Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Why People Are Annoyed By Retire/Rehire

Back in August the Okanogan School District hired an athletic director. The best I can do to share the story with you is this picture from the Omak Chronicle website, but I think the first couple paragraphs of the article will give you the gist:
The Okanogan School District opted to bring back recently retired Steve Chamberlin as athletic driector rather than go in several other directions that might have saved the school money.

Chamberlin officialyy retired July 1 after making $39,736.50 last year. He was rehired July 27 by the school board, on the recommendation of an eight-member interview committee, at $30,000 to work part time.

....

Chamberlin retired under the state's Teacher Retirement System Plan 1, which requires a 30-day wait unitl you can return to work under a program called Retire-Rehire enacted Jan. 31, 2003. The program initially was designed for retention of teachers.

....

"The retire-rehire is a process that the legislature made legal and encouraged so all government entities can hire the candidate they think is best for the job," Okanogan school district superintendent Richard Johnson said.

"This is a common practice," Johnson said. "You find it in administrators, teachers, classfieid, armed service men and women, politicians. In Okanogan County alone, you are looking at literally hundreds of people that have retired from a school district, county, state, or federal job and have gone back to work for a school district, county, state or federal governments. I think it is always critical that school districts and other public and private businesses be allowed to hire the best candidate. If we can't do that, then America really is in trouble."
They know what from cattle in Okanogan County, so I'm guessing that the superintendent knew this was a load of bullshit the minute he said it.

#1 is the obvious fact that Retire/Rehire from the state pension system is a, y'know, state program. Federal employees wouldn't be covered at all.

#2 is that if there are "literally hundreds" of people in Okanogan County who have done retire/rehire, I'll post video to the blog of me eating a hat.

#3 This is exactly the kind of abuse that has people like Ross Hunter talking about eliminating the program entirely. There's no reason that Okanogan had to hire back their AD at that cost--IF HE WANTED TO KEEP WORKING, HE SHOULD HAVE KEPT THE JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE.

And seriously, Dr. Johnson, couching your unethical hire in "It's for America!" terms is just pathetic.

How pathetic? Later on the article gives us these facts:
Johnson said the lower salary was due to cutbacks in the extra-curricular area. The school has cut golf, boy's soccer and cheerleading.

....

Records show that (Malcolm) Townsend worked two hours a day as Bridgeport's AD on a coaching stipend of $4,000.
So Okanogan is cutting sports opportunities for kids at the same time they're making a conscious choice to overpay for a retire/rehire athletic director. They're giving more than 7x what Bridgeport, a comparable district, pays. That's not OK.

Back in 2003 the Association of Washington Business said:
Waiving state law so high school students can have an algebra teacher is one thing, but allowing bureaucrats and administrators to use the law to score a whopping pay raise is inexcusable.
This example from Okanogan shows that the problem is still out there.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

The Weekly Liv

Some more ed reform groupthink, courtesy of the echo chamber that is Liv Finne:
Last week Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education, spoke in favor of re-examining the extra bump in salary states give to teachers who hold a masters degree. This bump amounts to $11,000 per teacher in Washington, totaling $330 million. The University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education has convincingly shown that these masters degrees (90% of which are masters in education)confer no benefit on student learning. See Stretching the School Dollar, edited by Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg.
Oddly enough, I've read the book. It's a rehash of everything that's been said about education reform in the past few years, but let's go right to the section that Liv is talking about.

It's in Chapter 3, on page 90. It was written by Marguerite Roza, who interestingly also wrote the report about Masters degrees that Liv cites. To bolster the study, she sends you to read a chapter from a book written by the same person who wrote the study. Later on, the Roza study is cited again (chapter 5, page 145) and again in chapter 10 (page 273).

So cite the study, then cite the book that cites the study, then refer to a newspaper article that cites the study, too. Echo....echo....echo....

For good measure later on, Liv does her usual and takes things a bridge too far:
I wonder how many great teachers have left public education for private schools because of this demeaning and disrespectful pay scale.

Public school teachers deserve better treatment. They should get what private school teachers take for granted: pay based on their ability to increase student learning, as judged by someone who knows them best ---their school principal.
Yes, Liv, I'm sure that the private schools are rife with former public school teachers who just got so damned sick of the disrespect heaped on them by the salary schedule. By the way, what are those average salaries again?
AVERAGE TEACHER BASE SALARY:

Public School: $49,630
Private School: $39,690
(source)
That darn salary schedule is really holding the public school teachers down, innit?

