Moscow Education (Idaho)

No fooling.

And to think that California is the model of progressive spending.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

State Controller John Chiang issued a stern warning Friday about California's cash reserves, telling legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger they must act on nearly $9 billion in budget cuts the governor is seeking by March — or the state will run out of cash to pay its bills.

Without making those cuts — which Chiang says will pump $1.3 billion into the state's checking account — California would be broke by April 1, no fooling.

The state wouldn't climb back to what's considered a safe level of cash on hand, $2.5 billion, until later that month, when tax revenues are expected to begin flowing into Sacramento.

"While our current cash condition is marginally better than it was one year ago," Chiang wrote to leaders, "it is still precarious."

Even with the budget cuts, the state's cash reserve would still be far below that cushion in March and April.

To that end, Chiang is calling for an additional $2 billion in cash-flow "solutions." Looking at previous cash crunches, that could mean some payments, like income tax refunds, would be delayed for a few weeks to keep the cushion intact.

From the Associated Press:

Idaho and Washington fare poorly in latest report cards issued by National Council on Teacher Quality

If a recent study from the National Council on Teacher Quality was a test, Idaho and Washington would score near-failing grades.

The two states, along with most others, are holding tight to policies that protect incompetent teachers and poor training programs, shortchanging educators and their students before new teachers even step into the classroom, according to the group's new national report card.

The study from the National Council on Teacher Quality paints a grim picture of how states handle everything from pay to discipline for public school teachers. States are using "broken, outdated and inflexible" policies that ultimately hurt how children learn, according to the report.

Overall, Idaho scored a D-, while Washington got a D+. In fact, even the top-scoring state, Florida, received a C, with most states getting Ds or Fs.

"We think it's really a blueprint for reform," council vice president Sandi Jacobs said about the report, called the State Policy Teacher Yearbook. "Each goal is something we think states could and should be doing to reform teacher quality."

The council is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on teacher policies at the federal, state and local level.

The report outlines weaknesses that frustrate parents like Barbara Jones, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Acworth and has four children in middle and high school. Jones said she once pulled her daughter out of an elementary class after hearing what teacher she would have - the same teacher who had made her son miserable a few years prior with her short temper, disorganized classroom and condescending attitude.

"That teacher stands out as one who probably should have lost her job a long time ago," Jones said. "It's sad that the really good teachers and the really bad teachers seem to get the same treatment."

A few key findings:

• All but four states allow teachers who are fired multiple appeals of their dismissal, leading to a process that can last years.
• Only five states have adequate preparation for elementary educators on how to teach reading, and only one trains educators to be effective math teachers.
• More than half of the states don't require special education teachers to take subject-matter courses while in school and don't test them on how much of the content they know.
• Nearly every state allows tenure to be awarded "virtually automatically," which protects inadequate teachers and makes it difficult for schools to fire them.

The report card

Idaho:

• Delivering well-prepared teachers: D
• Expanding the teaching pool: D
• Identifying effective teachers: D
• Retaining effective teachers: D+
• Exiting ineffective teachers: F

Washington:

• Delivering well-prepared teachers: D+
• Expanding the teaching pool: C
• Identifying effective teachers: D
• Retaining effective teachers: C
• Exiting ineffective teachers: D+

Now here is a trend that has been unaffected by economic booms and busts.

From KLEW TV in Lewiston:

LEWISTON – It just keeps growing and growing.

Lewis-Clark State College officials say the school continued its trend of “impressive growth” in student enrollment by setting an enrollment record for the sixth straight semester.

Enrollment is announced with the 10th day report.

In a news release from the school, officials said over the past decade, LCSC’s student population increased 1,194 students from 2001 when the college’s 10th day enrollment was 2,721, a 43.9 percent increase in spring enrollment.

“In these tough economic times, we continue to serve the people of Idaho, particularly northern Idaho,” LCSC President Dene K. Thomas says. “We’re doing our job as an economic engine with increased enrollment.”
 

According to Inside Higher Education, the gender gap has stopped growing.

We shall see if that is the case. In my opinion, the things that have caused the higher ed gender gap have not stopped. But I guess the inequality has to come to an equilibrium at some point.

From Inside Higher Education:

A report being released today says that the gender gap in college enrollments has largely leveled off, with the key exception of Latino enrollments, where men are falling further behind women.

