There is Always More to the Story

Surprise, surprise a union suing, this time over class size. Research has shown time and time again that class size has little affect on student performance. I bet if you took a look at the teachers' contract these teachers do not teach a full day especially those who are nearing retirement. If they actually taught the full day minus their lunch hour they could probably reduce class size as well.

Hey teachers stop whining, stop suing, stop giving excuses and get off your butts and do your job. Be grateful that you have job with excellent pay and benefits because many Americans do not have what you have at this time.

The following piece appears on NBC Chicago.com.

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Teacher's Union Sues CPS

Increased class sizes would violate municipal code, inhibit education, union says.
By ANDREW GREINER


The Chicago Teacher’s Union took legal action against the city for trying to increase Chicago Public School classroom sizes to 35 students.

In an unprecedented move that hinges on a decades old municipal code, the Teacher's Union filed a lawsuit against the school system citing overcrowding.



A code passed in 1958 -- after the Our Lady of Angels School fire that killed 92 students -- requires that all classrooms have at least 20 square feet of space per body.

That means classrooms of 35 students and one teacher require at least 720 square feet of space.

The Union suit will include affidavits from teachers who have measured their rooms.
School officials say 90 percent of the classrooms in the CPS system are at least 700 square feet, and the typical classroom is 720
square feet.

"On top of the educational problems it would create, such huge class sizes would violate the city's health and safety codes in thousands of our classrooms," said Union President Marilyn Stewart in a statement. "So whether you look at it from an educational standpoint or a health and safety standpoint, what CEO Ron Huberman and his Board of Education are trying to do is unconscionable."

CPS estimates it can shave about $125 million off its budget by increasing class sizes from the maximum of 32 students to 35.

The Slow Awakening

When Jim and I started fighting for education reform and education spending reform in Harvard many people did not like us or trust us but people eventually came around. We know the tax eaters, those living off the taxpayer teat and socialist will never like us and that is okay. In Illinois eventually more people came around to our side, hopefully someday more people will come around to our side in Croydon as well.


The following piece appeared on the Northwest Herald.

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.

Education reform

To the Editor:

I can’t even begin to tell you how much it warmed my heart to read the comments to Tony Casalino’s letter to the editor entitled “Supports tax increase” (May 1).

My husband, Jim, and I fought for education reform and education spending reform for four years before we decided not enough people were on board and Illinois was on a nonstop train to bankruptcy due to its spending problems and pension problems.

Good luck to you all, but you must do more than just respond to letters to the editors in newspapers. You must educate your friends and family, start tax-fighting groups, run for public office and, most importantly, support and vote for people who will be fiscally responsible and fight for true education reform.

Do not vote for any candidate who is funded with teachers union dollars. These are just your own education dollars working against you and your children’s futures.

Cathy Peschke

Co-founder Citizens for Reasonable And Fair Taxes, Croydon, N.H.



johnqpublic wrote on May 7, 2010 5:32 a.m.
"Think the NWH just published this letter to show their extensive reach? Not much going on in New Hampshire, huh?"

taxpayer wrote on May 7, 2010 7:20 a.m.
"Well said, Cathy. Finally the people are being made painfully aware of the situation."

kenbob wrote on May 7, 2010 7:23 a.m.
"This letter makes a lot of sense. Money doesn't solve education issues, true reform and a solid family values is what will make education work again. The astro-turf idiots in Springfield demanding to "raise my taxes" are nothing but a bunch of union goons. Throw money at the problem (while taxing everyone at higher rates) is their answer. Not in these days and not in any days is that the right answer."

Wake up America wrote on May 7, 2010 7:37 a.m.
"Hi Cathy....Yes, things have changed in the last few years....people have realized they've been massively ripped off by the schools....BOE's, Administrators and Teachers are now .....on the run.... Thanks to you and Jim for getting the facts out there...it was the start of today's movement..."

50 caliber wrote on May 7, 2010 10:56 a.m.
"John Q Public (Employee) caught RED HANDED! Take you anger out on your union. Thank you Cathy & Jim! The corrupted CRAZY TRAIN.... ALLLLLLL ABOARD, HA, HA, HA, HA, has crashed and burned like "so" many predicted. Your seminar's were damaging to the establishment and the liar's sitting on these school board's. Thank you very much. You are ALWAYS welcome back. "

Curmudgeonman wrote on May 7, 2010 11:30 a.m.
"So, Jim & Cathy, just what sort of reform did you fight for? From what I have read of your cybersquats, the only thing you fought for was to abolish public education. Is that the "reform" you speak of - get rid of schools? No wonder you couldn't find a following: you had no real, tangible ideas of reform. Go back to your maple trees in NH and continue grinding your one-room school district into the ground. "

Mr. Schneebly wrote on May 7, 2010 1:11 p.m.
"Cathy... you had me till the last sentence. Basically ou just used the vehicle of "school reform" to tout your anti-union hatred. Any reform to education should directly involve teachers. Oh and by the way they happen to belong to the union. If you are suggesting any sort of reform happes WITHOUT input from teachers you need to really look at your priorities. Instead of trying to use all parties to fix the problem you just want tos hove whatever concept of education reform you have down our throats. Sorry, anyone with half a brain won't support that!"

Mr. Schneebly wrote on May 7, 2010 1:14 p.m.
"You're talking about labor reform, not education reform. Figure out what your issue is and then try to deal with it. Stop concealing your real agenda with "education reform" and stay the heck away from decisions that effect MY children!"

GoodCitizen wrote on May 7, 2010 1:28 p.m.
"Schneebly, I think Cathy's term of Education Reform is fine in the context of the big picture. Teachers appear to support the Union's policies. Those policies have been shown to be not in the best interest of our children. Teachers have gone from being underpaid, to now being grossly overpaid. I'm not letting administrators off the hook with that statement. Administrators are nothing more than highway robbers. These costly teachers contracts get approved because parents can't take off work while a teachers strike. It's all out of control."

juschill wrote on May 7, 2010 1:30 p.m.
"Mr. Schneebly, what do you say we stay away from desisions that affect your kids and you agree to educate your kids and stay away from our wallets? Or are we supposed to give you our money, but not our input? "

pryan1967 wrote on May 7, 2010 3:57 p.m.
"Curmudgeonman-Where did Jim or Cathy EVER say "do away with public education"? On the other hand...where did the teacher's union (and, by extension, the teachers themselves) ever say "Let's do what's best for the KIDS, rather than what will fatten our wallets"?"

