Plunkett: More evidence of collaboration to steal public funds at Mississippi Dept. of Education.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett
I first noticed a blog post by the Bigger Pie Forum that published emails showing the Dept. of Education’s interior politics and pressures when it comes to school rankings on May 10 through a tweet. Now that story has been picked up by the Clarion Ledger. It ran this morning.

What it clearly shows is how out of whack things have been as it relates to accountability at the states government run schools, and how the more populous districts have used their considerable power to sway officials at MDE to keep taxpayer money flowing into the coffers.

Bigger Pie reported:

In August 2011, MDE’s former director of its Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) told an MDE contract worker via e-mail that he arbitrarily changed school ratings to make certain schools look more successful than they actually were. Some ratings alternations were made at the request of superintendents.

Former ORS director, Ken Thompson, e-mailed computer programmer Steve Hebbler (who is still under contract with MDE) about finalizing assessment files for the accountability model. Thompson mentioned “appeals” by school administrators who were not happy with their schools’ ratings and wanted them changed.

Judging by Thompson’s emails the pressure must have been intense. In the published emails he said he had become “too tired to fight”.

“I just finished wading through the appeals. We received 33 appeals but it was mostly garbage. I swear I think someone gave out stupid pills this year by the truck load.

“Jackson Public Schools decided they didn’t like the grade-level of 45 students so they want them excluded just because they think they are too old to be in the grade that JPS placed them.

“Hinds County thinks we should apportion proficiency rather than use FAY so they sent pages of students to apportion.

“Tupelo just can’t read and sent pages of students that they claimed weren’t in the SLAIF.

“And the list goes on….

“Some appeals were close enough to valid that I let them have them since it made a difference in the school. Some I let have them just because I’m too tired to fight. There were several errors by schools miscoding test forms that resulted in Pearson restoring the assessments. Arthur is working on getting those results updated. We will have a few MAAECF scoring appeals to change as well. Arthur is going to get those results from Susan in Student Assessment.”

Thompson resigned from MDE in December 2011. He now works as a private educational consultant

Thompson told the Clarion Ledger that “he sometimes gave schools the benefit of the doubt when making decisions because he feels accountability labels in some cases serve as “a ‘gotcha’ system to judge schools.”

The labels put public pressure on schools, Thompson said, and he understands why schools fight for every percentage point.

The Clarion Ledger reporter also decided to call on government school apologist and protector Nancy Loome of The Parents’ Campaign who began circling the wagons for her benefactors at the Superintendents Association.

“When we use assessments and accountability labels to demonize public education, that is a misuse of that system,” she said.

In another email exchange with DeSoto County Schools Accountability and Research Director Ryan Kuykendall, Thompson freely admitted to cooking the books.

“Since your public rate is higher than the rate on your final report, the correct graduation rate was slightly lower than the graduation rate I had originally given you,” Thompson said in an email later that same day. “Consequently, I used the incorrect rate since it was the most advantageous to the district.”

Is there any wonder our education system is in the shape it’s in?

Mrs. Loome has it partially correct. The use of assessments and accountability labels have been misused. But, not to demonize public education. Government school administrators have managed to do that job all on their own.

This effort has been an outright fraud perpetrated by public school administrators against the taxpayers, the students and the parents of Mississippi. Will none of our public officials charged with the job of protecting the public interest call it what it is?

This deserves, at the very least, to be the subject of an investigation.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Related articles

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• Anderson: Take a closer look at Common Core authors (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• How much do Mississippi’s public college presidents make? (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Separate public, charter school boards will hurt education (newsobserver.com)

Managing Editor Keith Plunkett to be on The JT Show Tuesday at noon to discuss latest in the Medicaid fight.

Mississippi PEP’s Managing Editor Keith Plunkett will be on the JT Show at noon Tuesday to discuss the latest developments in the Medicaid expansion versus reauthorization debate. Listen in or find your local station HERE.

To learn more by reading Mississippi PEP’s many articles on the subject of Medicaid, go to our latest Newsletter.