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Sunday, November 28, 2010

What Are They Saying About Levy Equalization This Week?

Further cuts for this year's budget must be made as well as the cuts for the next biennium 2011-13. When asked where this year's $385 million in near-term cuts will come from, director of the office of Financial Management, Marty Brown, said, "We're going to be talking about Basic Health soon, Disability Lifeline soon, levy equalization. School districts are going to get nailed."

State Sen. Brian Hatfield, D- Raymond, acknowledged that schools could get hit hard. "Levy equalization is another large ticket item that could be on the chopping block," he said.
--The Chinook-Observer, November 24th
Among the possible additional measures outlined in a memo to lawmakers:

Using $208 million in federal “edujobs” money to backfill the budget.
Reducing levy equalization to property-tax poor districts by $18 million.
Eliminating extra school funding for kindergarten through fourth grade to save $81.5 million.
The Olympian, November 25th

And, to wrap up, a great story from the Spokesman-Review on a small school district doing good.

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Shorter

Shorter Robert Wechsler: if teachers want to contribute, they should do it in such a way that school boards don't have to listen to them.

Shorter Rick Hess: We can solve the pension crisis by screwing new teachers, even though it's the legacy plans that cost the most. No, seriously, the math works!

Shorter Las Vegas Review-Journal: We believe Bill Gates lies, too!

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Friday, November 26, 2010

Quote Week #5

"Don't complain. The people who will listen can't do anything about it, while the people who can do something about it won't listen."
--John M. Hebert

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Dear TVW

I love you TV Washington, I truly do. C-Span for the Evergreen State political set, committee hearings at my fingers, and great public affairs programming.

Here's the thing. While I'm glad to see Inside Olympia and The Impact getting onto the public broadcasting stations around the state, since Dish and DirecTV don't carry TVW, a reality of new media is that if you're available through ITunes, you're not doing your job to max efficiency.

I get it--you think if it's on your website, that's enough. Trick is that ITunes will search out the program and let me know when a new episode is available in a way that your website doesn't, and that's a problem. Once it's in my ITunes player I can do quite a bit more with it, which may be a reason that you don't podcast the show, but it's a poor, poor reason.

For Washington's public affairs network to not be making the best use of the new media possibilities is unacceptable. Catch up, guys--you'll be better for it.

Your friend,

--Ryan--

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

What He Said v. What He Meant



Sen. Zarelli, the Republican state budget expert out of Ridgefield, has been releasing a good series of videos on the state budget crisis. A section from the most recent video (above) that caught my ear:

I believe that we ought to make some change in this area. I believe that it ought to be that the contract that is in place, once declared by the Governor or by the legislature of this particular (time of) financial hardship, that that contract in all its forms ought to become moot and the contract off the table which would then demand and require that the two parties go back and reach an agreement that works within the framework of what we can afford to do given the scenario that we find ourselves in.
One could read that to mean that Sen. Zarelli thinks that, in the event of a financial emergency, the state could tear up any existing agreements and go renegotiate new ones. Not just on compensation--everything would be in play. Later a slide in the video clarifies:
Upon declaration of "significant revenue shortfall", financial provisions of existing agreement are null and void.
....which is a narrower scope, but still worrisome.

Why worry? Look east, to Idaho, where numerous school districts, abetted by the legislature, are playing financial games to unilaterally reopen contracts, lower teacher compensation, and save money. Is it appropriate? Quite possibly, yes, but why not go to your local associations and have an honest conversation instead of turning this into a monologue where the teachers are told they need to give without other options being considered?

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Quote Week #4

"Capital organizes, and therefore labor must organize."
--Teddy Roosevelt

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How a Lie Becomes a Law

Last Friday, November 19th, Bill Gates was in Kentucky giving a speech on education. The PI had the AP summary the next day:
On Friday, billionaire Bill Gates took aim at school budgets and the master's degree bonus.

"My own state of Washington has an average salary bump of nearly $11,000 for a master's degree - and more than half of our teachers get it. That's more than $300 million every year that doesn't help kids," he said.

"And that's one state," said Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at a speech Friday in Louisville to the Council of Chief State School Officers. Gates also took aim at pensions and seniority.
Also picking up the lede were KOMO TV in Seattle, along with the Seattle Times.