warmfuzzy wrote on May 7, 2010 4:12 p.m.
"Shneeb-You’re wrong! Education Reform will enable LABOR reform. Do this first. Start with getting rid of TENURE. Let the good ones stay and the bad ones get FIRED. The Education System is broken because of a decision that put the needs of workers ahead of the needs of children. Other states that surround Illinois don't have TENURE. Get rid of it and you will see great leaps in education reform. Labor won't like it, but it will take a bite out of Labor's strength. Remove Labor from ALL Public Sectors-You will see HUGE changes and REAL Gov’t reform. Do you get it? Unions are the PROBLEM."

imhotep wrote on May 7, 2010 5:26 p.m.
"Poster Poll, Question 1. The purpose of a public education system is: a.to provide quality education for our children, b.to provide well paying jobs and pensions to "education workers" (teachers & bureaucrats)? 2. If Government mismanagement has bankrupted our Public Education system, the brunt of austerity measures should be borne by: 1."education workers/bureaucrats", or 2. children? "

+froggy+ wrote on May 7, 2010 6:49 p.m.
"nobody wants to takes your poster poll nancy"


IL Tax Payer wrote on May 8, 2010 7:59 p.m.
"Cathy-your letter is right on the mark. I believe MOST Illinoisians are finally getting it. Thanks to YOU and JIM for getting the REAL financial story out there and getting the education of the tax payer ball rolling - e.g., out of line salaries, benefits, 100% of TRS being paid by the tax payer, sick days, more vacation days than anyother sector, and on and on. For years we all believed the "woe is me poor educator" story - we all now know the real story."

Why I Homeschool

Reason number 113 why I homeschool my children. At a Newport school board member Jim discussed how are then four year old daughter could read. A teacher turned to Jim and said no four year old can read. At the time she was able to read such books as Go Dog Go by Dr. Suess.


Reason number 347 why I homeschool. My children are my responsibility your property taxes should not have to pay to educate my children.

Someone I have known for 30 years asked me if I was against public education, here was my answer.

Education is a privilege and not a right and should not be funded by the people. Parents should be responsible for funding their children's education. Stalin, Hitler, Marx all loved public education. I am not against education, I am against government funded education.

Friedrich Engels, who in is 1847 draft of the Manifesto called "Principles of Communism" wrote as one of its tenets:
"Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother's care, in national establishments at national cost."

"What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler "Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." - Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

For centuries scholars have known that education funded by the government has proven to curb the thinking of men.

Taxpayer funded socialist indoctrination centers aka public schools aka government schools have done their job well when men can no longer see the evils of such institutions.

Quote of the Day - "The abilities of a child are only limited by the minds of the adults that surround said child." Cathy Peschke


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Failures of Our Public Education System

The following commentary was sent to me by Pete Speer the Finance Guy and fellow education reformer. The piece below his commentary appears in Education Week.

Cathy

The Article below provides additional documentation to what I believe is the foundation of the smoke and mirrors being foisted on the public by the Education establishment. It is one other reason why the system can not be fixed from within.

Everybody who has a child in school, everyone who is or should be concerned about school performance should bookmark, print out and distribute the following article written by a professor at the Harvard School of Education.

The core measure of school performance comes from standardized testing prepared by the State Boards of Education. The ability to inflate scores by this body responsible for controlling and evaluating the true quality of education conceals the true performance of the students, their instructors and the school districts from the parents, the taxpayers and even the likely complicit legislators who appropriate huge sums in the professed hope that the schools are educating and graduating students who are able to contribute to the betterment of society and to enable the country to compete in the 21st Century World Economy.

Inflation of test scores is the primary method by which the Education establishment can bamboozle the parents and justify the teaching as well as the performance of the School Board. Perversely it can also be expensive to those Districts which have apparently raised the grade level performance of the ir students. This increased student grade level ranking can cause the District to lose State and Federal money. That means that to nmaintain and continue the improvement program the District must pay for it from its own funds. Perhaps your District is unaware of this result.

Pete Speer



Published Online: April 27, 2009
Published in Print: April 29, 2009
Commentary

What's Missing in Obama's Education Plan?

By Daniel M. Koret

President Obama recently announced the broad outlines of a new education plan. ("Rigor, Rewards, Quality: Obama's Education Aims," March 18 and "Obama Echoes Bush on Education Ideas," April 8, 2009.) This plan has much to praise but also three critically important omissions.

The new approach, like the No Child Left Behind Act and many of its precursors, relies on holding educators accountable for student performance on achievement tests. Indeed, it would make this element of education policy even more important—for example, by encouraging pay-for-performance plans. But the effects of the previous accountability programs have been disappointing: relatively small improvements on trustworthy indicators of performance, and many serious side effects. Why should we expect more of the president’s proposed variation on this familiar theme?

To avoid replicating past mistakes, the president’s accountability program will have to follow three principles:
Make it broad. An assumption underlying the No Child Left Behind law was that if we initially focused accountability on just a couple of the critically important goals of education—math and reading achievement—the rest would hold steady and wait for us to turn to them later. Abundant evidence shows this assumption to be wrong. The activities and outcomes that do not count for accountability deteriorate, sometimes seriously, as schools shift resources from them to those few things that do count.
Many areas can suffer, including untested subjects, untested aspects of the subjects used in the accountability system, performing arts, student-initiated work, and physical activity. This should be no surprise. It is just common sense, and the same problem has been found in many other fields and in private firms as well as the public sector.

Confront score inflation. Commenting on the low performance standards currently set by some states, the New York Times columnist David Brooks quoted U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as saying: “States are lying to children. They are lying to parents. They’re ignoring failure.” Indeed. But there is another reason that the public has been misled: bogus increases in scores. Many schools have responded to test-based accountability in ways that inflate scores, increasing them more than actual gains in achievement warrant. This does not require cheating. Scores can be inflated by many honest—although undesirable—forms of test preparation.

While not ubiquitous, score inflation is common and sometimes very large, and it is likely to hurt the most disadvantaged students the most. This too should not be surprising, because similar problems have been found in many other fields. Yet policymakers continue to ignore this inconvenient fact and use inflated scores to support exaggerated claims of success.
We should admit that our ideas for a better educational accountability system, however thoughtful, are partly unproven, need evaluation, and may require midcourse corrections.

If we fail to confront the problem of score inflation, we will be left, once again, with an illusion of effective accountability. Dealing with inflation effectively will require numerous steps. We will need frequent auditing of score gains to ensure that improvements on the tests used for accountability are trustworthy indicators of improved learning. We have had a small number of audits over the past two decades, but these have been the exception rather than the rule because neither federal nor state reform programs have established an expectation, let alone a requirement, that this type of evaluation be conducted.
We need to monitor how educators prepare students for the accountability tests—whether they improve their instruction or resort to inappropriate forms of test preparation. We also need to evaluate new approaches to test design tailored to lessening inflation. The Obama administration’s goal of developing tests that focus more on higher-order skills is laudable, but it will not address the problem of score inflation.

