Moscow Education (Idaho)

From Richard Whitmire over at Why Boys Fail:

Dating Out is what black women call dating someone out of their race, as laid out in this Washington Post article. For black women looking to marry someone equally educated, that's an option that has to be considered. In urban areas such as Washington, there are three times as many college educated black women as men. The math is simple.

The math is also becoming simple for white women. With 62 percent of associate's degrees and 57 percent of bachelor's degrees going to women, where are educated white women going to find suitable mates? By "marrying down," so to speak, to men lacking their education level.

Will that happen? Perhaps, but I'm guessing not nearly enough to avoid significant rises in the number of middle class white women avoiding marriage and having children on their own through sperm banks.

Now, tell me again why so many women's advocacy groups resist school interventions designed to correct the academic indifference we see among boys in the K-12 school system? And please explain why the Department of Education continues to duck the gender gap issue.

“It is a fundamental principle of the free market that when you infuse competition into any equation, you make it better.  We are lacking any substantial competition in education.”
—Virginia Del. C. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah

The following article ran in the Lewiston Tribune.

A new report on school salary increases continues to ripple through the Idaho Legislature, bringing with it the possibility of retribution in the 2011 budget.

The report, compiled by the Department of Education, showed that 43 percent of Idaho school teachers and 37 percent of administrators received raises in the 2009-10 school year.

The increases amounted to more than $21 million, in a year when the Legislature cut general fund support for schools by $102 million and reduced the salary appropriation.

The government school teachers are organizing a labor protest.

The sign looks a lot like a “communist workers of the world unite” sign.

Coincidence?

From Inside Higher Education.

Since homosexuality is (allegedly) the same category as skin color, sex, etc, there needs to be an all out outreach to yet another socio-economic class. From Inside Higher Ed:

At many colleges, it's a standard part of the recruiting process once applicants are admitted. Current students who share individual traits or academic interests help reach out to prospective students with similar backgrounds or interests. So the young woman who expresses an interest in engineering will hear from a female junior in engineering. A black admit might hear from a black student, and so forth. The idea is that these students may be uniquely well positioned to answer questions and to make the case that the college is a good place to be a female engineer, a black undergrad, or whatever.

This year, the University of Pennsylvania is applying the idea to admitted applicants who are gay. Several experts on college admissions say that they do not know of any other colleges that have taken this step. [Update: In comments below, an official of Dartmouth College describes such an effort there.] Outreach to gay applicants is different in some key ways from outreach based on academic interests or race and ethnicity. Typically, applications ask about academic interests and race and ethnicity (although that question is optional), and no colleges are known to ask applicants about their sexual orientation.

And while Penn has found ways to reach out to admitted applicants who are gay without asking the question, some advocates for gay and lesbian students are starting to talk about pushing colleges to add such a question (as an option). One group is preparing to petition the Common Application to do so.

Eric J. Furda, dean of admissions at Penn, characterizes the effort there not as something special for admitted gay applicants, but as doing for them what the university already does for many other groups of students. "We are speaking to students on the areas that they are most interested in," he said.

A feature-length documentary about our urgent national need for school choice, "The Cartel" shows us our failing educational system like we’ve never seen it before.

In this hard-hitting film by reporter and news anchor Bob Bowdon, "The Cartel" exposes the corruption, waste, and intimidation in our nations public schools. Arguing that our public school system wastes billions of dollars each year, while our children learn less and less, "The Cartel" makes a compelling case for far-reaching and immediate reform centered on school choice.

—Mark J. Perry 

From the Motley Fool:

Some good news: Today's the day that the much-ballyhooed Credit Card Reform Act goes into effect, offering consumers some new protections against surprise rate hikes and hidden fees.

This is a good thing, at least for credit card holders -- for once, the ballyhooing is on target.

