GilfordGrok

Leading up to the elections in March we heard the candidates state their political platforms to the citizens of Gilford. During last year's elections we had a candidate that claimed to be a conservative and vowed to be “objective” in matters concerning the library that his wife heads. A quick review of the record clearly indicates that this Budget Committee member not only supported every increase in spending but additionally supported most of the requested increases beyond the Selectmen’s budget. This included a serious effort to add $40,000 to his wife’s library budget as well as advocating for a revote on the Warrant Article that would return an additional $110,000 to the library for the sale of public land. In politics it is common for 33% of the voters to be strongly for a particular candidate and 33% are strongly opposed to that same candidate. It’s the remaining 33% that each candidate is lobbying to win their vote.  I’ve stated to the candidate countless times that he is doing what most of his constituents elected him to do. My point here is for those voters beyond his base that voted for him because they actually believed that he was a conservative and not go out of his way to lobby for his wife’s department. He may have legitimate excuses for his actions however they are in complete contradiction to his campaign promises.

I’m hoping the newly elected officials will have a better track record of keeping their campaign promises. Here are two promises that I am going to pay close attention to this budget season.

Kevin Hayes; Recognizing that spending is a problem he stated that he has ideas on raising revenues. He believes there are ways that Gilford can raise revenues, such as recycling, to off set spending.

Kevin Roy; “I’m frugal with a buck and I too would like to keep taxes down.” “I believe that town employees should be contributing more toward their health insurance benefits.”

Each Kevin is a stand up guy however the actual process of imposing tax reduction or even slowing the growth of government is easier said than done. We’ll see how they fare when the people that are requesting the spending are giving them the finger wag and accusing them of being cheap or uncaring for the children. As I sat through this process, I never realized how many poor single mothers live in Gilford. 

I have already heard rumor that Mr. Hayes is already challenging his campaign promises by advocating giving priority status to the development of communities that would be exempt from the school portions of their tax responsibility. Labeled as a Senior housing community, their website indicates absolutely no restrictions on income levels are needed to be a resident. These types of communities will deprive our children of desperately needed dollars for all of time. Apparently Mr. Hayes is unaware of the New Hampshire law that requires cities and towns to provide tax relief to senior citizens that meet the financial requirements. Seniors do NOT need special communities to receive consideration for their limited fixed incomes. No surprise because he’s also unaware of the fact that Gilford has an ongoing recycling program that, if progressed to fast, would actually cost us more money. It appears the kind of revenue raising Mr. Hayes was discussing is your property taxes!

Posted by Terry S. at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Board of Selectmen Meeting

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
7 p.m.

The time has changed - notice that it is no longer at 3pm!  This meeting is not just for those that can get away during the regular working day hours.

Will it stay that way?  It all depends on you, the townfolk of Gilford.  Show up, it may stay that.  Don't, and it may revert back to the afternoon time.

If you want to let the Selectmen know your feelings about how the town is run, now's the time to show up. 

(cross posted over GraniteGrok and GilfordGOP) 

Posted by Skip at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NRO:

On Tuesday, April 29^th, Manhattan Institute senior fellows Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters released a new study, “The Effect of Special Education Vouchers on Public School Achievement: Evidence from Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program.” Contrary to those who argue that school choice harms public schools, Greene and Winters find that disabled students who remain in public schools made substantial test score improvements when their school faced greater exposure to the McKay program.

Highlights of the study include:

• Public school students with relatively mild disabilities made substantial and statistically significant test score improvements in both math and reading as more nearby private schools began to participate in the McKay program.
• The largest benefit was found for students diagnosed as having a Specific Learning Disability, a categorization that includes 61% of disabled students and 8.5% of all students in the state of Florida.
• The academic proficiency of students diagnosed with relatively severe disabilities were neither helped nor harmed by increased exposure to the McKay program.

The authors conclude that the McKay program has had a positive effect on the quality of education that public schools provide to disabled students.  

Assumption - we all want our kids to be well educated.

Question - Do we owe our kids a public education?  Or a publicly funded education?

The two are not the same. 

And I also saw this:

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity has a new study showing that North Carolina's higher-education system is costing taxpayers a bundle. At the same time, among other negative findings, the report shows that many campuses are spending only 20 to 40 percent of their revenue on instruction.