Experiment and evaluate. This nation has tried numerous approaches to test-based accountability over the past several decades, but all of them have shared one essential trait: None has been based on sufficient evidence. They have been designed without enough hard information about their likely effectiveness and side effects. Once implemented, they have not been adequately evaluated. Scores on the accountability tests usually increase, and for a time we are greeted with claims of success. Eventually, less-encouraging data catch up with us—for example, scores on other tests less vulnerable to inflation, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and international comparative studies. A crisis is declared, we make up a new accountability system, and the cycle begins anew.

This failure to rely on hard evidence hinders the improvement of policy and schooling, and the failure to monitor effects on children is unacceptable. We do not tolerate this in other policy areas (think of Vioxx). The administration should avoid the temptation to say, once again, that we have it right this time. We should admit that our ideas for a better educational accountability system, however thoughtful, are partly unproven, need evaluation, and may require midcourse corrections.
The upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law should institute routine and rigorous evaluation of the program’s effects—evaluations that do not rely on potentially inflated test scores. It should also encourage states and large districts to experiment with innovative approaches to accountability, but with a price: evaluations that will tell the rest of us whether their systems should be terminated, modified, or emulated.

There is room to argue about how best to address these three principles. But a failure to address them will give us more of the same: a narrowed educational system, bogus claims of success, and children left behind.
Daniel M. Koretz is the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author of Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us.
Vol. 28, Issue 30, Pages 32,36

Another Education Myth Bites the Dust.

The following is in response to the Editorial in the Union Leader.

Cathy Peschke

So much for the phony, union created "teacher shortage" myth.

In any other field of human endeavor, such a steep labor surplus would drive wages down where they belong. In government monopoly education, we just retain poor teachers making far more than the competent teachers ready and willing to take their place.

Is it any wonder our property taxes are so high (No, its not because we don't have an income tax!)?
Jim Peschke

1,200 applied for 40 high school jobs in Windham
By DERRICK PERKINS
Union Leader Correspondent


WINDHAM – School officials say they have found an upside to the economic turmoil of recent months, tapping into a large pool of experienced and enthusiastic prospective teachers for the new high school.

According to Superintendent Frank Bass, the district received over 1,200 applications for about 40 open professional positions within the new high school, some from neighboring schools and others from as far away as Africa. While Bass said it is not unusual to see a high level of interest in positions within a new school, the nation's economic woes have been to the benefit of the district.



"It's been to our advantage ... there's no doubt in my mind," Bass said. "We had them come in from a lot of places. Usually these people were fearful of how their positions were going to be maintained in their current schools."

As Windham opens up classroom positions to educators across the country, other districts are downsizing. In Salem, school officials declined to renew a total of 13 teacher contracts and Nashua may cut more than 10 teaching positions as officials hammer out the budget. Five teaching positions have also been cut in nearby Merrimack.

Just as the poor economy and municipal budget cuts have increased the pool of potential educators, Bass said the advantages his district's new facility offers teachers also plays a role. Classrooms will be equipped with SMART Boards and each student will be issued a school laptop to use both in class and at home as part of the district's one-to-one computing program. The high school will also have a partnership with Boston College and Plymouth State University, Bass said.

According to Principal Richard Manley, the technologically friendly environment at Windham High School has become one of the larger attractions for prospective staff.

"Almost every teacher has cited the idea of the advantages of technology as a draw to the Windham High School. They relate stories of the difficulties they have in their own schools (where) their equipment is older and not working or they're scheduling the available equipment among other teachers and students," Manley said. "We are attracting a pool of candidates that are more technologically savvy than we would otherwise have."

Manley also believes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching the school intends to adopt for next year's first class of freshmen and sophomore students has attracted educators. Students at the high school will take a humanities class -- a blending of social studies and English courses -- taught by teachers trained in both fields.

While Manley and Bass have finished with the first round of hirings, Manley said he expects to hire more educators as the high school population expands in subsequent years.

For the time being, Bass is pleased with the crop of teachers that will take center stage when the building opens its doors for the first time at the start of the new school year.

"We're really thrilled," he said. "We've got a wonderful cross-section; we've hired some kids and some seasoned veterans."

Summer School At Croydon - Is it cost effective and does it improve performance?

As you have read in the Eagle Times Article Jim Peschke rejected funds for summer school. His reasons was that only 41.7% of the students performed proficient in math with 9 months of schooling, how was two hours a day, four days a week for four weeks going to improve student performance. At this point Marilyn Brannigan scolded Jim and said he needed to do research in the the subject. Jim has done plenty of research and he knows that, "in fact most research shows that summer school as typically administered has little if any impact on learning.” You can read another article on the subject here.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Flunked the Movie

I have added two new links to our Links of Interest section of our BLOG. The first link is to a movie called "flunked" the second link is to the "flunked" BLOG.

Hat Tip School Choice Illinois.org

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for our readers.

New Link - Parental Rights.org

We have added a new link...the link is Parental Rights.org. The site listing came about as a result of a discussion on a homeschool list. Someone listed a link to the UN rights of the Child and responded they did not see anything wrong with the list. Both my husband and I thought he was joking, actually we still do not know if he was joking or serious.

There are great problems with the UN rights list first and foremost the government will override your parental rights. If your child does not like the fact that you grounded him or asked him to study before play he could sue and say his rights have been violated. Read more about it here, here and here.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for our readers.

Charter School May Unionize

Frequent readers know I am a huge fan of charter schools and hold a dislike for government unions. My dislike of government unions has to do with their effect on the different forms of government, the people they serve, productivity and taxpayers. While doing some research on teacher certification vs. student performance I reminded myself of Jay P. Greene's Blog. We have a ton of links on our site which I do not visit as often as I would like. Jim always tells me, "life is just too short there is so much more I want to learn." Considering he is one of the most intelligent and informative people I know it is amazing he feels he has so much more to learn. Bit I digress.... I ran across the following piece on Jay P. Greene's Blog titled KIPP RIP.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for our readers.

KIPP RIP
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, two KIPP schools in New York have had a majority of their teachers vote to unionize under a card check type provision. New York Times story here.

Andy Rotherham attempts to downplay the whole incident. Nice try Andy, but forget about it. KIPP should pull the plug on these schools at the end of the school year, burn down the buildings and plow salt into the ground upon which they once stood. This would be tragic for the people that no doubt worked very hard to bring these schools to life, but let’s face it, their efforts would be much better rewarded in other states.