The report by the American Council on Education comes amid much talk nationally about the significance of trends that have left men making up only about 43 percent of college enrollments and new college graduates. Some colleges have gone so far as to talk about affirmative action for men, which in turn has prompted an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And a flurry of articles have suggested problems for the United States economy and society if male educational attainment continues to decline.

The message of the report is largely encouraging, noting that "several indicators suggest that the size of the gender gap in higher education may have stabilized" and that the number of bachelor's degrees being awarded to men is again on the rise. While women's numbers are also increasing, the report says that the male increases are important in showing that "women’s success does not come at the expense of men."

The Latino population is the only one where a significant enrollment gender gap appears to be growing, the report says.

Percentage of Undergraduates Who Are Male, by Race and Ethnicity, for Students 24 and Younger

Group	1995-6	1999-2000	2003-4	2007-8
All	48%	46%	45%	46%
White	49%	46%	46%	47%
Black	37%	40%	40%	41%
Latino	45%	45%	43%	42%
Asian	54%	50%	50%	49%
Native American	n/a	45%	44%	49%

With regard to the Latino figures, the report notes that a significant portion of the Latino population is made up of recent immigrants -- a group that tends to have low high school completion rates, making it more challenging for many Latinos (men and women) to become eligible for college. The report also draws attention to the issue of income and the gender gap. Across racial and ethnic groups, greater proportions of upper income students than lower income students are men, among those financially dependent on their parents.

Percentage of Dependent Undergraduates Who Are Male, 2007-8, by Race and Income

	Lowest Income Quartile	Highest Income Quartile
White	44%	51%
Black	42%	48%
Latino	42%	48%
Asian	45%	52%

 HT: Dr. A

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. It was written by Bob Celebrezze, principal of Moscow High School.

According to the National Association of Secondary School Principals organization, the state of Idaho ranked 49th in kindergarten through 12th-grade per-pupil funding in 2007.

Since that time, the state of Idaho has continued to gut funding support for our children, most notably continued cuts in public schools. At the same time that cuts have been constant, Idaho is one of the only states in the union that mandates a 66.67 percent supermajority vote for any facility plant bond measure to build schools. This year, even further cuts in public school budgets are being proposed by Governor Otter. These cuts have already left our greatest resource, the youth of Idaho, at risk in terms of competition among other youth in Western states, the United States and beyond.

In the past three years, class sizes throughout the state have continually increased, public school teachers salaries have been stagnant to declining, health benefit costs have risen, teaching positions have been slashed, and yet the State Board of Education, Idaho Legislature and Otter are demanding more through high-stakes graduation tests, graduation rates, increased math and science requirements and a variety of other unfunded mandates.

Idaho had a proud history of assisting our children. To be ranked second from last in the United States of America, in kindergarten through 12th-grade public school funding, behind Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia and Louisiana, is certainly not going to attract corporations, top-quality business leaders, small businesses, university professors and family-oriented taxpayers to our state.

I recommend that the Idaho Legislature and Otter take swift and decisive action to bring this great state back among the top in terms of public school funding; this will in turn bring growth and success to the state of Idaho.

Bob Celebrezze, Moscow

“Jlafer” responded:

Local school districts do indeed provide a large amount of the taxes that fund the local schools in Idaho. Moscow school district presently has the 3rd highest locally provided expenditure per student in the entire state. The only districts that provide more local funds for education are Sun Valley and McCall; high income resort towns. The amount of money spent per student in the Moscow School district is more than twice the cost of a private school.

I haven’t checked with the Idaho State Dept. of Education website in over a year. But last time I checked, this data was indeed correct.

If I get some time today, I’ll go thru the data and see where the Moscow School District falls.

I’ve always been surprised how the MSD voters, who for the most part live on a beer budget, want to spend money like they were from Sun Valley and McCall.

This is why it is important that Washington D.C. not rush in a “save” the schools. There is no way for the necessary pruning to be done if D.C. prints money and hands it to the states. Everyone cuts back during fiscal hard times. The educational-industrial complex should be no different.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Washington State University Faculty Senate discussed Thursday whether it would prefer vertical cuts or furloughs to address the university's looming budget cuts.

Under Gov. Chris Gregoire's budget-balancing proposal, WSU faces a $13.55 million reduction in state appropriations, which would come on top of the $54 million budget cut it experienced this past spring.