Author Richard Vedder concludes that North Carolina's colleges are neglecting their core mission, "actually teaching students," and questions the nature of the vast spending having that does not reach the classroom.

Similar reports on higher education spending in all states are needed, as well as analyses of campuses' spending priorities.

I asked a similar question this past budget season of the School Board - what is the ratio of indirect to direct labor (e.g., those not involved in student teaching to those who are).  

Never did get a straight answer.  Position and salary burden.

It will be asked...again. 

Posted by Skip at 07:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I should think not... LXXXI, LXXXII, LXXXIII.

Posted by Doug at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saw this post over at EIAOnline:

America loves its public school teachers. So much so that it continues to hire legions of them while growth in the number of students continues to peter out. An Education Intelligence Agency analysis of the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures shows that while K-12 enrollment grew only 2.45% between 2001 and 2006, the K-12 teacher force grew by 5.71% over the same period.

I took snippets from the table found here to create this:

EDUCATION INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Current Spending Statistics of Public Elementary-Secondary School Systems for 2005-06
State Rankings in Enrollment, Teachers, Per-Pupil Spending, and Spending on Compensation 

I see that while NH enrollment has dropped 3.56% since 2000, teacher employment and compensation and per-pupil compensation has gone way up (note: inflation has been between 2-3% or so for each year since 2000).

Kids down, teachers up.  

Since I saw this after the SAU closed, I can't fill in the relevant number for Gilford, but it would be interesting..... Oh, and in case you were wondering where the data came from:

Notes: 1) Data derived from U.S. Census Bureau Public Education Finances 2006, issued
                April 2008, Rankings & Estimates, NEA Research, December 2007, and
                Digest of Education Statistics 2002, National Center for Education Statistics.                           
    2) "Compensation" includes salaries, wages and fringe benefit contributions on
                behalf of employees.    

Posted by Skip at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An unqualified YES to that! 

From the aspect of making it harder to violate the RTK law upon chance encounters to spreading the workload around to allowing for more participation by the citizenry - what's the down side?

And yes, voting on the idea in November (hey, the cost of having the election is already there) is a good one, setting the stage for voting in March.

Go for it! 

Posted by Skip at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my earlier post, I really liked what Paul Blandford had to say:

“Maybe they’re just not learning what they need to learn,” said Blandford.

as I discussed the NECAP scores for Gilford (pretty much only average at best; dismal results based on what we budget for the SAU).  Certainly, the School Board was rather unhappy as well (as well I believe they should be).  He also said:

But Board Member Paul Blandford said the students might be taking their cues from teachers. “I think it goes beyond the students to the staff taking it seriously. It’s extremely disappointing. We do not want to be average.”

Again, we had both Dr. DiMinico and Ken Wiswell on MTNP and both of them, if I can summarize it balanced, are against this "high stakes" testing. Certainly, this belief is being held counter to that of the Board.

Then this in the Citizen this past Tuesday on the front page:

"Disheartening" and "alarming" are how the School Board is characterizing results from a statewide survey delving into the behaviors undertaken by high school students.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey was taken last year by 439 Gilford High School students and what the results found is, as school nurse Meg Jenkins said, "There is a tremendous amount of alcohol and drug use among students." Jenkins pulled out 13 key statistics to outline the problem areas for the School Board and in all but two of these areas the statistics in Gilford were up from years past and every area was well above state averages.

This is not new information - when my kids were at Gilford High, stories abounded about behaviors described above.  In my opinion, I'm glad that the survey was done and that the results are being publicized.  Terry has a good take on this here.

However - serious question here - is it the fault of the school system?  My SHORT answer - only if the staff is modeling this behavior (or showing attitudes / philosophies that would seem to condone such behavior) for the students to see, thus giving an implicit "this is ok".

Is it truly up to the school system to fix this?  No, not in my opinion.  It is up to the parents to be responsible for their children.  And part of the article says such:

"We feel it really is a community-wide issue, a family issue," explained Jenkins.

School Board member Margo Weeks honed in on the family involvement, saying: "If someone doesn't notice something is seriously amiss then something is seriously wrong."

