Good God, they let CABE in the State Capitol...

You guessed it, another CABE Journal newsletter. They call themselves "The leading voice for Connecticut Public Education" which is probably why parents are hiding the kids in the attic - "Don't be scared children, Bush can't run again."

Anyway. The headline of the April issue screams, "EACH CHILD COUNTS". In reality the article never mentions math or children again. Apparently it was just about the only sentence nobody disagreed with so they ran with it.

Actually, running is too strong a term. The picture that accompanies the article shows what looks to be a crazed mob of mall-walkers either looking to run Dr. Frankenstein out of town or mutually looking for a rest room in Bushnell Park.

It turns out that they were a CABE contingent that somehow finagled their way into the State Capitol under the pretense ("EACH CHILD COUNTS!") that they had something to say about education.

Later in the Journal a photo spread has a number of pictures of these people presumably saying something about education to education deaf legislators. Nancy Wyman's picture sums it up. Looking frantically for the exit, hands up as if being told this was a stickup, Nancy's expression infers that she's wondering where all these Alzheimer's patients came from.

Thank God nothing was accomplished. The next time CABE is let into the CT Statehouse I would like their sign to say, "FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY - NO MORE FREAK'N EDUCATION MANDATES!"

But that's just me.

CABE's Big Adventure - Republicans RAISE your local taxes

Representatives from the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) recently went to Washington, D.C. Their newsletter says they attended the National School Boards Association's Federal Relations Network Conference and then met with Connecticut's Congressional delegation.

Cabe's newsletter lists the failures of the federal government to fund their chronic spending without paying habits. For the past thirty years (approximately how long the Republicans have controlled, um, government), the federal government has simply not paid the 40% of special education costs accrued for legislation initiatives they passed.

Fuel, transoportation, and lots of other pricey items needing financial relief were discussed as well.

So the Congressional "staff" went into action and on the last day tthat the school boards were in Washington they were rewarded with the fruits of their labor, the president's budget, "not only fails to meet these needs, but contains the largest cut to federal education funding in the 26 year history of the Department of Education: $2.1 Billion. If enacted, this would be a 3.8 percent cut from the FT06 level."!!!!!

Oh, the cuts don't stop there either, CABE lists another $28.95 BILLION in education shortfalls and cuts. The upside is a $225 Million increase in neo-con sinkholes.

So how much is a $30 BILLION ADDITIONAL SHORTFALL in federal education funding? Um, about 3 months of spending in Iraq. Come to think of it, read the article and the increase in military spending in Iraq is almost exactly the dollar amount being taken from education! Put that on Sesame Street, Count Dracula!

But it doesn't stop there - no sir - these are the Bush years - if the ship is sinking then it's time to start drilling holes to let the water out.

On page 2 of the CABE Journal, president Robert Hale offers a Commentary on the CABE Meetings in Washington. In it he tap dances around the uncomfortable fact that, well, "For the most part our senators and representatives are responsive"... but... "somewhere out there are local board memberswho know their individual senator and/or congressman. We need to know who you are..."

Let me translate this into English. About a year ago, a union representative told me a story about trying to meet a legislator in Washington. He said that after days of being treated like short shrift his delegation finally pin-pointed the representative. They approached the staff about getting the promised meeting because they knew the congressperson was in.

The staff relented, "Step right this way.", into a small conference room. My friend who trailed the union delegation had not yet turned the corner to join his group when he watched the legislatior slip out a side door and RUN down the hall away from the citizens. They wound up meeting with the Congressional Skippy's who serve coffee smile and treat you like a mentally ill patient looking for directions to the Lincoln Memorial.

Somehow CABE and all the other BOEs got snookered. Hale can put as much lipstick on Rob Simmons, Joe Lieberman and others as he likes but what these so-called representatives are doing ain't pretty.

At the local levels we struggle to pay for all this. If we continue to be dumb enough to empower these bastards in Washington we deserve what we get - higher taxes from Washington disguised as tax relief.

Rather than beg strangers for access to our officials I have a better idea. Let's ask Attorney General Blumenthal issue a warrant for their arrest for child neglect - that's right a class action warrant for neglecting the children of Connecticut. And the only bail that will spring them is a face-to-face meeting with every BOE in the State of CT. I want to tell them a few things using a bullhorn.

But it seems to me that every CT politician who even thinks about voting on education legislation needs to have the common sense of calling the President of CABE and the President of the Teachers Union well in advance of voting on anything that affects children. For CABE to be begging for spam access to government officials is a humiliating admission that government has gone wrong in a big way.