Michael Swan, chairman of the Faculty Senate, asked the senators to make suggestions on the direction the new budget reductions should take. He also told the senators that President Elson S. Floyd has asked all college deans to come up with a plan assuming a 7-percent reduction in their respective colleges.

Swan said the number of furlough days hasn't been discussed and neither has the length of time during which employees would have to take the unpaid days off.

"I think many faculty would need that information to make an intelligent decision," Sen. David Gaylord said of whether faculty would prefer furloughs or vertical cuts.

From the Associated Press:

The University of Idaho reports more than 11,500 students are enrolled this semester, up three percent from the same time last year.

Those numbers include full-time and part-time students. The university also says nearly 10,300 students were enrolled at the main campus in Moscow in the spring term, up 2 percent from the same time last year.

More freshmen than last year returned for the spring semester. Ninety-three percent of freshmen students returned for the spring semester, up 3 percent from the same time in 2009.

The university releases enrollment numbers on the tenth day of class, deemed a good measuring stick because it doesn't count students who enroll on the first day but quickly drop out.

In a different press release, the UI takes responsibility for their increased enrollment: it’s all due to their phenomenal work in improving the “freshman experience”.

Efforts aimed at improving the freshman experience are bearing fruit for the University of Idaho: 93 percent of freshman returned for spring semester, 3 percent more than the previous spring. On the 10th day of classes for spring semester 2010, enrollment numbers at the University of Idaho statewide registered an increase of 320, 3 percent over the previous spring, to a statewide total of 11,512.

"We continue to focus our efforts on making sure that freshmen at the university are positioned for success," said Steve Neiheisel, assistant vice president for enrollment management. "This includes a number of initiatives, such as additional assessment and support for new students early in the semester, as well as programs to assist students with academic difficulties after their first semester. We measure our success in how well our students do; the fact that such a high number of freshman returned for spring semester leaves us encouraged."

That’s a bunch of hooey. The UI is taking credit for the economic depression is what they are doing. Everyone knows that college enrollment spikes during economic downturns. There’s no surprise that during the worse economic downturn in 80 years that we’d see the largest enrollment spike.

Details from Spokesman Review Betsy Russell's blog An Eye on Boise.

BSU President Bob Kustra displayed a pie chart to legislative budget writers showing the amount of state general funds per student that each Idaho four-year college or university receives. The amounts:

• $8,946 at the University of Idaho;
• $7,324 at Idaho State University;
• $5,459 at Lewis-Clark State College; and
• $5,066 at Boise State.

BSU’s fall full-time academic enrollment is the largest of the group, at 14,537 last year. UI’s was 10,368; ISU’s, 8,985; and LCSC’s, 2,467. 

 BSU Source: http://news.boisestate.edu/blog/2010/01/culture-of-innovation-and-imagination/

This is an amazing recognition for NSA, for Moscow, and for the international Reformed colleges.

New Saint Andrews College Senior Fellow Dr. Peter J. Leithart has been awarded an Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education (ARIHE) Lectureship for 2010-2012. At New Saint Andrews since 1999, Dr. Leithart will continue teaching theology and literature at the College during the term of the ARIHE Lectureship.

A press release from Bob Hieronymus, Executive Vice President of Administration and Advancement at New Saint Andrews College:

NSA faculty member recognized internationally

Dr. Peter Leithart awarded distinguished ARIHE Lectureship

New Saint Andrews College Senior Fellow Dr. Peter J. Leithart has been awarded an
Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education (ARIHE) Lectureship for 2010-2012.

As one of three lecturers recognized by the ten-member association of American and Canadian colleges and universities in the Reformed and Presbyterian Christian tradition, Dr. Leithart joins a distinguished group of scholars said to provide "a model of scholarship that reflect the mission and character of Reformed Christian institutions."

ARIHE includes seven American institutions (Calvin College, Covenant College, Dordt College, Geneva College, New Saint Andrews College, Providence Christian College, and Trinity College) and three Canadian members (the Institute for Christian Studies, The King's University, and Redeemer University College).

At New Saint Andrews since 1999, Dr. Leithart will continue teaching theology and literature at the College during the term of the ARIHE Lectureship. Dr. Leithart earned his doctorate in systematic theology from Cambridge University and is recognized as a prolific scholar with more than a dozen published books. Some recent works include, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture, was published by Baylor University Press, and Solomon Among the Postmoderns, published by Brazos Press. He has also published dozens of scholarly journal articles.