She, along with Jenkins, noted that there may be a wide range of problems at home that could be enabling these types of behaviors and, by in large, the results say parents and the community need to get involved.

Given that the problem is widespread, this would involve a lot of parents, right? Well, only 30 parents showed up for the forum they held later on. 

NOW, here's the part that the school system has to fix, when everything is considered.... 

The Steamer covered this issue as well in the same article (page A5) as well as the NECAP scores.  Ken Wiswell had this to say:

“Our staff meeting on April 2 was dedicated to this,” said Wiswell. “I am disappointed but not discouraged.” 

Look, the results have been far from steller for a while.  To say that a staff meeting was dedicated to it, with the School Board rather unhappy, I bet some other words ("anxious" might be one) may  have gone unsaid at the same time.  Frankly, if I had kids still in the system, my words would be far from "discouraged" and more to the point. 

As someone who looks at the the SAU budget, I will be asking a lot harder questions next year....we cannot have a spending budget of about $17K / child with these results.  We all should be.

Wiswell offered several courses of action that were already being implemented at the high school. 

Frankly, I think that some of the ideas were fine:

The math teachers are asking students to solve more multiple step problems and requiring more writing.

Absolutely....but what about the other areas?  And why didn't this start before?

“How can we say students can go off campus when they are scoring below average?” asked Wiswell.

...or requiring seniors to have certain scores for open campus privileges.

Absolutely!  But remember - you are the folks that permit and allow the off campus in the first place - blame yourselves.  And you  have known from previous scores (remember, your own School Report shows SAT scores at Gilford are below State averages.  That is a long term test that has been going on, so to blame only the NECAP is a dodge, IMHO). 

Some are just plain dopey: 

The school will also move the testing to an off site location to ensure the same proctors for each test and instill the seriousness of the test on the students.

No, we already pay for a school and its rooms - there is no reason for this expense IF THE CULTURE SET BY THE STAFF IS SUCH that it penetrates the kids' mindsets that this is serious stuff well ahead of test time.

This is a one time band aid scheme - a ill thought out one as well. It is NOT the testing location that matters - it is the attitude given by the staff to the kids all year long academics matter.  Kids will perform to expectations - raise them, not just for the NECAP, but for ALL the time.

Wiswell also suggested that the scores go on the student transcripts

Dopey Number Two - this won't matter except for the motivated kids - which is redundant (they're all ready motivated to do well anyways). 

and perhaps offering incentives such as gift certificates at the student store

Oh please, PLEASE let's not get into "paying for performance" for the kids.  Unless you're talking about "pay for performance for the teachers".  I bet that if the School Board wrote that into the contracts for the teachers (and not the Admin), scores would go up!

Naw, never happen...the union won't let it.  Speaking of the local union, I cannot WAIT for them to file their LM-2 forms now that the Supreme Court has forced this to happen.  I bet we'll see some GREAT stories in that!

Wiswell said that what needs to change is the culture of the school and that the students don’t feel like they are part of something bigger.

Yes to the first part, and that, again, is the responsibility of the teaching staff.  They have to set an "all the time" attitude and not just at test time.  It may well be time to move the emphasis by the Administration (and the Athletic dept) from Athletics to Academics. 

Want a clue - look what the Dean Kamen folks do - they make the students who do their academic competition  feel like Rock Stars!  When's the last time that the cheer leader squad cheered for the Math Team?

ANd add a huge "NO" to the second - students do not have to feel that they are part of the bigger collective in order to test better....that's silly.  Rather, they should be encouraged, as individuals, to perform at their best ALL the time.  After all, you cannot take part of Johnny's score and give it to Janey if he does well and she doesn't not.  Her score does not impact his.  Trying to graft a team mentality onto this is, well, dopey.

In fact, I think that a good part of the problem is this heightened emphasis on "the group" dynamics and "we're all in this together" attitude.

Instead of concentrating on pure academics. 

The students don’t feel the scores count for anything and so do not do as well as they could. Wiswell asked selected students individually about how hard they worked on the test and showed them the results for the school. “Most of them said ‘Oh if I had known I would have tried harder,’” said Wiswell.

