Moscow Education (Idaho)

Question of the day:

I wonder if MSD will end up spending more on lawyers than the cost of running another election.

That’s an excellent question.

I think that they will spend a ton more money on lawyers than they would on re-running the levy.

But I also think that they know they would lose re-running the levy because people now know what the total cost of the levy will be. It’s not just a $2m levy, like they advertised.

As I read this, I can only shake my head.

Look at how responsibly Pullman School District handles its finances and its responsibility with declining student enrollment.

Then compare that to how MSD handles its financial needs.

The only response in Moscow is to increase property taxes — regardless of whether enrollment is going down.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Pullman School District’s projected $18.5 million budget for the 2007-2008 school year includes a reduction in state money and a lower enrollment estimate than last year, district officials said this week.

The budget has been approved by the Educational Service District and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. The Pullman School Board has to approve the budget by Aug. 22. Classes begin Aug. 29.

Local Effort Assistance funds are provided as levy equalization to school districts that have above-average tax rates due to low property rates. Next budget year, the LEA distribution to Pullman will be reduced by $66,961 to $261,157.

Pullman property owners have seen a 20-percent increase in the value of their houses and land, which reduces the state subsidy to the school district. Pullman’s assessed property value in 2007 was $1,217,651,458. In 2008, it is assessed at $1,254,180,999.

…

This fall, the district will collect $1.62 million for the second half of the 2007 maintenance and operations levy. In the spring, the district will receive more than $2 million. The rate per $1,000 of assessed valuation is $2.99, which is 37 cents less than last year. Technology levy revenue will be collected in the fall of 2007 and the spring of 2008 for a total of $198,000. Taxpayers will pay 16.43 cents per $1,000 in the tax year 2007 and an estimated 15.95 cents per $1,000 in 2008.

Hornfelt has also based the budget on an estimate that enrollment will remain 35 students lower in fall than it was in August. He projected a fall enrollment of 2,085 to the board in April after 32 students left in January. Enrollment in the fall of 2006 was 2,120.

You can download the Findings of the Judge here.

Or read it here.

Many thanks to Dave G. for getting this documentation for me. First on the web with it!

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The lawsuit threatening Moscow School District’s supplemental levy will continue this August after a judge ruled Friday that Moscow dentist Gerald Weitz has standing to bring his complaint.

“I am keenly aware of the urgency of the issue,” Judge John Bradbury during a hearing at the Latah County Courthouse.

Bradbury said the case could have been prolonged if he had ruled there was no standing because an appeal could have pushed the case out by another 18 months.

“I have not taken this lightly,” he said. “This is what I think the law requires.”

The lawsuit began May 3 when Weitz filed a complaint against the Moscow School District alleging the $1.97 million levy increase that was approved by voters in March should be invalid because the ballot language did not meet statutory requirements. He also alleged the original 1992 indefinite levy election failed to meet the state’s legal requirements so the subsequent increase elections of 1995 and 2002 should be invalidated as well.

The Friday morning hearing touched on the arguments, though the parties focused on the issue of standing to determine whether or not to dismiss the case. To have standing in court means there must be a unique or peculiar injury to the plaintiff.

The district’s attorney, Brian Julian of Boise, argued that Weitz did not have a unique injury and that the case should be dismissed. He also alleged that Weitz failed to bring his suit and challenge the election in the manner required by the state.

Weitz’s attorney, Richard Hearn, of Pocatello, argued Weitz has standing as a property owner within the school district.

“The only possible people who could have injury from a tax are the people who pay it,” Hearn said.

Hearn said these are the appropriate people to challenge the actions of the district.

“I can see no one else, if they don’t,” he said.

Julian alluded to the dangers of disenfranchising voters and said it would be “a shame to suggest the voters didn’t know what they were doing.”

“It’s a very, very serious matter, taking away their vote,” he said. “Turning over an election is a dangerous area courts are reluctant to tread on.”

“The voters of Moscow are certainly sophisticated enough to know what an increase means,” Julian added.

Hearn disagreed.

“We’re not trying to disenfranchise voters,” he said. “Our claim is the voters didn’t know what they were voting for.”

At the close of the arguments, Bradbury made his ruling based on precedents set in other cases, his interpretation of Idaho Code, the need for urgency, and his belief that property owners within the district are affected by the levy.

“The role of the courts is to determine whether the laws of our Legislature are complied with … that is the next chore in the lawsuit,” he said.

After the ruling, Julian said the standing issue is a preliminary issue for a very technical area of law where previous Idaho Supreme Court rulings have been inconsistent. He said he thought Bradbury’s ruling was fair.

