Two semi-random (but critical) facts about public education

Number One is retrieved from the post below this one, because it is buried deep in the middle of the post and might not receive the attention it merits. [Hit that article for all the links.]

According to CNBC, conducting a study of the attractiveness of each state to business and investment, in 2008--which was when Governor Markell came into office and just before the Race to the Top--Delaware was rated #26 out of 50 in terms of Education.

Five years later, after Vision ~~2015~~ 2020, data coaches, Race to the Top, $119 million in Federal funds we think we may or may not have spent, and all else, by the CNBC rankings we have raced up to #34 out of 50 in terms of Education.

That's right: during the first five years of the Markell administration, CNBC finds that our national Education ranking has dropped 6 places. Think about that when you are evaluating how well we've done.

Number Two comes from the American School Board Journal, which supports something I have been asserting for several years: district school boards should be the primary issuer of school charters:

Evidence suggests states that identify local school boards as the primary authorizer of charter schools are more likely to create academically successful charters.

This approach has worked well in Maryland, where a 2003 law allows school boards to have the opportunity to ensure charter school applications include viable academic and financial plans before approval. Boards can closely monitor these schools and intervene if problems arise....

The stance of NSBA [National School Board Association] is that the local school board should be the sole authorizer of charter schools -- as school board members are a community’s elected or appointed trustees responsible for the education of local schoolchildren.

“The advantage, not just of having a single authorizer, but having the school board as authorizer, is that they are already there to be responsible for the students in their district,” says Patte Barth, director of NSBA’s Center for Public Education. “They’re closer to the community. They know what the needs of children are. They are better able to manage the flow of resources, and they can keep an eye on the children and make sure the promise of the charter is being upheld.”

According to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), school boards already play this role for the majority (53 percent) of charter schools across the nation. But the remaining charters are authorized by and report to a variety of groups, including higher education institutions, independent charter boards, municipalities, for-profit organizations, and state education agencies.

Too often, here in Delaware we don't actually get to look at data or research because we're too busy drowning in spin.

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici...

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

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