Tag Archives: Elections

Score high on ALEC policy, score low on education

 

According to ALEC’s own website, states that score high on ALEC’s education policies score low on education. Remember, ALEC is behind the Georgia charter school amendment on the November ballot. If you didn’t believe Stanford Credo’s study that showed adding a charter school authorizer, as that amendment would do, reduces academic learning, how about ALEC’s own data?

Bill Simon write for The Political Vine today, Charter Schools and ALEC: The Facts ALEC Doesn’t Want You To Know,

If you take the state performance rankings and match them up to each state’s education policy rankings, you come-up with an entirely different picture of how little (if any at all) a state’s degree of conservative education “policy” translates into actual education performance.

I did this ( PDF copy available here) and this is what the 2012 Top 10 states in Performance looks like, and their corresponding Policy ranks:

2012 Performance/Policy Rank

ALEC's 17th Report Card on American Education
  1. Massachusetts / B-
  2. Vermont / D+
  3. New Jersey / B-
  4. Colorado / B
  5. Pennsylvania / C+
  6. Rhode Island / C
  7. North Carolina / C
  8. Kansas / C-
  9. New Hampshire / C+
  10. New York / C-

The numbers are ALEC’s performance rankings, and the letters are ALEC’s policy grades.

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GA PSC questionnaire: David Staples

David Staples The Georgia Sierra Club sent a questionnaire to all candidates for Georgia Public Service Commission. None of the incumbents answered. The two challengers did. Here’s the one from David A. Staples for District 5. -jsq

  1. As a Candidate for Public Service Commission, what is your campaign strategy for achieving 50% +1 of the votes cast?

    [I’m omitting the answers to this question. -jsq]

  2. How should the Public Service Commission consider and weight the impacts to community health (asthma, cancer rates, etc.) and on Georgia’s environmental (water quantity, air quality etc.) when making decisions about a utility’s generation portfolio?

    Impacts to community health and the environment have to be considered very carefully. I know there are a number of different ways of viewing the situation but the explanation I’ve found that works best with Republicans in trying to get their support is that it comes down to a private property matter. The right to swing ones fist ends at the other person’s nose. Does anyone have the right to pollute the air that I breathe or the water that I drink?

    If I buy a piece of property for instance along the Savannah River or Ogeechee River, does someone upstream from me have the right to pollute the water that then flows onto my land, carrying those pollutants with it?

    Absolutely not.

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Adding another charter school authorizer reduces academic learning —Karen Noll

Received today on Georgia charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. -jsq

The Stanford study, Multiple Choice: Charter school performance in 16 states (p. 4), also found that multiple authorizers:

Figure 15: Charter School Effect of Policy Variables

States that empower multiple entities to act as charter school authorizers realize significantly lower growth in academic learning in their students, on the order of -.08 standard deviations.

Currently we have the local boards of education that authorize charter schools at a very high rate, 94%. If the charter is not approved by the local board then they can appeal to the Dept of Ed. For approval. So, by adding another authorizer in the form of the UNCONSTITUTIONAL charter school commission you simply reduce the academic learning of the students! This is not about education this amendment is about the money earned by some to keep power! Our constitution states that we have an obligation to provide free quality education to all Georgians. We have no obligation to line the pockets of the rich with our tax dollars!

-Karen Noll

Charter school amendment: taxation without representation —Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09

Karen Noll spoke to the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday about the charter school amendment, saying it would implement taxation without representation Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09 and would take more tax dollars from our public schools to give twice as much money to special charter school students.

When you’re talking about my kids in the schools and you’re going to take their money and ship it to somebody else’s family and then there’s no accountability, that’s just unacceptable.

Here’s the video.

-jsq

WCTV on LCC Chair Candidates

Greg Gullberg at the Lowndes County Palace Greg Gullberg wrote for WCTV today, Lowndes County Commission Chair Candidates Polar Opposites,

The Chairman of a County Commission can have great impact on the lives of residents. And in one local county, the candidates couldn’t be more different.

She wants to make it easier to see what the Commission is doing; he worries ordinances make it too difficult for business.

Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes County Chairwoman Bill Slaughter for Lowndes County Chairman

Gretchen Quarterman speaking to the Lowndes County Commission WCTV using LAKE video Here’s the WCTV video, which appears to start with outtakes from LAKE videos of Commission meetings. LAKE videos that were taken by… Gretchen Quarterman. The one of her speaking to the Commission? Camera on a tripod.

-jsq

Georgia charter schools do no better than traditional public schools

Let's look at Georgia's non-unionized public schools. So far as I know, Georgia does not have teachers' unions. But there's still no reason to believe charter schools in Georgia would be any more magic than in Chicago.