…

New rules to curb the worst of the abuses made famous by supersize credit card issuers like Citi, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Capital One (NYSE: COF) are certainly welcome, but they aren't going to change the two biggest factors in America's ongoing battle with its credit cards:

• Issuers will still strive to maximize profits. They can't pull the old tricks, but they will certainly think up new ones as they strive to improve their profit margins. Annual fees are already back in vogue, along with new charges like "inactivity fees" and higher charges on balance transfers. Moreover, with Visa (NYSE: V) and MasterCard doing their best to extract as much in merchant fees as possible, I suspect it's only a matter of time before a completely new set of dubious tactics emerges.
• Running a balance is still a bad idea! If we've learned anything from the financial disasters of the last two years, it's that spending more than you earn is a bad plan. A standing credit card balance is a money sink as well as a source of constant low-level worry for many -- but hugely profitable for issuers.  

If you want to get rich and stay rich, paying off your plastic in full every month is a great place to start. If you have a balance now, make paying it down a high priority. Yes, even higher than investing -- the "returns" on paying off a high-interest balance are almost always the best available, and unlike the returns from hot stocks, they're guaranteed.

From D.F. Oliveria at Huckleberries Online:

“I write with an update to confirm that the University will implement a furlough plan, the details of which are being completed over the next few days and will be communicated early next week. The University is a complex organization, with many different functions and units and many different funding sources. As such, a furlough plan for the university is itself a complex process. Any furlough action, in any organization, is a major change and requires careful planning. We are committed to doing that planning so that the implementation is as smooth as possible and employees are treated fairly.”

—UIdaho President, Duane Nellis

The following article by Doug Bauer appeared in today's edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. This is the consensus of the Daily News editorial board.

According to fiscal year 2007 statistics, Idaho spent $55.84 per prison inmate, per day. That adds up to $20,381 and change over the course of a calendar year - or about four times the amount the state spends to educate a K-12 student over the course of a school year.

I about fell out of my chair when I read that.

Where in the world did Bauer ever get the idea that Idaho spends $5,000 per child on government school education?

Check here for the latest data from the state of Idaho: http://www.sde.idaho.gov/site/statistics/docs/financial_summaries/07_08/2007-2008%20Excel%20Financial%20Summaries.xls

MSD had 2281 full time students (Membership tab; Cell D82). MSD had total revenues of $22,498,753 (Tab 281; Cell J23).

That's $9,900 per year per student. Doug only missed his number by 100%

Perhaps he forgot to take into consideration all of the other income sources other than just the Idaho 1% sales tax that goes to the schools? Supplemental M&O, Torts, Emergency Levies, Bonds, etc.

This is why the public never knows about the truth of the matter concerning government education funding costs — the newspapers don’t report the full amount.

Why is that?

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Moscow School Board has approved an activation of the school district's reduction in force policy.

Superintendent Candis Donicht brought the request to the board Tuesday evening, saying she anticipates next year's state public schools appropriation to be substantially below this year's budget. That means the district must find ways to reduce costs, which could result in the elimination of positions if not enough savings are found elsewhere.

But, "Activating (the reduction in force policy) does not automatically mean pink slips to people who would like to remain employed with us," Donicht cautioned.

Looks like belt tightening everywhere. But I’ll believe it when I see it. Last time MSD did this (2009), there were no reductions, just threats.

You’ve got to love the liberals. When a tax increase is voted down, those for more taxes always say “the voters clearly were not well informed. No one in their right mind would vote against raising taxes. After all, “it’s for the kids’ ”.

As reported in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Dozens of parents and community members in Colfax attended a meeting Monday night to learn more about the Colfax School District's recently failed levy and to discuss its future.

"There was misunderstanding, I think, the first time (the levy ran)," said Carey Fulfs, who is part of the Future of Colfax Education, a recently formed parent group. "I don't think people understood what the school was asking for and what they needed it for."

 

When is a tuition increase not an increase? When it’s labeled a “fee”.

From the University of Idaho’s Argonaut

University of Idaho administrators announced this week that they will seek a student fee increase totaling $296 more per semester for full-time undergraduates beginning in the fall.

The proposal breaks down to a 12 percent student increase, including an 11.26 percent increase to facility fees and a 16.45 percent increase to matriculation fees. Full-time undergraduate students will pay an additional $296 per semester under the proposed plan. That money is distributed into four different areas — facility fees, the matriculation fee, student computing and network access fees and dedicated student activity fees. Under the proposal, only the student computing and network access fee would remain the same.

