Common Core Education And More About Federal Government Control

[Ross]

January 15, 2016

Education Week

Quality Counts 2016:
State Report Cards Map

Select a state in the map or sorted list to view details and data. What do these indicators mean?

You will have to visit this web page to see all sorts of information. The information was beyond my capabilities to post here. There are interactive maps.

Under Overall Grades & Scores (2016) Kansas only recieved a grade of "C" ans a score of 93.0 and is listed 27th out of the 50 states.

Even Kansas itself rates our schools as only average.

Under Chance for Success (2016) Kansas fairs a little better recieveing a grade of B- and a score 0f 80.7 and is listed 19th out of the 50 states.   

Under K-12 Achievement (2016) not so good with a "D" and a score of 66.0 and is listed 42nd out of the 50 states.   

Under School Finance (2016) average with a grade of "C" and a score of   74.9 and is listed 23rd out of the 50 states.   


Kansas
C (73.9)

Chance for Success: B- (80.7)
Early foundations:  B+ (88.5)
School years: C  (75.8 )
Adult outcomes: B- (79.9)
K-12 Achievement:  D (66.0)
Status: D (63.4)
Change: D- (60.1)
Equity: B- (81.0)
School Finance: C (74.9)
Equity: B+ (88.1)
Spending: D- (61.7)

http://www.cascity.com/howard/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=15765.420;last_msg=228178

[Ross]

ISLAMIST RUNNING 140 TAX-FUNDED CHARTER SCHOOLS IN U.S.

Casts broad net of influence over lawmakers

Muhammad Fethullah Gulen heads a global empire of schools and Islamic cultural centers and is one of Turkey's most influential spiritual leaders. He lives in exile in the United States and has 140 charters schools in 26 states.

Muhammad Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Islamist, writer and preacher with a secret plan for bringing Shariah law to America.

Arguably Turkey's most influential spiritual leader of the past 50 years, Gülen left that country in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools.

As the second largest chain of charter schools in the United States, Gülen schools rake in tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars every year.

But the schools — which have innocent-sounding names like the Horizon Science Academies in Illinois, Harmony School of Excellence in Washington, D.C., Dove Science Academies in Oklahoma and Magnolia Science Academies in California — have long been the subject of investigations into alleged corruption scandals involving influence peddling and visa abuse.

USA Today reported recently that the Gülen faith movement secretly funded 200 overseas trips for congressional lawmakers and staff since 2008.

"Turkish leaders have asked the United States to extradite Gülen from the remote compound in rural Pennsylvania where he has lived for 20 years.

The movement has founded hundreds of charter schools across the United States and around the world, has its own media organizations, and was deeply entrenched with the Turkish regime until a falling out two years ago. That led President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to declare Gülen was running 'a parallel state' inside the country with the intent of undermining the government."

Critics argue that the schools also covertly engage in Islamic missionary outreach, usually after-hours or during school extra-curricular activities.

Anti-Shariah activist Pam Geller says Gülen has been dubbed "the Turkish Khomeini" for a reason.

"It has been widely reported for years that he wants ultimately to restore the Islamic caliphate in Turkey. That alone should make his charter schools in the U.S. a subject of law enforcement scrutiny, but it largely hasn't," Geller told WND. "There have been allegations that funds from these schools have gone to a Turkish Islamization movement, Hizmet. The U.S. government shouldn't be funding Gülen's schools; it should be investigating them and shutting them down."

See list of all 140 Gülen charter schools in 26 states.

Most of the parents of students who attend Gülen charter schools have no idea about Gülen's background as a Turkish Islamist and believer in civilizational jihad — which is a form of nonviolent jihad focused on infiltrating and overcoming Western nations over time through immigration and exploitation of the civil liberties available in those nations.

But a new book on Gülen and his U.S. schools hopes to blow the lid on his cloak of secrecy.

Clare Lopez, co-author with Christopher Holton of "Gülen and the Gulenist Movement: Turkey's Islamic Supremacist Cult and its Contributions to Civilizational Jihad," says the movement is extremely secretive but there's no small amount of information for those willing to dig. She and Holton decided to peel back the layers.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/islamist-running-140-tax-funded-charter-schools-in-u-s/#DVHtGU178uYKUoiH.99

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This picture is on the page:

There is also a video on the page.