The Discretion of Coaches

The January issue of CABE's The Journal ran an article called "The Nutmeg Board: Coach violates constitutional right of free speech".

The body of the article written by Thomas B. Mooney, Esq. discusses the fact that schoolextracurricular activities are a privilege not a right and therefore coaches, BOE, and administrators can impose rules that normally would not apply in normal school activities. Unfortunately the article is not available on-line. The hypothetical case concluded that a coach can schedule practices outside a normal school schedule but cannot cut a player in retaliation for complaining.

Buried at the end of the article is a new CT statute about firing coaches that's worth discussing.

"Under newly enacted Connecticut State Statutes ~10-222e, coaches with three or more years of experience in a position have new rights. Such coaches... may be fired only for "moral misconduct or a violation of the rules of the Board of Education". Otherwise they must be notified of their non-renewal within ninety days of the end of the season. Moreover they may appeal termination or non-renewal "in a manner prescribed by the Board of Education. The Board may need such review procedures here." (as in the example provided)

We need to think about what constitutes grounds for non-renewal.

Would it be something as ambiguous as being accused of bad coaching?

Or something as subtle as caving in to the interests of loud parents by promoting their sons and daughters over players who play by the rules, play hard, and earn the right to play?

And what about winning and losing? Are athletes and teams allowed to lose in dignity or can they be publicly humiliated with benchings because the score is embarassing to a coach?

What about coaches who crush the competition even when the outcome is no longer in doubt?

Do screaming coaches ever cross a line?

And what about the sensational stories about coaches getting physically involved with players?

Lots to think about and talk about for the policy committee.

CABE, Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)

It turns out that CABE does have a website. It's pretty pathetic but I thought I'd poke around. The latest CABE Journal repeats some astonishing assertions about education from the State Dept. of Education.

What I found was Improving Achievement and Closing Gaps Between Groups: Lessons from Schools and Districts on the Performance Frontier, April 2005 - Katie Haycock's Presentation given at the CABE Workshop "The Board's Role in Closing the Achievement Gap" on April 6, 2005. Katie Haycock is executive director of the Education Trust in Washington, D.C.

It is a downloadable PDF file that is very interesting in that it contains data that is cooked! In fact it is hard to believe that this data is still making the rounds or that CABE paid for the presentation. The data in question is (at least) on slides 69 and all slides thereafter refering to Aldine, TX schools. It is possible the rest of the school examples are equally dubious.

Aldine, TX is in Harris County and it's part of the Houston metro area. That's Rob Simmons' buddy Tom Delay's district - quaint co-incidence.

The data smelled funny so I went out to the school district's web page and found out these facts.

Ethnic Composition (of the school district):

Hispanic 61.06%
African American 31.85%
White 4.87%
Asian/Pacific Islander 2.14%
Native American 0.08%
as of Oct. 3, 2005

...and look at these student/teacher ratios!

The pupil/teacher ratio averages are:

Grades PK-4 22:1
Grades 5-6 28:1
Grades 7-8 29:1
Grade 9 29:1
Grades 10-12 29:1

The data showed the Hispanic and Black population pulling even with the white population in reading and math and the School in question was being touted as a national example of success in testing excellence. But it looked too good to be true. and that 5% White population looks more like the statistical evidence is more noise than substance. And that student/teacher ratio implies that the students must be mind-melding with the tests. I mean this stuff is fantastic evidence! Sci-fi channel quality to be sure.

So I looked at the demographics of Harris County, TX.

The racial makeup of the area is 59.30% White, 5.84% African American, 0.69% Native American, 3.41% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 27.58% from other races, and 3.10% from two or more races. 56.33% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Um, 60% of the area is white yet these nationally recognised schools are just attended by a handful of white kids. Even John Stoussel would admit this looks, well, miraculous.

So I looked up Katie Haycock and discovered an interesting Washington Post article equally enamored with the Texas education data.

Education 'Miracle' Has a Math Problem
Bush Critics Cite Disputed Houston Data

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 8, 2003; Page A01

" Opponents of the Houston system of business-style accountability have seized on the dropout scandal as evidence that some of Paige's most cherished accomplishments -- including narrowing the "achievement gap" between white and minority students -- rest on false or manipulated data. They have raised questions about the validity of test results that purport to show spectacular progress by Houston students in reading, writing and arithmetic.

"It is all phony; it's just like Enron," said Linda McNeil, a professor of education at Houston's Rice University, referring to the bankrupt Houston-based energy services company that boosted its stock price by covering up losses. "Enron was concerned about appearances, not real economic results. That pretty much describes what we have been doing to our children in Houston." "

and...