The whole idea of running a KIPP academy along with a thousand page union contract is absurd. Half-days on Saturday? Not on your life. On call to help with homework? Are you kidding? KIPP has earned many donors, but can they afford a rubber room? Need to change a light bulb in your classroom? Page 844, paragraph 5 clearly states that you must call a union electrician. You kids sit quietly with your heads down in the dark until he arrives. It will be any day now.

KIPP has a methodology and a hard earned brand to protect, and there are plenty of other kids in other states to help. If Congress is misguided enough to pass a national card check, it will be up to individual states to ban the practice. Those that do may find themselves rewarded by the opening of some very high quality schools.

UPDATE Andy has posted a hopeful reply that the first generation of union agreement with KIPP may be benign due to the threat of closing the school, which he views as a PR nightmare. The unions seems nigh immune to bad PR to me, and the best way to get leverage is to display your willingness to use it. Let’s see how events unfold.

To read more of Jay P. Greene's Blog click here. I am also a huge fan of his book Education Myths a must read for all parents who send their children to public schools as well as taxpayers. Cathy

5 Myths About No Child Left Behind

The following piece appears in the Washington Post. The greatest point in the article is point 5 - "Lawmakers blundered when they confused "qualified" with "certified" teachers. There's no solid evidence that state certification ensures classroom effectiveness -- and the booming success of programs such as Teach for America, which sends recent college graduates into troubled schools, suggests that certification may be wholly unnecessary. By requiring certified teachers in every classroom, No Child Left Behind makes it harder for district and charter schools to attract energetic and capable people who want to teach but take a less traditional route to the classroom."


If readers are interested there is a bit of research out there and can easily be found by googling the subject. I think the real world performance of homeschoolers most taught by non certified teachers further drives home the point.

I just was about to post this and I noticed the date of the report was from March of year, for some reason I thought the article appeared in yesterday's Washington Post. I hope you do enjoy the article anyway.

Cathy

5 Myths About No Child Left Behind
Myths About the Education Law Everyone Loves to Hate

By Chester E. Finn Jr.
Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page B03

It's the 800-pound gorilla of U.S. education. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the sweeping legislation enacted six years ago to improve public schools, seems to make a lot of people unhappy. But President Bush, undaunted by the barrage of criticism aimed at this beleaguered measure by states, teachers' unions and politicians on both sides of the aisle, is pushing Congress to reauthorize it this year . Many Capitol Hill observers believe that it won't survive without the political clout a new president and Congress would bring -- but after a starring role in five straight presidential elections, education is a bit player at best in the 2008 race. Could these widespread myths about No Child Left Behind have poisoned the well?

1. No Child Left Behind is an unprecedented extension of federal control over schools.

This allegation comes most often from Republicans who, claiming that they voted for the legislation only out of courtesy toward President Bush, have forgotten the bipartisan consensus that helped enact it. It's also a common complaint from state officials, who want fewer strings on their federal dollars.



But NCLB isn't compulsory. States that don't want to jump through its hoops are free to forgo their federal dollars. (Several, such as Utah, Nebraska and Virginia, came close to doing just that, but the lure of those funds helped them overcome their reservations.) The legislation isn't unprecedented, either -- it's just another incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society monuments. That law's centerpiece program, known as Title I, has pumped billions of federal dollars into education for poor children over the past 43 years. And the Improving America's Schools Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, was No Child Left Behind-lite, with similar expectations for states and districts but fewer rules and timelines.

2. No Child Left Behind is egregiously underfunded.

This charge comes mainly from Democrats, including liberal lions such as Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy and California Rep. George Miller, who helped shape the law. It arises from the fact that NCLB, like almost every social program, was authorized at higher funding levels than have ever been -- or are likely to be -- appropriated. Viewed that way, nearly everything born in Washington is "underfunded."

The costs of complying with No Child Left Behind -- setting standards, testing children, publishing the results and intervening in low-performing schools -- are actually relatively modest. Instead of demanding more money for No Child Left Behind, critics should ask why states and local communities get such dismal returns on the half-trillion dollars, or nearly $10,000 per student, that they already spend on primary and secondary education every year.

3. Setting academic standards will fix U.S. schools.

No Child Left Behind asks state governments to set standards in reading, math and science -- to identify basic skills that students should have mastered by a given grade level -- and to test them accordingly. This follows an educational theory called standards-based instruction that says: State what children should know; measure their progress; and use rewards and punishments to help them succeed.

For this to work, of course, good standards have to be in place, and NCLB doesn't address the problem of mediocre or even downright silly standards. Compromises needed to pass NCLB left the law laid-back about standards yet fussy about what states and districts should do when those standards aren't met. The upshot: low expectations on one hand and too much micromanagement on the other. A few states, such as Massachusetts, California and South Carolina, have taken their job seriously. But the majority either expect woefully little of their students and schools or have developed such nebulous standards that nobody -- not parents, not teachers, not test makers -- can make out what students are supposed to be learning.

4. The standardized testing required by No Child Left Behind gets in the way of real learning.

Teachers' animus toward standardized testing has many roots, chief among them the grueling weeks of preparation and exams that they and their students endure every year. But the accountability made possible by standardized testing isn't all bad. If the test is an honest measure of a solid curriculum, then teaching kids the skills and knowledge they need to pass it is honorable work. Just ask any Advanced Placement teacher.

5. Certified teachers are better than non-certified teachers.

Lawmakers blundered when they confused "qualified" with "certified" teachers. There's no solid evidence that state certification ensures classroom effectiveness -- and the booming success of programs such as Teach for America, which sends recent college graduates into troubled schools, suggests that certification may be wholly unnecessary. By requiring certified teachers in every classroom, No Child Left Behind makes it harder for district and charter schools to attract energetic and capable people who want to teach but take a less traditional route to the classroom.

cefinnjr@aol.com

Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik."

Jay P. Greene Nails it Again.

Earlier today I was chatting on a mailing list with people about homeschooling policies. One of the so called "advocates" just does not seem to understand how dangerous the NEA is to homeschooling freedom. Unfortunately this well intentioned person is doing more harm to homeschooling freedom than she may ever realize.

Jay P. Greene nails it again. Greene is the author of one of my favorite books Education Myths What Special-Interest Groups Want YOU to BELIEVE About our SCHOOLS AND WHY IT ISN'T SO. This book is a must read for all parents and taxpayers.

His BLOG today nails teacher unions and education policy dead on. The following is a partial post of his blog.

"This not only helps explain why JPGB beats Edwize, but also why reformers are able to beat the unions in the policy arena. It’s true that the unions win most of the time. But given their enormous advantage in resources, it is amazing that the unions ever lose. The reason that the unions lose as often as they do is that their policy positions are much more difficult to defend intellectually."

To view the rest of this post go to JayPGreene.com.

True education freedom fighters and reformers understand the above statement.

What you do not know can hurt your families finances.