For them, it doesn't.  It does for the professionals that we employ to ensure that our children have the knowledge and the skill to succeed at these benchmarks, not the other way around.

Now, I've gone long already....but did anyone ELSE notice this?  This may be part of the problem as well!

On the next page, page A6:

Gilford Schools plan weeklong  Earth Day celebration

Lots of time and effort expended on this effort - what would be the result if the staff were to do the same thing on something that is more important to the kids - ensuring not an "incomplete" knowledge of a crisis (in name only - and yes, I am a skeptic that man is primarily responsible for this - look here at some of the project's finding with which Morrison is associated.

Look, I believe a back to basics is has to be implemented - prioritize what has to be taught to cover those bases.  Those not at the top, dump them.  Period.  Until scores rise to acceptable levels (and the School Board ought to say what those acceptable levels should be REAL SOON so that everyone knows what the expectation is.

PUT THOSE EXPECTATION OUT ON THE SAU WEBSITE SO THAT THE COMMUNITY CAN SEE WHAT THE SAU leadership and School Board are expecting our kids to achieve - by academic area by grade level.

In fact, I CHALLENGE them to start now - even the draft forms, even the glimmer of ideas! 

Dr. DiMinico said on his last time on MTNP that this process was already beginning - here's the invite to come on as soon as possible again! 

To conclude: the retained academic priorities should apply to ALL students, not just the top level ones.  And that proposed International Baccalauriate program?   Ditch it for now.

According to Dr. DiMinico at the IB info meeting (I do have to post the audio from that still, don't I?), it would only be used for the top students at its beginning.  So dump the IB idea (and the expense, even if outside money is used).  Concentrate the SAU's time, effort, and money, for a few years, on ALL students and strictly on the basics.  

Posted by Skip at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our friend Chan from Weekend Pundit started a new blog site One Voice In Gilford when he ran for Selectman this past election.  The latter was supposed to be for the election, but he is now hoping that this new site will be more successful than his run in that he'll be blogging about local stuff here in Gilford (WP is more "other focused").

With that all said, I trundled on over to see what his take on Gilford was and found this:

I have to wonder what was running through the minds of the Gilford Board of Selectmen during yesterday's meeting.

In March the voters of Gilford decided the Facilities Planning Committee should receive $150,000 to put towards the completion of plans for the addition to and renovation of the police station. The FPC had hoped to work with the architect – Stewart Associates of Gilford– to complete those plans and to work with the original general contractor – Horne Construction of Rochester – to come up with a firm will-not-exceed price.

[snip]

..which promptly turned it down and directed the FPC to go back to square one, sending out new bids for a new architect and new contractor. With this decision 15 months of work and almost $50,000 of taxpayer money was flushed down the toilet. (See Laconia Sun article below)

I'm not part of the inside baseball concerning the FPC, but I do know that folks have been a tad upset about the delay.  Chan's post did include some musings about the new "schedule" of that as well:

Bidding a new architect will take a minimum of 6 weeks, with 9 weeks being the most likely time line. During that time the FPC will be able to get little if anything done because it cannot go forward without an architect. Once one is selected, it will take between 4 and 8 weeks to complete the plans started under Stewart Associates. Then another 6 to 8 weeks to qualify contractors and to put out a bid to those contractors. After that the selected contractor and the FPC will need time to work on refining the costs of the project. Not counting the last part, which could take an additional 4 to 6 weeks, that takes the time line of this project out to the end of September/beginning of October, a good month or more past the Labor Day deadline requested by the Board of Selectmen. And that's assuming everything goes right the first time. If everything on the time line takes the longest portion of the estimates, we're now out to the end of October, meaning the Board of Selectmen won't see the 'end product' until November or early December, which still leaves us exactly where the FPC was last December, except that an additional $150,000 taxpayers dollars will have been spent.

Kinda seems like situation set up for failure, time wise. Flush the $50K so far, now add another $150K? 

Go read his conclusion(s). 

Posted by Skip at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It would have been easier than typing out the description.