“Letting it go to the merits to determine this doesn’t bother us,” he said.

Julian immediately filed a motion for a summary judgement. The motion will bring the case back to court Aug. 24 for a hearing without a trial. The judge will review the facts of the case at that time and issue a ruling.

Julian said he plans to ask the judge and the opposing parties for an earlier date because teachers return to school Aug. 27 and the schools open to students Aug. 29.

Superintendent Candis Donicht said the decision to move the case forward to review the merits made sense as a way to avoid a lengthy appeals process.

“We need to have this resolved one way or another so we can proceed,” she said.

Moscow School Board chairwoman Dawn Fazio said there has been a lot of support for the district in the community, but she isn’t ready to think about having to start the levy process from scratch. She said it would be a major process if the entire levy was repealed.

“It’s disappointing that we have to deal with this (lawsuit), but I think the overall impact is going to be positive,” she said. “I don’t have any reservation at all that we will prevail.”

The following “breaking news” article ran in today’s Lewiston Tribune.

Second District Judge John Bradbury today allowed Moscow dentist Gerald Weitz's lawsuit against the Moscow School District to move forward.

In denying the school district's motion to dismiss the suit, Bradbury found that "As a taxpayer, property owner, and resident of the district Mr. Weitz has standing to bring this action."

Weitz filed the lawsuit in May after a $2 million supplemental levy was passed by voters in March. In his complaint, Weitz claimed the levy is invalid because language on the ballot did not meet the standards required by the state.

This is a “no duh!” kind of decision. As I’ve said before, if Weitz didn’t have standing to bring this lawsuit against MSD, no one in town would.

And that would be a very dangerous precedent to set.

We discussed here previously that a Washington Woman Registers Her Dog to Vote.

This was as a protest to demonstrate how easy the Washington voter-registration law makes it for illegal aliens to vote.

Now this:

Jane Balogh is shown this week in Federal Way, Wash., with her dog Duncan. Balogh signed up the dog to vote in protest of a 2005 state voter-registration law she thinks makes it too easy for noncitizens to vote. She used a paw print to mark ballots on Duncan's behalf.

HT: Huckleberries

From today's Spokesman Review.

A proposal to open a University of Idaho campus in Sandpoint using private money needs only the approval of the state Board of Education for construction bids to open, and members have already expressed support.

"It's going to happen," board member Sue Thilo, of Coeur d'Alene, predicted.

Under the proposal, the nonprofit Wild Rose Foundation, operated by Coldwater Creek Chairman and CEO Dennis Pence, will buy a 77-acre site off North Boyer Road from the UI for $6.25 million, construct buildings and help pay for course offerings.

What does this mean to Moscow? I think Tim Lohrmann is right with his assessment:

BYU-Idaho in Rexburg is already taking plenty of the mostly LDS students from the South/Southwest part of the state that used to come up to Moscow.

 

BSU is taking more of those from the Treasure Valley of course.  

 

And now this new campus in the fast-growing CDA/Post Falls/Sandpoint area--- seems to be pretty dismal news for the Moscow campus doesn't it?

 

Or is that just short-sighted thinking?

 

I'm sure it's a boon for the UI system as a whole, but there are only so many students to go around.

I wonder what input the City of Moscow and the Moscow Chamber of Commerce is having on this deal.

Regarding my post Union Thwarts Courts, one of my readers writes:

The WEA may not have to pay back because of a new WA law:
 
The WEA seeing that they would likely loose the Supreme Court case rushed a piece of legislation on an emergency bill (takes effect immediately - no room for near term challenge) through the WA legislator earlier this year to basically overturn the negative effects of the pending decision - it was signed by Governor Gregoire.
 
http://teachers-vs-union.blogspot.com/2007/06/seattle-times-wea-ducks-and-weaves.html

The following letter to the editor ran in today’s Lewiston Tribune.

The Washington Education Association (WEA) owes a fine of $590,375 for breaking the law.

After Initiative 134 passed in 1992, the WEA arranged a sweetheart deal with then-
Attorney General Chris Gregoire that allowed them to spend a portion of union dues collected from teachers for political purposes without the union members permission. The WEA also found it convenient to do the same with agency fees collected from non-union teachers.

When challenged in court, the WEA fought all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court found in the WEA's favor. Justice [Faith] Ireland wrote that requiring that you ask permission before spending non-union member dues on political purposes was too heavy an administrative burden. Justice [Richard] Sanders, in a dissenting opinion, stated the decision turned the First Amendment on its head.