Newsletter: The Many Layers of the Medicaid Debate

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Plunkett: Media attempting to ride to rescue of Mississippi Democrats with new Medicaid narrative.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett
Democrats have been flailing around looking for any and every reason to remain relevant in a Medicaid debate that, except for their obstructionism in the Mississippi House, passed them by weeks ago.

House Democrat leader Rep. Bobby Moak’s latest attempts, with the help of long time Representative Cecil Brown, has been to paint Medicaid expansion as a jobs program. It’s the latest argument in an ever-changing and undisciplined message from Democrats.  Before, it was about rural hospitals closing due to the loss of federal money, and before that it was about hospitals losing their good credit ratings. Both of the latter arguments have been disproven. The argument as it relates to job creation is, at best, speculative.

Besides attempts during the legislative session to organize rallies in conjunction with the Mississippi Hospital Association to support expansion of the program–a strategy that did little more than trot out examples of the very reason the Medicaid program is in the terrible shape it is in–there has been nothing consistent about the Democrats message. Chairman of the Democrat Party Rickey Cole hasn’t been seen publicly commenting on it in over a month.

But, never fear. The cavalry is coming.

Two analysis articles written by the Associated Press and another by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal are attempting to give Dems a hand in rewriting the script with a “one-two punch”.

The AP analysis attempts to recognize a tremor in the political steadiness of Republicans. The Daily Journal editorial tries to help the Democrats refocus the argument on the wretched plight of the impoverished masses.

Back in 2006, the AP welcomed a new director who made it perfectly clear that in order to compete, the news organization would have to be more of an advocate for causes. This latest article appears to fit well within that organizational reboot.

In short, the AP analysis tries its dead-level best to show that Governor Phil Bryant’s latest comments, that he would attempt to run the Medicaid program, is a crack in the Republican foundations, an example of “veering from the script.”

The AP analysis said:

Beyond the cloudy legality of the Republican’s claim, it turns away from the clear-as-glass GOP strategy of blaming Democrats for voting against the program and causing a calamity where 640,000 Mississippians wouldn’t have health care coverage come July 1.

Those GOP positions, repeated over the last two months, appeared aimed at ratcheting up pressure on members of the House Democratic minority. The idea is that some would give in and vote to reauthorize the state-federal health insurance program for the poor without insisting on expanding Medicaid to cover additional people. The plan appeared to be to build the pressure into June and then for Bryant to call lawmakers back for a special session, with the threat of the program’s imminent collapse teetering over Democrats’ heads.

But if it’s Bryant’s position that he can keep Medicaid going even if the Legislature doesn’t act, why say it out loud? It’s likely to encourage some Democrats to keep fighting.

There’s a couple of problems with the AP’s attempt at encouraging the Democrats to continue this political game: Democrats DID vote against reauthorizing the program. And, this WILL be a calamity for the 641,194 needy Mississippians who now rely on Medicaid.

A precursory read of Governor Bryant’s comments show a man frustrated with those two facts, and one who cares about the elderly and disabled who the Democrats are willing to “toss out in the street.”

The man said he cares enough to do everything he can and that is a political weakness? Sorry, that boat doesn’t float.

Like Reading Mississippi PEP’s Original Content? Help Us Keep It Coming.

The Daily Journal editorial attempts to pick up the other side of the argument; that no one is speaking for the people who need Medicaid.

They write the following:

So far, little has been said about the consequences for the program’s 640,000 current clients.

Politics so far trumps patients – those 640,000 people who are primarily the disabled, poor pregnant women, poor children and the elderly.

The additional 300,000 who would be eligible under expanded coverage aren’t in the equation except as a footnote about uncompensated care provided by hospitals already hard-pressed to stay financially afloat.

That is a complete fabrication, and the Editorial Board at the Daily Journal knows it. The Governor’s office released a well-publicized list of the services that would end for Medicaid patients come July 1, and has clearly discussed with the media that the needs of those currently on the program should come first.

Finally, the Daily Journal pushes another fallacy on it’s readers. The opinion of the Editorial Board is that if it weren’t for the hard headedness of Gov. Bryant there COULD be a compromise in Mississippi along the lines of the Arkansas’ model.

In that instance, the Governor of Arkansas cut a deal with the US Dept. of Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius to take the Medicaid expansion money and apply it to private insurance through a state-run insurance exchange.