The following piece appeared in the Hoover Institution's Journal Education Next. Is the Price Right?
Please visit the Hoover Institution website to read the whole article and the links for more information. This piece is a must read for all voters before approving more dollars for education.

By William G. Howell and Martin R. West

Probing American's knowledge of school spending

Article opening image: Contestants on 'The Price is Right' try to guess average teacher salary and per-pupil expenditure.

In the contentious world of education politics, the need to spend more on public schools stands out as a rare point of agreement. Our recent national survey of American adults (“What Americans Think about Their Schools,” features, Fall 2007) found that those who support increased spending on public schools in their district outnumber those who want spending to decrease by a five-to-one margin. What’s more, a solid majority (59 percent) of Americans express confidence that spending more on the public schools in their district will increase student learning.

Our findings paralleled those of other surveys, which routinely show that Americans rank inadequate funding among the most important problems facing the nation’s schools. According to the 2007 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, for example, 22 percent of U.S. adults identified a lack of financial support as the biggest problem facing the schools in their community. The second-ranked problem, a lack of discipline, was mentioned by only one in ten respondents. It is no surprise, then, that every Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2008 has called for increased federal spending on education, and that no Republican candidate (with the exception of libertarian Ron Paul) has proposed a spending cut.

Yet while the public’s views about spending on education are well known, the same cannot be said about the information on which those views are based. Do Americans have an accurate grasp of how much is currently being spent on public education?

The 2007 Education Next–PEPG Survey directly addressed this question. In addition to asking Americans whether school spending should be increased, we asked them to estimate both per-pupil expenditures in their districts and teacher salaries in their states. We then used data on actual spending and salaries, matched geographically to each respondent’s school district or state, to compare the public’s perceptions with reality.

The results are striking: Americans dramatically underestimate the amount spent on the public schools in their district, even when prompted to consider the full range of uses to which school spending is devoted. They also think that teachers earn, on average, far less than is actually the case. The public’s strong preference that more be spent on public schools is based, at least in part, on faulty information.

Measuring Knowledge about Spending

In February and March of 2007, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,000 American adults about a wide range of education issues. (For overall results, see “What Americans Think about Their Schools”) Within an extensive battery of questions, we included the following: “Based on your best guess, what is the average amount of money spent each year for a child in public schools in your school district?”

Half of the sample, randomly chosen, was also offered a prompt to encourage them to consider the full range of costs associated with educating a child. These respondents were told that “Individual student costs go toward teacher and administrator salaries, building construction and maintenance, extracurricular activities, transportation, etc.” With this prompt, we anticipated, respondents would have an easier time answering the question.

We also asked people to estimate the average annual salary of a public school teacher in their state. We asked about teacher salaries at the level of the state, rather than the specific district, because that is the lowest level of aggregation for which information on actual salaries is readily available nationwide. With information about where survey respondents lived, we then compared their answers to actual per-pupil expenditures in their districts and to teacher salaries in their states in 2004–05, the most recent year for which this information is available (see methodology sidebar, below).

Methodology

For the analyses of per-pupil expenditures, we matched survey respondents to school districts using either census blocks or zip codes. When we relied on zip codes, we could not match some respondents to a unique school district. For such respondents we calculated the average per-pupil spending levels for each district that served the relevant zip code, weighted by districts’ population sizes. Teacher salary data, by contrast, are available only at the state level. We were able to match all survey respondents to the states in which they resided.

Data on per-pupil spending come from the National Center for Educational Statistics Common Core of Data, “Local Education Agency Finance Survey.” Data on teacher salaries come from the American Federation of Teachers publication, “Survey and Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends 2005.” Both sources cover the 2004–05 academic year, the latest for which this information is available. The two-year lag between 2004–05 and the time we conducted our survey should lead respondents to overestimate actual expenditures, as spending on public schools tends to increase over time.

On any survey item, there are likely to be some respondents who either misunderstand the question or, for one reason or another, choose not to take it seriously. To ensure that such responses would not cloud our analysis, we eliminated 21 answers of zero to the spending question and another 25 of zero to the salary question. We also eliminated 18 answers of more than $50,000 for per-pupil spending and 17 answers of more than $100,000 for average teacher salaries. In the end, we were left with 1,926 valid responses for per-pupil spending, of which we were able to match 1,656 to districts with available spending information, and 1,932 valid responses on teacher salaries, of which we were able to match 1,911 to states with available salary information.

Not Even Close

The amount of money actually spent annually on children in school districts across the United States varies widely. For the districts in which our sample members live, per-pupil spending in 2004–05 ranged from $5,644 to $24,939,with an average of $10,377. This last figure is slightly higher than the true national average of $9,435.

How well informed is the public about these financial commitments? Not very. Among those asked without the prompt listing possible expenses, the median response was $2,000, or less than 20 percent of the true amount being spent in their districts. Over 90 percent of the public offered an amount less than the amount actually spent in their district, and more than 40 percent of the sample claimed that annual spending was $1,000 per pupil or less. The average estimate of $4,231 reflects the influence of a small percentage of individuals who offered extremely high figures. Even so, the average respondent’s estimate was just 42 percent of actual spending levels in their district (see Figure 1).



As expected, reminding people of the range of expenses school districts face improved their assessments—but not by much. The half of the sample who saw the prompt claimed, on average, that their districts spent $5,262, about $1,000 more than the others, but still only 54 percent of the actual per-pupil spending levels in their districts. The median answer remained $2,000, and more than one-third of the sample still thought that their districts spend no more than $1,000 per student each year.

Teacher salaries also vary considerably across states, ranging from a low of $34,039 in South Dakota to a high of $57,760 in Alaska, with a national average of $47,602. When asked about the average teacher salary in their state, members of the public again offered significantly smaller figures. The median response was just $35,000 and the average was $33,054. On average, Americans understate average teacher salaries in their own state by $14,370.

In percentage terms, estimates of teacher salaries better approximated reality than did estimates of per-pupil expenditures. On average, Americans underestimated teacher salaries in their states by 30 percent. It is possible that people formulated better answers to this question because they used their own pay (or that of a family member) as benchmarks, while they lacked as much context on the per-pupil spending item.
Closer to the Truth?

Are some citizens better informed about education spending than others? To explore this question, we looked at whether the accuracy of Americans’ beliefs about spending and salaries varied among different groups within the overall sample.

Some interesting differences emerged. For instance, the responses of men to both items were significantly higher—and therefore closer to the truth—than were those of women. On average, men thought that per-pupil spending was $1,483 higher and teacher salaries were $2,065 higher than did women. The magnitude of these differences, as well as those reported below, attenuate somewhat when accounting for respondents’ demographic backgrounds. It bears mentioning, though, that the more accurate responses offered by men do not appear to stem from the fact that they are more likely to be in the workplace; the same pattern emerged when we restricted the comparison to men and women working full time.