This picture is not on the page:

[Ross]

In my last article, I mentioned COMMON CORE. Some of you do not know what this is.

Common Core is a curriculum to be very wary of based on the people who are putting it together, one of whom is Linda-Darling Hammond who was endorsed by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers for Secretary of Education and served as an advisor to the Obama campaign.

What EXACTLY is Common Core?

Essentially it is a standardized, all-out assault on learning: it is designed to further lower schools standards and is supported by the teachers' unions which have a self-serving interest in avoiding as much accountability as possible; the lower the standards, the less push back against the teachers, too many of whom are failing the young trapped in the government schools. The over arching ideology that shapes this agenda is far leftist ideology, that is  much more intense and deliberately focused than that which tends to be a somewhat sporadic, less uniform at present.

Okay. But can you give us some examples.

The curriculum even includes teaching math in such a way, that non ideological Math experts who have looked at the proposed programs are telling us that "it marks the end of improvement in education." Moreover it devalues and de-emphasizes traditional literary works in favor of song lyrics and of course, government documents. I am willing to bet that these documents will be carefully cropped to make the left all-powerful and the only channel of the flow of such information, or should we say disinformation?
These are for starters.

Why is this happening?

The left, in order to increase its hegemony, its total control, permanently, since we are still  "a democracy" of sorts, that is, requires an absolutely ignorant as possible cadre of voters. It isn't enough that the mainstream media, almost all of the organs of the dissemination of vital information are in collusion with the left and extremely dangerous, double faced organizations, such as CAIR, it is necessary to destroy any vestige of Constitution-upholding citizens if at all possible. It is too late for the older generation who were not indoctrinated in the government schools, but the young are vulnerable.

Currently only five states do not have any aspect of the Common Core curriculum programs. Maine is not one of them, most unfortunately. The five states are Alaska, Texas, Nebraska, Virginia and Minnesota.

There are many logos for the various subsets of Common Core, one of which is an apple that has been bitten into on both sides. This reminds me of the serpent in the garden with Eve who has taken a bite out of the apple - she chooses what is good and evil, not God - then hands the apple to Adam who eats of it also. The apple has always been a symbol for the teacher, but as an unblemished, whole fruit, until now.

I believe that this is why Obama wants to begin with mandating school for impoverished 4 year olds, under the pretext of preparing them for a global economy, to further Common Core. Once the public becomes used to this, then it will be mandated for all 4 year olds. Five years is just too old - Mom and Dad may have already begun to instill the ideal of true liberty and the natural law principles that go hand in hand. By this time, he and his so-called Department of Justice and other agencies will have striven to have home schooling outlawed. If he is no longer in office, the war against normalcy and meritorious standards will  be carried on with whatever means are available to those still entrenched in government agencies where policy is issued.

Parents who do not want their children indoctrinated for the left at present have a choice and choice for the "pro-choice" crowd only means abortion, not education.

Let us listen to Michelle Malkin, who says it best of all. This excerpt is taken from an article about  Common Core from her web site, link HERE. [Text below in Red, emphasis in bold added by me.]
For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. "Progressive" reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.

Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children's school curriculum. It's being done in the name of federal "Common Core" standards that do anything but raise achievement standards.

Common Core was enabled by Obama's federal stimulus law and his Department of Education's "Race to the Top"gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular "alignment."

In practice, Common Core's dubious "college-and career"-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America's schoolchildren.

Over the next several weeks and months, I'll use this column space to expose who's behind this disastrous scheme in D.C. backrooms. I'll tell you who's fighting it in grassroots tea party and parental revolts across the country from Massachusetts to Indiana, Texas, Georgia and Utah. And most importantly, I'll explain how this unprecedented federal meddling is corrupting our children's classrooms and textbooks.

There's no better illustration of Common Core's duplicitous talk of higher standards than to start with its math "reforms." While Common Core promoters assert their standards are "internationally benchmarked," independent members of the expert panel in charge of validating the standards refute the claim. Panel member Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas reported, "No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics" or other subjects.

In fact, Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He's not alone.

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed "significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries."

Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed. Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.

Ze'ev Wurman, a prominent software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert in California and Washington, D.C., points out that Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.