Today, the WashACE blog picked up on the story, calling Gates' comments "perceptive insights" in the broader context of how to handle the state budget crisis.

Bill Gates says it, the media repeats it, it becomes the groupthink of the ed reform class, and merrily we go on our way.

The trouble is, what Gates is saying is flat-out wrong. You can see for yourself by going to the OSPI website and looking at this year's salary schedule. Look at the column for BA+0, then look in the same row at the column for MA+0. The result? A $6,800 difference. Move down to the row for 8 years of experience, and you'll get to about a $7,000 difference. Neither is the $11,000 difference that Gates cited.

How was the lie born? Gates didn't just pull those numbers out of the ether; instead, he's quoting a study done by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at our own University of Washington. The lead researcher is my old friend Marguerite Roza, and the germ of the lie can be found in the appendix:

This analysis used data from two sources. The 2003-­‐04 Schools and Staffing Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics provided state-by-­state figures for both the percentage of teachers with masters degrees, and the average salary of teachers at each degree level—bachelor’s or below, master’s, to name a few—for given years of longevity. This analysis used these data to compute the average percentage salary increase awarded for education credits earned beyond a bachelor’s degree. The analysis then applied the percentage increases to the more recent state-­by-­state average salary figures and total number of teachers from the National Educators Association’s 2008-­‐09 Salary Survey, in order to compute the dollar value of the master’s bump in each state.
(Personal aside: National Educators Association? You're an expert on reforming public schools, and you can't even get the name of the frackin' teacher's union right?)

Look at the process here: using data from 2003, published in 2004, then refracted again through the lens of a different study from 2008, this final product was made. Common sense tells us that the more you play with any set of numbers the farther away from their original meaning they're going to get, and that's exactly what you're seeing here. Instead of using the salary schedule--the simplest, clearest data--Dr. Roza decided to do data gymnastics instead. It calls her results into question.

Things get worse. Quite a bit worse, to my mind. The 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey that the report mentions is available online, and one of the tables that you'll find is the pithily named "Percentage of public school districts and private schools that had salary schedules for teachers and among those that had salary schedules, the average yearly base teacher salary, by various levels of degrees and experience and selected public school district and private school characteristics: 2003–04." Their numbers?

In 2003-2004, the average salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree and no experience: $29,100
In 2003-2004, the average salary for a teacher with a master's degree and no experience: $31,900.

That's a difference of only $2,800.

So let's look at this lie again: the numbers had to be processed more than the "meat" that makes the average hotdog, and there was a perfectly good data set in the report that was ignored in the process of making the larger point. There were two easy ways to get to the heart of the question, and the CRPE ignored both of them. That's either driven by an agenda or rank laziness; neither is particularly appealing.

So Bill tells this lie. He may even believe the lie, but it's a lie in spirit and in fact because of the absolute crap job that the CRPE did in getting those numbers. The real pisser, if you're Bill Gates and have been made into a liar by this "research", is found on the very last page of the report:
Funding for this work was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Money well spent, Bill.

Why let the truth get in the way of a good lie, though? It's much easier to just repeat what Bill said. He's got a foundation, after all, and he talks a lot about education, not to mention the whole billionaire thing, so he must be right. Just watch--in the coming months you'll hear this lie repeated with vigor by people who heard the soundbyte and nothing else and figured "Hell, Gates said it, and there's real University-backed research, so it must be true!"

And that, my friends, is how a lie becomes a law.

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Quote Week #3

--Franklin D. Roosevelt
"It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic modern nation that it have free and independent labor unions."

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Quote Week #2

"Don't waste any time in mourning--organize!"
--
Joe Hill, on the occasion of his execution by firing squad

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My Other Favorite Exchange from Inside Olympia

Sen. Zarelli: "Don't give medical care to illegals."

Rep. Hunter: "You're a moron. That will cost more money in the long run."

Sen. Zarelli: "At least I'm proposing ideas, like closing McNeil Island."

Austin Jenkins: "Should we close Larch Mountain, too?"

Sen. Zarelli: "NO! Also, Walla Walla sucks."

Austin Jenkins: "I think they actually send them to Coyote Ridge, which is new and efficient and awesome."

Sen. Zarelli: "Zip it, pinhead. I'm talking with my hands, which proves my sincerity."

Rep. Hunter: "I support closing everything in Sen. Zarelli's district. This seems fair, and wise."