Over the course of the Lectureship, Dr. Leithart will be available to speak at member institution campuses giving the following lectures: "Constantine and the City of Sacrifice," "The Quadriga: A Biblical and Pastoral Defense," "City of In-Gratia: The Politics of Ingratitude in Shakespeare's Coriolanus," and "Extrinicism and Incarnation: Nature and Grace in Athanasius."

The other 2010-2012 Lectureships were awarded to Dr. Keith Sewell of Dordt College and Dr. Don Sinnema of Trinity Christian College. Last year two ARIHE Lectures spoke at New Saint Andrews during the College's Calvin@500 Lectures Series.

Today, Logos School’s secondary students broke up into groups of about 15 and went around town doing various service projects in the community all morning long.

I had the privilege of supervising 15 of them along the Chipman Trail, Palouse Creek, and Highway 8,  as we picked up trash along the way. We went from the Idaho State line all the way to the McDonald’s on the east side of town.

These kids and I did a similar project two years ago, but that year we started on the east side of town and worked our way downtown.

You can tell a lot about a town from its trash. Some observations:

• The drink of choice among UI students: Bud Light. I sure hope it’s because of the cost and not for the taste!
• The snack of choice among UI students: Nestle’s crunch chocolate bars.
• Smokers love to throw their cigarette butts out the windows at stop lights.
• Dog owners do not pick-up their doggie poop along the path.

But overall, there was little trash along the Chipman trail. I was really pleased with how the Moscow residents have been keeping things looking nice. It was definitely cleaner than when we did this two years ago.

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said. "Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

Question: didn’t George Soros' Moveon.org do the bulk of the work to put Obama in office?

HT: John K.

Big surprise here: Luna doesn’t want any cuts in his empire. Surprise, surprise!

The following is from the online edition of the Lewiston Tribune.

Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna has said for months the public school budget can't be cut any further without hurting student achievement.

He didn't back away much on that stance today during his fiscal 2011 budget presentation to the joint budget committee.

Luna recommended using $58.3 million in reserves next year - most of it from an endowment lands earnings fund - plus $25.2 million in targeted cuts, saying that would still allow schools to maintain student progress.

That put Luna at odds with Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter, who is recommending a total K-12 budget for fiscal 2011 of $1.58 billion, including general fund support, dedicated and federal funding.

That's down $130 million from 2010 - or almost $50 million more than Luna thinks can be cut without hurting students.

If lawmakers thinks deeper cuts are necessary, Luna said, then they should implement an across-the-board cut of about 3.74 percent for all school programs, including salaries, transportation funding and remediation.

The targeted cuts Luna is proposing include:

• Freezing the pay grid for a second year, meaning teachers wouldn't get a salary bump for experience; this would save $6.1 million.
• Eliminating the early retirement incentive, saving $2 million.
• Cutting reimbursements for field trips, saving $1.4 million.
• Cutting classroom supply payments from $300 per teacher to $200, saving $1.6 million.
• Reducing textbook and capital purchases by $9.1 million.
• Cutting another $5 million districts receive for "average daily attendance protection." Districts negotiate teacher contracts in spring, based on estimates of student attendance the following fall. If the fall attendance comes in under estimate, districts currently can't terminate the contracts; this $5 million is used to cover the cost of those teachers. Luna wants to give districts the ability to terminate the contracts, thereby eliminating the need for this funding. 

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Moscow School District Superintendent Candis Donicht will retire in July.

Donicht, who was chosen from a pool of 17 candidates to be Moscow's chief of schools in 2002, made the surprise announcement to the Moscow School Board on Tuesday evening after praising the work of staff, students and the community.

School board members responded by expressing appreciation for her service and recognizing that they now have a superintendent search to conduct on top of dealing with ongoing budget issues.

"We as a board have some decisions and some planning to do," board Chairwoman Dawn Fazio said.

Fazio said she's been through a couple of superintendent searches before and said the board has a lot to consider, such as search timelines and committees and whether or not to hire outside help to assist with the search.

Board members decided they will have a special meeting in early February to begin the search process.

Curriculum Director Cindy Bechinski held back tears as she told Donicht she was happy for her.

"You've really done an amazing job," Bechinski said. "I'm really going to miss you so much."

Donicht's lengthy career in education includes 11 years as superintendent of the Salmon School District before she was hired in Moscow.

She was named Idaho's School Superintendent of the Year by the Idaho School Superintendents Association in 2009 and is scheduled to accept the award at the ISSA's convention in February.