I cannot sum up the stakes any more clearly than Wurman did in his critique of this mess and the vested interests behind it:

"I believe the Common Core marks the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States. No state has any reason left to aspire for first-rate standards, as all states will be judged by the same mediocre national benchmark enforced by the federal government. Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations. While they may not admit it, they have a vested interest in lowering the accountability bar for their members. ... This will be done in the name of 'critical thinking' and '21st-century' skills, and in faraway Washington, D.C., well beyond the reach of parents and most states and employers."

I referred to an organization, CAIR, above. What is it and why should we all be concerned?

You could say, without any exaggeration, that CAIR is the media's "common core." How?

CAIR is the acronym for The Council on American–Islamic Relations, a PR front group that presents the good face of Islam to the public. It has tentacles throughout government and the media that either knowingly or stupidly act as propaganda shills for Muslim extremists. CAIR has strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both depend on preventing the public from seeing through their ultimate goals - Islam the dominant power and belief system in the world and the establishment of the Caliphate. Period. Only they cannot let us know this. They exploit Americans' lack of common sense and reason in re "discrimination" in order to mis-direct our attention and change our ideas about Islam. The term Islamphobia is bandied about as if we are all evil for rejecting elements of Islam or all of it, as we should. One CAIR honcho on one of their web sites some time ago boasted about the group's ability to get us to comply in so many words. CAIR also has its sinewy clutches into various financial institutions, etc. I suspect, although I cannot prove it right now, that CAIR has a hand in Common Core principles. Certainly at present the American government schools are pro-Islamic and anti-Christian, very important for CAIR. There was even a Supreme Court case that did not make it through Certiorari - in effect, the Islamists won big time in the New York schools because the Supreme Court permitted a lower court ruling favoring the favoritism of Islam in public schools over that of the Christians. Just think about this, folks!

CAIR pressures journalists to cease using the term Islamist because to them it ought not connote and denote what it actually, rightly does. One cannot adequately address and fight against a concept or idea that one is not permitted to name. At best a distortion but the intent is to remove it from the American mind. How many times have we heard a reporter's account or read a story that this word is absent from and a politically correct substitute is used, like Jihadist? Now Jihadist is a warrior for a holy war. But there is only one kind and that is Islamic. We are not supposed to connect the two. Of course, fundamentalist and Christian are paired by our sell-out journalists ad infinitem so as to prejudice the public unfairly. The defense of Christ the King, why that is such a threat, don't you know! But Allah's war on the West, well, that's okay for now, it fits our agenda.
When anyone raises the alarm about CC [Common Core] and CAIR, their spokesmen just offer the usual clichés about alarmists and so forth, then provide some soothing talk to allay public fears. The public, wanting things to just go away as it has too much to deal with as it is, buys it all too many times. We are losing our culture, our Western heritage, our religious rights, our freedoms, one at a time, our very country and so few as yet realize it. The revolution needs this mindset to succeed. I am determined that this will not happen and there are others, too. Do not let the insurgents against common sense, the ideals of the natural law, and above all the Social Reign of Christ the King maintain their already powerful grip on those in power. Make no mistake they are after total control and no-choice, not pro-choice. Now Islam does not favor abortion. Once they become dominant I am not certain that their useful idiots - the left - will know how to handle this reality, which they have discarded for the moment - strange bedfellows and all. Perhaps the Islamics will permit America to continue to abort herself into oblivion and such degradation of immorality that America will cease all together, which suits them I am sure, just so long as they have control of what is left of the finances and infra structure.

Do not be deterred by the politically correct statements, the disarming palaver in the media. What else would you expect from those with such an evil agenda? The truth, an admission? Oh, come on people ...

The banner image was put together thus: the twice bitten apple for COMMON CORE and the green serpent for CAIR. Green is the color symbol of the Caliphate. The snake for the devil in the details.

http://www.catholictradition.org/common-core.htm


http://www.catholictradition.org/common-core.htm

[Ross]

Common Core by a New Name
and on Steroids:
'Every Student Succeeds Act'

First published by SFPPR News & Analysis, a publication of the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. (sfppr.org) on December 15, 2015. Reprinted with permission.

by Mary Grabar

A bill over a thousand pages long is drafted behind closed doors and given a nice-sounding name. The chair of the Senate committee, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, announces on November 18 that the conference report, which is finished, will not be available for reading until November 30.  The House vote will be two, at most three, days later.