The United States Supreme Court ruled against the WEA 9-0. Justice [Antonin] Scalia wrote it does not violate First Amendment for a state to require that its public-sector unions receive affirmative authorization from a nonmember before spending that nonmembers agency fees for election-related purposes. The union will now be required to return the misspent dues to the non-union teachers.

Now, the WEA has exerted its raw political power to change the law, so it can continue to spend non-member agency fees for political purposes. Should this arrogance of use of power stand? No!

Washington voters should show they don't appreciate the Legislature, the governor and the state Supreme Court being so subservient to WEA.

James H. Stevens
Asotin 

The Greater Moscow Alliance had an answer to this 6 weeks ago: The GMA supports the rights of private individuals to exercise their lawful rights of citizenship."

It's clear to me that the Latah County Democrats do *not* support that right.
And here all this time I thought that the Democratic Party stood for individual rights.

The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

The Latah County Democratic Party believes that in a democratic society when a majority of votes determines an issue, any attempt to overturn the result should be taken only when the outcome of the vote does not truly represent the will of its citizens.

The suit against the successful Moscow School District levy does not meet that criterion.

Additionally, the effect of the suit has already caused harm to students because the district has been forced to shift dollars to meet mandated needs, resulting in a loss of high school teaching positions, as well as class sections of music, art and foreign language, despite a projected rise in enrollment for next year.

Corresponding adjustments also were made in the other district schools.

Had he who brought the suit and those who support him raised their legal questions prior to the levy, they could have been considered in a timely manner. However, Gerald Weitz deliberately chose to wait.

We urge Weitz to drop this unnecessary litigation and to present his case to the legislators from District 6.

If steps need to be taken to clarify the law they can be addressed during the coming legislative session without further harm to the students in Moscow School District.

Corinne Hunter, Betty Benson, Sue Hovey
Latah County Democrats
Moscow
This letter also was signed by eight others.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

District meets state deadline; amount includes money from levy election

The Moscow School Board approved a $20.4 million budget for the coming school year that uses all of the money from its $7.6 million supplemental levy despite the challenges of a recent lawsuit.

The school board conducted its budget hearing Tuesday evening in advance of Friday's pending court hearing because the state required that the district's completed and approved budget be submitted this week.

Superintendent Candis Donicht said the district decided to include the levy in its budget because the board can always take things out.

• WHAT HAPPENED: Moscow School Board approved a budget of $20.4 million that includes all of its supplemental funding from its indefinite levy despite a pending lawsuit challenging the legality of the levy.
• WHAT IT MEANS: The board had to approve a budget to submit by the state's deadline. Without any injunctions against collecting the levy, the board had to approve a budget that accounted for its levy money because if it approved a budget without the funds they could not be added in later.
• WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: The first hearing on the lawsuit will be Friday when a judge will hear a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
• WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: The district's supplemental levy pays for resources beyond what the state provides. These monies pay for things like additional teachers to keep class sizes low.

"We cannot put them in after the fact," she said.

At this point, Donicht said there are no injunctions to stop the district from collecting the levy. Without such an order, she said the district needs to account for having that money in its budget this fall.

"There is nothing at this point that stops us from levying the amount the majority of voters approved," Donicht said. "It's in there, but in there in a fashion that I can remove it if we need to."

…

The approved budget allows the district to restore the items that have been tentatively pulled under the board's plan to cut its budget by $400,000, which is the amount the district would have needed to cut if voters had not approved the $1.97 million increase in March.

At its May meeting, the board reviewed the plan that caused an immediate spending freeze to garner $100,000 to carryover from this spring. It brought a hiring freeze that will save an estimated $100,000. The plan also called for a freeze on discretionary spending for supplies and other materials over the next year to cut an additional $200,000.

Without knowing what lays ahead, the board Tuesday also prepared for changes related to athletics and legal services.

In order to avoid cutting any of the sports programs, the board approved a resolution to increase the activities fees for all sports by $5.

"If we do not have to reduce the 2007-2008 budget, we will not have to enact it," Donicht said.

Board member Jennifer Watts asked when a decision whether the athletic fee should be increased would be needed.

"We'll decide after a few more cards are dealt," Donicht said, adding that it would be before the activities begin in early August.

The board also increased the allotment for expenditures on legal services by approximately $20,000 in its budget.

"It's in the event we need resources for legal fees," Donicht said.

The following article ran in today’s Lewiston Tribune.

MOSCOW - A decision on whether a Moscow citizen has the right to challenge a school levy passed in a general election and applied equally to everyone in the district will be heard Friday.

Second District Judge John Bradbury will hear the motion to dismiss the civil case of Gerald Weitz against the Moscow School District.

