smoking-ban legislation--House Bill 193, and Amy Barkley, advocacy director with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Governor wants to rearrange chairs on Kentucky Medicaid's sinking ship deck
Gov. Beshear wants lawmakers to shift $167 million from next year's Medicaid budget to this fiscal year so the state can "draw more federal matching money for Medicaid from federal stimulus funds," according to the (Louisville) Courier-Journal.
But that same article points that if Beshear succeeds in this legislative maneuver, "it only postpones the need to achieve savings or make cuts in the program."
Instead of decisively moving forward with an announcement of immediate and detailed cuts needed to right this ship, Beshear proposes doing little more than rearranging the chairs on the deck of Kentucky Medicaid's sinking ship.
Kentucky now is so firmly planted on Washington's teat that it has weakened its sovereign power and placed the future of the commonwealth's economy -- not to mention the individual liberty of its citizens -- at great risk.
Could we stand up to Washington even if those in charge of Frankfort's political hen house wanted to?
Thursday links: Lexington check register, Friedman on education, civility
The daily dose of links!
- Democrats calling Republicans Nazis? Maybe I need to check the dictionary for the word "civility", perhaps I've been using the wrong definition all these years...
- Interested in how Lexington spent your hard earned tax dollars in 2009? You can use our sortable database here and see for yourself!
- This Milton Friedman documentary was filmed decades ago but it's sad that most of the problems he discusses are just as relevant today as they were then. His assessment of education bureaucrats is right on. This is part 1:
‘Bang for the buck’ report shows inefficiency in many Kentucky school districts
A new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) is going to catch some attention around the country. As the CAP writes in the introduction:
“At a time when states are projecting more than $100 billion in budget shortfalls, educators need to be able to show that education dollars produce significant outcomes or taxpayers might begin to see schools as a weak investment. If schools don’t deliver maximum results for the dollar, public trust in education could erode and taxpayers may fund schools less generously.”
The CAP wades into that discussion, which we started in Kentucky years ago with our “Bang for the Buck” report, with new rankings of the efficiency of school districts around the nation in terms of test proficiency rates achieved versus per pupil dollars spent.
While the CAP findings are no surprise to us, they reinforce what we at the Bluegrass Institute have been saying for years: with education now absorbing such a huge percentage of the overall tax dollar, Kentucky simply cannot afford education systems that don’t produce efficiently for kids.
I’ll have a lot more to say about the CAP report, so stay tuned.
In the mean time, the CAP’s web site has a neat mapping tool where you can drag the map to show Kentucky, click within the area of the state, and then see how each district in the state shapes up in their efficiency rankings.
Here is one map I assembled that shows the worst Return on Investment (ROI) school districts – shown in red, to the best – shown in dark green, in Kentucky.
Check out how your school system performs with these tools, too.
BIPPS to oppose government-mandated smoking bans on TV's 'Kentucky Tonight'
Jim Waters, the Bluegrass Institute’s vice president of policy and communications, will appear on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" on Monday, Jan. 24, at 8 p.m. (EST) to debate a proposal to enact a government-mandated statewide smoking ban.
The program is hosted by Bill Goodman live on KET and www.ket.org/live, and will be replayed Wednesday at 2 a.m. (EST).
Waters will be joined in his call to protect individual liberty and the property rights of business owners by Rep. Jim DeCesare, R-Bowling Green, who is leading an effort in the Kentucky House of Representatives to make government more transparent and accountable to citizens.
During the live Monday broadcast, viewers with questions and comments may participate by calling 1-800-494-7605 or by e-mail at kytonight@ket.org or use the message form at www.ket.org/kytonight.
Other panelists include Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, the primary sponsor of the smoking-ban legislation--House Bill 193, and Amy Barkley, advocacy director with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
What's in a letter?
"What's in a name?"
Juliet posed this question in Romeo and Juliet. She explained, "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
In Kentucky, I think we need to ask ourselves "What's in a letter?"
Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday recently published a letter to the legislature stating that he hoped the legislature would continue to pressure the education establishment to abandon the status quo and look to the interests of children rather than adults. This is a message that more bureaucrats, legislators, and teachers union leaders need to hear.
