State Education Commissioner Helps Right-Wing Front Group Write Evasive Ballot Language

Here's a November 21 statement from the Missouri NEA site:

(Jefferson City, MO) Today education leaders from the American Federation of Teachers, Missouri National Education Association and the Missouri State Teachers Association issued the following joint statement regarding press reports of Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro’s covert conversations with Rex Sinquefield lobbyist Kate Casas. 

“As educators we are disturbed by Commissioner Nicastro’s covert communication with a registered lobbyist, her potential disregard of open meetings law, and the circumvention of input from anyone involved in the day-to-day operations of public schools. 

Published reports indicate Commissioner Nicastro actively assisted a special interest lobbyist in crafting language for an amendment to the Missouri Constitution and ordering DESE staff not to post items to the State Board of Education’s public agenda. Nicastro assured special interest groups the fiscal note outlining the financial impact would be favorable.

The professional staff at DESE developed language that disclosed the potential significant costs to local districts. However, Nicastro chose to personally override her financial experts at the expense of taxpayers. 

Government officials have a duty to act in an open and transparent manner for the benefit of the citizens of the state of Missouri – Commissioner Nicastro’s actions fall short of that duty.”

More soon.

Mayor Slay's Education Team Turns a Blind Eye to Michelle Rhee's Scandals

Michelle Rhee, hailed as a prophet by people who want to privatize education and destroy teachers' unions despite her sketchy results and lack of an education background other than a year short stint teaching, is getting involved in Missouri politics, with her group "Students First" (bankrolled by undisclosed donors) pushing for new education laws in the state. Local right-wing zealot Mark Reardon naturally had Rhee on his radio show to discuss her history and the legislation. Here's what Mayor Slay's education adviser Robbyn Wahby, last seen attending a Koch brothers-funded American's for Prosperity propaganda panel on education with Dick Morris, Dana Loesch, and Gateway Pundit, had to say about it:


It's sad that the Mayor's staff would so uncritically praise Rhee's status despite the fact that numerous experts have claimed that the D.C. school district results that catapulted her to fame were fraudulent. A recent article explained it well:

Investigations questioned many of Rhee’s accomplishments in increasing test scores in D.C. schools. In 2008, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education discovered that 103 schools -– more than half of D.C. schools -- were flagged by third parties for suspiciously high wrong-to-right answer changes. These including eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out TEAM awards “to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff.”

During Rhee’s tenure, CTB/McGraw-Hill informed her office of abnormally high rates of answer changes at Noyes Elementary School. Answers were consistently changed from wrong to right. The gains in test scores made at Noyes earned the school recognition as a Blue Ribbon School. Rhee promoted the school as a model for her education reform movement.

Statisticians, including Professor Emeritus Thomas Haladyna, told USA Today “the odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance.”

Haladyna suggested the answer sheets had been tampered with.

Furthermore:

The Washington Post reported Jan. 31 that for the most part there was little meaningful change in the D.C. schools’ testing performance over the past two full school years following Rhee’s exit.

Moreover, the graduation rate was also essentially unchanged -- moving from 72 percent in 2009 to 73 percent in 2010 (2011 rates will be released later this year).

According to Rhee’s own policy standards, her performance bonus program has not worked. And the same thing goes for her other signature policies, including D.C.’s new evaluation system and the annual dismissals based on the results of that system.

So Rhee is someone with almost no education background, who is being funded by undisclosed donors, and whose only success story was based on an absurdly high erased wrong-to-correct test answers. Yet she is being hailed uncritically by Mayor Slay's staff in order to push their agenda (and, no doubt, to keep that sweet, sweet Sinquefield money flowing to the campaign). If Slay's office really wants to claim that they're doing this "for the children," then they owe it to the children to make sure they are relying on credible information rather than propaganda.

Update: To be clear, Rhee doesn't, as far as I know, advocate for the privatization of schools; I just meant she's a hero to those who do. And I agree that we need changes in education, but let's do it carefully and not rely on the gospel of someone whose "success story" looks pretty questionable and is currently being investigated!