Weitz filed a lawsuit against the school district May 3, claiming an increase in the district's permanent levy is illegal. That legal question will not yet be heard.

Instead, the school district wants the case dismissed because "Plaintiff has not alleged that he suffers any injury different from other property owners within the district, or that the district has or will be illegally expending the funds," according to documents filed in court by the district.

The motion to dismiss, filed by the district, claims Weitz has no "peculiar or particular injury." The school district is represented by Brian Julian of Boise.

In response to the motion, Weitz claims he "is directly and personally subject to the assessment of property taxes resulting from the very levies and levy elections challenged in this case."

His attorney writes, "denying standing to Weitz would leave unchallengeable the actions of the school district." Weitz is represented by Brian D. Thie of Moscow.

If Weitz does not have standing, no one else in Moscow does either — and that’s scary.

You can checkout the MSD ISAT results over at the following site:

• State Proficiency Reports - Reading, Math, Language Usage, Science
• District Proficiency Reports - Reading, Math, Language Usage, Science

I’m posting a 1–on-1 comparison of Moscow to the rest of Idaho.

You’ll have to answer for yourself whether the extra $7m+ that we’re paying in property taxes is worth this marginal improvement — and whether we should be getting more bang-for-the-buck.

My next analysis will be to compare MSD’s ISAT results with other schools who spend the same amount on education as MSD does.  

You can also download the two files here:

• File Attachment: 2007 Spring ISAT MSD Aggregated Results (114 KB)
• File Attachment: 2007 Spring ISAT State Results.pdf (108 KB)

You can checkout the MSD ISAT results over at the following site:

• School Proficiency Reports - Reading, Math, Language Usage, Science

I’ve included the results for the Moscow School District below. This is broken down by school, grade level, and ISAT test.

Feel free to look it over and see what you think. Let me know if you think we’re getting our money’s worth, since we’re kicking in over $7m per year just in property taxes.

You can click on each image to enlarge.

You can download a copy of these ISAT results for just MSD here: 2007 Spring ISAT Results for MSD.pdf (267 KB) 

The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Three cheers for Chris Papineau (Daily News, June 23-24), who mastered the construction trades at his own expense. At Moscow High School he had no choice of such pre-employment programs. They've been replaced by academics. So he went to Lewis-Clark State College.

Over in Pullman, another "college town," he would have had not only a full sequence of construction technologies, but also sequences in agriculture, horticulture, landscaping, and other applied technologies in addition to business skills, all of which lead to good paying jobs - and for the same price tag.

Papineau and scores like him have few choices to pursue employment-related subjects, since Moscow High School is an "academic institution" where precollege programs are subsidized by taxes paid by families whose youngsters aren't "college material." Even so, 25 percent of Moscow High graduates drop out of the university their first year. So who wins?

Moscow administrators ignore statistics published by the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor listing jobs paying between $12 and $20 an hour or more. Most Moscow youth seeking such jobs have to go elsewhere for training. The local trade union sends them to Spokane. Who wins?

For several years the Moscow Chamber of Commerce encouraged MSD to re-examine its professional programs to no avail. Trustees showed no concern, administrators turned a deaf ear, and grant monies from the Idaho Division of Professional-Technical Education were ignored. So MSD deceives the community: "Our kids aren't interested in technical training." A hoax?

How much longer will residents pay for this kind of irresponsible behavior? How long will economic development here be stunted due to lack of qualified human resources?

How long must residential taxpayers provide the lion's share of public money due to slow business growth?

It's time for basic changes in yesterday's school system, Moscow. In not looking at all the facts, such reporting spins smoke and mirrors which distort reality.

Ken Medlin, Moscow

From today's Idaho Statesman:

Student test scores in language skills plummeted throughout Idaho in achievement tests taken this spring, a trend some attribute to a new test and higher passing scores.

…

State Board of Education officials defended the new test, which they say accurately reflects the education standards Idaho students are expected to meet when they graduate.

Reading and math scores also declined statewide, but not as sharply as language. ISAT exams are given to about 280,000 students in grades two through 10.

The exam was new to Idaho students this year because Data Recognition Corp. got the state contract to provide the Idaho achievement test, replacing Northwest Evaluation Association.

Passing scores for the language exam, which includes 42 multiple-choice questions, were raised this spring after a group of 27 Idaho teachers were invited by the State Board to outline what they thought students should know at each grade level, Healy said.

The teachers also were made aware that raising the bar would cause lower test results this year, she said.

As I’ve said from the beginning, there’s no way that Moscow’s liberals can define a family. A dog? A cat? A lesbian “partner”? Polygamy? Polyandry? Who’s to say?