"An investigation by state auditors showed that at least 14 other Houston high schools, including Austin, reported unusually low dropout rates in 2000-2001, although there is no evidence administrators falsified data. By reporting a dropout rate of less than 0.5 percent, school principals increase their chances of winning bonuses of as much as $10,000 and earning top accountability ratings for their campuses.

After years of relying on dropout statistics as a key component in their annual accountability studies, school officials concede that they were worthless all along. “The annual dropout rate was a crock, and we’re not [using] it anymore,” said Robert R. Stockwell Jr., the district’s chief academic officer.

Katie Haycock, director of the Washington-based Education Trust, a nonprofit group that supports strict accountability standards, said dropout statistics are notoriously unreliable, in Houston and across America.

“We have been lying to the public for a very long time about how many kids leave high school by using a dropout-reporting system that is crazy,” she said."

That's right, CRAZY! But that didn't stop her from using this data anyway.

There's more. The NCLB hoax is unraveling everywhere.

Wesley Elementary a Hoax
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
By Jim Trelease, © 2005

Whether you like it or not, the No Child Left Behind Act is gradually sinking. While some argue that the priority of the war in Iraq and a lack of funding is causing its destruction, others point to a lack of support from rank and file educators as an undermining factor. A more fundamental argument is that it was doomed from the very start. Just like Enron, the "numbers game" it plays is finally catching up with NCLB.

NCLB was built on the bedrock of "what's good for business is good for schools," that schools' productivity would improve significantly if business principles were applied, and nothing proved it better than the "education miracle" built in Texas by then-governor George W. Bush and in Houston by Superintendent Rod Paige. If such "miracles" could happen in Texas, then they could happen everywhere in America.

As the statistics on the following pages will show, nothing could be further from the truth. And then one must ask: How much did Rod Paige know and when did he know it?

...it continues...

The fact that all children cannot blossom on time does not signal the end of the world as we know it. It's possible to bloom late and still be successful, and nothing proves it better than the high school or college transcripts of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell-each of them a "late bloomer." While wondering how these three would have measured against today's proposed standards of learning, there's no denying they did all right for themselves once they finally "blossomed." Fifty years ago David Boies didn't learn to read until third grade (severe dyslexia) but today's scoreboard lists him as the most "in-demand" lawyer in America.

But today's standards allow for no such late starts. The present schedule began with the Business Roundtable (see Nation at Risk Report, 1985, Reagan
administration) and the concept that all children can learn, even poor children, if you bring the right kind of administration to schools and incorporate "accountability" into the picture: Reward achievement, punish failure. George Bush the Harvard MBA won the hearts of business class by advocating that strategy state-wide in Texas and in urban-poor Houston, Paige proved it worked.

One problem: It won't work now because it didn't work then. That is, there was no "education miracle" in Texas or Houston. If it wasn't a hoax, then it was a mirage. In any case, building a national education agenda on the Texas model was like building on quicksand.

...and...

And finally, under provisions in both No Child Left Behind and the Texas Public Education Grant, students attending a school that does not make adequate yearly progress in its tests scores have the right to move to achieving schools.By December, 2004, Texas' latest count was 293,000 students at the state's worst 420 schools (199 of the latter on the federal failure list) had the right to transfer to a better school.

How many of the students were expected to make the switch to better schools? Since Texas established its Public Education Grant program under George Bush in the late 1990s, only 2,000 students (about 200 a year) have switched schools. Why so few? Transportation cost is not included, good schools are already overcrowded, and out-of-district schools are not obligated to accept neighboring students. Even with vouchers, how many Texas private schools would you need to accept 293,000 students, many of which come with special deficits? Since NCLB is modeled on the Texas program, it also incorporated many of its liabilities: There is little enough room or money to accommodate the millions of students nationally who now attend what government labels "failing schools."

Read the entire article for a wakeup call.

CABE should demand their money back.

NCLB as class warfare

No Child Left Behind is the boldest educational fraud in history perpetrated by an administration whose trademark is corruption. Yet why does no one protest?

The math of NCLB doesn't add up, yet no mathematicians step forward to point out the obvious.

The educational value of NCLB doesn't educate kids with anything they need, yet no educators raise a whimper of protest.

If the country were reading with comprehension then articles on the ineffectiveness, fiscal insanity of, and shameful social experimentation on our youth would certainly ignite growing protests and demands that this program be stopped immediately.

But none of that happens. It is as though we live in a totalitarian state of mind - an educational 1984 - in which all news is good news even as we sink deeper into the quagmire.

