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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Gov. Bryant signs education reform bills.

Gov. Phil Bryant continues to tout the “transformative” potential of new education measures.

The Republican Bryant signed four bills into law Wednesday at Northwest Rankin High School, where he pledged last fall to seek many of the changes.

Among the new laws is one that expands the authority to create charter schools — public schools run by private groups that agree to meet certain standards in exchange for less regulation.

Read More

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Plunkett: Dems, civil rights groups continue pushing “angry teacher” narrative in fight against student protection.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

Democrats in concert with left-leaning groups continue to promote the idea that if the legislature allowed local school boards to decide on armed protection of students a teacher might mentally snap and injure or kill a child.

The position indicates a severe lack of trust of teachers and their dedication to students livelihood. It also shows a mistrust of educators ability to safely handle a firearm, something that many of the thousands of them already do outside the classroom.

Civil rights groups and Democrats used this misguided tactic again on Thursday in fighting against Senate Bill 2659.

SB 2659 would provide funding for school resource officers to police around primary and secondary schools. The House version of the bill would allow local school boards to develop safety policies to arm administrative employees and teachers. The policy would have to be submitted to the State Board of Education and Department of Public Safety and would authorize school superintendents to allow their employees to carry a concealed weapon with the proper permit. Language for the House amendment was inserted from House Bill 958, which died in the Senate Education Committee.

House Democrat Adrienne Wooten went a step further and insulted parents saying they should be concerned about the bill, because parents don’t properly maintain good relationships with teachers.

“You don’t know enough about these individuals to feel safe knowing that they have a weapon around your child, let alone speak of where the weapon is going to be housed,” Wooten said.

Nsombi Lambright, formerly with the ACLU and now communications director for the liberal group One Voice, directly promoted the idea of the angry teacher while attempting to place “advocates” such as herself as the ones really concerned with students well-being.

“The proposal to bring more armed guards into schools and to arm teachers is like a slap in the face to us as advocates and to those of us who are parents and aunts and mentors to young people in Mississippi Schools,” Lambright said. “As the parent of a 15-year-old in the public school system, I know that the risk of him being harmed by an angry guard or an angry teacher is far greater than him being harmed by somebody who is coming into the school from the outside.”

One may easily view this as an isolated incident, except for the fact that Democrat Representative David Myers of McComb made the same argument a few weeks ago.

Democrats would do well to remember that many teachers already own guns and use them responsibly every day.

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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Sen. Hob Bryan not happy about additional funding for MAEP.

This map shows the incorporated and unincorporated areas in Monroe County, Mississippi, highlighting Amory in red. 

Funding for public schools is expected to be about the same in the coming year as it is this budget year.

During a debate last week, Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, criticized budget writers for moving $20 million out of a fund for public school buildings. The money is being routed into the schools’ basic funding formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program.

MAEP is designed to give each school district enough money to meet midlevel academic standards, but it has been fully funded only twice in more than a decade. The formula was not fully funded during the current year, and top lawmakers say it won’t be in fiscal 2014, either.

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman Terry Burton, R-Newton, said legislators for years have been moving $20 million from the school building fund into MAEP.

“I know we’ve been doing it for years,” Bryan said. “That’s not a mitigating factor. That’s an aggravating factor.”

Burton replied: “I don’t disagree that in a perfect world, we would fund all these things. But we don’t have a perfect world.”

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Castens: Charter schools offer a chance for change.

Four decades later, Mississippi still has schools that offer only the barest of promise for students who want a real education, real opportunities, a real chance at success.

As previously acknowledged, I don’t know to what extent charter schools can counter the shortcomings of failing school districts. Some of them may prove as ineffective as the schools they replace.

But some, if the track records of other states is any indication, will be a vast improvement.

The broken educational systems in some communities condemn whole generations of their citizens to lifetimes of underachievement.

It seems not only shortsighted but utterly cruel not to try something – almost anything – that offers a chance of change.