What if a group of unrelated people function more like a traditional family than a “family” related by blood?

Is the City Council looking for functional families? Or legally related families?

The following article ran in today’s Lewiston Tribune.

MOSCOW - The definition of family has become central to a continuing debate over the legality of boarding houses in this university town.

Members of the Moscow City Administrative Committee agreed Monday to refer the family question, as well as the entire boarding house issue, to the city council for discussion and then referral back to the city planning and zoning commission.

"It's really hard for me, knowing how broad families are, to say that's a family, or that's a family," committee member and newly appointed Councilor Tom Lamar said.

Lamar and councilors Linda Pall and Bill Lambert - the three of whom make up the administrative committee - agreed after a public hearing the matter could be referred back to the city council for debate and potential action.

Pall, who led the Boarding House Committee in its latter stages, said the issue became much more complex than expected. "We could not come to a single focus of, if you do this, everything will be taken care of."

That sentiment was echoed in a recent letter from former Councilor Bob Stout who initially chaired the boarding house committee. "Although this committee initially thought that there were relatively few issues related to the boarding house concerns, it has become clear through a series of meetings, research provided, memoranda generated, and input from the community, that the boarding house issues are quite complex."

Lambert called the matter "one of our hot-button issues."

The debate started about two years ago when some people questioned the legality of New Saint Andrews College students living in homes of Christ Church members. That opened the door to questions about other people renting to University of Idaho students, or students subleasing rentals to other students. Eventually the definition of family became part of the debate.

Members of the boarding house committee were unable to reach a consensus about an overall fix, and several balked at trying to define family.

"The ordinance that regulates the number of residents in a living unit should not use a definition of family to accomplish its goals," boarding house committee member Ken Nagy wrote in a recent letter to the mayor and city council. "The notion that it is desirable to preserve the character of 'family neighborhoods' is an outdated and frankly absurd idea. A government should not be in the business of making the judgment that 'family households' are more important than households that do not contain traditional families."

Another committee member, Henry D. Johnston, wrote in a letter he failed to see any real problem and his advice to the council would be "leave it alone." He said Moscow city government seems intent on wanting to "attach a permit, license, certificate, registration or other form of regulatory mechanism to all things in the city, right down to the matter of wanting to license cats."

Current city code defines family as, "One or more persons related within the second degree of consanguinity by blood, marriage, and/or adoption; or a group of not more than six persons (excluding servants) not related within the second degree of consanguinity by blood, marriage, and/or adoption, living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit."

The proposed change to the code, as outlined in a memo from Pall, defines family as "One or more persons who are related. A group of not more than four persons when any one of them is not related to any other person in the group, as long as all of them are living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit, or a group of two persons who are not related and any persons who are related to either of them, as long as all persons in the group are living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit."

Under the current definition, Pall said, she and her dog could have five other people living in her house. The problem is she lacks parking for that many people and the neighbors might start a "revolution in the streets." So some sort of regulation seems appropriate, she said.

Linda: who are these neighbors that might start a “revolution in the streets”?

Your tax dollars at work: DoE funding grants for "radical math" that teaches the young that capitalism is bad, bad, bad; and that "social justice" must be taught.

Google "radical math" to get more on this movement to inject leftist politics into the government school system.

Is there little wonder that our kids cannot do math?

And was this all Dr. Frankenstein’s idea?

From the N.Y. Post:

More than 400 New York City high-school math teachers and education professors gathered in Brooklyn late last month for a three-day conference on "Creating Balance in an Unjust World: Math Education and Social Justice."

At many of the 28 workshops, city math teachers proudly showed how they used classroom projects to inculcate their students in seeing social problems from a radical, anti-capitalist perspective.

At a plenary session, Prof. Marilyn Frankenstein of the University of Massachussets' math-ed department proclaimed that elementary-school math teachers shouldn't use traditional math lessons where students calculate the cost of food. Instead, they should use lessons to get their students to see that in a truly "just society," food would "be as free as breathing the air."

The city's Department of Education insists nothing was inappropriate about its teachers participating in the radical conference. In fact, the DOE got the whole ball rolling with a grant to Jonathan Osler, a math teacher at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (a small social-justice high school in Brooklyn).

Back in 2005, Osler and two colleagues from other schools applied to the DOE's Zone Teacher Inquiry Grants Program for aid in "the creation of a system to bring together NYC math teachers to share, ideas, curriculum, resources, and experiences integrating issues of social justice into math classes."

