I don't get it

KTVB on the passing of 2 out of 3 Luna bills

from the article:"This is the pay for performance bill. More specifically, this is the bill that gives teachers bonuses when their students do well on tests."

Why are teachers protesting a bill which would reward them when they do a good job? This bill says nothing about punishing teachers whose students don't do a good job.

I understand teachers feeling a little angst about the first bill passed, which perhaps does punish teachers by: not allowing teachers who have received court orders to stay away from minors to get paid, giving more control to local school officers, allowing a teensy-tiny bit more parent input in teacher evaluation, and limiting tenure. It means that they have less job security. But it's no worse than the job security of anyone else who has to maintain a level of performance that justifies the paycheck they receive.

UPDATE: This article just appeared in Fox news. Note the last line which reads:

"The biggest piece of Luna's reform package remains stalled in the Senate. That legislation would boost technology in the classroom, require online courses and increase the minimum teacher pay from $29,655 to $30,000..."

Again, I don't understand--griping about an increase of minimum wage? OK, to be fair, the bill also included increasing class size.

I know a lot of great teachers, and I had a lot of great teachers. My guess is that those great teachers' jobs won't be on the chopping block if cuts need to be made.

p.s. A few weeks ago, I wrote to my state senator, and he wrote the following explanation of the bills that are in question:

Thank you for your message and for sharing your views with me about the education reform bills. The final package contained three bills: S1113-Modernization & Reform; and S1110-Pay for Performance; and S1108 – Labor Relations. Last Thursday, I voted AGAINST S1113 and FOR S1110 and S1108.

S1113 (Modernization & Reform) increases the student-teacher divisor to pay for a 1:1 ratio of computers to high school students while requiring four on-line classes during high school. Expressed public sentiment was overwhelmingly against this proposal as written. More public and stakeholder consultation and collaboration are necessary so that an improved plan can be crafted and consensus reached.

S1110 (Pay for Performance) was negotiated with stakeholders for nearly nine months before general agreement was reached. The plan rewards schools for student growth achieved during the academic year. It pays teachers extra for teaching in hard to fill positions and for taking on leadership roles. The plan is based upon the principle that if you reward something, you will get more of it. The New Plymouth School District instituted a pay for performance plan and has achieved amazing results.

S1108 (Labor Relations) supports student growth and local control. It is generally supported by the Idaho School Boards Association, Idaho Associations of School Administrators, and the Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence. Some features are:

• Performance evaluations focus on student growth and school board chooses evaluation criteria;

• Principal has discretion in new hires;

• Parents have some input for performance evaluations (could be as little as 1%);

• Employees ordered by court to stay away from minors put on unpaid leave. This protects kids and frees up more money for education;

• During reductions in force, needs of the students take priority over seniority;

• Courts will review school board action for propriety, but will not hear cases from scratch. Less court costs mean more money for education.

• Master contract limitations of one year allow school board to respond to citizens rather than having their hands tied by past boards that are no longer in office;

• Public negotiations and open records ensure transparency and a more accountable government.


I hope that the information above is helpful to you. If my reply to your message was not immediate, I apologize. I read every message as it arrived and considered its contents carefully. The proposed changes to education have resulted in a flood of correspondence that I have tended to personally with the help of one part-time volunteer. Your message helped shaped my opinion of these proposals. I will keep your message and this reply on file for future reference.



Kindly,


Senator Mitch Toryanski

Education Ideas in South Carolina

http://biggovernment.com/abschaeffer/2011/03/04/sen-demint-taking-the-lead-on-education-reform-in-south-carolina/#more-237180

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/if-they-gave-out-awards-for-good-policy-design/

Wisconsin Riots

Informative article by John Fund at WSJ.

When teachers call in sick to attend a protest, often bringing their own students with them, and then say that they are doing this "for the children," or because they "love their jobs," I smell a rat. They would sacrifice 5,500 jobs throughout the state of Wisconsin so that they could continue to suck the coffers dry? They would continue to force other laborers to pay union dues, even though they do not want to belong? (In the state of Washington, my brother does not belong to a union, but he is required to pay dues anyway.) They think that they shouldn't have to put as much away towards their own health and retirement benefits as the rest of us, but they say they are protesting "for the children?"

My 2 cents on Luna's Plan

1. Intense debate is good. Vandalism, not so much!

2. My kids don't need a laptop. I don't want you (as in the taxpayer) to buy them one.

3. Plus, they will be out-dated before they are done using them and graduate from High School.

4. Not to mention the headaches that the IT guys at each school are going to get trying to fix each and every abused computer that we gave to the kids.

5. I like school choice. On-line education classes could benefit a lot of students. If they are quality courses, kids will want to take them. (In fact, maybe they will want to pay for them if they want them that badly.) But no one should be forced to take an on-line course.

6. YES to ending teacher tenure, and YES to restricting collective bargaining.

Thomas Sowell Interview

http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/24/thomas-sowell-speaks-to-thedc-about-the-financial-crisis-health-care-and-his-ideological-transformation-from-marxism-to-conservatism/

Love Thomas Sowell.