The Daily Journal Editorial board says:

Mississippi has a health insurance exchange constructed and ready to be implemented, but Gov. Bryant, in a disagreement with statewide elected Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, refused to take the necessary steps, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services disallowed the exchange.

Chaney moved to create the state exchange on the premise that it would be better for the state to run its own exchange than to have the federal government do it for us.

There’s been no compelling argument to the contrary; Bryant’s decision was clearly political.

Again, that’s a load of crap.

There are plenty of compelling reasons not to have a state-based health exchange under ObamaCare, but the main one is the job-killing taxation that only comes with a state-based exchange. The IRS ruled that it could tax companies and implement the individual mandate regardless of whether there was a federal exchange or a state exchange. But, that is outside of the way ObamaCare was written and a lawsuit filed in Oklahoma last week is meant to get to the bottom of it.

In December of 2012, Commissioner Chaney heatedly debated some of these finer points with me on a statewide radio telling me I was wrong because “the IRS already ruled on that.”

But, the lawsuit clearly shows this is not settled, and much of the wheeling-and-dealing of the Obama Administration to arm twist states into expanding Medicaid may in fact turn out to be completely unenforceable and unworkable.

The ObamaCare law, and the Medicaid expansion that is a foundational piece of it’s implementation, is unsettled. Until the time that we can know for sure whether the federal government has the constitutional authority to cut DSH payments to hospitals, for example; or if the IRS rulings will stand up to the latest lawsuit over whether they now have carte-blanche authority to make law and tax individuals without prior approval of Congress, there simply is no reason to move ahead with this liberal experiment.

In the meantime, Mississippi Medicaid patients are about to lose services. That is the one thing Mississippi has control over right now, and where the focus of lawmakers should be.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Related articles

• Plunkett: DSH payments will never be cut. Dems should vote to reauthorize Medicaid now. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
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• Plunkett: Dems, civil rights groups continue pushing “angry teacher” narrative in fight against student protection. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Democrat Rep. Chuck Young: Expand Medicaid or risk “civil unrest”. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Division of Medicaid preparing to notify beneficiaries of loss of coverage. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Gov. Bryant: Dems playing political game with lives of 641,194 needy Mississippians. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Democrats continue to play politics with lives of most vulnerable Mississippians. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)

Anderson: Take a closer look at Common Core authors

BY: Rita Anderson

Dot Ward’s column warning of the Common Core state standards in the Clarion Ledger appeared on the same day, coincidentally, that I received a MississippiPEP article with more detailed warnings. Keith Plunkett points out that Marc Tucker, who spoke to a MS Department of Education forum in 2011 and is a chief player in the Common Core initiative, has never taught a day in his life in a K-12 classroom.

This morning on SuperTalk Radio the on-air guest was Joy Pullman, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, who stated that the four persons responsible for crafting the Common Core state standards have never been K-12 classroom teachers and have no background in writing such standards.

Common Core is not a state-led initiative. The National Governors’ Association is a D.C.- based trade association, which receives half its funds from the federal government. According to Heartland, as recently as two weeks ago, NGA had not released what, if any, resolution that governors voted to authorize Common Core.

Common Core assessments begin in 2014 and this element brings another set of challenges. Then there is the requirement that states establish a longitudinal data system, which includes the sharing of private information about students across state lines.

Granted, our individual liberties are being systematically eroded at the federal level, but must we just roll over?

Who had the authority to commit Mississippi school children to a massive new and untested educational initiative? If there is no local control of education, why do we even have local school boards?

Related articles

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Managing Editor Keith Plunkett to discuss Medicaid expansion developments on Gallo show at 7:30

Plunkett

Mississippi PEP Managing Editor Keith Plunkett will be a guest on the Paul Gallo Show this morning at 7:30AM on Supertalk. The discussion will be the latest developments regarding Medicaid expansion, including a new study released by the New England Journal of Medicine of a  two-year study of expansion in Oregon.

Find your local station or listen online at Supertalk.fm

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Plunkett: Another nail in the Medicaid expansion coffin.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett
Democrats and left-leaning groups have continued to push the expansion of Medicaid in Mississippi over the past few weeks.

