Please read and share this article. It explains what’s at stake. Every Kansan who cares about public schools should have their eyes wide open. “The Legislature’s failure to adequately pay for public education is a long-running Kansas story. The Supreme Court in 2005 ordered lawmakers to put more money into school financing. Conservatives bitterly decried the ruling, but finally settled on increasing allocations for three years until they were funding schools by an additional $755 million annually. The state kept its word for two school years. Then the recession hit. Starting in the 2009 school year, Kansas cut...
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Rising classroom sizes contradicts push for increased global competitiveness
“Districts are making these difficult trade-offs at a time when schools are raising academic standards and business leaders are pushing schools to prepare a work force with better skills. ‘We can’t have the doublespeak where everybody talksabout how important education is to our being globally competitive,’ said Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, ‘and then education is not a priority when it comes to funding.’ In Pennsylvania, although the state’s education budget is now above prerecession levels, a large proportion of money is being diverted to replenish underfunded pensions, leaving less...
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Leave a Comment More questions about full-day kindergarten funding
“It would be too bad if the kindergarten funds met a fate similar to increased higher education funding that was included in Brownback’s budget last January. Although Brownback voiced support for additional funds and even toured the state near the end of the session to tout his position, he nonetheless ended up signing a budget that didn’t include the higher education boost.” We agree and hope the governor and legislature aren’t playing good cop bad cop on education funding.http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/dec/23/editorial-first-step/?opinion...
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Leave a Comment Mark Pocan explains how ALEC works via the Special Needs Scholarship bill
Here’s Wisconsin Senator Mark Pocan in March 13, 2012 illustrating our concerns about ALEC using the example of the Special Needs Scholarship Program. Kansas had its ALEC Special Needs Scholarship bill last session (http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2263_00_0000.pdf). The section he refers to regarding hiring a company with experience evaluating these programs is Section 9 in the Kansas bill, rather than Section 8 in the Wisconsin bill. “Sec. 9. (a) The department may contract with one or more qualified researchers who have previous experience evaluating school choice programs to conduct a study of the program.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOBsoUZFae8...
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