Dept. of Ed. plays more shenanigans with school rankings to implement Common Core.

The ranking Mississippi schools and districts receive this fall could stick for three years.

That’s because the state is switching to new more in-depth objectives for its classrooms to greater emphasize critical-thinking skills. By freezing its school rankings, the Mississippi Department of Education hopes schools can better prepare for those Common Core State Standards.

“We want to encourage the districts to move forward with full implementation of the Common Core, but our current assessment and the Common Core are not aligned,” said Paula Vanderford, education bureau manager for accreditation and accountability at the MDE.

Many schools have tried to begin teaching the new standards, which will be tested for the first time during the 2014-15 school year. However, they’ve also been accountable for state tests on Mississippi’s current frameworks, meaning they’ve had to juggle two different sets of standards.

Results on those state tests are used to determine a school’s and a district’s letter grade.

“Districts have a fear of moving into full implementation of Common Core because the assessments will be used in the accountability system,” Vanderford said. “We thought if we were able to not assign a performance classification over the next couple of years, that would release some of that fear, and districts would move toward full implementation of Common Core.”

Students still will take state tests under the old standards next school year and their test scores will be released to the public. But those results will have no impact on schools’ and districts’ letter-grade rankings, unless they improve.

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Rep. Frierson: Medicaid expansion will reduce education funding.

Funding for education is falling short because Medicaid is devouring a larger share of state money than it did a few years ago, a top Mississippi budget writer says in a letter to teachers and school administrators.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, wrote that expanding Medicaid would create more uncertainty about funding for all levels of education, from kindergarten through universities.

“Do you think we should expand the Medicaid program knowing how it may cost the educational community?” Frierson wrote. “Can the educational institutions afford not to take a position on the expansion of the Medicaid program?”

But a Democrat who used to be a budget writer disputes the premise of Frierson’s letter. Rep. Cecil Brown, of Jackson, said in an interview Wednesday that money for education has fallen short because of many financial choices, including giving tax breaks to corporations and setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the state’s financial reserves.

“Education hasn’t been funded because there hasn’t been a willingness to fund it,” Brown said, criticizing Republican leaders, including former two-term Gov. Haley Barbour, who left office in January 2012.

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State paying Iowa consulting firm $38K to find next Superintendent of Education.

Consultant Gary Ray and his employees will survey educational leaders and associations about what they want to see in the next superintendent, drawing up a profile that the board could approve by the end of the month. The candidate pool would be winnowed to a group of 8 to 12 people, with the board making its selection after one or two rounds of interviews in September.

Board member Charles McClelland, of Jackson, said he’d like to expedite the process because he fears that candidates might not want to leave their current jobs in the middle of the fall semester. But Ray told board members through a video conference that because many school personnel would be on vacation during the summer, his firm needed the full 90 days to publicize the opening and recruitment of candidates.

“The summer time is a difficult time to recruit because a lot of people are just not around,” Ray said. He agreed that the planned schedule might mean the next superintendent won’t start work until early 2014.

The state is paying Ray and Associates, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, more than $38,000 to help with the search.

Board members agreed to pay a new superintendent “in the range” of $300,000. Board members said the superintendent’s pay is capped at $305,000 a year.

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Thousands of MS public school seniors flunk exams required to graduate.

Mississippi officials are trying to retest hundreds of high school seniors who flunked exams that are required for graduation.

Seniors statewide are streaming to Mississippi State University to get over the hurdle and receive diplomas with classmates. Any student who needs to pass only one exam to graduate is being offered the chance to try one more time.

Interim state Superintendent of Education Lynn House said more than 100 students registered for tests Thursday, and the state could give more tests than that Friday. MSU’s Research and Curriculum Unit is giving the exams, which normally cost as much as $250 per student, per test.

“We need to do what we can to get students to graduate on time and that is one thing we could do,” said Wayne Gann of Corinth, chairman of the state Board of Education.

Gann said both he and House had received phone calls from school officials trying to win another chance for seniors. The Hazlehurst school district, for example, took seven students to MSU Thursday.

Since 2003, Mississippi public high school students seeking to graduate have been required to pass four subject-area tests — algebra I, English II, biology I and U.S. history.

Of the roughly 28,400 Mississippi seniors this year, about 3,000 have not passed all four tests, said James Mason of the state Department of Education.

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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

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Snowden: Medicaid sponging up education dollars.