Sen. Zarelli: "You almost lost an election to Mike the Mover."

Rep. Hunter: "Oh, go to hell."

Austin Jenkins: "Let's talk pensions."

Sen. Zarelli: "You work until 85, then we bill your family for you dying on the job."

Rep. Hunter: "Actually, that sounds about right."

Austin Jenkins: "And that's all the time we have for today. Tune in next week!"

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Ross Hunter: I'm Going After the Teacher Jobs Money

That's pretty much what I just got out of his appearance on Inside Olympia last week.

I've been pushing for my district to encumber the money as soon as we can, and this is the exact reason why.

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Monday, November 22, 2010

A Curriculum Recommendation!

Longtime readers will know that I'm a pretty vocal critic of the LASER science kits that have been thrust upon the schools, so it's nice to be able to make a recommendation: Prime Curriculum, put together by an outfit out of Reardan, Washington. Simple, direct, focused, oriented towards agriculture, I've done a couple of them and have found that they fit into my 5th grade classroom just about perfectly.

They're not meant to be the primary bit of science curriculum, but I think they're a great add-on. Anyone else using them?

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Why Ed Reform in Washington State is Completely Full of Crap Right Now

From the most recent Quality Education Council meeting, the League of Education Voters summarizes:
Concerns about growing budget deficits and lack of funding to implement bold reforms. Ms. Ryan vehemently pushed back saying she hears the budget concerns, but now more than ever is the time to step up and put forward a strong vision for the state — our kids deserve it. Dr. Bette Hyde agreed “125 percent.”
I watched the segment (it's about 2.5 hours in), and I'd say the LEV transcribed it accurately.

I'd also say that Ms. Ryan, of the State Board of Education, and Ms. Hyde, of the Department of Early Learning, are both talking out of their ass, which seems to be the pattern right now.

Exhibit A, right here at the Quality Education Council. Ms. Hyde had anothe quote later on about how people are looking to the QEC for hope (hope of what, who knows?), and that meant they needed to fulfill their charge. Sorry, Bette, but from where I stand in the classroom I'm not looking to you for jack-squat. I'd just as soon you left me alone instead of creating work to justify your existence.

Exhibit B would be Ms. Ryan's very own State Board of Education, which just passed new graduation requirements despite there being absolutely no way to pay for those requirements. But the reasoning goes that, hey, things will get better, and the State Board of Education has to do something, so why not.

You've also got the Professional Educator Standards Board screwing around with cultural competency requirements, the Superintendent of Public Instruction signing on to the common core standards even though we didn't get the Race to the Top money, the Center for the Improvement of Student learning doing who-the-hell-knows what, the Local Levy Workgroup just had a meeting, too, and the districts involved in the Evaluation Pilot Project are also clicking along, and I assume the Department of Early Learning and the Higher Education Coordinating Board are also putting out the paperwork, too.

Right now ed reform in Washington is a sad, expensive Dilbert cartoon with board after board, committee after committee working on scores of different projects and none of them possessed of the moral fibre to admit that we're in a budget crisis and maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be re-arranging the furniture when the house in on fire. The first rule of being in a hole, the one about stop digging? That's not going to happen as long as the Big Shovel lobby that makes up all these commissions keeps thinking that their work trumps the reality that everyone else in the state is having to live with.

If you put them together, the packets from the last Quality Education Council and State Board of Education meetings come up to exactly 800 pages. Not 800 pages of how to preserve what we have, not 800 pages of acknowledgement that we're in the worst budget crisis since the Great Depression--800 pages of change that we just can't afford. And to put it bluntly, if the bureaucracy can't figure that out for themselves, then Lord let the legislature defund them and use the money for something worth a damn. There may well come a time where what Hyde and Ryan want can be--this is absolutely not that time.

And that's my rant.

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Quotes Week #1

"A scab in a labor union is the same as a traitor to his country."
--Eugene Debs

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Sunday, November 21, 2010

What Are They Saying About Levy Equalization This Week?