UI officials will hold an open forum on the request at 3 p.m. March 4 in the Crest Room at the Idaho Commons.

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

Dene K. Thomas, president of Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, has been named one of three finalists for the presidency at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., according to a news release from LCSC.

Thomas will visit the Fort Lewis campus for an interview March 1 and 2, according to a news release from that college.

This is excellent news for President Thomas. She has done an excellent job at LCSC.  

Nationally, inflation-adjusted public school spending per pupil has more than doubled since the late 1960s (see graph above, data here).

—Mark J. Perry

Realize, this is inflation-adjusted spending.

Don’t you feel smarter already?

My experience in government schools is probably like my readers’. I had a couple excellent teachers; but most were mediocre or atrocious. But because they have “tenure” and work for the union, there was no way to replace the bad ones with good ones. And so hoards of bad teachers educated kids for 30+ years.

Talk about a recipe for disaster.

From Education Next:

As school districts prepare to lay off teachers due to funding shortfalls, government officials are starting to push back against seniority policies that force districts to make decisions about layoffs without regard to the effectiveness of the teachers involved. In an article that appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Ed Next, Paul Peterson noted that recessions can be a good opportunity to make policy changes that are otherwise politically impossible. “Recessions cause lots of harm, but they also eliminate bloat, fat, even fraud.”

John Stossel gets no answer from the politicians.

DC has thrown tons of money at public education.  The capitol now spends more than 26 thousand dollars per student. With so much money, you could do a great job, but they don't.  DC has lower test scores than any state. So the Bush administration tried an experiment: vouchers for some poor kids.

Just some. Over the last six years, a few thousand public school kids got a $7,500 voucher that they could take to a private school. The average school the kids chose -- about half were Catholic -- charged less than that: $6,600.

Yet despite spending just a quarter of what the public schools did, a Department of Education study found that the kids who got the vouchers did better.

And because kids were selected by lottery -- four kids applied for every slot available -- researchers could make a scientific comparison between kids who got into the program and those who didn’t.

The Department of Education found that the voucher kids were 14 months ahead of the others in reading.

So what do the politicians do?  Expand the program?   No.  They killed it.

There were protests about that.

One student asks: "President Obama, you say that getting an education is the key to success… why do you sit there and let my education and others be taken away?"

President Obama never answered.  His spokesman, Robert Gibbs struggled to answer:

"The President has concerns about... uh... [LONG PAUSE] concerns about... uh... [LONG PAUSE]  taking... uh... [LONG PAUSE] large amounts of funding out of the system...”

Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. 

This is from his site: Carpe Diem

The Cato Institutes's Andrew Coulson had crunched the numbers and finds that the District of Columbia public school system spent almost $1.3 billion educating 45,858 students for the 2008-2009 school year (data here).

 

That works out to spending of $28,169 per student (and that's for last year, spending is probably higher this year), which is almost as much as Harvard tuition of $32,550 for the 2009 academic year (data here), see chart above. And the D.C. district's annual budget for 2008-2009 of $1.29 billion places it just slightly below the annual GDP of the entire country of Belize (data here) in 2008, see chart [below]. 

Why should we be surprised that government schools spy on kids when our government spies on us illegally? After all, the police are pushing for warrantless searches of cell phones. For our own protection, of course.

What ever happened to the Democrats fighting for civil liberties? Oh, that’s right, they are in control of the White House and Congress. Civil liberties go on hold until they are the minority party.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."

The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the suit, spokesman Douglas Young said the district was investigating. "We're taking it very seriously," he said last night.

The district's Apple MacBook laptops have a built-in webcam with a "security feature" that can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen, Young said.

But he said "the district would never utilize that security feature for any other reason." The district said that the security system was "deactivated" yesterday, and that it would review when the system had been used.

Widener University law professor Stephen Henderson said using a laptop camera for home surveillance would violate wiretap laws, even if done to catch a thief.