BY: Rep. Greg Snowden

A few years ago, a then prominent member of the House Appropriations Committee (a Democrat who no longer serves in the Legislature) stated during floor debate that “Medicaid is a cancer which will eat up the General Fund.” This legislator was not trashing the Medicaid program itself, which he in fact supported; however, he was making the sensible (indeed, undeniable) observation that whenever our state’s Medicaid spending increases, there simply is less money left to spend on Education, Public Safety, and everything else.

Rep. Herb Frierson (R-Poplarville), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee
Mississippi’s current House Appropriations Chairman, Rep. Herb Frierson (R-Poplarville), wrestles first hand with this fiscal phenomenon every year as he provides leadership in the state budgeting process. A coach and teacher in earlier life, Herb has a head for numbers, and a heart for Education. No one is more committed to sufficiently funding public Education at all levels than is Herb Frierson.

This week, Herb has sent out a letter to Educational leaders all over Mississippi: school superintendents, school board members, college presidents and trustees, etc. His message? Mississippi Educators have a stake in the decision whether Mississippi’s Medicaid program should be expanded under Obamacare so as to add 300,000 new recipients to the rolls. Why? Because the same pot of money (i.e., the General Fund) is used both to fund Education and to pay our state’s Medicaid match; a critical truth seemingly missed altogether by advocates recklessly pushing the Legislature to embrace a premature Obamacare expansion.

Although the choice for Mississippians isn’t whether we prefer to fund schools or to fund hospitals (not yet, at least), a decision by Mississippi lawmakers to expand Medicaid necessarily would result in serious long term consequences for the state General Fund budget. A “rush to judgment” is exactly the wrong approach, and certainly one Mississippi Educators, especially, should resist.

Read the letter HERE.

How much do Mississippi’s public college presidents make?

The Chronicle of Higher Education released their annual ranking of executive compensation at 191 public colleges including Mississippi schools.

According to the Chronicle, public college leaders are seeing an increase in pay. The median base compensation rose to $441,392 from 2010-2011.

As for the Mississippi public college president’s total compensation for the 2012 fiscal year, according to the Chronicle, Mississippi State University’s Mark Keenum’s had $458,299. University of Mississippi president Daniel W. Jones received $454,298 and former University of Southern Mississippi president Martha Saunders made $369,125.

Read More.

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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?

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Harrison: Will charter schools survive a constitutional challenge?

The Legislature passed a comprehensive charter school law that allows public funds to be spent on charter schools that do not have to adhere to many of the guidelines and governance of traditional public schools. In return, the schools agree to a charter to meet certain goals.

On the surface, there does not appear to be any legal issue surrounding charter schools. The Legislature also created a whole new state agency – the Mississippi Charter School Authorizing Board – to oversee and to approve charter schools, which also does not appear to create any legal issues.

It is of interest to note, though, that the state Board of Education is one of the only boards established in the Mississippi Constitution. Most boards and commissions that oversee state agencies are created only in law – at a lower level than the Constitution.

But the Board of Education and the Board of Trustees of state Institutions of Higher Learning, notably, are created in the state Constitution.

The Constitution states specifically that the Board of Education “shall manage and invest in public schools, according to law,” and “formulate policies according to law” for the public schools.

Could it be argued that since the Authorizing Board will be managing money and setting policy for charter schools, which have been described as public schools, that it is usurping the constitutional authority of the Board of Education?

That could be an issue for the courts to decide here in Mississippi at some point.

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Atheists sue Northwest Rankin for allowing student-led religious assembly.

American Humanist Association (Photo credit: Ryan Somma)

A Mississippi high school forced students to attend on-campus programs where fellow students urged them to turn to Jesus for hope and eternal life, according to an atheist group that has sued.

The district has denied that assemblies were mandatory and says they were legal.

A lawsuit filed by the American Humanist Association asks a federal judge to bar the Rankin County School District from having religious assemblies. The suit also seeks to hold Northwest Rankin High School Principal Charles Frazier personally liable. Humanist Association attorney Bill Burgess said Frazier should have known better than to allow the gathering.

The district has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed April 24 in U.S. District Court in Jackson, and administrators could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

It’s the latest in a series of school prayer struggles in Mississippi. But while many of the cases have occurred in small towns, this one centers on a 1,600-student school in fast-growing suburban area that includes visible religious minorities including a Hindu temple. The Humanist Association, based in Washington, D.C., says some students there have no religious faith.

The suit was brought on behalf of a 16-year-old Northwest Rankin junior named only as M.B. in the complaint.

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