Read More

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House and Senate Pre-K bills now go to conference for negotiation.

Mississippi State Capitol (Photo credit: Ken Lund)

The Mississippi House passed a bill Thursday to create Mississippi’s first state-funded prekindergarten program, in limited form.

House Bill 781 would create a voluntary program for 4-year-olds in some parts of the state. A similar Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, passed last week.

Both bills call for consortiums to be set up between child care centers, public and private schools, and Head Start programs to apply for funding. Successful applicants would adopt state-approved early learning standards aimed at helping children build motor skills, language, and social and emotional development, among other skills. The program would start by 2014-2015.

Read More

Government School Lobbyists: The wolves are back on the prowl

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

The government school lobbyists are dusting off their their tired old rhetoric.

In a Clarion Ledger article released this afternoon Nancy Loome of the Parents Campaign and Mississippi Association of Educators President Kevin Gilbert are pushing the familiar theme of “partnership” with legislators. Gilbert is quoted as saying, “We want our schools to be successful, and we need to come up with collaborative efforts.”

Loome said, “We need to lift up the wonderful successes, and to craft policy that allows our successes and our high-performing schools and districts to thrive.”

Those kind of statements can mean only one thing: They want control . . . again.

When organizations with track records of protecting and promoting government schools as a jobs program for teachers and administrators begin asking to hold hands and sing kumbaya with Republican leaders then we should all beware. When they point to questionable state testing like the MCT2 to illustrate improvement, and describe the continued downward spiral of ACT scores as a success then legislators should be outraged at the gall of someone who wants to help “craft policy.”

These groups have had their opportunity to do better by children and parents and chose instead to cash in.

It was Loome who joined forces with Desoto Superintendent and political boss Milton Kuykendall to kill charter school legislation in the 2012 session. Using a trojan horse tactic, Loome successfully co-opted the charter school message. In large part, helped because of a lack of organization by conservatives. She then worked behind the scenes with Kuykendall to kill charter school legislation in the House of Representatives.

An email obtained by Mississippi PEP in February of 2012 showed the action that went on behind the scenes. Loome sent the email to Kuykendall in early February, just days before the charter school vote in the legislature, asking that he rouse teachers to action against charter schools by lighting up the phone lines. She even went so far as to provide some legislators personal cell numbers. In the email to Kuykendall, Loome wrote:

“We can’t afford to waste scarce taxpayer dollars on inexperienced “mom and pop” charter organizers who don’t know what they are doing.”

She went on to knock “for profit” charter school companies that would “rake in greater profits” (greater than who?). She also wanted to be sure any legislation that may get through require that charter schools in Mississippi show a “proven track record of success.” (Obviously not a current requirement of Mrs. Loome and her pro-government school monopoly friends.)

Kuykendall, always eager to protect his fiefdom in Desoto County obliged.

Now comes Loome wanting to again “collaborate” with legislators.

We have seen this act before.

Mrs. Loome’s Parents Campaign is hooked at the hip with other liberal organizations that think they know what’s best for all children.

If Mississippi legislators successfully break the stranglehold monopoly these organizations have on the future of our children, Mrs. Loome could personally lose her ability to “rake in the profits”, as would Mr. Gilbert and the other pro-government education groups. But more importantly, the shift in political power from lobbyists to parents would be a monumental opportunity for Mississippi to begin making huge strides towards education reform, something that we have not seen under the pro-government system promoted by Mrs. Loome.

Let’s be clear about this, what is at stake here is the future of our state, not just the future of education in our state. Mississippi is dangerously close to the edge. The numbers of dropouts we have is unacceptable and the fact that government school proponents have attempted to keep dropout numbers from even being counted should be a big sign of what is really going on.

Welfare numbers continue to rise. How long can we sustain this before our state is too far gone? Who then, will be pulling the wagon, and how many can fit inside it before it simply is too heavy to tow?

