Wednesday, February 22, 2012

How to Avoid Solving a Problem

What you've heard from many of our politicians lately, regarding the health care takeover bill:

"Pity the poor classified employees! Why, Doug from the PSE told us about a bus driver in Auburn who has to spend their entire salary on their health insurance! That's awful! Now, we're not going to raise the amount of money that we put in for health coverage for classified staff, and we're not going to try to lower the cost of health insurance.....no, we're going to add 30+ more state employees over at the Health Care Authority. For the Classified!"

What reality actually tells us, on page 37 of the amendment that Senator Keiser passed out of the committee today:

"School district bargaining may include the classification-specific definitions of how many hours an employee must work to be eligible for plan participation and proration of part-time employee contribution."

The reason your bus driver has to put their whole salary into health insurance is because the pay for bus drivers stinks, and because they're usually not full time employees. SB6442 does nothing to solve the proration problem--a .4 employee is still only going to get .4 of the benefit.

Please remember that in three years when you hear the Public School Employees union going on about how their members still can't afford insurance. Their idea of bargaining something better was to bargain something worse for certificated staff instead.

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Sunday, February 12, 2012

I Agree, They Certainly Are!

From a ridiculous puff-piece that was linked to off of the League of Education Voter's Facebook page:
But that's changing. Why? First, leaders from both parties, including Senators Litzow and Tom, and Representative Pettigrew, are demonstrating the steal it takes to move reform in a state that has long resisted it.
I agree--Senator Tom does have what it takes to steal.

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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

A One-Off Thought

The biggest problem with Reuven Carlyle's ideas is Reuven Carlyle.

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Monday, January 16, 2012

Kelly Munn, Casual Stereotyper

From an email that I received a bit ago from the League of Education Voters, signed by their field director Kelly Munn:
We have to use every resource possible to give all of our kids the education and opportunities they deserve. High-performing public charter schools are helping these kids in 41 other states. Only Washington, Kentucky, Alabama and a handful of others don't give parents this valuable education option.
It's no accident that Ms. Munn chose those two states to compare Washington to, because she wants you to get a very specific image in your mind when she brings up Kentucky and Alabama:

Other states that don't have charter laws? North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Montana, Nebraska, and Maine. The two examples that Kelly went with are the only two states in the south that don't have charter school laws, and we can either attribute that to a 2-in-56 chance that she picked those two at random, or she picked those two purposefully to move a part of the LEV agenda forward because Lord knows we wouldn't want to be like those folks.

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A Quick Thought Upon Watching Several Episodes of Beyond Scared Straight

All those kids need is a Charter school, then everything will be OK!

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From the "We Shan't Overcome" Beat

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Everything Comes From Somewhere

One of the dumber arguments that people try is the whole "Teachers unions are funded by taxpayer's dollars!" canard, which you can see on display here at Education Next.

Just don't do it.

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Friday, January 13, 2012

I'm Sure It's Just a Coincidence

A particular line from the charter schools bill that was introduced to the Washington State legislature yesterday, related to an extension of the time that it would take a charter to start serving students:
"The authorizer may grant or deny the extension depending on the school's circumstances."
From the charter school law in Maine:
The authorizer may grant or deny the extension depending on the particular public charter school's circumstances.
How about Montana?
The authorizer may grant or deny the extension depending on the particular school's circumstances.
Heading down south, to Alabama:
The authorizer may grant or deny the extension, depending on the particular circumstances of the charter school.
...and Mississippi:
The authorizer may grant or deny the extension depending on the school's circumstances.
When you hear folks like Rep. Anderson complaining about the powerful teacher's union just remember that it isn't a plucky group of passionate advocates that came out of nowhere on the other side; the movement in support of charters is quite well funded and organized nationally, and this fight in Washington is just another battle that they've already fought before.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Mitt v. Newt

The humorous thing about Mitt saying that Newt "Can't take the heat" is that Mitt has sputtered pretty hard in the debates when he's actually been challenged head-on. Perry got under his skin a few weeks back, and Newt got him in the last one with the line about Ted Kennedy.

If Mitt Romney can't handle softball attacks from his fellow Republicans, how can anyone really think that he'll be able to handle Obama?

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