For those of you still brave enough to read the writing on the wall, here's more:

No Child's Behind Left: The Test
By Greg Palast
The Observer UK

Tuesday 10 January 2006

President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing."

But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year.

I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't provide more opportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools - in which there were only 8,000 places open.

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army. (That option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)

Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income - just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve trillion dollar GDP - for primary and secondary education.

President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean the extra cash actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better uses for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.

No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score Mark of Cain - no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap.

I ask you, why doesn't CABE address this issue, head-on, no more double-talk nonsense? Why?

CABE - Can we change the name to RUBE?

Man, are these people in the dark. They sent me another CABE Journal the other day. The last one featured this Jodi Rell money sink. You'd think these people would stop throwing good money after bad. But Noooooooooooooooooo.

In this issue they announce yet another waste of taxpayer's money called CABE-Meeting. I know you're holding your breath wondering what magic this thing brings to the educational table. Get this... it promises to...

• Make documents available in REAL-TIME [hooo-hoo]!
• Allow for board members to follow along electronically [no not with a pacemaker - with a laptop]
• Allow minutes to be put together as the meeting progresses! [Stop the world! I want to get off!]

All for the introductory price of $2K/year and $1K/year after that. There's more but really you have better things to do than ponder this buffalo chip [It makes my eyes water].

Between the lines CABE tells us the true agenda. The Gates Foundation is underwriting some of the cost of this boondoggle because they are soooooo interested in better school board meetings. It's coincidental that each school board will requisition laptops requiring Microsoft software to actually run this thing.

AH, PHILANTHROPY, where art thou?

What's that?

Sold to the highest bidder, you say.

Pity.

Truth be told this software sounds as useful and necessary as a third shoe. Region 19 can already post documents to the internet [there's zero urgency in doing so and so on]. This software aspires to be dubious but dubious refuses to compromise its integrity in this case.

I will attempt to help this organization the best I can but I'm not miracle worker - just keep that in mind.

CABE; Whose side are these guys on, anyway?

CABE is the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, Inc. I just received their December issue of The Journal, their newsletter. If these articles are representative of the state of education in Connecticut, man are we in trouble!

Connecticut desperately needs an advocacy organization to truly promote the needs of citizens for education. I'm depressed reading this stuff.

There's a short blurb about the outcome of the Schaeffer v. Weast ruling that is perfunctory. BOE members who want a truer synopsis can read it here.

The Journal also listed The State Department of Education's "legislative agenda". The DOE obviously has too much time on their hands and is way overfunded because this cauldron of steamy stuff needs rethinking to say the least.

• Redirection of use of school facilities
  They want some state grant money returned "to the state" if an educational facility is closed. My thought is, NO. Let's offer the taxpayers of that region a tax rebate or redirect the funds into an educational trust fund that can be applied to emergency situations. The state doesn't need any more money to waste.
  
  
• Turn-key school construction projects
  Here they're saying new school facilities must (D'OH) have an architectural review and meet school space standards! Geezus, is the State brain-dead that in the year 2006 we'll be debating the issue of building schools that meet school space standards. Because if space is the issue I think they might as well debate the size of outdoor Porto-potties as well.
  Brutal.
  
  
• Limitation of change orders
  The state wants to limit to 5% "the amount of a change order". Basically, as written, this is meaningless since it doesn't limit the volume of change orders. What's needed is a rigorous walkthrough of orders in the first place and any nonsense better be caught early. Is that asking too much?
  
  
• Reporting on the condition of school facilities
  This is about envoronmental concerns in schools. The article says "It is proposed to extend the reporting requirement [on long-term school plans and indoor air quality] to two years." Oh.
  Well it would be nice if the State EPA would check the quality of air on the school grounds as well and get this expense off the backs of school budgets. And in the age of concerns about pandemics, I would like to see an environmental SWAT team investigating any and all instances of potential flu outbreak hot spots.
  
  
• Reading programs for priority school district students
  Too little information to comment on this.
  
  
• Bullying Policies
  The State wants teachers to become the misbehavior police "to include bullying on a school bus and outside of the school setting". Like schools don't have enough to do already. They forgot to include bullying while day-dreaming. Just what schools need more paperwork and bureaucracy.
  
  
• Special Education
  The State wants to dump Connecticut's protections to comply to the Schaeffer v. Weast ruling. This would be a rollback of superior legal coverage for parents of speciual education children.
  This is a stealthy, unnecessary manuever that lowers Connecticut's standards. parents need to let their State representatives know what they think about this.
  
  
• Energy Efficient School building design
  Thirty years after Jimmy Carter... I'm speechless.