Any push for a voice in the argument from The Parents Campaign, the Superintendent’s Association, the Mississippi Association of Educators and any other group that has had a hand in Mississippi’s race to the bottom should be rejected outright. These groups have overseen the failure that our state must work to correct. They wish to maintain a status quo and a cash cow at the expense of Mississippi students and our states future. It shouldn’t be tolerated, and Mrs. Loome’s games should be rejected. Legislator’s should repeat to themselves the old adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I, for one, don’t think that simply passing charter school legislation is the answer. Frankly, I think we’re too far gone. What needs to happen in Mississippi is full out school choice. Drastic? You bet. But, at this point half-measures get us nowhere. One thing is for sure, whether you’re for charters or full choice, trusting this bunch isn’t the way to go.

The wolves have their sheep’s clothing back from the cleaners. It’s fresh pressed and ready for a new legislative session.

We don’t have too many more chances at this. So, let’s not fall for that again.

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

Government School Lobbyists: The wolves are back on the prowl

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

The government school lobbyists are dusting off their their tired old rhetoric.

In a Clarion Ledger article released this afternoon Nancy Loome of the Parents Campaign and Mississippi Association of Educators President Kevin Gilbert are pushing the familiar theme of “partnership” with legislators. Gilbert is quoted as saying, “We want our schools to be successful, and we need to come up with collaborative efforts.”

Loome said, “We need to lift up the wonderful successes, and to craft policy that allows our successes and our high-performing schools and districts to thrive.”

Those kind of statements can mean only one thing: They want control . . . again.

When organizations with track records of protecting and promoting government schools as a jobs program for teachers and administrators begin asking to hold hands and sing kumbaya with Republican leaders then we should all beware. When they point to questionable state testing like the MCT2 to illustrate improvement, and describe the continued downward spiral of ACT scores as a success then legislators should be outraged at the gall of someone who wants to help “craft policy.”

These groups have had their opportunity to do better by children and parents and chose instead to cash in.

It was Loome who joined forces with Desoto Superintendent and political boss Milton Kuykendall to kill charter school legislation in the 2012 session. Using a trojan horse tactic, Loome successfully co-opted the charter school message. In large part, helped because of a lack of organization by conservatives. She then worked behind the scenes with Kuykendall to kill charter school legislation in the House of Representatives.

An email obtained by Mississippi PEP in February of 2012 showed the action that went on behind the scenes. Loome sent the email to Kuykendall in early February, just days before the charter school vote in the legislature, asking that he rouse teachers to action against charter schools by lighting up the phone lines. She even went so far as to provide some legislators personal cell numbers. In the email to Kuykendall, Loome wrote:

“We can’t afford to waste scarce taxpayer dollars on inexperienced “mom and pop” charter organizers who don’t know what they are doing.”

She went on to knock “for profit” charter school companies that would “rake in greater profits” (greater than who?). She also wanted to be sure any legislation that may get through require that charter schools in Mississippi show a “proven track record of success.” (Obviously not a current requirement of Mrs. Loome and her pro-government school monopoly friends.)

Kuykendall, always eager to protect his fiefdom in Desoto County obliged.

Now comes Loome wanting to again “collaborate” with legislators.

We have seen this act before.

Mrs. Loome’s Parents Campaign is hooked at the hip with other liberal organizations that think they know what’s best for all children.

If Mississippi legislators successfully break the stranglehold monopoly these organizations have on the future of our children, Mrs. Loome could personally lose her ability to “rake in the profits”, as would Mr. Gilbert and the other pro-government education groups. But more importantly, the shift in political power from lobbyists to parents would be a monumental opportunity for Mississippi to begin making huge strides towards education reform, something that we have not seen under the pro-government system promoted by Mrs. Loome.

Let’s be clear about this, what is at stake here is the future of our state, not just the future of education in our state. Mississippi is dangerously close to the edge. The numbers of dropouts we have is unacceptable and the fact that government school proponents have attempted to keep dropout numbers from even being counted should be a big sign of what is really going on.