While Holliday makes a great point and expresses his concerns about the future of education in Kentucky, in the end, it is still just a letter. Over the years there have been more than a few press conferences, task forces, studies, press releases, and public statements by those wielding power in Frankfort about how Kentucky's education system needs serious reform.
But what's in a task force? What's in a study? In a letter?
Getting upset about the problem is not only the first step but the most simple. The hard part is applying pressure to the system to force change through creating accountability at each level of the system, welcoming school choice to create competition, and by not lying to parents and students about achievement gaps via test score inflation.
Juliet said a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. An education system without accountability, transparency, and free-market options is just that.
Wednesday Links: education status quo and the KEA
Check out these links on this fine Wednesday:
- KEA - This page is a bit empty right now. FreedomKentucky.org is trying to build a comprehensive article about the Kentucky Education Association. We'd be interested in your information and thoughts! Contact us via a comment on this blog!
- Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holiday expresses his dissatisfaction with the status quo in the state's education system.
Education Commissioner to Legislature: Don’t cave into adult interests with school reform
It’s sad.
Unmotivated adults in Kentucky’s public school system are using the state’s economic situation as a smoke screen in an attempt to undermine implementation of Senate Bill 1 from the 2009 Regular Legislative Session (SB-1).
The situation is apparently so bad, and so misrepresented, that Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday has found it necessary to officially alert members of the Kentucky legislature about what is happening.
SB-1 requires Kentucky to implement a much better state assessment program – one aligned to what kids will need in the future for college and careers. If schools want to do well under this new system, they are going to have to make some important changes.
However, Holliday’s letter indicates a disturbing number of educators in this state don’t want to put effort into changes that will improve education of our children. Quite simply, as the commissioner’s letter points out, some of the adults in Kentucky’s school system prefer the lesser demands of the status quo, which continues to fail many students.
Sadly, this really is no surprise. It’s a natural outcome of a system that runs mostly like a monopoly, tending to attract people of lower motivation who don’t like incentives to improve.
This is not to say all, or even many, of our educators are unmotivated. I know that is absolutely not the case. But, clearly, enough of Kentucky’s educators are standing in the way of progress that now the education commissioner feels it necessary to formally point it out.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Monday links: Health care reform, tax hikes, and geolocation
Here is your dose of daily links for Monday!
- Americans for Tax Reform published a great document outlining all the tax increases associated with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare". You can download that document here.
- We have made some recent additions to our "Healthcare Reform" page on Freeedomkentucky.org!
- This blog by The Cato Institute about the government using cell phones for geolocation is more than just a little scary.
Opposing forced smoking bans on the airwaves: BIPPS on Bowling Green's WKCT-AM
Quote of the day: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Friday, January 14, 2011
More KERA math?
The Herald-Leader ran a short article yesterday, “Education Week magazine gives Ky. a 'C'” that offers interesting insight.
The article says that in 2008 Kentucky ranked 33rd in Education Week’s ranking of state education systems and slipped to 34th this year.
Then, the article continues, “Susan Weston, an analyst for Kentucky's Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, said the latest K-12 ranking shows the state has progressed but needs to do more.”
While I have a lot of doubts about EdWeek’s rankings, somehow going from 33rd to 34th place is hard to stretch into a picture of progress, at least over the last three years.
Williams goes after Jefferson County School Board and JCTA
Wave-3 TV has the details here.
However, WAVE-3 misses some important material, so, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, here is the rest of the story.
WAVE-3 reports in other articles that the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA) makes some very large campaign contributions to favored school board candidates, sometimes running to enormous amounts over $100,000.
So, William’s comments that the union controls the local board of education have good supporting evidence.
Also, a pending report from the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability (OEA), which was approved by the Kentucky Legislature’s Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee in December, shows that the JCTA has definitely been involved in activities that were unfavorable to children.
For example, Jefferson County has the only remaining union contract in Kentucky that still allows seniority to trump the superintendent’s and principals’ authority to place teachers where they are most needed.
The OEA also points out that some procedures and provisions in the JCTA contract may run afoul of statute.
One of the most serious charges is that the union negotiated a Memorandum of Agreement with the school district on restaffing in the district’s Persistently Low-Achieving Schools. In consequence, the report shows that a large proportion of the teachers who wound up in those schools were highly inexperienced first-year interns. House Bill 176 was written specifically to prohibit that from happening and it looks like the Memorandum violated that law.
