This is a well-written summary. Click here for the blog post and embedded photos: https://stephanametzger.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/kansas-school-finance-at-a-crossroads/ Kansas School Finance: At a Crossroads by Stephan A. Metzger I’m back to my roots. Education finance in Kansas has been getting a fair amount of news coverage in recent weeks, and for good reason. The first is that the Governor has created a new committee tasked with doing leg work in creating a new finance formula for the state’s 286 school districts. This is a big deal. It makes the prospect of going back to the old, not at all broken, formula virtually...
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Governor’s communications director derisive
We agree. “Melika Willoughby apparently is paid to be derisive – and with public tax dollars, no less. Gov. Sam Brownback’s deputy director of communications mocked ‘ever-litigating’ school districts and the media in a newsletter e-mailed last week. She called criticisms of school-funding levels ‘flimsy’ and ‘easily refuted’ — even though the state has lost every school-funding lawsuit. In a newsletter last month, she accused editorial boards and union leaders of engaging in ‘bombastic talk’ about school funding. Earlier in the summer, she claimed that Kansas City, Kan., school district complaints about funding were the latest example of...
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Leave a Comment Merit pay for teachers doesn’t work
Governor Brownback is now promoting teacher merit pay. We posted earlier about the issues of tying teacher pay to test results. Here’s an article, with cited research, showing why merit pay doesn’t work. “It is curious that teachers vigorously oppose merit pay, even though they are the ones who are supposed to reap the rewards. What do they know? They know that merit pay undermines collaboration and teamwork. They know that it corrupts the culture of the school… “Merit pay has been tried again and again since the 1920s. Sometimes scores go up, sometimes they don’t, but the...
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Leave a Comment VAM for merit pay does not work
Governor Brownback is now promoting teacher merit pay as part of the new school funding formula. That idea has largely been rejected after years of experience in other states. Here’s a summary of some of the research. “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. That makes the statement that the association just issued very important for school reform. “The ASA just slammed the high-stakes ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been...
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