Welfare numbers continue to rise. How long can we sustain this before our state is too far gone? Who then, will be pulling the wagon, and how many can fit inside it before it simply is too heavy to tow?

Any push for a voice in the argument from The Parents Campaign, the Superintendent’s Association, the Mississippi Association of Educators and any other group that has had a hand in Mississippi’s race to the bottom should be rejected outright. These groups have overseen the failure that our state must work to correct. They wish to maintain a status quo and a cash cow at the expense of Mississippi students and our states future. It shouldn’t be tolerated, and Mrs. Loome’s games should be rejected. Legislator’s should repeat to themselves the old adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

I, for one, don’t think that simply passing charter school legislation is the answer. Frankly, I think we’re too far gone. What needs to happen in Mississippi is full out school choice. Drastic? You bet. But, at this point half-measures get us nowhere. One thing is for sure, whether you’re for charters or full choice, trusting this bunch isn’t the way to go.

The wolves have their sheep’s clothing back from the cleaners. It’s fresh pressed and ready for a new legislative session.

We don’t have too many more chances at this. So, let’s not fall for that again.

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

Not as Good as You Think: MCPP Liberty Luncheon speaker Lance Izumi delivers a sobering message about “affluent” government school districts in Mississippi

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

So called “affluent” school districts in Mississippi worked with the Superintendent’s Association, the Parent’s Campaign, Parent’s for Public Schools, and other financially connected organizations to defeat a charter school bill in the legislature in 2012. The refrain of public school officials from those geographic areas considered to have “successful” or “high performing” schools was something akin to “not in my backyard.”

Freshman Senator Chris Massey from Desoto County pointedly told a crowd at the Hernando Chamber of Commerce quarterly meeting in June, “We don’t need charter schools to come in and change what we have.”

Superintendent Milton Kuykendall is a political force in Desoto County. It was due to his help that Massey defeated Senator Doug Davis in the Republican primary. Davis was the chairman of appropriations, but had supported reduced funding of the controversial MAEP funding formula, the confusing formula used by government schools as a means to pull more and more money out of the state budget. When Davis began to ask too many questions about the wisdom of the open checkbook requests of Kuykendall and his friends, he became a target.

Other Superintendents of “High Performing” districts had been doing their part politically, as well. Jackson County teachers were shown a Power Point legislative ranking of legislators by the anti-school choice organization The Parents Campaign just hours before primary elections in 2011. The result was the loss of some of the legislatures supporters of education reform.

With the political deck stacked in their favor at the state capitol, government school organizations joined forces during the charter school debate to take control of the message–a task made easy by a lack of effort on the part of conservatives. The result was the eventual defeat of any legislation based on the false message that charter schools would take valuable resources from “high performing” schools.

Lance Izumi, a nationally recognized education expert, threw cold water over that argument in his presentation to Mississippi officials and media at Tuesday’s Mississippi Center for Public Policy “Liberty Luncheon.”

Sign up NOW for free and receive the password to listen to an exclusive PEP Talk Podcast interview with Lance Izumi.

Izumi presented data on Mississippi’s “affluent” districts that showed how they use the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) to bolster numbers and mask a failing system. According to Izumi’s research Desoto County and other “high performing” school students are really not much better prepared than students in some of Mississippi’s failing schools or those on “academic watch.”

One indication of the continued charade is the recent move by the Mississippi Department of Education to remove graduation rates from school ranking systems. A change made during the 2012 legislative session to an “A-F” grading system for school districts removed the confusion of the old system. Government school officials weren’t ready for that kind of transparency. So, after voting to have both systems side by side for “comparison” (read: more confusion), they further moved to pull graduation rates out of the data in order to continue the game of hide and seek with Mississippi parents and taxpayers.