Osler & Co. listed some issues to explore in math class: "Check cashing locations ripping off poor people. H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt ripping off poor people. Foreclosure agencies ripping off poor people. Issues of joblessness, homelessness, incarceration, lack of funding for education, excessive funding for war."

Our tax dollars at work.

HT: Bill J.

From the NEA website:

The National Education Association approved Saturday the affiliation of the New York State United Teachers NEA-AFT effective September 1. NEA, the largest labor union in American history, will now grow to 3.2 million members.

This new organization is the result of a merger between the two teachers union affiliates in New York -- NEA-NY and New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. The NEA Executive Committee took action Saturday, following Friday's unanimous delegate vote of NYSUT to create a single, united public education union for the State of New York.

"This is a historic step for NEA, for teachers and other educators, and most importantly for our (this should say Teachers/employees/members) students in public schools," said NEA President Reg Weaver. "Joining forces will allow us to better advocate for great public schools for every child (this should say Teachers/employees/members), and protect the right of every child (this should say Teachers/employees/members) to a quality (this should say Teachers/employees/members) public education."

Members of both unions said they look forward to working together to ensure a smooth transition, and to better advocate for (this should say Teachers/employees/members) quality public schools.

"Our coming together will give public education, and public school educators, a stronger voice in the classroom, in the state legislature, and at the national level," Weaver said. "Now more than ever, public education and our (this should say Teachers/employees/members) students need united advocates to ensure that all children are able to (meet only minimum standards) maximize their potential and realize their basic right, access to great public schools."

Now here’s a doozie.

From EIA:

 For those who think that the worst thing that can happen to a high school kid is to have a conversation with a military recruiter, there is good news from the Air Force Times:

"Most of today's youth are not eligible for military service because they are too fat, too weak, not smart enough and prone to drug-use and criminal behavior, according to a panel of senior military officers."

Vice Admiral John Cotton, commander of the Navy Reserve, estimates 72 percent of American youth between 17 and 24 years of age are not eligible for military service because of "fitness, academic and law enforcement deficiencies."

 

To paraphrase Dean Wormer,

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son, but it will keep you out of Iraq and Afghanistan."

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

This could be relevant to us in Moscow. I can see MSD wanting to consolidate with Potlatch, Troy, and/or Genesee.

From EIA:

Lo these many years ago, I wrote a report for the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution titled Mission Creep: How Large School Districts Lose Sight of the Objective – Student Learning. I opined that whatever the relative merits of consolidating many small school districts into one large school district, it wasn't likely to save money. In fact, in many cases the larger the district became, the less money it devoted to instruction.

 

Faced with declining enrollment, several states are looking at ways to cut costs, and the subject of district consolidation invariably arises. This is far from a red-meat issue for the unions, but they tend to oppose consolidation because it also involves internal union restructuring for little or no benefit.

 

Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania State Education Association President James Weaver testified before the state's School Cost Reduction Task Force, saying:

"The findings are mixed as to the effects of larger school districts on institutional costs, and on student achievement. The conclusions reached by researchers and state commissions are equally mixed."

Weaver further noted that when a district becomes too large "there can be diseconomies of scale," and no consensus at what point that occurs.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From EIA:

The black market in school choice is when parents lie about their place of residence in order to get their kids into better public schools. Many school districts have resorted to hiring investigators and former cops to spy on these interlopers, even prosecuting them. Today's Los Angeles Times adds a wrinkle: kids crossing the border with Mexico to attend U.S. public schools.

 

It's no surprise that this will get roiled up in the national immigration debate, but it will be interesting to see who defends this practice for kids crossing a national border, while denouncing it for kids crossing a school district boundary line.

 

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From today's Idaho Statesman:

 BSU's football team has been nominated for two ESPY awards, and voting begins today.

The two nominations are for "Best Game" and "Best Play" for Ian Johnson's 2-point conversion at the end of the Fiesta Bowl.

The 15th annual ESPY's will be televised at 7 p.m. July 15 on ESPN.

Vote here by clicking on “best game”.

From ABC News:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that students can face limits on their rights to free speech.

Schools can rein in students’ speech if it can be interpreted as promoting illegal drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.

The case stemmed from an incident in January 2002 in which a crowd of students, townspeople and teachers gathered on a public street in Alaska across from a high school to watch the Olympic torch relay pass in front of them as part of a parade in support of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.

…

Lawyers for (school principal, Deborah) Morse had argued that she was responsible for “maintaining order and proper decorum” at a gathering outside of the school. In briefs her lawyers argued, “She responsibly took the appropriate action to ensure that the Olympic torch relay event was not further disrupted by Frederick’s pro-drug banner.”

