We said Goodbye to a Friend Yesterday

Who could have known on that day at the pound that I would come across a cute little dog who forever changed both of our lives? From the moment I took you home, you became my special little friend, filled with quirky habits both frustrating and endearing.



Through countless life changes, in good times and in bad, you were always there. You loved your special orange ball, until you lost it in a heating duct. Friends and relatives felt joy and anguish over the prospect of babysitting my little wiener dog.

Over the years, our family grew, but you were always my wiener buddy. Daddy wondered where my mint meltaways went, until you nudged a ball into his lap. Igloo turned you into a Frankenfurter, but learned to live with your bouncing demeanor.




Anastasia booted you out of my lap, but never out of my bed.


Alexander remains your main source of extra people food to this day. Our newest family member Fletcher took to you immediately.

George, you hold a special place in my heart that none can ever replace, none can ever forget. You've brought companionship, inspired songwriting, photography, and countless hours of storytelling.



You have fulfilled and exceeded our expectations of true friendship.

We've lived a long and happy life together. Our family will never be the same because of you, our family will never be the same without you.

Goodbye George.

I hope that those of you who had a chance to know and love him think about him tonight.

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

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.

Croydon Residents will see a 26 Cent Drop in the School Tax Rate.

The following article is from the April 9, 2009 edition of the Eagle Times. The article is a partial summary of what happened at the Croydon School Board Meeting.



Click on the article to enlarge the article.

Cathy

Jim sent the following to Archie Mountain as a correction to Jim's comments made in the article.

Archie,

I just read your article about last night's Croydon school board meeting and would like to comment while the event remains fresh in my mind. I believe that you misquoted me, and more specifically mischaracterized the interaction between myself and Marilyn Brannigan regarding the role of a school board member. This article gives an erroneous impression of my stance on the role of a school board member.

Marilyn Brannigan did not merely "suggest that I read up on the subject to understand it better." She dictated that in order to be a school board member that I had an obligation to read the research. (Her words were something like "If you're going to be a school board member, you need to read the research.") This is quite different than making a suggestion. This is a command - completely inappropriate in her position.

I cannot remember my exact response, but it was something to the effect of "I already have the only requirement to be a school board member - I got elected".

The point I was trying to make is that it is inappropriate for the Superintendent to attempt to define my role as a school board member. I believe that my words succeeded in making that point at the board meeting.

In contrast, your article not only fails to convey the spirit of the exchange, but actively represents an entirely different message.

Jim Peschke

How well did Croydon School Students Really Do in Reading And Mathematics?

On Monday I reported that the Eagle Times reported Croydon "maintained its perfect slate in both reading and math, goals it also reached in 2008." I also cautioned that I needed to read the report. Well I did!

When I was going to school 66.7% was a D and 41.7% was an F or failing. It appears to me that the Croydon school is failing to educate too many of our students.

If you look at the raw data this is what a perfect slate and reading looks like to educrats.



25% or 3 of the 12 students scored substantially below proficient in reading.
8.3% or 1 of 12 students scored partially proficient in reading.
50% or 6 in 12 students scored proficient in reading.
16.7% or 2 in 12 students scored proficient with distinction in reading.

In other words 66.7% of students scored proficient or above in reading. But with "new math or educrat speak" the group performance index score is 83.3%. Not perfect in my book and not good enough considering the amount of money taxpayers spend to educate Croydon's children.



33.3% or 4 in 12 students scored substantially below proficient in mathematics.

25% or 3 in 12 students scored partially proficient in mathematics.

41.7% scored proficient in mathematics.

No child scored proficient with distinction in mathematics.


In other words only 41.7% of the students scored proficient in mathematics. But with "new math or educrat speak" the group performance score is 66.7%.

I found the above picture at rttworks.com.


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

What is Next For Croydon Schools - Jim Peschke

The Next Steps

The Croydon special budget meeting concluded at about 9:30pm with board approval of the necessary spending cuts. As in any negotiated process, none of the board members considered the end result to be perfect.

Although I believe that Croydon school is overstaffed, my budget proposal did not contain any staffing cuts. Budget areas where spending cuts were more palatable were abruptly deemed "off-limits" due to various combinations of bureaucratic regulation and "That's just the way it is" eduspeak.