What is even worse, it looks like the school district isn’t even planning to fix the issue of low-experience teachers, either.
So, there is a lot behind Sen. Williams’ comments that WAVE-3 didn’t cover.
Stay tuned, because I think Senator Williams is going to open a lot of eyes on the real situation in Jefferson County schools. It’s about time.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Quote of the day: Fight, don't fear, labor unions
Today's edition of Frankfort's Frivolous Legislation: Energy fiends, beware!
There isn't even an election for their seats this year, yet Frankfort's politicians -- especially those in the House -- remain committed to filing frivolous bills during the beginning of the legislative session while avoiding addressing the tough issues.
Take, for example, House Bill 65, which would ban the sale of energy drinks to children under 18 years of age. The bill, filed by Rep. Danny Ford, R-Mt. Vernon, has been introduced to the Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee.
Ford tried, but failed, in the past to get support for such legislation. Apparently he once again is emboldened now that the Food and Drug Administration has banned alcoholic energy drinks.
There have been a few cases of alcoholic poisoning across the country. But does this justify banning all energy drinks to all minors, the vast majority of whom drink them in moderation?
An Energy Fiend blogger wrote: "I fail to see the logic here and it amazes me how some people can be elected to government when they don’t seem to have a shred of common sense or reason."
Me, either.
Since Ford and other Republicans who continue to waste taxpayers' time and money on frivolous legislation that chips away at our individual liberties and choices -- even after what happened in the November elections -- perhaps a Democratic lawmaker would introduce a bill banning politicians displaying such disregard for a free society from the Capitol grounds in Frankfort.
The Energy Fiend blog offers you some direction if you want to take action:
"If you love energy drinks and are one of the vast majority who drink them in moderation, perhaps you should take some action and write your congressmen. Stop big government from legislating your freedoms away."
Reach Rep. Ford at (502) 564-5855 or Danny.Ford@lrc.ky.gov. His office is in room 414 of the Capitol Annex.
Messenger-Enquirer’s attack on AP bill is puzzling
The Messenger-Enquirer has come out against Senate Bill 13 (subscription), a bill that would provide rewards for teachers of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses in math and science when students earn high scores on the related tests for those programs.
That editorial opposition makes me wonder if the Messenger’s editors really read and understood the bill and really understand the problem.
First: It’s no secret – across the United States and here in Kentucky – schools are having a hard time finding enough qualified teachers for math and science. That is especially true in high schools, where the subject knowledge required renders potential teaching candidates very competitive for other occupations, many high-paying, that also require this important knowledge.
In fact, over the past several years, Kentucky Senator Ken Winters, who heads the Senate Education Committee, reports that all the education schools in Kentucky combined have graduated only one person each year – just one a year – who is qualified to teach high school physics.
Clearly, the shortage of high school math and science teachers is a serious situation. It is obvious that schools need to be able to offer special inducements to get more teachers in these high skills, but high shortage areas.
Senate Bill 13 was created to address this most critical imbalance problem at a cost we can currently afford.
Certainly, as the Messenger suggests, it would be good to implement merit pay across the board for all teachers along with instituting reforms that insure teachers who don’t provide good performance are removed. However, the state cannot afford to do that, right now.
So, SB-13 institutes a first step, limited program to deal with one of the most serious teaching problems of all. As such, it can provide useful pilot information for the future when Kentucky is in a better position to address all teachers’ performance.
By the way, we already have a track record in this area based on the success of a privately funded pilot program called AdvanceKentucky, which has shown that using similar stipends for performance plus doing other activities dramatically improves AP course performance.
One last note, so far, the Enquirer’s position doesn’t seem to be sitting well with its readership. Both comments on the article as of 1 PM on January 13, 2011 express differing opinions. It seems at least a few readers may have a better handle on this subject than those at the Enquirer do.
How much does your state representative make during a session?
The Kentucky Legislative Research Commission has added a new feature to their site that allows Kentuckians to search the expenditures of the Kentucky General Assembly. Interested in the travel reimbursements your state senator receives? How much do you think your representative is compensated throughout the regular session? You can find out here!