The vote takes place two days later, on December 2. The 247 House Republicans are divided, but most (all but 64) side with 100% of the 188 Democrats who vote for it.

On December 8, the Senate votes to advance the bill and it is passed the following day. Again, zero opposition from Democrats. Only 12 of the 54 Senate Republicans oppose the measure.

This is the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), an arm of the War on Poverty that sends federal funds to low-income area schools.

ESSA is supported by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and 37 liberal and far-left civil rights and education groups.  It is supported by "the owners of the Common Core Standards" (National Governors Association and the Council of Chief School Officers), as Donna Garner notes. Republican Lamar Alexander, a Common Core booster, joins with Democrat Patty Murray, expressing hope for more such "bipartisan" legislation.

The over 200 grassroots groups and experts who sent a detailed, open letter on October 13 to Congress opposing the Act valiantly continued the battle in the two days between the release of the conference report and the vote in the House. Volunteers divvy up the bill in an attempt to digest it in 48 hours. They continued to rally the troops after it went before the Senate, to no effect. It passed on December 9. The next morning Obama signed it. According to one activist, the hurry was manufactured to prod members to "vote blindly." ESSA had been on "ice" for six months.

The American Principles Project announces their "disappointment" over passage. Emmet McGroarty chastises Republicans for failing to listen to "the more than 200 pro-Constitution, anti-Common Core grassroots groups that laid out in detail their objections . . . and practically begged their 'conservative' elected officials to pay attention."

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch, calls ESSA "a huge lump of educational coal." Effrem, a pediatrician, sees in ESSA a solidification of the harmful age-inappropriate methods of Common Core. She thanks presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for their "steadfast opposition."

Left-wing sites claim, "Christmas miracle sees end of Common Core."

The Department of Education had prepared the groundwork for the hurried holiday-time vote with Obama's own announcement in October, when he inveighed against "excessive testing" — as opt-outs spread like wildfire. He subtly blamed the unpopular testing on [George W. Bush's] No Child Left Behind.  New tests, we are told, will be "state driven and based on multiple measures." Multiple measures include "non-cognitive skills," attitudes and emotions.

The Department of Education announces: "The bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind . . . incorporates many of the priorities the Obama administration put forward."

It does. These are the same priorities undergirding Common Core.  According to Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow at the American Principles Project, the rub is in the mandates, as she explained to Dr. Susan Berry at Breitbart. States must coordinate with eleven different federal statutes and submit their plans for approval by the feds.

Statutes include "the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that's designed to connect the K-12 education system to government-controlled workforce-development, the Head Start Act that centralizes preschool standards, the Education Sciences Reform Act (which seeks to boost data-collection on students). . . ." Standards must focus on "minimal workforce-development rather than academic knowledge" — just like Common Core! States will comply or lose their federal money.

The federal government will determine "college- and career-readiness," thus continuing its power grab on campuses.

At the other end of the "cradle to career" spectrum is "mission creep" into preschool, as states participate in Race-to-the-Top-like competitive grants. The Act expands ESEA power by making Head Start preschool a statute (instead of an appropriation), Dr. Susan Berry reports.

Promoters ignored the research that shows the ineffectiveness of Head Start. They ignored studies that indicate that pre-school programs often have a negative impact on students' ability to concentrate in school.

Additional concerns listed at the Truth in American Education blog include the weakening of parental rights to opt children out of tests, removing checks on federal control, increasing overall federal spending through ESEA, and transferring federal dollars from the classroom to for-profit companies.

As consumers face skyrocketing health insurance premiums they realize that the "Affordable Care Act" is not what its name implies. Similarly, many supporters of the Every Student Succeeds Act will learn that rather than eliminating Common Core, ESSA implements Common Core on steroids.

Mary Grabar, Ph.D., taught college English for 20 years and is now a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. She is the founder of the Dissident Prof Education Project, an education reform initiative that offers information and resources for students, parents, and citizens.

http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/jan16/common-core-new-name-steroids-every-student-succeeds-act.html

[redcliffsw]

American government education.  What a deal!  If you want to raise your kids to be communists, send 'em to a government school.