In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that students could wear black armbands to protest Vietnam. It established the right to speak freely in schools. Since that decision a lot has changed. Other cases have reached courts that limited students’ free speech.

Schools have had to find ways to control gangs, stop school shootings, deal with perceived hostility toward religion in public schools and cope with a rise of drugs and alcohol on campus.

When schools assume in loco parentis, then free speech and other liberties must be curtailed.

IMO, this is a dangerous precedent — especially since the student was not on school/government property.

The truth comes out.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

In recent years, critics have charged the Moscow School District with failing to provide adequate professional-technical education, or PTE, programs.

Mike Rush, the state administrator for the Idaho Division of Professional Technical Education, said he thinks the Moscow programs are "very high quality."

"Moscow does, however, offer fewer PTE opportunities than other districts in the state," he said.

Rush estimated the district offers about half of what is offered elsewhere. He also revealed that Moscow spends $33 per student for PTE while the state average is $156 per student.

University of Idaho researcher Gary Maki has been removed as director of a Post Falls-based research center after he allegedly tried to smear colleague Kenneth Hass by orchestrating a critical letter from NASA.

University officials, citing personnel privacy concerns, wouldn't say whether the letter spurred the removal.

Yet another black-eye for the University of Idaho.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Former University of Idaho football player Marvin C. Jones Jr. will face three counts of delivery of cocaine in Latah County District Court.

Jones' jury trial is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. July 16.

Jones, who was a sophomore defensive tackle for the Vandals during the 2006 season and was listed on the team's spring roster, was arrested on the charges April 26.

According to a press release from the Moscow Police Department issued after Jones' arrest, the arrest stemmed from a two-week investigation. Police identified Jones as purchasing and selling cocaine in the Moscow area.

At the time of the arrest, Jones' apartment was searched and $1,605 was seized, which included money allegedly provided to Jones from a previous drug transaction, according to the release.

UI officials have since indicated that Jones is no longer a member of the football team.

Jones' trial was bound over to District Court on Thursday after a preliminary hearing. Thomas Whitney will represent Jones in the trial, and Latah County Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Evans will represent the state.

A whole slough of liberal arts college presidents have decided to withdraw from the college ranking “game”, such as that done by US News & World Report.

The presidents of dozens of liberal arts colleges have decided to stop participating in the annual college rankings by U.S. News and World Report.

The decision was announced Tuesday at the end of an annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, a loose association of liberal arts colleges. After two days of private meetings here, the organization released a statement that said a majority of the 80 presidents attending had “expressed their intent not to participate in the annual U.S. News survey.”

The commitment, which some college presidents said was made by a large majority of participants, represents the most significant challenge yet to the rankings, adding colleges like Barnard, Sarah Lawrence and Kenyon to a growing rebellion against the magazine, participants said.

U.S. News says it provides a valuable service to parents and students in its yearly evaluations, which are based on factors that include graduation and retention rates, assessments by competitors, selectivity and faculty resources. Critics say the ranking system lacks rigor and has had a harmful effect on educational priorities, encouraging colleges to do things like soliciting more applicants and then rejecting them, to move up the list.

These rankings are very incestuous. The weighting is by “reputation” from other college presidents — “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” kinds of rankings. Of course they are going to recommend their own alma mater.

What parents need is some real hard data — average ACT/SAT scores; average GRE scores after graduation; graduation rate; average time to graduate; “bang-for-the-buck”; etc.

Here is the current data for Idaho arranged by ACT rankings of the 2007 freshman class.

• NSA:
• Mean ACT: 26.3
• Mean SAT: 1173
• Cost: $7,800
• Albertsons:
• Mean ACT: 25.1
• Mean SAT: 1121
• Cost: $17,680
• UI:
• Mean ACT: 23.0
• Mean SAT: 1090
• Cost: $4,200/$13,800
• BYU-Idaho
• Mean ACT: 22.7
• Mean SAT: N/A
• Cost: $3,290
• ISU
• Mean ACT: 21.0
• Mean SAT: 1042
• Cost: $4,190/$12,460
• BSU
• Mean ACT: 21.0
• Mean SAT: 970
• Cost: $4,154/$11,932

According to ACT, Inc: “The ACT is "designed to assess students' general educational development and their ability to complete college-level work”.

The further to the right on the graph, the better educated the incoming students and the more selective the college.

If Professor John Ogbu is correct, the conclusions are tragic.

When a culture has the attitude that “academic success is acting white”, you have to somehow change the culture to make academic success something to be desired.

And ask any sociology and management guru — you cannot create culture.