From the Associated Press:

Idaho public universities and colleges have absorbed funding losses with larger class sizes and fewer course degree offerings, but lawmakers were warned Monday more cuts could delay the state's economic recovery by crippling the machinery churning out educated workers and retraining the unemployed,

"The impact of these cuts is more than larger class sizes, fewer section offerings," state Board of Education president Paul Agidius told legislative budget writers.

More cuts will also have an immediate impact and mandated furloughs may become necessary, he said.

The board will consider policy changes next month to give university presidents in financial crisis more latitude to handle funding shortfalls, including the power to temporarily reduce wages through furloughs and make permanent salary reductions regardless of contracts with tenured and non-tenured professors and some staff members.

Faculty representatives have raised concerns over the proposed changes, which board officials have assured will not allow presidents to target individuals but rather make university- or department-wide cuts.

The way higher ed works is really too bad. In the corporate world, people who do not produce can be easily laid off.

In higher education, they are granted tenure and the productive people are cut.

It really is a bass-ackwards system.

From the L.A. Times:

Over the last decade, a quiet revolution took root in the nation's second-largest school district. Enrollment is up at charter schools, and overall, standardized test scores outshine those at traditional campuses.

Today, Los Angeles is home to more than 160 charter schools, far more than any other U.S. city. Charter enrollment is up nearly 19% this year from last, while enrollment in traditional L.A. public schools is down. And a once-hostile school board has become increasingly charter-friendly, despite resistance from the teachers union. In September, the board agreed to let charters bid on potentially hundreds of existing campuses and on all 50 of its planned new schools.

At what point are you cutting meat and bone, and at what point are you just removing fat and cancer?

From today's Spokesman Review.

The University of Idaho has taken $22 million in budget cuts just in the past two years, and with more looming, UI President Duane Nellis told lawmakers Monday that higher education is key to Idaho’s recovery from the current economic downturn.

“I’ve been on record as stressing higher education’s impact to the state’s economy,” Nellis told legislative budget writers, as he made his pitch for the university’s budget. “Higher education is even more important to Idaho when the state is facing these very significant economic difficulties.”

The tally of $22 million in cuts in two years doesn’t count another $10 million Gov. Butch Otter has recommended removing from a planned dairy research project, or millions more in additional holdbacks lawmakers are considering this year. For next year, the governor’s budget proposes $35.1 million less in funding for Idaho’s four-year colleges and universities combined, a 14 percent drop from this year’s budget, which itself was set at $32 million below the previous year’s budget, an 11 percent drop.

“These budget reductions do have an impact on our academic programs and on the state,” Nellis said.

So far, the UI has discontinued 45 programs - eliminated 35 degree programs, and restructured 10 others. It’s also established four new ones in targeted areas, he said. There have been hiring and travel freezes, and the Moscow, Idaho-based university has cut 77 positions and deferred maintenance and equipment purchases.

This past fall, the university took a 6 percent budget hit thanks to the mid-year holdbacks Otter announced in September. Nellis said those cuts, which slashed $6.5 million out of the university’s spending for this year, were accomplished in part by tapping into the UI’s fast-shrinking reserves. But now, as Otter and lawmakers call for more cuts this year, the UI will have to turn to furloughs, he said, with top-paid employees facing as many as six unpaid days off between now and June 30, and lower-paid workers getting shorter furloughs.

From GOP USA:

Last week, Scott Brown showed that running a campaign built on conservative principles could not only win, but it could win in the bluest of blue states. His platform keyed in on the frustration felt by Tea Party activists that the federal government is out of control. He made Barack Obama and left-wing policies his targets, and he won.

But what does it mean for the future? The answer is simple; it means that the so-called Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) should beware. Actually, any Washington incumbent should probably be sleeping with one eye open as we move into the primary election season, but those Republicans who put politics over principle and helped pave the way to massive spending should be particularly troubled. In order to truly change Washington, there needs to be a fresh approach. You can't do that with stale leaders.

From Inside Higher Education:

The Transgender Athlete

Many transgender athletes relate similar experiences that make their participation on college teams painful and frustrating: An athlete is called "she/he" and "it" by opposing players during a game. An athlete stops playing sports in college because it becomes too uncomfortable to use the locker room. An athlete has to change clothes in a utility closet separate from the rest of the team. An athlete quits the team because it becomes too painful to keep reminding coaches and teammates about the athlete's preferred pronouns. None of the institutions or athletic conferences in which these athletes compete have a policy governing the inclusion of transgender student-athletes on sports teams.