"We're going to be talking about Basic Health soon, Disability Lifeline soon, levy equalization. School districts are going to get nailed."
--Marty Brown, the Governor's budget director, during the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council meeting from Thursday.
"That discussion includes the Basic Health Plan, which provides health insurance for poor people, and Disability Lifeline, a welfare and health care program for unemployable adults. Both programs are entirely state-financed. Levy equalization payments that aid rural and property-poor school districts also could be on the table, Brown said."
--Marty Brown in the Kitsap Sun
"Just as we saw Reagan Dunn rail against tax increases and then attempt to shift budget away from Publc Health to sherif deputies to guard his castle, we will see Republicans in the legislature the rose on the tax cut camp song beg on the Senate flloor for levy equalization funds. The answer will be no, you wanted no, you ran on no, go get no."
--A commentator at Crosscut
Can't get a two-thirds majority to raise revenue for, well, anything? Then act like the Republicans claim they would act, and start making those painful cuts. You know, by cutting things like school levy equalization.

Yeah, I know, levy equalization is good policy and all that, but let's try to approach this from a classical, free market, Republican perspective for a moment. I mean, if folks out in rural Washington are unwilling or unable to raise local school levies sufficient to educate their children, then perhaps they shouldn't even have public schools? That's the market at work, right? So why should taxpayer dollars be sucked away from school children in Seattle to help pay for schools in communities that obviously don't care enough about their children to properly educate them? At a time of budgetary crisis like this, how can we possibly afford to pay for all this rural welfare?
--David Goldstein, normally of Horse's Ass, posting at Slog

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Why the General Consensus is that Chris Christie is an Asshole

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Sigh

I can't possibly see it going anywhere, but it has to make haters like Marguerite Roza happy to see ending the Masters degree bonus being debated on KOMO news.

I need to look harder for good news, but the bad news is so damned easy to find nowadays.

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It's Absolutely Critical That I Eat this Candy Bar

From the list of personal service contracts filed in September of this year (page 42), $900,000 to the Association of Washington School Principals...
"To design, field test, and implement a state-of-the-art Leadership Academy for school principals and administrators, based on research correlating leadership practices and student achievement here in Washington State. The OFM Director approved an exception to ESHB 2921 based upon critical necessity."
When we're living off of Federal credit, when levy equalization is always at risk, when the state budget is $5.8 billion dollars in the red, is a program like this really a "critical necessity"?

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Arne Duncan: Still a Pain in the Ass

This event from the American Enterprise Institute sort of puts every criticism of Arne Duncan that I've ever had into one bite-sized video.

"We need more online learning!" he says, ignoring that internet-based schools haven't proven themselves in the slightest.

"Class sizes are higher in Asia, so they can be here too!" he says, which is one of the dumber things ever said by a Secretary of Education, ever.

He also uses the clever rhetorical device of "I'm not saying we should do these things, but let's talk about it!", which is akin to a husband offering "I'm not saying you're fat, honey, I'm just saying we should talk about your weight problem."

And, shocker, Rick Hess loved it. And he moderated it, too. Whocoodaguessed?

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Saturday, November 13, 2010

That Little Red Spot? It's the 3rd LD.

There are roughly 10 legislative districts in Eastern Washington, with 30 legislators between them. Of those 30, only three are Democrats. They're all in the 3rd LD, downtown Spokane.

I only bring it up because while the 3rd might be one of the bluest districts in Washington State, I'm not sure that's always going to be the case. Prior to this election going back quite a few years the Republicans were lucky to poll 33% to 35% in either the primary or the general; this year the two GOP contenders, Dave White and Morgan Oyler, were both right around 40%. If Lisa Brown were to actually run for Governor in 2012 (she shouldn't, but...) and Timm Ormsby were to slide into her Senate spot, it could be competitive. Especially if we're still looking at these same lousy unemployment numbers.

Bob Apple? Louise Chadez? Morgan Oyler? Dave White? Someone we don't know yet? Who ya got?

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Friday, November 12, 2010

Offered Without Comment

Reuven Carlyle:
But I know and recognize that real education reform will not happen in powerful and transformative ways unless and until our partners–teachers–feel a profound sense of ownership of this journey. Teachers are the DNA and soul of learning and we must empower their success by unleashing their creative energy. That means the teacher’s union is part of the solution. The Seattle Education Association didn’t endorse me in my highly competitive 2008 campaign or even my uncontested 2010 race, but I hope they know that I remain committed to building a partnership for education progress together.
That's something, at least. I'll leave it to those who known Carlyle better to parse the meaning of it all.

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Remembering Veteran's Day

Teaching at a military base the way I do, our Veteran's Day assembly takes on a different tenor than at most other schools. When you ask all the Veterans in the audience to rise, it's a heavy majority of the parents and more than a few of the staff. When you ask the kids who have had a parent deployed to stand, it's almost all of them.