According to CREDO at Stanford University, which has done CREDO at Stanford University state-by-state charter school studies, they find CHARTER SCHOOLS IN GEORGIA PERFORM SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW THEIR TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOL PEERS IN MATH: No Difference Found in Reading Performance. That's their press release. Here's the detailed study.

So if someone has a charter school idea that they think will perform Vote No on Amendment 1 better than public schools, they can talk to their local school board about that, and maybe that local board will agree. There's no need to authorize an unelected Atlanta board to force that charter school on us.

Vote No on the charter school amendment in November.

-jsq

Chicago charter schools do no better than unionized public schools

The Georgia “charter school” amendment isn’t really about charter schools (which any school district in Georgia can already approve, and many have): it’s about giving an unelected committee in Atlanta power to force us to pay extra local taxes to fund charter schools we don’t want. However, since the pushers of that amendment say it’s about charter schools, it’s worth reviewing that charter schools actually on average perform no better or even worse than traditional public schools. Let’s look at what the pushers hate most, unionized public schools in Chicago. and then let’s look at Georgia’s non-unionized public schools.

Ben Joravsky wrote for chichagoreader.com 3 October 2012, Today’s lesson: charters do not outperform unionized schools: Confronting the anti-teachers’ union myth with, you know, facts

But as I was saying, the foes of the teachers’ union declare that we should pay close attention to the all-important standardized test scores. So let’s take a look.

Chicago Public Schools There are 541 elementary schools in Chicago. Based on the composite ISAT scores for 2011—the last full set available—none of the top ten are charters. None of the top 20, 30, or 40 either.

In fact, you’ve got to go to 41 to find a charter. Take a bow, CICS Irving Park!

Most of the 49 charters on the list are clustered near the great middle, alongside most of their unionized neighborhood schools.

The top scorers are public schools with unionized teachers who are members of the Chicago Teachers Union.

UNO is a charter school operator. Joravsky compares one of its schools side-by-side with a unionized public school.

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Library process transparency —John S. Quarterman

John S. Quarterman videoing SPLOST VII Kickoff Speeches It’s good to see that someone responsible for allocating millions of dollars of taxpayer money is willing to answer questions about related decisions, as Kay Harris is doing! It would be even better if there were a regular process by which the taxpaying and voting and library-using public could ask such questions and get answers.

If there were such a process, it’s pretty likely Ms. Harris or the Library Board or the County Commission would have been asked about the architect selection, considering I wasn’t even involved in that selection and my ear was scorched with complaints as soon as it was announced. Maybe Ms. Harris can suggest a way to produce such a process.

Let me take Ms. Harris’ points in order.

“First, they were the only one of the four finalists who did a full cost evaluation of the project, estimating $16 million while others were more than content to use the state’s estimate of $21 million.”

That’s very interesting news, which clarifies for me what she was getting at in the VDT writeup on that selection:

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Why we selected an out of town architect —Kay Harris

Received yesterday on New Library —Kay Harris. My response follows in the next post. -jsq

I was never asked why we selected an out of town architect, but will Kay Harris happily answer that question now. First, they were the only one of the four finalists who did a full cost evaluation of the project, estimating $16 million while others were more than content to use the state's estimate of $21 million. Second, they brought to the project a consultant who is considered the country's leading library consultant; only one of the other four brought in an outside expert. Third, the principals of this firm live right over the county line in Florida—they are within the 50 mile radius that is considered "hiring local", so they are indeed a local firm. They also brought a local engineering firm, from Valdosta, to the table, and have agreed to hire as many subs from the local area as possible. So I truly don't understand the "jab" about hiring non-local… if it was that big a concern, why not just ask me the question? Mr. Quarterman wasn't even in the room at the time I spoke….

-Kay Harris

-jsq

Ethics Matter —David Staples for GA PSC

Received 2 October 2012 from David Staples. -jsq

One of the most frequent topics that comes up in political conversation these days is ethics. On July 31st, Georgians overwhelmingly voted that there needs to be a cap on the amount of gifts our elected officials are allowed to accept. However, there are many of us who believe that even a $100 per day cap is still too much—that perhaps $0 is a better cap. After all, looking at the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission website, one can see that while the $150 rounds of golf and several hundred dollar dinners for the official and their spouse may be eliminated, there are many more of the smaller lunches, dinners, and various other goodies that would still be allowed. Would you be surprised to hear that some Public Service Commissioners walk out of their office or a hearing at lunch time and say “I’m hungry, where’s a lobbyist”?

However, there is one completely legal process by which we can eliminate all gifts

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