[Ross]

How Much Federal Money Does Your State Receive?

FEBRUARY 4, 2016 BY SHANE VANDER HART

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/US_Capitol_Building_East_side_steps_and_dome-1024x681.jpg

The following document below is from FY 2013 provided by the Bluegrass Institute, but it will give you a pretty good picture that the Feds provide very little money to states in exchange for all of the mandates they place on the states.

It's time for a change.


(

See Document Showing all states information at

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/federalized-education/how-much-federal-money-does-your-state-receive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TruthInAmericanEducation+%28Truth+in+American+Education%29 )

[Ross]

Broken discipline tracking systems
let teachers flee troubled pasts

Georgia officials revoked a teacher's license after finding he exchanged sexual texts and naked photos with a female student and was involved in physical altercations with two others.

A central Florida teacher's credentials were suspended after she was charged with battery for allegedly shoving and yelling at a 6-year-old student.

In Texas, a middle school math teacher lost his job and teaching license after he was caught on camera allegedly trying to meet a teenage boy in a sting set up by NBC's nationally aired TV program To Catch a Predator.

All three of those teachers found their way back to the front of public school classrooms, simply by crossing state lines. They're far from alone.

An investigation by the USA TODAY NETWORK found fundamental defects in the teacher screening systems used to ensure the safety of children in the nation's more than 13,000 school districts.

The patchwork system of laws and regulations — combined with inconsistent execution and flawed information sharing between states and school districts — fails to keep teachers with histories of serious misconduct out of classrooms and away from schoolchildren. At least three states already have begun internal investigations and audits based on questions raised during the course of this investigation.

Over the course of a year, the USA TODAY NETWORK gathered the databases of certified teachers and disciplined teachers using the open records laws of each of the 50 states. Additionally, journalists used state open records laws to obtain a private nationwide discipline database that many states use to background teachers. The computerized analysis of the combined millions of records from all 50 states revealed:

States fail to report the names of thousands of disciplined teachers to a privately run database that is the nation's only centralized system for tracking teacher discipline, many of which were acknowledged by several states' education officials and the database's non-profit operator. Without entries in the database, troubled and dangerous teachers can move to new states — and get back in classrooms — undetected.
The names of at least 9,000 educators disciplined by state officials are missing from a clearinghouse operated by the non-profit National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification. At least 1,400 of those teachers' licenses had been permanently revoked, including at least 200 revocations prompted by allegations of sexual or physical abuse,

State systems to check backgrounds of teachers are rife with inconsistencies, leading to dozens of cases in which state education officials found out about a person's criminal conviction only after a teacher was hired by a district and already in the classroom. Eleven states don't comprehensively check teachers' work and criminal backgrounds before issuing licenses, leaving that work to local districts — where critics say checks can be done poorly or skipped.

The USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found many examples of failure of screening at the school district level, including school systems first made aware of troubled teachers on their staffs by journalists. One teacher in North Carolina was removed from the classroom and another in Louisiana resigned in recent weeks after journalists questioned school districts about past disciplinary actions in other states.

Read the whole article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/14/broken-discipline-tracking-system-lets-teachers-with-misconduct-records-back-in-classroom/79999634/

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How about "BROKEN" School Administrators that force resignation, simply by saying either you resign or you are fired.
Just because they are to lazy to do their job properly or they have become great friends with the teacher!
And because they can get away with it?

How is that Administrator protecting your child by such actions?

Something to think about isn't it?

[Ross]

SUPREME COURT RULING
ON
EQUITY CREATES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITY

Dave TrabertFebruary 12, 2016 Education

The February 11 Supreme Court decision ruling declaring that two pieces of state aid are not equitably distributed creates some opportunities and challenges for the Legislature. One big opportunity is the development of a new method to equitably distribute capital outlay and supplemental general state aid (Local Option Budget equity) without necessarily spending a lot more money for the current year. The Court reaffirmed that constitutional infirmities "can be cured in a variety of ways—at the choice of the legislature" with the proviso that any adjusted funding must also meet a separate test of adequacy – i.e., whether districts are receiving 'enough.'