All else equal, parents of school-age children also gave more accurate responses about teacher salaries, perhaps because they are in regular contact with working teachers. But they were no better informed than nonparents about per-pupil spending levels.

Homeowners, who pay the property taxes that typically account for local spending on education, have a clear incentive to stay informed about spending levels. On average, the estimates of per-pupil spending offered by homeowners were $427 higher than those of non-homeowners, a difference that is not statistically significant. But homeowners do appear to be much more responsive than other Americans to higher spending levels in their districts. In districts spending more than $10,000 per pupil, for example, the responses of homeowners were more than $1,100 higher—and therefore closer to actual spending levels—than those of individuals who rented or lived with other families.

Homeowners were also much better informed about teacher salaries, offering responses that were $7,502 higher than non-homeowners’ responses.

Again, these differences were even more pronounced in states that had especially high teacher salaries, indicating that homeowners’ information may be more responsive to marginal changes in spending than the rest of the general public.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the differences observed between all of these groups are dwarfed by the overall gap between the public’s understanding of school expenditures and teacher salaries, and the truth. Even homeowners, for example, were off by more than $5,000 on average for per-pupil spending and by more than $11,000 for teacher salaries.

Knowledge and Views on School Spending

Does ignorance about these factual matters bear on public attitudes toward school spending? As noted above, the public as a whole expresses strong support for increasing or at least maintaining current spending levels on public education. More than half of Americans say that spending on the public schools in their community should increase, compared with 38 percent who say it should stay the same and only 10 percent who say it should decrease.

It is quite possible that information plays an important role in explaining overall levels of support for school spending. On average, those who support increasing spending on their local schools underestimated per-pupil spending by nearly $6,000 (see Figure 2). In contrast, those who said that spending should decrease underestimated spending by only $4,267.The estimates of those who felt that spending should remain the same fell in between these two extremes, at $5,602. In short, while even supporters of decreased spending substantially underestimated true spending levels, their estimates were considerably closer to reality than those of supporters of increased spending.Figure 2

Similar patterns emerge when looking at the difference between estimated and actual teacher salaries, though the differences are slightly less pronounced. Respondents who support increased school spending underestimated teacher salaries in their state by almost $15,000, while those who wanted to see school spending remain the same offered estimates that were $14,230 below the truth. Those who support decreased spending offered modestly higher figures, underestimating teacher salaries by only $11,896, on average.

Americans with more accurate knowledge of school spending also tend to be less confident that increased spending will improve student learning. Among those who offered a figure for per-pupil expenditures within $5,000 of the truth, 20 percent were “not confident at all” that more spending would lead to higher achievement. People who either grossly underestimated or overestimated actual spending, by contrast, report lower levels of skepticism about the rewards of higher spending.

Note, however, that these findings do not necessarily support the contention that misunderstandings about school finance cause people to support spending increases. It is quite possible, after all, that the public’s assessment of how much is being spent may derive from, rather than contribute to, their policy views. Based on direct observations of conditions in local schools, for instance, some portions of the public may decide that whatever is being spent is not enough. When they are asked to hazard a guess, these concerns may lead them to underestimate actual spending.

In point of fact, we do find that Democrats offer significantly lower estimates of teacher salaries than do Republicans. (Differences between Democrats and Republicans on per-pupil expenditures disappear when accounting for respondents’ demographic backgrounds.) It is difficult to explain such a finding by reference to the two groups’ prior knowledge about school finance. Rather, we suspect that Democrats are especially likely to believe that the government does not give teachers either the professional respect or support that they deserve, and that such underlying convictions lead Democrats to offer lower estimates of teacher salaries. Indeed, the Democrats in our sample are 25 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say that they are either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that additional spending on schools would improve student learning.

Conclusion

In sum, Americans think that far less is being spent on the nation’s public schools than is actually the case. The vast majority of the public thinks we spend amounts that can only be described as minuscule, and almost 96 percent of the public underestimate either per-pupil spending in their districts or teacher salaries in their states.

Important questions about the public’s understanding of school spending remain. Why are their estimates so low? Is this phenomenon unique to education, or would we find the same thing if people were asked about the salaries of other public servants, say, postal workers or police officers? And crucially, does the public’s understanding of school finance shape their policy preferences, or do the public’s policy preferences shape their understanding of school finance?

At this point, though, one matter seems certain: whatever motivates people’s concerns about school finance, it is not sound information about what is actually being spent.

William G. Howell is associate professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Martin R.West is assistant professor of education at Brown University and an executive editor of Education Next.

Public School Workforce Swells While Enrollment Growth Flattens.

The following piece comes from the Education Intelligence Agency.

Public School Workforce Swells While Enrollment Growth Flattens.


America loves its public school teachers. So much so that it continues to hire legions of them while growth in the number of students continues to peter out. An Education Intelligence Agency analysis of the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures shows that while K-12 enrollment grew only 2.45% between 2001 and 2006, the K-12 teacher force grew by 5.71% over the same period.

Stathttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife level figures further illustrate the phenomenon. Twenty-five states had fewer K-12 students in 2006 than in 2001. Of these, 14 (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont), had more K-12 teachers in 2006 than in 2001.
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Even in states with significant spikes in enrollment, teacher hiring is keeping pace – and often greatly exceeding – that growth. Nine states (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Texas) experienced double-digit growth in the K-12 teacher workforce from 2001 to 2006.

Per-pupil spending continues its steady upward spiral, with an increase of more than 25% (unadjusted) in the same five-year period. Spending on compensation tracked closely with a 24.51% increase. Oregon is the only state that did not experience double-digit growth in spending over that time.

The full state-level table is available at District-level tables will be updated with the latest figures over the next few weeks.

Education conference sheds light on important school needs

The following piece appeared in the Nashua Telegraph.


Education conference sheds light on important school needs
Covering education in New Hampshire, you sometime lose sight of the fact that many of the issues being dealt with in the Granite State are nationwide issues as well.

Merit pay for teachers, the growing Hispanic student population and the trend toward alternative schools – all issues relevant to Nashua schools – were just some of the topics covered at the Education Writers Association's 61st annual conference in Chicago.

I was one of 200 education writers to attend the conference, held from April 24-26, and it was by far the best professional development opportunity I've ever had. I'm hopeful that much of what I learned can be applied to our local education coverage.

Here were some of the highlights:

• At the Friday afternoon luncheon, Michelle Rhee, the new chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school district, talked about the drastic changes she has implemented to turn the troubled school system around.