Thank you, Veterans, for your sacrifice. We couldn't do it without you.

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Raging Liberal Liv Finne Calls on Seattle Public School to Ignore I-200, Return to Racial Preference in Hiring Process

Oh Liv, you scamp:
Another benefit of TFA teachers is that they are much more diverse than traditionally trained teachers. One-third of Teach for America candidates are people of color, while 2007 figures for Seattle's teachers reveal that only 7.5% of Seattle's school-of-education-trained teachers are people of color.
I-200, passed in 1998, was the state effort to undo any sort of affirmative action laws. Liv should know this--it pretty much was the Washington Policy Center's raison d'etre back in the late '90s.

Seriously, though, for a free-market lovin', all-men-created-equal believin', "Heritage Foundation of the Northwest" livin' think tank to have to play the diversity care to support their new pet cause, Teach for America? That shows you just how threadbare the idea really is.

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Saturday, November 06, 2010

Correlation != Causality

Washington Policy Center edition:
It’s especially interesting to point out three of the ballot proposals where there was no organized "no" campaign: Referendum 52, King County’s sales tax increase proposal, and Spokane’s Childrens Investment Fund tax increase. We were the only group educating citizens on the problems with these measures and voters rejected all of them.
The humor I see in this is that the Seattle Children's Levy, which brought together the very nicest elements of both the Spokane Children's Levy and the King County sales tax increase, passed by a country mile. It's also funny to note that a Google search for Vote No Referendum 52 doesn't give you any inkling of the Washington Policy Center until deeper than I care to look. Far from being the "only group educating citizens", there were a number of editorial boards that were right there with 'em.

Remember, WPC--even Steve Scheffler made a finals. Didn't necessarily make him worth a damn.

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A Collection of Thoughts About Levy Equalization and Small School Districts

Thanks, Seattle Times.
Say goodbye to levy equalization red counties, and a whole host of stuff you are demanding that you don't want.

Meanwhile in Seattle, we passed our school levy. Liberals in Seattle, my hometown, have to accept the fact that some people are demanding to be dirt poor and stupid.

The schools in my district are quite fine, thank you. I would be willing to pay more in taxes to make them better. The tired arguments about money making no difference make great generalizations, but only that. My solution: get rid of levy equalization. That would allow people who value eductaion to tax themselves in order to support it locally. Why should I have to support schools in areas where the population is clearly unwilling to support their own? This would also allow for more accountability. If the local school board does not deliver, then I can choose not to financially support them. This may allow for more local reform.

Of course this would mean that some districts would suffer. That may force the realization that some of the most virulant anti-tax communities are also some of the most heavily subsidized. Oh well. perhaps some good can come out of it.

Elections have consequences. Eastern Washington does not approve of any form of socialism. The Legislature must stop forcing these levy equilization funds on Eastern Washington districts that don't want them. Stop the socialism now.

Get rid of this program, the people there want to live in an area with no taxes, let them suffer the consequences of getting bad services like public education. We in Seattle shouldn't have to approve funding on our schools and then have our tax dollars used to support schools in areas where the people don't think they need to pay any taxes.

I agree with those people who say that we should end the levy equalization program. People need to realize that if they want quality education--- we have to find a way to pay for it. In other words, you can't approve 1107, and vote down 1098 without there being consequences. You don't want a state income tax. Fine, that's your right. But don't expect Seattle/King County to pay for your unwillingness to pay.
Three things that gnaw at me:

1) On his blog recently Seattle-area legislator Reuven Carlyle was making some noise about legislative history in the state, notably notions that have come and gone regarding only returning to the counties those tax dollars that they have contributed to Olympia. That would be a coup de grace for so many of our rural counties.

2) In all of Eastern Washington now there are only three state legislators from the Democratic party, and they're all from the 3rd LD--downtown Spokane.

3) If Kelly Linville goes down--she's the current head of the House Ways and Means Committee--that would put either Mark Ericks of Seattle or Pat Sullivan of Covington in South King County in the driver's seat. Auburn gets a good amount of LEA. Seattle doesn't.

It's going to be a tough year.

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Monday, November 01, 2010

The Lazy Way Out

Hadn't posted in a few days, poked around in my email, pulled out this link, and went to bed.

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