A group calling itself the Mississippi Health Care Access Coalition has been touring the state using the same set of numbers released a year ago. They also say expansion will promote preventative care and create savings by reducing emergency room visits. That explanation, like many that continue to be promoted, has also been debunked by a study released this week.

Rep. Cecil Brown wrote an Op-Ed in support of expansion that went out to news outlets across the state last week. He used the recent passage of the incentive package to bring Yokahama Tire to Clay County as a comparison to incentivizing the creation of jobs in the medical industry by expanding Medicaid.

Out of all the explanations I have heard given by Democrats for expanding the program, I believe Rep. Brown’s has been the most well-thought out and presented so far. However, he still relies on an “apples-to-oranges” comparison of 2 industries that work nothing alike. Beyond the comparison of the dollar to dollar investment by the state, the government regulations and the return on investment are completely different.

There are plenty of conservatives out there who aren’t too happy about the Yokahama tax incentive plan and the state investment in a private enterprise. But, at least that offers a return from the private generation of wealth from creation of goods and provision of services.

Creating 9,000 jobs by expanding Medicaid, if that number is anywhere near correct, is still creating 9,000 jobs DIRECTLY dependent upon government continuing to subsidize.

State government investment in federal government subsidies that creates more government and more subsidy doesn’t create anything but more dependence. Where in that scenario does private investment begin to spin off and take up the slack? I think we all know history shows us that it doesn’t.

The expansion proponents rely on two basic arguments:

1. The federal government will cut DSH payments to hospitals meaning hospitals in Mississippi who rely on federal dollars will have to close. This has already been revealed to be a bogus argument, and we have seen hospitals back away publicly from promoting it. I won’t go into it any further here, but you can read more HERE.
2. Medicaid expansion will increase healthier lives through preventative care and therefore healthier outcomes for the working uninsured who now must rely on services via emergency room visits when they are sick.

As I have written before, there are many studies that show the actual physical outcomes of traditional Medicaid patients fall short of even those who have NO insurance.(Again, not going into that here, but you can read more HERE.)

Medicaid is a program with terrible health outcomes for those who are on the program now. Unfortunately, that still doesn’t clearly tell us how the expansion of the program would fare among those who are currently in relatively good health and “work but can’t afford health insurance.”

Like Rep. Brown’s investment argument, that too wasn’t a clear comparison. How will outcomes change as a result of a healthier group of people receiving benefits and therefore leading healthier lifestyles and participating in preventative care? We could only look to the outcomes the program has produced so far, from the sickest of the sick.

Until Now.

Now we do have just such a comparison. And, it proves once again that the basic arguments for expansion don’t stand up in the real world.

Oregon has been sited by some as an example of what Medicaid expansion would look like, and how wonderful it would be. The state expanded it’s program through a federal pilot project in 2008. The participants in the expansion were drawn from a lottery of working poor applicants. A health study group was formed to analyze the data of 6387 adults who were randomly selected to be able to apply for Medicaid coverage and 5842 adults who remained uninsured.

Measures included blood-pressure, cholesterol, and glycated hemoglobin levels; screening for depression; medication inventories; and self-reported diagnoses, health status, health care utilization, and out-of-pocket spending for such services.

The Results of the Study Don’t Look So Good.

The results of the study were released last week. It found no significant effect of Medicaid coverage on the prevalence or diagnosis of hypertension or high cholesterol levels or on the use of medication for these conditions.

The Oregon Health Study Group’s conclusion published in the New England Journal of Medicine was that the study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes, and no measurable decrease in emergency room visits.

Hello?! Isn’t that what every study has told us over the past two decades?

The use of the services by new enrollees and the costs to the taxpayers providing those services increased. As did the mental well-being of the new enrollees due to a lessened financial strain.

Call me crazy but the cost of expanding Medicaid seems a lot to pay just so someone can feel better about dying faster.

Let’s get past this idea that government expansion creates anything other than a feeding frenzy and a reduction of service to those who really need it.

Medicaid should remain for the most needy among us. The last thing anyone wants are the disabled and elderly left to die alone and without medical services.