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| This is an example of a returned search result |
The search engine allow for searches of legislators, full-time employees (the site actually calls them 'permanent' - think about that for a second...), and part-time employees (I guess you could say 'transient'...)
This new feature combined with other recent additions to the site are an encouraging step toward making Kentucky's government transparent.
Of course this doesn't mean that we will stop our hard work providing resources for Kentucky's citizens through our own transparency site with articles like this one.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Beshear skipping press association's forum
Gov. Steve Beshear is skipping the Kentucky Press Association's forum for gubernatorial candidates on Jan. 21, claiming "he'll be busy being governor."
Bill Hyers, Beshear's campaign manager, says in an e-mail to KPA executive director David Thomson that the governor "will be happy to appear ... after the primary."
Of course, Team Beshear knows full well that the KPA meets each January, meaning that another forum with this number of reporters, editors and publishers won't occur again until long after November's gubernatorial election.
I wonder: Which of those reporters' questions is the governor trying to avoid?
Perhaps this one:
"Governor, one of the primary duties of Kentucky's chief executive is to propose -- in good faith -- a balanced-budget proposal to the General Assembly. However, in 2010, you offered a spending plan that included nearly $780 million in expanded-gaming revenue, even though you knew the idea had little support in the Legislature, even within your own party. Isn't it a dereliction of duty for you to offer a budget you knew would cause the Legislature -- on the people's dime -- to essentially start the budget process from scratch?"
Or, maybe this one:
"Governor, the current budget was balanced only because of an infusion of hundreds of millions in federal bailout money. Given that those are one-time dollars, how do you propose -- assuming you are reelected -- that Kentucky's next budget be balanced?"
Surely this one:
"Governor, in August, a state legislative oversight committee voted to disapprove renewing the contract of the Kentucky Climate Action Panel, expressing concern about the panel's involvement with the radical Center for Climate Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group committed to discouraging the use of fossil fuels and diminishing consumer freedoms. You overrode this decision by the people's representatives and funded the group anyhow. How could you agree to fund a warming-alarmist organization that supports policies that not only hurt Kentucky's economy but also damage its coal industry and even go so far as to threaten private property rights and individual liberties?"
Come to think of it, there's plenty of reasons for Beshear to avoid meeting with an association representing 160 newspapers and other organizations, including the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky's free-market think tank.
If not Senate Bill 3, then what?
The Courier-Journal reports that key leaders in the Kentucky House are already pronouncing SB-3 – the parent choice bill with both charter schools and neighborhood schools provisions – dead upon arrival.
SB-3 is intended to do something positive about poor performance in too many Kentucky schools by opening up more options to parents. The hope is that those options will create competitive forces within our currently monopolized school system that will spur real improvement for kids.
While the House leaders may make some supporters happy by pronouncing SB-3 dead, what, exactly, do those House leaders intend to do about the poor performance in many of our schools?
So far, the answer seems to be: not very much.
While the list of Persistently Low-Achieving Schools grows, and while gaps remain – largely unchanged – the best we are hearing from House Education Chair Representative Carl Rollins is that he wants to have a study on why blacks are under-performing. He also wants a bill to relieve regular public schools in Kentucky from burdensome red tape, the same sort of roadblocks that charter schools in other states can avoid now.
Well, here’s one newsflash: Schools in Kentucky already can request waivers from regulations.
It’s all covered in KRS 156.160, Promulgation of administrative regulations by Kentucky Board of Education — Voluntary compliance — Penalty, under Paragraph (2)(a).
This waiver provision has been in statute since KERA was enacted in 1990. Problem: it must not be getting used effectively if Rep. Rollins thinks we need legislation that already exists.
So far as studying why blacks under-perform, this is one of the most studied issues in education. I’d be surprised if diversity experts from the Kentucky Department of Education couldn’t outline all sorts of existing research for Rep. Rollins within a day of being asked to do so. We are past the point where we need time-wasting studies.
As Jim Waters recently pointed out in his syndicated column:
“No single politician, legislative committee or special-interest group should stand in the way of real reform in Kentucky’s education system.”
So, I return to my initial question: If not SB-3, then what? The kids of Kentucky are waiting for the answers.