From Cato-at Liberty:

Who said public schooling is all about the adults in the system and not the kids? Everyone knows it’s even more basic than that: Public schooling is a jobs program, pure and simple. At least, that’s what one can’t help but conclude as our little “stimulus” turns one-year old today.

(Sources: Digest of Education Statistics, Table 64, and National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long-Term Trend results)

“State fiscal relief really has kept hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters and first responders on the job,” declared White House Council of Economic Advisers head Christina Romer today.

Throwing almost $100 billion at education sure as heck ought to have kept teachers in their jobs, and the unemployment numbers suggest teachers have had a pretty good deal relative to the folks paying their salaries. While unemployment in “educational services” – which consists predominantly of teachers, but also includes other education-related occupations – hasn’t returned to its recent, April 2008 low of 2.2 percent, in January 2010 it was well below the national 9.7 percent rate, sitting at 5.9 percent.

Of course, retaining all of these teachers might be of value to taxpayers if having so many of them had a positive impact on educational outcomes. But looking at decades of achievement data one can’t help but conclude that keeping teacher jobs at all costs truly isn’t about the kids, but the adults either employed in education, or trying to get the votes of those employed in education. As the following chart makes clear, we have added teachers in droves for decades without improving ultimate achievement at all.

Since the early 1970s, achievement scores for 17-year-olds — our schools’ “final products” — haven’t improved one bit, while the number of teachers per 100 students is almost 50 percent greater. If anything, then, we have far too many teachers, and would do taxpayers, and the economy, a great service by letting some of them go. Citizens could then keep more of their money and invest in private, truly economy-growing ventures. But no, we’re supposed to celebrate the endless continuation of debilitating economic – and educational — waste.

You’ll have to pardon me for not considering this an accomplishment I should cheer about.

Perhaps universities need to start doing background checks on their professors and lecturers?

From the Boston Globe:

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop."

Bishop received probation and prosecutors recommended that she be sent to anger management classes, though it is unclear from court documents whether a judge ever sent her there.

The woman, identified in court documents as Michelle Gjika, declined to comment, saying only "It's not something I want to relive."

The following article ran in the Lewiston Tribune.

Idaho panel gives college and university presidents power to use furloughs, pay cuts to help balance their budgets

The State Board of Education on Thursday strengthened the power of college and university presidents to use furloughs and pay cuts to balance their deteriorating budgets.

Approved unanimously by the seven board members present, the policy shift has been stridently opposed by many tenured and tenure-track faculty members who see their salaries as inalienable property rights.

That is quite a telling phrase: their salaries are inalienable property rights? Wow.

"We will get meaningless contracts, and the presidents will get their furloughs," said Joni Mina, chairwoman of the Lewis-Clark State College Faculty Association.

The board voted on the new policies at its regular meeting at Boise State University. Board President Paul Agidius did not return a call seeking comment.

In a December editorial he circulated statewide, Agidius said the intent of the changes was simply to give the presidents flexibility in dealing with current and future state budget reductions.

The state has reduced its higher education appropriation by nearly 20 percent, and more cuts are imminent.

Opposition to the policies was not limited to faculty members. Reps. Tom Trail, R-Moscow, Liz Chavez, D-Lewiston, and Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, registered their distaste during the meeting.

Trail presented the board with a letter detailing his opposition to the new policy, which he called "draconian."

He decried the lack of faculty participation in crafting the policy, and challenged as possibly illegal the insertion of language in current employee contracts asserting presidential authority to use furloughs to save money.

The board did make some last-minute changes to the policies in an attempt to address the concerns of the faculty members, according to spokesman Mark Browning.

For instance, the board included due-process measures from its existing financial emergency policy (called "exigency"), Browning said.

But Mina said the institutions already have such powers under the board's financial emergency policy, a policy that has the strict requirements for due process. "If the state is going broke, if the institutions don't have money, then what is the problem with declaring exigency?"

Administrators like University of Idaho President Duane Nellis said declaring exigency is a blemish that can harm the reputation of an institution.

Mina strongly objected to that rationale.