We remain far from getting our money's worth from public schools; Croydon's per-pupil spending today is almost three times as much as it was only 10 years ago. Are students actually receiving three times the education, or are more funds simply being wasted due to government edicts and overzealous administrators?

The time has come to push back on unfunded mandates. Such resistance stands on firm legal ground, as the New Hampshire constitution specifically prohibits unfunded mandates. Some would try to intimidate us from standing up for ourselves, claiming the only resistance is total resistance and that total resistance would meet with disastrous consequences.

This is a false dilemma; many mandates have considerable latitude in their implementation. Scaling back mandates to bring costs out of the stratosphere doesn't rise to the level of Fort Sumpter defiance. We must also guard against becoming tools of our own demise by pressing for "more funding". All too often Big Ed's solution to unfunded mandates is funding them. That simply lets us keep $1 in our right pocket while Concord takes $2 from our left pocket. Mandates themselves are the problem.

The money we waste in mandated programs show that there's plenty of room to save taxpayer dollars. With a combination of legislative action and selective trimming, we can continue to make progress towards affordable public education.

Special interests spent decades buying laws to force us to spend more than we should. We can't undo this damage overnight, but the sooner we start, the sooner we can make "public education" truly "public" again.

Jim Peschke
Croydon School Board Member

Jim had sent the above letter to the Eagle Times. I have checked both online and several paper editions and have not been able to confirm if the Eagle Times published the letter.

There is a school board meeting tonight at the Croydon Village School.

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

What is more important a good education or pleasing the teachers' unions?

Yet another piece showing that it is not what's best for America's public education students, but what is best for the Teachers' Unions. A vote for a democrat is a vote against education reform, education spending reform and educational freedom. I don't see how it cannot be more clear to taxpayers and parents. Public schools are an entitlement program for those who work there and a source of campaign funds for almost all democratic candidates and some republicans. It is a vicious cycle where the teachers' union give democrats campaign contributions and the democrats pander with teacher union friendly legislation and tax dollars back to the unions. It is a cycle that never ends, where those crushed by the cycle are the taxpayers and public education students.

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

The following piece appears in the Wall Street Journal.

Democrats and Poor Kids
Sitting on evidence of voucher success, and the battle of New York.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did a public service last week when he visited New York City and spoke up for charter schools and mayoral control of education. That was the reformer talking. The status quo Mr. Duncan was on display last month when he let Congress kill a District of Columbia voucher program even as he was sitting on evidence of its success.



In New York City with its 1.1 million students, mayoral control has resulted in better test scores and graduation rates, while expanding charter schools, which means more and better education choices for low-income families. But mayoral control expires in June unless state lawmakers renew it, and the United Federation of Teachers is working with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to weaken or kill it.

President Obama's stimulus is sending some $100 billion to the nation's school districts. What will he demand in return? The state budget passed by the New York legislature last week freezes funding for charters but increases it by more that $400 million for other public schools. Perhaps a visit to a charter school in Harlem would help Mr. Obama honor his reform pledge. "I'm looking at the data here in front of me," Mr. Duncan told the New York Post. "Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up. Teacher salaries are up. Social promotion was eliminated. Dramatically increasing parental choice. That's real progress."

Mr. Duncan's help in New York is in stark contrast to his department's decision to sit on a performance review of the D.C. voucher program while Congress debated its future in March. The latest annual evaluation was finally released Friday, and it shows measurable academic gains. The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 low-income families in D.C. to send their children to private schools. Ninety-nine percent of the children are black or Hispanic, and there are more than four applicants for each scholarship.

The 2008 report demonstrated progress among certain subgroups of children but not everyone. This year's report shows statistically significant academic gains for the entire voucher-receiving population. Children attending private schools with the aid of the scholarships are reading nearly a half-grade ahead of their peers who did not receive vouchers. Voucher recipients are doing no better in math but they're doing no worse. Which means that no voucher participant is in worse academic shape than before, and many students are much better off.

"There are transition difficulties, a culture shock upon entering a school where you're expected to pay attention, learn, do homework," says Jay Greene, an education scholar at the Manhattan Institute. "But these results fit a pattern that we've seen in other evaluations of vouchers. Benefits compound over time."

It's bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.

Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.

Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.

Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.

The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren't worried that school choice doesn't work. They're worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.