On Evidence suggests voucher expansion won’t lift education
Posted on June 16 at 11:38 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
2004: Bush's Department of Ed compared charters to traditional public schools. ""Charter schools in all five case study states were less likely than traditional public schools to meet performance standards even after controlling for several school characteristics."
2006: Bush's Department of Ed compared private schools to traditional public schools. Public schools were higher in 4th grade math, and private schools were higher in 8th grade reading. Other scores were similar.
2009: CREDO study of charter schools in 16 states. Charters scored better than traditional public schools in 5 states and scored worse in 6 states (including Arizona). The other states were a wash.
2009: Study of Washington, DC, voucher program. A few subgroups of students in the voucher program performed better than those in traditional public schools, though the study expressed concern some of those could be false results.
2010: University of Arkansas study of the Milwaukee voucher program. Milwaukee has had vouchers for 20 years. "The University of Arkansas study, which tracks about 2,700 comparable students over time, has shown no statistically significant difference between the test scores of voucher students and Milwaukee Public Schools students."
2013: Study of Louisiana vouchers at the end of the program's first year. "LEAP scores [the Lousiana standardized test] for third- through eighth-graders show only 40 percent of voucher students scored at or above grade level this past spring. The state average for all students was 69 percent."
http://www.blogforarizona.com/blog/2013/...
On Evidence suggests voucher expansion won’t lift education
Posted on June 15 at 3:17 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
"Sure, there are poor quality schools in every system, and, while Milwaukee Public Schools has its shining star schools, we have far too many schools that are substandard. But Borsuk sees that the bad schools in the voucher program are “especially bad,” much worse than anything in MPS.
While MPS is slowly improving student achievement, the latest Public Policy Forum study shows that Milwaukee Public School students are achieving at a higher rate than voucher students in nearly every category.
Every year, we have children that show up at our public school doors wishing to transfer into our schools from these private, voucher schools. Too often, the students show up without transcripts because the voucher schools really didn’t keep any records.
For every St. Marcus Lutheran School that is highlighted as a quality school within the voucher programs, there are two or three voucher schools that are truly awful and should be shut down. Now the state legislature is considering extending this system statewide without requiring any additional accountability measures. We can’t afford to let these children down again."
http://www.milwaukeemag.com/article/4820...
On Health care changes will make Rock County hire
Posted on June 15 at 10:58 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
"After spending 25 years in the health care field, most of it related to making hospitals more efficient and effective, I have become skeptical of many of Washington’s reform efforts, especially by my party, the GOP.
One of the biggest problems with health care is escalating, uncontrolled expenditures, taking a larger and larger proportion of our GNP. However, what Rep. Paul Ryan and the GOP want to talk about is the federal budget and cost-shifting via Medicare and Medicaid.
Experts in health care economics differ on many things. But one thing they all agree on is that raising the age for Medicare will do virtually nothing to reduce the overall cost of health care in this nation.
Under the Affordable Care Act, everyone must have insurance or be taxed. Medicare has a 3 percent administrative overhead while the private sector has run 28 percent, coming down to 20 percent as required by the ACA. Raising the Medicare age simply shifts the insurer from the government to less efficient private providers. This dumps the extra cost into the lap of the senior, who at 65 is probably unemployed and unemployable. There are no overall cost savings via efficiencies with Ryan’s Medicare “voucher” proposal."
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06...
"Jack Bernard is a retired health care executive, former Jasper County, Ga., commission chairman and former chairman of the Jasper County Republican Party."
On Walker, Republican leaders stand by voucher deal
Posted on June 6 at 4:35 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/scien...
On 10 things to know for Monday
Posted on June 6 at 9:42 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
"However, the IRS does publish the names of groups that have received special scrutiny and been approved for tax-exempt status. They recently released a list of 176 organizations that have been approved since 2010, so Martin Sullivan checked each one to figure out if it was liberal or conservative. Here's what he found:
122 conservative
48 liberal/nonconservative
6 unknown
This doesn't tell us anything definitive about the entire set of groups that got special scrutiny. If the whole set is similar to the approved set, then about two-thirds were conservative and one-third liberal—most likely because of the boom in new tea party groups in 2010. But that's just a guess.
One thing isn't a guess, however: Two-thirds of the groups who were approved for tax-exempt status were conservative. If the IRS was on a partisan witch hunt against conservative groups, that's sure an odd way of showing it, isn't it?"
On 10 things to know for Monday
Posted on June 6 at 9:35 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
"Finally, maybe all those nasty questions the IRS kept asking Tea Party groups about the nature of their political activities was not a Team Obama plot after all -- the Tea Party was probably a bigger pain to the Republican establishment than the Democrats (who actually jumped at the chance to paint all Republican candidates with the Todd Akin/Richard Mourdock/Christine O'Donnell brush. MSNBC made a living off the Tea Party!) And let's not forget that the IRS focus on the Tea Party was all done under an IRS chief who was still serving his allotted five-year term as a holdover from the Bush administration. If -- as Congressman Issa now charges -- the orders to strip-search the Tea Party actually came from "Washington," isn't it also true that the GOP establishment had more "motive, means and opportunity" for mischief than any Democrat"
On 10 things to know for Monday
Posted on June 5 at 11:40 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Still evading the question.
Hmmm.. according to your logic a conspiracy theorist could say that since Shulman and Lerner are both Republicans, it is all a scandal created by them to discredit the administration.
A partisan scandal, by definition, only involves one side, and that is not what happened, according to testimony. I am still waiting to see any proof of illegal activity, stupid, thoughtless, idiotic, yes, but not illegal yet.
On 10 things to know for Monday
Posted on June 5 at 9:32 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
"Non-conservative advocacy groups given special scrutiny by the IRS in or after 2010 included the Coffee Party USA, the alternative to the Tea Party movement that got a bunch of press in 2010, as well as such explicitly progressive groups as the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada; Rebuild the Dream, founded by former Obama administration official Van Jones; and Progressives United Inc., which was founded by former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold.
Also included in the special scrutiny were Progress Texas and Progress Missouri Inc.; Tie the Knot, which sells bow ties to raise money to promote same-sex marriage; and ProgressNow, which describes itself as "a year-round never-ending progressive campaign."
The targeting also rolled up centrist groups, such as the Across the Aisle Foundation -- the educational and cultural arm of No Labels, which worked to build momentum for an independent ticket for the presidency -- and politically neutral ones, such as The East Hampton Group for Good Government Inc., formed to encourage better leadership and management of the New York vacation town, and the League of Women Voters of Hawaii."
On 10 things to know for Monday
Posted on June 5 at 9:07 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Testimony of
The Honorable J. Russell George
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
June 3, 2013
Washington, D.C.
http://appropriations.house.gov/uploaded...
Still evading the question.
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On Evidence suggests voucher expansion won’t lift education
Posted on June 16 at 1:21 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/ap...