"Would you rather treat your employees unfairly to save face?" she said. "You talk about shameful. Burn your own people. That is shameful. It's not just the genius of the presidents, it's the hard work of the faculty and the staff that keeps our institutions afloat. And these policies absolutely denigrate the value of the employees."

Idaho faculty members have promised to alert the American Association of University Professors, which could censure LCSC, UI, BSU and Idaho State University for using the policies.

"When you're looking at trying to retain or recruit faculty, having the black eye of censure is really not going to do any good for the institutions," Mina said. "No one will want to come."

If a union is going to buy a Congressman’s votes, they expect him to do what they say. Otherwise, there’s a money-back guarantee. From the Huntsville Times:

Labor leader says groups feel betrayed by voting record of Rep. Griffith

Angered by his voting record in Congress, Alabama labor groups that contributed to U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith's 2008 campaign demanded Monday that Griffith return their money.

"Parker Griffith, we feel you have swindled us," said Al Henley, secretary-treasurer of the Alabama AFL-CIO.

Speaking at the downtown Holiday Inn before labor officials and local media, Henley said labor groups felt like they helped elect a "pro-working family" congressman, but now feel betrayed by his votes on major legislation.

Henley criticized Griffith for voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the stimulus bill and health care reform.

"His public service as a congressman has ranged from disappointing at its best to disgusting at its worst," Henley said.

One float in this year’s New Orleans Mardi Gras parade, “Experiment of His Own Power,” mocked America’s arrogant president. From First Things:

I’ve had conversations with many friends in the investment industry. They have assured me that Congress could never touch the IRA’s or 401(k)’s of the taxpayers: there’s too many people with too much money invested to allow the politicians to “nationalize” or sweep up all the IRAs/401(k)’s into government control.

Perhaps.

But what the government could do is to say that anyone with savings are not allowed to draw any Social Security benefits until those savings have been exhausted.

And that would essentially be the same thing.

From Investors:

You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams."

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

This "conversion" may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: "'Choices' have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market — so they will effectively tax you by forcing your 'retirement' money to buy them."

HT: Dave G.

HT: Dave G.

From Bloomberg:

Restrictions on oil and gas drilling will cost the U.S. economy $2.36 trillion through 2029, according to a study requested by state utility regulators and paid for in part by industry-sponsored groups.

Drilling restrictions in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the U.S. coastline are blocking access to about nine years’ worth of U.S. oil and gas consumption, according to the report. Among sponsors are the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the industry-funded Gas Technology Institute, of Des Plaines, Illinois.

Former President George W. Bush and Congress ended bans in 2008 on drilling along the U.S. coastline. The Interior Department hasn’t acted to open the newly available areas, including offshore Alaska and on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Congress has kept the Arctic refuge off limits.

The above map of no drilling zones says it all. Most of the best places to drill for have been put off limits by democrats. This 'no drilling' policy will cost the US $2.36 trillion over the next two decades.

1984 being played out by the government in the government schools.

From Computer World:

A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday alleged.

According to the lawsuit filed by a high school student and his parents, the Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. has spied on students and families by "indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the Webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District."

Approximately 1,800 students at the district's two high schools have been given laptops as part of a state- and federally-funded "one-to-one" student-to-laptop initiative.

And here all along I thought that the schools were struggling for money. Must be nice to have enough money to just give 1800 laptops away…

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

An assistant principal at Harriton later confirmed that the district could remotely activate the Webcam in students' laptops. "Michael Robbins thereafter verified, through [Assistant Principal] Ms. Matsko, that the school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the Webcam contained in a student's personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the Webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer," the lawsuit stated.

Take the king’s money, become the king’s man.

Congratulations to Logos School for taking 1^st place at the North Idaho regional Knowledge Bowl yesterday at the University of Idaho.

Students Gresham Schlect and Josiah Nance received all-star gold medals.

Well done to the team and the coaches!

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

Public schools would be held harmless this year, but potentially lose upwards of $100 million in general fund support next year under draft spending plans being considered by the joint budget committee.

The committee discussed the fiscal 2010 budget cuts during a workshop this morning. It will take final action Friday, prior to beginning work on the 2011 budget next week.