Since taking the position in June, Rhee has finalized the closure of 23 of the city's 144 schools and has fired 100 central office employees, bringing the total number of employees down from 700 to 600.

Closing the schools has not been easy, and there has been a significant amount of criticism from parents, she said.

Rhee said she has tried to make data-driven decisions. With 50,000 students, the city should really only have about 70 schools, she said. Rhee's math works to about the same as what Nashua is running, with 18 schools for 12,500 students.

Using the money saved from the school closures and reduction in staff, Rhee said she has been able to ensure that each school will have an art teacher, a music teacher and a physical education teacher at the start of next year.

"In the District of Columbia, that's almost unheard of," she said.

• A Saturday session focused on the growing Hispanic student population in the country. Richard Fry, senior scholar at the Pew Hispanic Center, went over census data that he believed debunked some myths about Hispanic students.

For example, there are 8.9 million Hispanic students in the country, and 3.8 million English Language Learners, so most Hispanic students are not in an ELL program, he said.

Also, only 16 percent of Hispanic students are foreign born, he said.

Jose Martinez, associate superintendent of the Racine Unified School District, talked about his personal experience going to school in New York City. One of the problems, he said, is ensuring that school districts challenge Hispanic students.

Hispanic students make up 13.2 percent of the enrollment in Nashua, the highest proportion in the state.

In Nashua, data has shown that Hispanic students are underrepresented in the district's gifted and talented program, and that there are an inordinate number of them in the low-level classes in the middle schools and high schools.

Martinez said this happens in districts across the country.

"If you have low expectations, you're not going to get much," he said.

• One of the more entertaining seminars was Friday morning, when two vastly differing opinions were presented on the issue of single-sex education and whether it is truly effective.

Leonard Sax, president and founder of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, believes that there are innate learning differences in boys and girls, and that there are some students who can benefit greatly from single-sex classrooms with different learning environments.

The difference can be as subtle as changing the room temperature, he said. But it's not enough to simply separate boys from girls, he said.

"Single sex education will be of no value if teachers have no knowledge or background in the subject," he said.

Lise Eliot, an author and a neuroscientist, argued that the differences between boys and girls are not substantial enough to warrant segregating the two groups. She said that single-sex education is more of a response to the systemic problems in public education.

"I really believe that the genders have a lot to learn from each other," she said.

At first, it seemed having two such differing opinions represented was beneficial, but the seminar quickly degenerated into a back-and-forth argument between the two, and the issue at hand was lost.

• At a series of seminars at the offices of the Chicago Tribune, the focus was on multimedia and adapting to the convergence of newspapers with the Internet. Reporters talked about education blogs they had created and projects they had done that utilized audio and video.

Kent Fischer, reporter for the Dallas Morning News, said he uses his blog as a way to get out to the readers all of the little tid-bits and nuggets of information that don't make it into the stories published in the paper.Fischer, who used to write for the Concord Monitor, now covers the Dallas Independent School District.

He gave some examples of how he uses his blog – one entry focused solely on the fact that there are 60 different languages spoken in the district. There is also an entry every morning called "Daily Dish," which includes all news about the district in the past 24 hours.

Fischer said he uses his blog "to give analysis to things that are happening in the district that you can't write in a story."

• Dion Haynes of the Washington Post and Emily Hagedorn of the Bakersfield Californian both went over projects they worked on using multimedia.

Haynes wrote a series of stories focusing on what it would take to fix the Washington, D.C., school system. One of those stories tracked 140 students who did not graduate and look at what they did after high school.

On the paper's Web site, readers could hear from the students themselves in videotaped vignettes.

Hagedorn was on a team at her paper that tackled childhood obesity. The stories tracked a group of teenagers who were trying to lose weight. Reporters gave the teens their own voice recorders to create a diary to chronicle the daily struggles of weight loss.

Those clips were then loaded onto the Web site to go with the story.

• Fischer gave another seminar later in the conference on how to analyze school district spending. He makes regular requests for the check logs, credit card statements, payroll database and purchase orders.

He uses the information to create a database tracking how the money leaves the district. Through credit card statements, Fischer was able to find that $800,000 was spent on retail gift cards, among other things.
The Learning Curve appears Thursdays in The Telegraph. Michael Brindley can be reached at 594-6426 or mbrindley@nashuatelegraph.com.

The Disability Racket

While browsing the internet during one of my 3 year olds rare naps I ran across this gem on the Blog School Is Hell. He has a great site I recommend it for all parents. I ran across the following quote on his site "If the Children Don't Learn, the Schools Didn't Teach." That quote reminded me of a quote from an education reformists and friend from Illinois, "Education is unique among consumer products – when it fails to work as advertised, it's the customer that gets labeled as defective." – Kevin Killion

The post as it appears on his site is posted below.

"The Disability Racket
How schools cash in on false diagnoses and a bounty system.

“Thousands of children are suffering from being placed in LD classes, and the labeling of children at an early age becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The children learn to see themselves as disabled in some way and they act out the part.” – Terry Endsley, The Myth of Learning Disabilities

I have several blind spots. I had them in school and still have them. For example: Algebra, Latin, History, Chemistry, Physics, Literature. In some cases, it was the teachers who made the information seem uninteresting. My response was to create minor disturbances like fidgeting in my seat or throwing spitballs. In others, I simply was bored and not learning anything except how to avoid doing the work, and that was most of the time.

Today, a child's disinterest in school subjects is viewed by the schools as a "disability" --a kind of disease. And, sure enough, the schoolers have all sorts of ways to "prove" that a child has a disability -- even a brain disorder -- when s/he is merely bored or unhappy or rebellious at being cooped up in an ugly classroom.

Parents who are not well informed can easily be frightened by the "diagnoses" that come from teachers and school psychologists. They are often intimidated by the school "experts" who claim that their child is "learning disabled" or "mentally disordered," when no such problem exists. Many children are labeled and stigmatized for life by “diagnoses” that are often wrongly made to benefit only the school, not the children.

Yet, this is how schools take the focus off their programs and place it upon the child's alleged "disability." How convenient for the schools. It provides the excuse to never examine themselves or their own activities to see if those might be causing the symptoms of unhappiness (boredom, stress, fear) and rebellion among the children.

Making matters worse is an incentive for the schools to make such a huge mistake. It's called the "Bounty System." For every child who is "diagnosed" with a so-called Learning Disorder, there is a large cash reward from the state (around $4K in CT). Thus, every diagnosis of a disability means more money for the school employees. It is no wonder that the schoolers have invented a multitude of "diagnoses" that enable them to collect the bounty. The second stage of this racket is that the children are then placed in "special" classes that pretend to help the children with their false diagnoses of disabilities. It's no surprise that along with the many spurious diagnoses has come a huge increase in school employment in this new area. It has been major cause of higher school budgets, but it has little, if any, success to show.

