Here’s a report on the ALEC conference held in KC earlier this month. Given the number of ALEC supporters in the KS legislature, this is alarming.

“And as ALEC convenes a new working group on public school financing, the model bill that is in the works is a funding formula based on school performance with criteria set by state legislators. One ALEC legislator stated that school boards should be taken out of the equation all together, as they merely use children as ‘human shields.’Finally, there are the economics of the ALEC otherworld. I chuckled at the scorn directed at Minnesota, where, Rep. Garafalo remarked, ‘the inmates are running the asylum.’ Minnesota raised taxes on the rich and invested the resulting revenue in public schools, including all-day kindergarten. In ‘Rich States, Poor States,’ an ALEC publication that ranks states in terms of a 2013 State Economic Outlook, Minnesota ranks 46th, Wisconsin 15th and Mississippi 10th. Yet in 2012 Minnesota had one of the fastest growing economies in the nation, and currently has higher median incomes and lower unemployment and poverty rates than both Wisconsin and Mississippi (where a whopping 17.5% of families have incomes below the poverty level). The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts Minnesota near the top of private sector job growth in the Midwest, while Wisconsin lags near the bottom. In the ALEC otherworld, actual economics do not count.” http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/05/187687/alec-otherworld