The Division of Medicaid is preparing to notify them that they are about to lose their coverage.

Democrat’s and this coalition should stop this ridiculous effort to throw the sickest among us out in the street to prove a political point. They should get to the table now and get this done.

The Oregon study is the last nail in the coffin. Pun intended. It’s time to reauthorize the program and move on.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

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PEP Talk Podcast: Rep. Cecil Brown on the push to do away with inspection stickers in Mississippi.

Rep. Cecil Brown joined Managing Editor Keith Plunkett to discuss Brown’s bill HB 499. The bill would have done away with the state requirement for inspection stickers on motor vehicles. However, following passage in the State House by a 112 to 5 vote, the bill never made it out of committee in the State Senate.

Brown discusses his plans for moving the legislation to passage in the 2014 session.

This podcast is brought to you by:

Plunkett: Gulfport High School’s Academic Institute sounds very familiar.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

Back on September 3, 2011 Mississippi PEP was a month-old website. At the time, I was the only person writing and linking articles from state news sources to the site. I was focused a great deal on public education as the state prepared to take on the charter school issue, and other education reforms in 2012. So, when I found a Department of Education forum taking place on September 14, 2011 in Rankin County involving a controversial speaker I posted an article about that speaker.

It became one of my most linked articles, and has been shared all over the web by websites all over the country. Even today, a year and a half later, we continue to get web traffic from links to the article.

Marc Tucker was the speaker. He is considered controversial due, in part, to a letter he wrote to Hillary Clinton in 1992 that outlined a radical new approach to education that would have the federal government take over education standards across the country. What is even more interesting about this is that Tucker has never taught a day in his life in K-12. He has no education degree, and only for a brief two-year stint taught a college course.

A System of Control

In the “Dear Hillary” letter, as it’s come to be called, Tucker lays out a plan “to remold the entire American system” into “a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone,” coordinated by “a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels” where curriculum and “job matching” will be handled by counselors “accessing the integrated computer-based program.”

Tucker’s plan would change the mission of schools from teaching children academic basics and knowledge to training them to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards. Nothing in this comprehensive plan has anything to do with teaching schoolchildren how to read, write, or calculate.

The plan would use “national standards” and “national testing” to cement national control of tests, assessments, school honors and rewards, financial aid, and the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), which is designed to replace the high school diploma.

Designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of to educate them so they can make their own life choices.

It’s Here.

That’s why yesterday I felt a certain familiarity when I read that Gulfport High School was announced as the first school in Mississippi to implement an Academic Institute.

The Sun Herald reported:

Gulfport is the first district in the state to offer Academic Institutes, which is a mix of intensive curriculum and project-based learning that integrates academic course work with real-life experiences to better prepare students for life after graduation, Superintendent Glen East said.

Administrators studied similar curriculums in Tennessee, California, Florida and GERMANY before starting the program in Gulfport.

Tucker’s ambitious plan began to be implemented in three laws passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1994: the Goals 2000 Act, the School-to-Work Act, and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The move to nationalize standards continued with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind.

Some of the implementation mechanisms in those laws have been altered somewhat over the years, and the names have changed. But, the plan itself lives on under a new name: Common Core. Mississippi is one of the 48 states that have bought into the Common Core push.

Computer Database Employment Matching

The Tucker Plan proposed using a computer database, a.k.a. “a labor market information system,” into which school personnel would scan all information about every schoolchild and his family, identified by the child’s social security number: academic, medical, mental, psychological, behavioral, and interrogations by counselors. The computerized data would be available to the school, the government, and future employers.

Again, the similarities to the Gulfport High School program are eye-opening. From the Sun Herald article:

Freshmen and sophomores begin with Common Core Institutes, a rigorous college-preparatory experience with compressed high school coursework. It focuses on math, science, English, history and other electives required for graduation.

Students will complete advanced algebra, trigonometry and even pre-calculus by their sophomore years.

As this group prepares to enter its junior year, the learning will be focused on developing specific interests, skills and abilities for college and career readiness, he said.

Students are evaluated on their skills, interests and abilities beginning in elementary school with the goal of preparing them for college or a career.