The following is from the online edition of the Lewiston Tribune.

The names of two juveniles charged with felony counts for allegedly shooting at moving vehicles near Deary Friday have been released.

Austin Blake Medlock and Austin James Rickert, both 14-year-old freshman at Deary High School, appeared during a closed hearing in juvenile court with their parents today before Magistrate John Judge. The boys each face two counts of being principal to the unlawful discharge of a firearm at a vehicle.

The charges stem from a three-hour incident Friday on U.S. Highway 8 after reports that several vehicles had been hit with bullets. The highway was closed until the boys were taken into custody.

Medlock and Rickert were released to the custody of their parents on condition they not be out of sight of a parent, that they not touch a firearm, that no firearms may be in their house, that the parents transport them to and from school, that they wear electronic monitoring devices and that they consent to being searched by authorities at any time.

Both are scheduled to appear again in juvenile court on Feb. 3 at 11 a.m. 

From the Associated Press:

Idaho's public universities are facing the grim possibility of a more cuts on top of a $15.2 million loss in current funding as they take their proposals for spending in the next fiscal year to lawmakers.

The University of Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College are up first, with the schools' presidents scheduled to make presentations to the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee early Monday.

Boise State University and Idaho State University will report to the committee later in the week.

Officials at the schools have warned further cuts could threaten programs and put college out of reach for some students because of higher tuition and fee increases.

Details from Spokesman Review Betsy Russell's blog An Eye on Boise.

Legislative budget writers were very keen this morning to ask about the University of Idaho’s net asset balances, which reports show at $38 million to $40 million. “How much of that unrestricted assets could be used in economic difficulties like we’re in now, in order to keep the University of Idaho tracking at the same level?” asked Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert. UI President Duane Nellis responded, “We’ve looked at that very, very carefully. Many of those dollars are either matches on grants that have been committed, or startup packages,” such as commitments made to new professors who come on board to purchase equipment for their research. “When we took the 6 percent reduction the governor ordered earlier this year, we used part of that as a way to bridge - it was one-time money - instead of taking a furlough,” Nellis said, “although we’re at the edge now where we think the next round of holdbacks will trigger a furlough.”

The university’s executive director of budget and planning then told JFAC that unobligated funds available to the UI at the end of fiscal year 2009 were $2.6 million, and that money was tapped in the fall term for the holdbacks. Nellis said with the size of the infrastructure at the UI, “that’s how slim a margin we have at a major university” to cover such things as disasters, snowstorms, roof leaks and the like. “I worry about that, and taking more of that given how limited our funds are,” he said. Cameron responded, “We worry about those same things. … We’ll look forward to spending our reserves together.”

Doctors and Judges in Canada now decide life or death for patients, not parents.

Welcome to socialized medicine.

From WND:

Isaiah James May was born a little after 5 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2009, and was scheduled to die this past week – on Wednesday, Jan. 20 – just short of his three-month birthday.

That was the day chosen by Canada's publicly funded, government health service as the deadline for Isaiah to recover from his traumatic birth or be taken off life-support.

"There is no hope of recovery for Isaiah," reads a letter from Alberta Health Services delivered to Isaiah's parents and dated one week before the health care system intended to pull the plug on the baby it has determined irreparably brain damaged.

“Your treating physicians regretfully have come to the conclusion that withdrawal of active treatment is medically reasonable, ethically responsible and appropriate," the letter states. "We must put the interests of your son foremost, and it is in his best interests to discontinue mechanical ventilation support.”

Parents Isaac and Rebecka May, however, immediately appealed to the courts for more time, encouraged by signs that their boy was growing and moving, pointing to instance after instance where Isaiah had already proven the doctors wrong.

"He is doing everything they said that he would not do. Every day he does something new. So that helps us to fight," the baby's 23-year-old mother told CBC News. "His eyes dilate. He opens his eyes. He moves his limbs. He's growing. He's gaining weight. He's living. They told us he would never do any of that."

Then, the day before the hospital planned to allow Isaiah to die, a judge granted Isaiah a few more days of life.

HT: David D.

From Glenn Schwaller:

“University of Washington president Mark Emmert said he supports allowing illegal immigrant students to attend college as a pathway to permanent residency and US citizenship. Those students . . . could take out student loans.”