And throwing more money at the problem will not fix it.

The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense.

…

UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor John Ogbu had spent decades studying how the members of different ethnic groups perform academically. He'd studied student coping strategies at inner-city schools in Washington, DC. He'd looked at African Americans and Latinos in Oakland and Stockton and examined how they compare to racial and ethnic minorities in India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Britain. His research often focused on why some groups are more successful than others.

…

The professor and his research assistant moved to Shaker Heights for nine months in mid-1997. They reviewed data and test scores. The team observed 110 different classes, from kindergarten all the way through high school. They conducted exhaustive interviews with school personnel, black parents, and students. Their project yielded an unexpected conclusion: It wasn't socioeconomics, school funding, or racism, that accounted for the students' poor academic performance; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents.

Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as "acting white." Although he noted that other factors also play a role, and doesn't deny that there may be antiblack sentiment in the district, he concluded that discrimination alone could not explain the gap.

"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says during an interview at his home in the Oakland hills. "They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn't supervise their children that much. They didn't make sure their children did their homework. That's not how other ethnic groups think."

Check out Ogbu’s book Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

There are some interesting things that are trickling out. Read between the lines below.

The concern to me: that 12th graders cannot do 10th grade-level work — and still graduate.

NCLB put some teeth into the government school habit of taking $10,000 per year per kid from the tax payers and not teaching them their 3 R’s; but then graduating them anyway. Quite a racket they have going there.

As reported in yesterday’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Members of Idaho's high school Class of 2009 soon will know whether they made the cut to graduate.

The scores from the spring Idaho Standards Achievement Test, or ISAT, were distributed to school districts across the state Wednesday, and individual results will be trickling out over the next few weeks.

While scores are in for all grades, last year's 10th-graders face the specific challenge of meeting proficiency in math, reading and language usage in order to graduate. The requirement stems from policies that emerged in 2002 under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

In previous years, ISAT scores arrived before the school year ended, so 10th-graders knew what to plan for in the fall. If they passed, the stress would be over. If students failed to meet proficiency, they would have to find an alternative route to graduation.

This year, the students on the edge are into their summer vacation and still waiting for an answer.

The delay in the release of scores came from statewide changes in the test. Over the past year, the Idaho Board of Education changed its test vendor and developed a new test. The need for a new test arrived when the board revised its content standards in 2006. Content standards are different at each grade level because they define what each student is expected to know and be able to do.

Board spokesman Mark Browning said the board is continuing to pore over all the data that came in.

"Overall, we're really pleased with the test and the vendor," he said. "They have lived up to everything they committed to in the contract."

Among the other recent changes, the board revised the cut scores for establishing proficiency at its May meeting. For 10th-graders, the math cut score went down from 241 to 238. The reading score went down from 221 to 220, and the language usage cut score went up from 222 to 226. The changes for other grades can be found online at www.boardofed.idaho.gov/saa/achievement.asp.

Browning said these revisions took a huge effort from educators throughout the state. He estimated that at least 100 different people studied the questions and materials of the new test to determine where the level of proficiency should be to be fair and accurate.

"The important thing to keep in mind here is that even with the old vendor, we would have needed a new test this year to align to the standards," he said.

At the district level, people like Cindy Bechinski are trying to make sense of the numbers that were released Wednesday.

"We have a lot of clean up to do before I have any solid numbers," said Bechinski, who handles the test results in her position as the Moscow School District curriculum director.

For example, test vendor Data Recognition Corporation reported that Moscow High School had 20 additional 10th-grade students who were supposed to take the ISAT, and now that error is surfacing in the school's reported participation rates.

Despite this problem, Bechinski said the company and the state board have been "very responsive" to her questions.

"I do understand it's an adjustment period," she said. "I've called and they've both been great."

Bechinski said in general the results for the district and its 10th-graders look positive, but she hesitated to give specific numbers until the errors had been cleared.

Moscow parents will receive their child's results, a brochure explaining how to interpret the results, and a letter from the district office. The 10th-grade students who failed to meet proficiency will receive a letter from the high school principal encouraging their enrollment in classes that will help them catch up.

"We are processing all the information and we will have a letter out the first week in July at the latest," Bechinski said.

Most districts already have mechanisms in place to make sure at-risk students enroll for appropriate classes to get back on track by their senior year.

ISAT results also affect the operations and funding of districts on a larger scale. The ISAT establishes whether a district has met its adequate yearly progress. These results determine whether schools will need assistance from the state to get back on track and whether the schools will receive full federal funding for its programs.

Browning said the AYP results for the school districts will be released in about two weeks.