Why don't the schools look to their own instruction methods or programs for the source of children's problems? Because they would then probably have to admit that they use bad methods of instruction and would need to change, but mostly it is because there is no financial incentive. The bounty system only pays for diagnoses of children's disabilities (true or not); it doesn't pay for finding fault in the schools themselves.

Schools have been turned into psychological clinics where amateur psychiatrists roam the halls in search of children they might be able to garner as "clients" for their "therapies.” Teachers are supposed to teach; playing amateur psychologist is against the law. Besides, education is a separate field from therapy. School students should never be treated as "patients," and yet, that what the disability racket is all about.

If a school has diagnosed your child, be sure to get a second opinion from an independent source because chances are good that the school wants to use your child to gain a financial bounty while increasing its payroll at taxpayers’ expense."

Superintendents grow scarce

Superintendent shortage?!? Hardly! Maybe if we didn't use three times the number we need, this "shortage" wouldn't exist. Sounds like the Stuporintendents have taken a recipe from the NEA Taxpayer Fleecing Cookbook: Create ridiculous overdemand through state mandate, add a dash of empty credentials to weed out qualified candidates, then bake taxpayers by demanding higher compensation.

There are more than enough qualified individuals, but not to meet the combination of inflated demand plus bureaucratic paper requirements. Many Superintendents couldn't run a lemonade stand in the private sector, which is why they often remain government employees/pensioners for life.

Don't buy for a minute that there's a danger of the private sector funneling these candidates off. The private sector doesn't want them.

The above was in response to the article below that was published in the Union Leader
.

Superintendents grow scarce
By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff

School districts are shopping long and hard for superintendents, as the pool of qualified candidates has dwindled in recent years.

"It's an extremely difficult job," said Ted Comstock, executive director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association.

"Many people who have the skills to manage a large district and a large budget also would have the skill set required for a job in the corporate world with greater remuneration," he said.

There are eight districts throughout the state searching for a superintendent. Most started the process in the fall and a few are expected to make offers soon.

"It's kind of a long process," said Hollis/Brookline Cooperative School Board member Webb Scales, whose district is narrowing its search. "It's a tough market."

Mark Joyce, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, said the average tenure nationally of a superintendent is less than three years.

"One of the reasons for that is the tremendous complexity of that role and the many different bosses -- that legitimately are bosses -- of that job," said Joyce.

A former superintendent himself, Joyce said it used to be common for someone to remain in a school district 20 years, but he can't imagine that now.

Hollis/Brookline's search committee for SAU 41 plans to interview four finalists Thursday and Friday, bringing closure to a process that began in October.

"A number of years ago, we would have expected 40 applicants," said Scales. "I think we got 19, but the good news is from that we got nine or so candidates that we felt were qualified.

"We hope to have our choice by the end of next week," he said yesterday.

Manchester is late to the search party due to former Superintendent Michael Ludwell's unexpected resignation in mid-November.

One search committee disbanded this week and a replacement panel was named.

Paul DeMinico, the NHSBA consultant working with Manchester, told the school board he hopes to have 20 applicants before next Thursday's deadline.

City board members, however, are still trying to define qualities they hope to find in the next superintendent as other districts are poised to make job offers.

Three finalists for the SAU 16 job in Exeter will interview Monday, and board members say they could make an offer that night.

Raymond School District got a two-month jump on Manchester and will begin interviewing semifinalists next month.

Board chairman John Harman wouldn't disclose how many people applied for the SAU 33 job, but said he's happy with their qualifications.

He said a winnowing process to get to three finalists starts next week.

"The intent is we will complete the process and name a superintendent by our March elections," said Harmon.

Every job search NHSBA conducts is at least national in scope. "We have found candidates internationally sometimes," said Comstock.

A wide net is needed, he said, because baby boomer superintendents are retiring and a strong corps of replacements doesn't exist.

"The pool of candidates is much slimmer than it was even four or five years ago," he said. "There are fewer people who are looking to superintendency as a career."

SAUs also often find themselves competing with sister districts throughout New England, because candidates interested in moving here will shop several of the geographically small states.

"It does make it more difficult," said Comstock. "We tend to draw from the same pool."

Litchfield recently started its superintendent search, and school board members were told it could take five months to complete.

Mascenic, Sunapee and Wilton-Lyndeborough are also in the midst of school superintendent searches.

Quote of the Day - "The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline."
Milton Friedman

Can Full-Day Kindergarten Level the Playing Field.

On June 21st Senator Iris Estebrook and her fellow cronies voted to add full day kindergarten to the definition of an "adequate education" in the passing of HB 927. This clearly was pandering to the educrats and unions. Anyone in their right mind and who has done research knows that kindergarten does little to enhance long term student achievement.

For more information on this we suggest readers visit the Rand Corporation website. The following brief comes directly from their site.

"Abstract
For children who enter school unready to learn, policymakers have been looking to full-day kindergarten as a way to level the playing field. Using longitudinal survey data on a nationally representative sample of children, this RAND study examined issues related to school readiness and the effect of full-day kindergarten on student performance. Both academic and nonacademic school readiness skills at entry to kindergarten were significantly related to reading and mathematics achievement in fifth grade. As with earlier studies, the study finds that full-time kindergarten programs may not enhance achievement in the long term."

To read the full report go to the Rand Corporation Website.

The Special Ed Myth.

We placed this post under the category of Failures of Our Public Education System because of the labeling of students by Educrats. Often times you will hear that academic performance in schools has been hindered by special education programs. The fact is schools get more money if they have larger numbers of students labeled with some sort of disability. It is true that there are more "special ed" children in schools, in fact the percent increase is 50% from the 1976-1977 school year to the 2000-2001 school year. * Closer inspection of this information reveals that we do not actually have more "special ed" children but the standards for labeling these children has been reduced.





* Digest of Education Statistics 2002, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Educaiton, 2003, Table 52.

To learn more about the education myths we recommend the book Education Myths What Special-Interest Groups Want YOU to BELIEVE about our SCHOOLS - AND WHY IT ISN'T SO.

The Money Myth "Schools perform poorly because the need more money."

At the end of WWII the US spent $1214 (inflation adjusted for 2001-2002 dollars) per student for those in elementary and secondary schools. By 2001-2002 we were spending a total of $8745. That is an 8 fold increase. From 1971/1972 to 2001-2002 spending doubled from $4479 per student to $8745 per student with no increase in student performance.*


*To learn more about this education myth and other myths we recommend the book Education Myths What Special-Interest Groups Want YOU to BELIEVE about our SCHOOLS - AND WHY IT ISN'T SO.