Regular readers of Mississippi PEP know that this website has aggressively shared information on this fight since we first launched a year ago this month. We have stirred some debate, and anger, by pointing out the flaws in the government system, and by investigating the communications and moves of the anti-schoolchoice groups. With Mr. Izumi and others help we’ll continue to do this as we march through the next 6 months leading up to the 2013 Session of the Mississippi Legislature.

Mr. Izumi was the first to admit that his data was simply too voluminous to share in a single short presentation. Likewise, there is too much data to share in a single web posting. That’s why we plan on continuing this conversation. Mississippi taxpayers and parents deserve to see first hand how the system has failed generations of families, and how groups have played politics to milk the state coffers yet provided no real progress to show for it .

Over the coming weeks and months, we intend on breaking down this data, and presenting it to our readers little by little to give time for true analysis, engagement and discussion. Interviews will be conducted with legislators, school officials, teachers and policy wonks alike.

The goal is simple: education. An educated citizenry makes educated decisions.

What’s my angle? Their names are Isaac and Rickey. They are my two sons, and they and their children–when that time comes–deserve the best I can give them. I want the options. I want the choice.

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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Performance based compensation for teachers is patching leaks, we need a new ship.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

Governor Phil Bryant unveiled a plan on Friday to change the way teachers are paid in Mississippi from a seniority based system to one based on student performance. On it’s face, the change has merit. But, it will be years before we know if such a change is doing it’s intended job. That means, potentially, another generation of Mississippi students lost to the archaic bureaucracy of government schooling.

The governor’s plan places the implementation of the new reward system at the school level. That makes sense, but it also puts the success of the plan in the hands of some very politically driven decision makers. We’ve already seen how school administrators work to keep their fiefdoms intact and the golden goose eggs coming their way.

Regardless of whether charter school legislation would have made it to Governor Bryant’s desk or not, changes to the current government schools as they exist would have still needed to be made. But, if Mississippi is to move at the pace of improvement that is needed then even more drastic changes must come. In the void of education reform from the legislature, Governor Bryant is forced to patch the leaks on a sinking ship.

Warren Buffett said, “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Unfortunately, the political moves of Superintendents like Milton Kuykendall in Desoto County have denied our children that additional vessel. The government school lobbyists would have us defer our parental responsibility to oversee the education of our children to them and them alone without question, and regardless of how pitiful a job they have done piloting the ship. That has left parents without a diverse set of choices for the near future.

The study released by Bryant was conducted by Mississippi State University. It takes the successes and failures of other states attempts at Performance Based Compensation (PBC) into consideration in planning what may work best here. Other studies have shown attempts at teacher merit pay to have mixed results at best, a fact the MSU study acknowledges.

A recent study by two professors at Harvard indicated that what may work best in terms of PBC is “loss aversion”. Rather than paying teachers for good results, “loss aversion” would take money away from those who don’t get results from their students. But, in a state where teachers are swamped by administrative mandates and a lack of money making it past administrators and into the classroom, that type of punitive system seems mean-spirited enough to drive more qualified people away from teaching altogether.

The governor says that a few districts have already shown interest in being part of a trial  run for the new PBC plan. For the plan to be implemented across the state, the legislature would have to vote to change from seniority based pay to the new system.

The plan is not without merit. But, it’s not going to change our state’s education rankings overnight. The only thing that will make the drastic changes we need in Mississippi is to get to the root of the problem. That problem is the government school administrators who have convinced generations that only they can do the job of education. Many parents have been content to believe them and have institutionalized their own children into a failing system. Parental involvement can only go as far as schools allow, and school districts can only allow as much as the mandates and bureaucracy give them the leniency to do so. It’s a vicious cycle that has trapped generations of families.

The solution is a legislature willing to drastically change the education system in Mississippi from a one-size-fits-all system to a diverse set of choices for parents to find what fits their child best. It is that type of system we should be striving for, and that type of change has merit.

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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• Mississippi Education: The Cold Hard Truth
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