Turner Report Catches KOMU Pushing Right-Wing Propaganda as Fact

Kudos to the Turner Report for calling out Columbia KOMU after KOMU pushed a story saying that Missouri ranked 47th on the American Legislative Exchange Council's ranking of the national schools. KOMU failed to do any basic research on what ALEC actually is, and instead just accepted the ranking as fact. However, ALEC is not some independent ranking agency, but rather an extremely partisan, agenda-driven organization that literally allows corporations to buy in and have legislation written and then passed off to state lawmakers. Here's the Nation's description of the group:

ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals…making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more.

You can read more about ALEC's pernicious influence in Missouri at Progress Missouri.

This story reminds me of a recent incident where St. Louis Public Radio used a report from a restaurant front group to criticize the state's minimum wage. I don't know how long this trend has been going on, but it seems to me like the Right is getting better at pushing bad information to news outlets who uncritically report it as "fact" without bothering to research the groups.

Citing Kindergarten Marxist Indoctrination, Breitbart Launches "Big Education"

Andrew Breitbart claims that Kindergarten children are subjected to "Marxist Indoctrination," so he has to start a new site to save 'merica:


Fortunately for everyone, Breitbart already revealed exactly what his site will be like when he shamefully distorted the quotes of two Missouri professors teaching a Labor Studies Course:

Lembke Uses Tea Party Blog To Whine About How Misunderstood He Is

After leading a group of grandstanding state senators fillibustering to deny money for healthcare, education funds, and unemployment benefits (and demonizing the unemployed as lazy in the process), Jim Lembke has searched his heart and finally found some sympathy. For himself.

Lembke apparently is feeling quite victimized over the fact that no one appreciates what a great guy he is for trying to defund our schools and kick sand in the eye of people struggling to pay the bills, and seems to be using the St. Louis Tea Party blog to vent his frustrations.

A little context before getting to the tragic story of our state's most misunderstood man. Lembke was apparently behind the push to get Chip Wood selected as the Republican County Assessor candidate:

Chip Wood’s horrid performance – taking only 34% - in the St. Louis County Assessor race has Republicans finger pointing, mainly at the process which chose their flawed candidate. One operative says that it was Sen. Jim Lembke’s people, led by Republican committeeman John Judd, who pushed for Wood over Gene McNary.

So, with that in mind, you can see how Bill Hennessy's recent post about the "selfishness" of the Missouri Republican Party is nothing more than a long list of Lembke complaints about how he doesn't get more respect while he's drinking port and smoking cigars at the good old boys club:

How selfish were these Republicans?

• One State Senator from St. Louis County attended a $150 per person fundraiser for the candidate but paid only $100. And if you think it had something to do with Chip’s property tax issue, think again. This Senator from an affluent area never asked for the money back after the story broke.
• A rising star in the GOP House (who hopes to be Speaker one day) is busy amassing over $1 million for his re-election to the House. A million bucks for a race in which he’s likely to run uncontested. He’ll spread that wealth around next year—to buy votes for the Speakership. With tons of cash in the bank, this bright young man did little or nothing for the assessor race—yet his constituents will be disproportionately damaged when the elected Democrat assessor uses his power to redistribute wealth in St. Louis County.
• In his race for the Senate, Jim Lembke worked tirelessly to win in a very tough district. But the Missouri GOP did almost nothing to help. In 2010, the Missouri GOP did as little as possible in St. Louis County. The result: two state-wide Republican candidates who won their elections handily lost landslides in St. Louis County.

So, to summarize:

• Boo hoo, a state senator only paid $100 for a fundraiser for Lemke's candidate.
• Boo hoo, a "rising star" didn't give Lembke's candidate any money.
• Boo hoo, nobody helped poor, "tireless" Jim Lembke.

I'm sure that schoolchildren, the unemployed, bus riders, and people who would benefit from health care infrastructure are all crying their eyes out at this tale of woe from Lembke, the Most Misunderstood Man in Missouri.

Shocker! Recipient of Sinquefield Donations Wants to Deprive Public Schools of Funding!

Great catch by Sean at FiredUp of some more craziness from State Senator Brian Nieves. Nieves is off his rocker as usual, so you should read the full post for pure entertainment value if nothing else, but the issue that set Nieves off is pretty interesting. Basically, Nieves has been threatening to block $200 million dollars in federal education funds for Missouri Schools. And, as pointed out by Union R-XI School Superintendent Steve Bryant, Nieves is also the recipient of campaign contributions from Missouri's favorite millionaire voucher evangelist Rex Sinquefield:

“His (Nieves) idea is that we need to work on federal spending, but I just don’t feel this type of political stunt is how we accomplish that,” said Bryant. “It seems likely that his philosophy centers around major contributors like Rex Sinquefield.”