When breathlessly asked what could be wrong with that, Schwaller answers:

The UW president's approach is backwards - obtain legal status in the country THEN you may pursue the rights, privileges and opportunities of all citizens and those with legal status.  Doesn't matter if it's education, jobs, health care, bank loans, housing, day care, food stamps, whatever.  Legal first - "stuff" second.

Quite simple really.  I'm surprised it had to be spelled out for you.

I’m not.

From today's Spokesman Review.

Careful optimism and a heightened sense of uncertainty were the themes of the day at the University of Idaho’s biannual faculty meeting Thursday afternoon.

About 130 faculty members in Moscow and participating electronically statewide were present to approve a series of revisions to the UI Faculty-Staff Handbook and program catalog.

Among catalog changes are the discontinuance of the master of economics degree and arboriculture and urban forestry minor due to low demand and limited resources.

Also on the chopping block are the foreign language bachelor of arts degrees that have emphases in classical studies and Latin, in addition to minors in Greek and Latin. They will be replaced by a restructured classics minor. New bachelor of arts degrees in Spanish and French also will be offered as part of the restructuring of foreign languages.

I wonder how much of this has to do with a classical college just blocks away that is busting at the seams with applicants?

Another reason to have a separation of school and state.

From WND:

A New Jersey judge has dismissed a criminal case against a volunteer who was preaching the Gospel on public property in front of the Edison, N.J., High School when his toe inadvertently brushed the grass and he was arrested.

The case has been detailed by the Alliance Defense Fund, which takes on civil rights and religious rights cases nationwide.

The order dismissing the case against Robert Parker was signed by Judge Travis Francis.

"Christians shouldn't be arrested and charged as criminals for expressing their beliefs on public property. They have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America," said ADF-allied attorney Demetrios Stratis of Fair Lawn.

"A person cannot be charged with a crime just because a school official has a complete misunderstanding of the First Amendment or doesn't like what that person has to say. We are pleased that we prevailed in court in getting these unwarranted criminal charges dropped," he said.

This goes back to the contemporary version of “free speech” that progressives believe in: it’s free as long as we agree with it. Otherwise, you can’t say (or think) it.

According to the report issued yesterday by the ADF, Parker "was taken into custody after his toe touched the grass on the school's side of the sidewalk. He was charged with trespass and disorderly conduct."

It was last May when Parker was sharing the Gospel from a public sidewalk outside the high school after students were dismissed for the day.

The school principal came out and told him to leave, whereupon Parker explained his First Amendment free speech and free exercise of religion protections. Dissatisfied, the principal called police.

According to the ADF, when officers arrived they took control of the situation and instructed students "not to go near Parker."

The principal then insisted that Parker be arrested.

"While speaking with officers, Parker's toe brushed against the grass along the school side of the sidewalk. The officers arrested him and issued him a summons for 'defiant trespassing,'" the ADF reported.

The events leading to the arrest were recorded on video.

Stratis later filed a motion to dismiss the charges with the Superior Court of New Jersey, Middlesex County, and the court ordered the dismissal. The Edison Municipal Court later followed the order.

HT: David D. 

I’m reposting this study’s finding in case some of you missed it.

Bottom line: the government study reports that Head Start is ineffective.

From the Goldwater Institute:

The Department of Health and Human Services has been sitting on an evaluation of the Head Start government run pre-school program. Well, the study was released.

As the leaks suggested, the study found virtually no lasting effects to participation in Head Start. The study used a gold-standard, random assignment design and had a very large nationally representative sample. This was a well done study.

For students who were randomly assigned to Head Start or not at the age of 4, the researchers collected 19 measures of cognitive impacts at the end of kindergarten and 22 measures when those students finished 1st grade. Of those 41 measures, only 1 was significant and positive. The remaining 40 showed no statistically significant difference. The one significant effect was for receptive vocabulary, which showed no significant advantage for Head Start students after kindergarten but somehow re-emerged at the end of 1st grade.

The study used the more relaxed p< .1 standard for statistical significance, so we could have seen about 4 significant differences by chance alone and only saw 1. That positive effect had an effect size of .09, which is relatively modest.