The Legislature modified the equity formula to provide proportional funding to eligible districts but the Court said that amounts to under-funding the equity formula. The Court also ruled that equity funding cannot be 'frozen' as has been done under the block grant but must be adjusted annually according to the formula.

Equity system favors big districts

Equity is a constitutional construct that must be met, but putting more money into the existing equity system would be a perversion of the concept, as much of the increase would go to districts with high property values. Equity is distributed based on per-pupil valuation, so tiny districts where 1 mill of property tax generates less than $25,000 are considered 'wealthy' and ineligible for extra aid but districts in wealthy Johnson County are all considered 'poor' and in need of extra aid.

Citizens and media might think equalization money goes to small counties with low property values, but the per-pupil valuation method favors the big counties. In fact, 49 percent of Local Option Budget equalization money went to the five counties with highest total equity2assessed valuation last year. Distributing equity funding based on total valuation rather than per-pupil valuation would be a good option to consider. Another option was explored in the 2015 Legislative session; SB 71 would have equalized against the per-pupil valuation of Shawnee Mission (Johnson County), which has the highest total valuation. Districts with per-pupil valuation below Shawnee Mission would be eligible for equity aid based on their relative variance to the Shawnee Mission valuation per-pupil.

The current cut line for equity eligibility is the 81.2 percentile of per-pupil valuation, which was arbitrarily established years ago. Legislators had a specific amount of money to spend and simply drew the eligibility line where that specific amount would be spent. The SB 71 method draws the line on a rational basis and also brings total valuation into play.

This spreadsheet shows Local Option Budget equity allocations by district under several scenarios: actual equity paid in 2013-14, block grant equity in 2014-15, full equalization under the current formula and 2014-15 calculation from SB 71.

(Go to the web site to see charts, sorry)

Political challenges

Developing a new equity distribution formula presents a number of political challenges. SB 71 would provide more money to 115 districts but 177 districts would receive less.  equity3Smaller districts that are arguably more in need of equalization would see net gains while net losses would be concentrated in large districts. Unlike the current arbitrary 81.2 percentile methodology, an SB 71-like formula would be rationally derived. But how many legislators would vote for such system if their district loses even a tiny amount of funding in the base year? Would Johnson County legislators object to Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission being declared 'wealthy' instead of 'poor'?

The large urban districts have a decided political advantage over small rural districts. Some use taxpayer money to employ full time lobbyists and since the big districts pay higher dues (more taxpayer money) to the Kansas Association of School Boards, the big guys tend to have more sway there as well. Union political power also favors the big districts because, as bank robber Willie Sutton said, that's where their money is found.

Some legislators would likely object to anything that doesn't spend millions more, but if history is any guide, most wouldn't say which tax they would increase or which budget they propose to cut to balance the budget.

Creating a new equity allocation method is a good opportunity, but angst over the court's threat to close schools may produce an even greater opportunity – convincing enough legislators to move forward with an entire new student-focused school funding system that holds districts accountable for outcomes and efficient use of taxpayer money. Doing so would finally putting the old system, block grants and related court battles in the rear view mirror.

And then perhaps the focus can shift to the real education crisis. For all the hue and cry over money, Kansas doesn't have a money crisis; funding continues to set records, districts continue to operate very inefficiently and some aren't even spending all of the money they receive. The real crisis is in student achievement, but districts don't want to talk about it.

https://kansaspolicy.org/supreme-court-ruling-on-equity-creates-challenges-and-opportunity/

[Ross]

I'm sorry. I forgot to mention the charts discussed in the above post contains the amounts of money
from the state to each and every school district for 2014-2015 including West Elk and Elk Valley.
I believe it shows the money that the West Elk Superintendent said didn't exist except for an hour and then disappeared.

If you scroll down to the middle of the page you will find the chart.
Then place your cursor anywhere on the chart and a bar will appear that will permit you to expand the chart to full screen.
Then you can either choose which page of the chart you wish to view or push the chart upward with your cursor that appears as a hand.

West Elk and Elk Valley are shown on page 3 of 8 pages.

That web site once again is:
https://kansaspolicy.org/supreme-court-ruling-on-equity-creates-challenges-and-opportunity/

[redcliffsw]

The government ought to stand against ifself to defend individual liberty. 

Instead, Republicans and reconstructed Democrats prefer government control of Americans.