That evaluation sounds a lot like Tuckers plan of a computer database where “school personnel would scan all information about every schoolchild and his family, identified by the child’s social security number: academic, medical, mental, psychological, behavioral, and interrogations by counselors.”

Here is the final point from the Sun Herald article about Gulfport High School’s plan:

The district will work with business and industry to provide students with mentoring opportunities and paid and unpaid internships in their chosen fields, East said.

Sounds a great deal like Tucker’s proposal that the “computerized data would be available to the school, the government, and future employers”, doesn’t it?

Keep Pushing for Choices

In 1988, Tucker became the president of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) where he joined up with Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, and Ira Magaziner to get states to move away from local control of their schools and migrate to national standards.

In 1991, Marc Tucker and Lauren Resnick created New Standards that pushed standards-based reform. In 1998, he and Judy Codding created America’s Choice that made sure the national standards were further implemented into the schools; and in 2005, Tucker created the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.

Tucker’s whole plan has been to require public school teachers to quit focusing on knowledge-based, academic content that emphasizes mostly objective testing with right-or-wrong answers. Instead, Tucker and his cohorts have managed to restructure public schools into a national program of social engineering through subjective assessments that emphasize feelings, opinions, beliefs, multiculturalism, political correctness, diversity, global warming, homosexuality, and “social justice.”

This effort has been given a new level of control under President Obama and Arne Duncan who have added federal “teeth” by creating Common Core Standards and the millions of federal dollars available through Race to the Top funding.

The whole thing reminds me of a Pink Floyd video where school children dressed in gray march in lines through a dark dank factory school “system”, as they are trained to take their place in the corporate world.

If this is the future of public education, then the push for continued education reforms is sorely needed to include vouchers to give parents the ability to opt out. I pray that my youngest will be out of school before this makes it to our school district.

One of the major arguments against Governor Bryant’s proposal to increase standards for students entering college to become teachers was that many of those in college change, sometimes dramatically, from the time they enter university until the time they have completed courses and entered the workforce. It’s a very valid point.

The Mississippi Department of Education’s 2013 teacher of the year from Hancock High School, Joshua Lindsey, says he didn’t even go to college to become a teacher, but found it to be his calling.

Would Lindsey have been picked to be a teacher by the government school bureaucrats? Do we want government making those choices for our children?

None of us knows what wonderful things God has in store for us. Yet we somehow are going to buy in to a government program that evaluates children’s career capabilities and puts them on an employment track beginning in elementary school?

This absolutely flies in the face of personal freedom and the freedom to maintain Faith in Divine Providence. Instead, future generations will see the role of god replaced with the all knowing government school system.

Do as your told. March to that new job, and don’t get out of line.

God help us.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Related articles

• Test-Based Accountability, International Comparisons, Standards-mania: Lessons Ignored (atthechalkface.com)
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PEP Talk Podcast: Treasurer Fitch discusses the outcome of the MPACT audit and the future of the program.

In the latest PEP Talk Podcast, Treasurer Lynn Fitch joined Managing Editor Keith Plunkett to discuss the outcome of the audit of the Mississippi Prepaid College Tuition program, and how the MPACT Board may proceed to save the program from insolvency.

This PEP Talk Podcast is brought to you by:

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First Look: Final phase of the MPACT Actuarial Audit

UPDATE: Listen to this interview with Treasurer Lynn Fitch for more information about the MPACT Audit and the future of the program.

The final phase of the audit of the MPACT program is released today by Treasurer Lynn Fitch after presentation to the MPACT Board.

Here is a first look:

View this document on Scribd

Below are links that show the history of where we are, and how we got there:

September 17, 2012: MPACT program being audited

September 19, 2012: Fitch and Reeves spar over MPACT program at budget meeting

September 28, 2012: Wilson: Fitch right to verify soundness of MPACT program

January 12, 2013: Treasurer Fitch says first phase of MPACT audit raises concerns.

March 4, 2013: PEP Talk Podcast: Treasurer Lynn Fitch talks Financial Literacy, MPACT and state debt planning.

Today: MPACT Board to receive performance audit on underperforming program.

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