And more:

“I certainly understand the point that Sen. Nieves is trying to make in curtailing federal spending, and I don’t think anyone disagrees that we need to make more changes at the federal level, and at the same time, I understand the financial needs of this state,” Bryant said.

“This money is being put out regardless. It is already in the pipeline. He certainly has the right to make a point, but that money won’t be sent back to the federal government — it will be redistributed to other states,” Bryant added. “It really puts a big hole in the already strained budget of Missouri.”

“That jobs bill was to plug a hole in the state education budget. I think it is a real detriment in out ability to serve kids,” Bryant said,

Another superintendent shared Bryant's views on the fillibuster:

“It really was on the verge on ridiculous, but this latest change of events appears to be good news for public school districts,” VanLeer said. “I understand the principle of the matter, but it’s at the expense of schoolchildren.”

Just another day of common sense and basic decency being trumped by dogmatic extremism built on the foundation of free-market mumbo-jumbo.

Loesch Contradicts Herself in Six Minutes

Of course, this is nothing compared to the average 4.7 contradictions per minute of her radio show, but it's still a pretty funny example. Loesch, as always, is angry at Media Matters for America Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, presumably because he retweeted this post about Loesch's failure to do basic research. So first she accuses him of "using a mother for politics:"

It's not at all clear why Loesch claims Boehlert is using Kelley Williams-Bolar for politics: I don't think he's even written about the subject and certainly hasn't made any statements like, "it's Glenn Beck's politics that are responsible for her situation." But the really funny part is Loesch's very next tweet:

Yup, it's Eric Boehlert's political views (or rather, what Dana Loesch imagines are Boehlert's political views) that are entirely responsible for Kelley Williams-Bolar being convicted for allegedly lying to get her children into a better school district (I write "allegedly" because the case is complicated, and I agree with most others that her punishment was way too harsh for the suspected crime). Given that Boehlert's particular political views have absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of this case, and considering that solutions to education problems in general and the Williams-Bolar case in particular are complicated, there could not be a more textbook example of "using someone for politics" than Loesch's statement.

Jerry Brown cuts Education so he can Incarcerate Marijuana Smokers.

''We will do everything we can to minimize cuts to public schools,'' Brown said. ''I can't promise you there won't be more cuts because there will be.''

Brown told the roughly 200 people at the briefing that the state's financial situation is worse than it was in the Great Depression.

Well times are bad so Jerry Brown, the liberal from California, has decided he has no choice but to take an axe to higher education. After all higher ed accounts for 5.9% of the states budget. And really what return is there on education spending? Well there is increased economic activity, higher future tax revenues and lower crime but lets not get our priorities mixed up.

Rachel Meyer has discovered another area which might be ripe for cuts. She begins her story of her promising client who was on the way to a better life when he failed his urinalysis for marijuana. Now her client will be just another lifer in the California system. California uses 9.7%, or 10.6 billion dollars annually to lock up 175,000 citizens. Jerry Brown is following a pattern for California by cutting education and preserving incarceration dollars.. Education spending as a percentage has fallen two thirds since 1967 while spending on prisons has tripled.

Strangely Rachel is not the first to notice. In 2007 the Urban Strategies Council documented per prisoner spending at $216,000 for youth and $43,000 per adult while per pupil expenditures were less then $10,000.

The long term trend does shows a general change in attitude. Certainly Nixon's war on Drugs is in part to blame but that pales in comparison to Three strikes and Your Out. Since 1993 in California the law has radically increased the number of inmates. The law has some peculiarities. While a juveniles convictions are generally sealed for purposes of three strikes and you out the records are unsealed. Thus a person with one felony years in the past can receive tow charges for his current offense and receive a minimum 25 year sentence. People have been sentenced to twenty five years in California for shoplifting gulf clubs, stealing a slice of pizza and in one case disputing a air conditioning repair bill. Since 1990 the California prison population has increased by 73%.

I do not know about you but this does not look like a liberal state to me.