Interesting Video on Charity

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4478336/charitable-giving-democrats-vs-republicans?playlist_id=87185

When I post this, I don't mean to brag or boast, or turn charitable giving into a contest. What I want to do is combat false assumptions that so many people believe to be true. Again and again, I hear that Conservatives are wealthy and greedy, while Liberals are generous. You can hear that sentiment in the opening of the video posted above. But study after study shows that the opposite is true. I don't mean to say that democrats don't care--I think they do--but they are more comfortable with turning "charity" over to the government. But that is problematic in at least two ways. First, charity isn't charity when it's forced. And secondly, half of the money intended to "help" ends up in the pockets of government workers, who generally earn more money than the average worker. (There are studies about that, too.)

Some links about recent studies:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703766704576009361375685394.html?KEYWORDS=Charitable+giving

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576036010174911064.html?KEYWORDS=Charitable+giving

http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=402

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18218

http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/23/surprise-conservatives-are-more-generous-than-liberals/

Good quote

Too many people debate as if the point is to show who is smarter, rather than which conclusion is correct.

Thomas Sowell

Food Safety Modernization Act (SB 510)

The Daily Caller featured this article. I'm not seeing much said about SB 510 anywhere else, except for a youtube video that talked about some of the possible scenarios we could end up with in the event of a national crisis.

Like most bills that ever go through Congress, this one has a nice name that really doesn't mean anything. We all believe in food safety. Most of us like modernization, although in the context of growing and preparing food, I'm not sure I do like the sound of it that much.

SB 510 advocates say that this bill will help protect us, by ensuring that farms and food manufacturers follow safety procedures that will prevent future scares like the recent egg recall. Opponents say this is just more government overreach that will hurt small farms and local farmers markets.

I've read that Monsanto is a huge lobbyist behind this bill. Just the first paragraph in the link is enough to convince me that I do not want Monsanto behind anything regarding food safety. They're all about pesticides and growth hormones and genetic engineering.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an environmentalist by any means. I'm a free-market girl, and I believe that we should have the choice to support Monsanto, or to support our local farmers' market. Living in Boise, there are a lot of ways to buy fresh, local, organic food. This bill will make it harder for those local farmers to produce food, and could possibly make it more difficult to buy heirloom seeds for our own gardens. It will likely end the sale of raw milk (there's a place that sells it a half mile from my house), and I think that I should be able to buy raw milk if I want to.

TSA

I'd post a link, but there are too many already--you'll see if you haven't already, about the new security measures being forced upon ordinary travelers. I don't know which airports around the country have installed these measures, but they include an x-ray machine that allows an agent to see your naked body. If you don't like that, you can "opt out," and receive an invasive and uncomfortable pat-down--the kind you see police officers give criminals on TV.

This cannot be the best way to promote security and safety. If you think that invading my privacy or molesting my body increases your security, then you must think that I'm a terrorist. And I'm not. (DUH!)

With all of the ways the government keeps tabs on us (ever try to get out of paying taxes?), don't they have a way of identifying those who might pose a risk--say, those with criminal backgrounds, previous arrests, anyone who has spent a significant amount if time in a nation that sponsors terrorists? How about, when you buy a ticket and show up at the airport, they check to see if your identity matches the one you supplied when you bought the ticket. How about--if someone buys a ticket with my husband's credit card, and doesn't look like my husband--they stop that person from boarding! (A couple of years ago, someone took a trip to Jordan and Egypt on Dave's credit card. I'm appalled that neither the credit card company nor the TSA noticed anything amiss.)

Instead, you and I, our grandparents, parents and children are violated in the name of security. It's madness.

Pass it on!

http://fee.org/articles/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/

Long, but excellent and informative article about the Great Depression. Though I say it's long, it is shorter than the many important books written on the subject, so don't be intimidated!

Glenn Beck has been saying this for a while, and I agree with him, and that is that we need to be truly educated in order to make wise and prudent decisions in our daily and civic lives. After reading the above article, one will want to ask, "But why do we keep electing officials who do so much harm?" And I believe the answer lies in the fact that most of us simply don't know our history, or we've learned it from biased sources, such as textbooks written by those very people who benefit from our not knowing the whole story.

So, if you read this article and like it, pass it on!

I don't need to blog when there are writers like Thomas Sowell. While I have never read an article I didn't like, and wouldn't recommend, his last set, "Dismantling America" are worth special mention.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
I wouldn't be surprised if Part 4 comes out tomorrow, so keep checking his site. Even if there isn't a next part, whatever he will have written is sure to be brilliant.

Education stimulus

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704164904575421613093659730.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

This new stimulus is worse than I understood--it's not only going to increase the debt and reward unions, it is going to force states to spend money they don't have in their budget, and leave them even more beholden to the federal government. I hope Idaho rejects this money and all the strings attached, like it did "Race to the Top" money.

Idaho ranks #2, not #49!

Some big study ranked Idaho 49th of 50 in money spent per student in public education, for it's spending of $7000 per student. Utah ranked 50th. New York ranked No. 1, with the state spending a whopping $17,000 per student!

Most of Idaho's news media outlets are reporting this as an embarrassment for us, when in reality, shouldn't New York be embarrassed for wasting so much taxpayer dollars on it's failing education program? This is a case in which there is an inverse relationship between spending and results, but news reports fail to make note of it.

Honestly, I can't tell you how Idaho ranks compared to New York in actual results. But I know that I would rather send my kids to school here. There's a reason that thousands of parents are vying for limited spots in charter schools in New York, as depicted in "The Lottery." But for spending the 2nd lowest amount of my involuntary tax donation, I applaud my state!