For students randomly assigned to Head Start or not at the age of 3, the researchers also collected 41 measures of lasting cognitive effects. This time they found 2 statistically significant positive effects and 1 statistically significant negative effect. For the students who began at age 3 they showed a .08 effect size benefit from Head Start in oral comprehension after first grade and a .26 effect size benefit in Spanish vocabulary after kindergarten but a .19 effect size decline in math ability at the end of kindergarten. Again, 38 of the 41 measures of lasting effects showed no difference and the few significant effects, which could be produced by chance, showed mixed results.

It is safe to say from this very rigorous evaluation that Head Start had no lasting effect on the academic preparation of students.

The long and short of it is that the government runs an enormously expensive pre-school program that has made basically no difference for the students who participate in it. And folks are proposing that we expand government pre-school to include all students. Those same folks have some bridges they’d like to sell.

HT: Dave G.

From my friend Jim who lives in Massachusetts:

One ironic note in all of this...

This election would not have been possible at all except for the fact that when Kerry was running for President (and Romney was serving as governor), the Democrats in our state legislature changed the law from an appointed senator to one elected by special election (over Romney's veto no less).

At the time, the conservative group was pretty angry; this was an arrogant change done simply to keep the seat in Democrat hands.

The irony, of course, is that without that change, Deval Patrick would  have appointed Interim Senator Kirk to a permanent seat.

The Democrats found themselves hoist on their own petard.

Mitt Romney had a bit of an evil glint in his eye when he was asked about that last night. Can't say that I blamed him.

From EIA:

 "We really don't have adequate position control and we don't know where our funding comes from for all these positions."
—Los Angeles Unified School District Inspector General Jerry Thornton, upon learning that the district spent $200 million more than budgeted on employee salaries, despite laying off more than 2,000 of them. (January 14 Los Angeles Times)

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From EIA:

As long as the teaching force grew, the National Education Association could count on its membership ranks to grow correspondingly. But with last year's flat enrollment, tight state budgets and teacher layoffs, NEA faces a situation it hasn't faced since 1983 - fewer members than the previous year.

While the decrease is bad news for a union ill-equipped to cut costs, it is very far from debilitating. NEA's total numbers were down by almost 37,000 members, but more than half of the loss came from the student ranks. Students must renew their membership annually, and so can make individual decisions that bear no relation to their job status.

The ranks of working members ("active") were more of a mixed picture. NEA showed a small gain (632) in the number of active education support employees nationwide, but a loss of 15,181 "active certified" employees, a category that includes teachers, counselors, speech pathologists, and other professionals. Of these, 13,605 were full-time.

This is a significant number of teachers, but small relative to the reports of catastrophic force reductions we have been reading since the school year began. As late as last month, the California Teachers Association was claiming 20,000 educator layoffs. If true, it would mean the other 49 states hired as many as 7,000 additional teachers, which seems unlikely.

The loss of full-time dues alone amounts to $2.2 million - chump change out of the national union's $355.8 million budget. Even so, a new proposal to create a tiered dues structure based on salaries may eliminate most of the loss. That proposal has not been finalized yet, but it could be ready for approval by the NEA Representative Assembly in July.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

This article from Arutz Sheva shows the typical bias in the mainstream media. First, as for Israel’s relief efforts to Haiti, they include the following:

• A field hospital, the only hospital in operation, with 40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an emergency room, two operating rooms, a surgical department, an internal department and a maternity ward. The hospital can treat approximately 500 patients each day, and in addition will perform preliminary surgeries.
• A search-and-rescue team, which has rescued about five people from under the rubble.
• 220 personnel in total
• Dozens of truckloads of medical and logistical equipment

Second, Mike Huckabee, speaking on his Fox News television program:

“Once again, in the face of a horrible human tragedy, it’s Americans who show up first, do the most, and expect the least in return.”

“When it comes to a time of human tragedy,” Huckabee continued, “it’s the United States that will export its most precious commodity – its generosity. Within hours of the horrific earthquake that hit Haiti, Americans were pouring record donations into the relief efforts… The U.S. military dispatched ships, planes and thousands of personnel… American relief workers lined up to go to Haiti and risked death and disease to help people they don’t even know.”

“I realize that other countries are helping and providing resources – but the next time some pipsqueak punk politician like [Venezuelan dictator] Hugo Chavez or Iran’s nutjob of a president Ahmoud Medinajad [sic] whines about how evil we are, we ought to tell them to put up or shut up.”

“… When the earthquake struck, American went to Haiti. As for our critics, they can go to hell.”