Remember this?  In that post, Doug "raised our consciousness" about the waste of energy (and money) of Gilford vehicles left to idle when the occupants went inside to either the Airport Deli or Dunkin' Donuts:

While I agree with calling on our “National Leaders to act against Global Warming,” I believe that there is much that we can do right here at the local level. Several examples of potential carbon reducing measures that could easily be implemented include the study of uses and policies of the town’s inventory of motorized vehicles. From the dump trucks to rack bodies, police cars, the red fire department pickup truck, etc, we as a town should look at ways of reducing the operating times and usages, thus reducing emissions. Simple policies like ordering the fleet of town vehicles that I witness idling at the Dunkin Donuts parking lot every morning at 6:25AM turned off are easily implemented methods of energy consumption reductions.

[snip]

One of the DPW's many vehicles sits with engine running at the local donut shop with no occupants. On this day it was only one, but I have witnessed as many as 5 vehicles at the same donut shop at approximately the same time, all idling, within the past week. 6:15AM june 19th, 2007

[snip]

The deputy fire chief drives approximately 7-9 miles from home to coffee shop to station, thus turning a less than one mile commute into a much longer journey. Let's buy them a coffee pot for the station and supply coffee. I'd bet we'd save $$$ in gas, and cut back on his carbon footprint, too!

At the time, this post did raise a stir (to put it mildly) and resulted in promises from the Administration that the idling practice would stop.

Er, guess what?

Well, at 7:56am yesterday morning, I decided to get a coffee roll before heading off to get ready to do Meet The New Press.  Just ahead of me was the green F350 from the Gilford DPW (license plate G12792).  Out pops the driver - right into Dunkin Donuts.

Leaving the truck to idle.   And the door unlocked. I decided just to sit in my car to observe instead of getting my roll (yes, I was parked right next to it).

Well, 7 minutes pass.  At no time, did the driver turn around to check to see if the truck was still there (hey, we're NOT Boston, but please - those trucks are not a dime a dozen!).  He then comes out and heads into the Airport Deli and this time, disappears from sight.  Which means, he cannot see the truck at all.

Leaving the truck to idle.   And the door unlocked.

Seeing that I was going to be late.  I left.  Hopefully, the truck did not leave until the rightful driver got back into it. 

Still wish I had bought the coffee roll...but if I had, The Most Esteemed Wife would have given me a look...and some words....and....

Decisions do have consequences... 

Posted by Skip at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I noticed this in yesterday Laconia Daily Sun (pg 11, emphasis of the text is mine):

Social service agencies to be told not to count on Gilford funding in 2009

GILFORD — In response to questions posed by social agency advocates whose requests for funding were rejected by the Gilford town meeting in March, the Board of Selectmen instructed acting town administrator Deborah Shackett to advise them that they should submit requests as they have in the past.

However, members of the board agreed that it was unlikely that they would recommend a 2009 appropriation for an agency whose request was denied in 2008.

The primary reason of doing the Warrants on the NGOs this year, if one listened to the BudComm deliberations, was that we were hoping to have put this whole issue to bed.  The feeling of the majority of the BudComm was that if any NGO was voted down for funding, that was it.  Done.  Fini.  

For those that did get a thumbs up from the voters, we might not like it, but we wouldn't try to remove them as in years past.  We WANTED to know what the public thought - and now we do.

While the board said it would look more favorably upon requests for agencies that were funded in 2008, such funding was not guaranteed. The three-member board stressed that the agencies should come to the town prepared  to make a strong case for their requests to both the selectmen and the Budget Committee.

Now, I'm not sure if the following this was stated by the Selectboard in their meeting or is the opinion of the reporter, Kinney O'Rourke:

If either the selectmen or the budget committee vote not to recommend an outside agency request, the organization should be prepared to petition for a 2009 town meeting warrant article.

If the former, fine - they are fulfilling their role of providing fully transparent government, letting townfolk know of the options .  If not, this is intermixing news with opinion / advocacy - doesn't that belong on the Op Ed page (or in a blog!)?

The law says anyone can bring a petition warrant forward.  If they do so for a charity that was voted down, I can assure you that THIS BudComm member will not be mildly amused. 

Posted by Skip at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year, I wrote an article, Coerced Charity, that continued to comment on the fact that monies for Non-Governmental Organizations ("NGOs") were put back into the budget at the Deliberative Session. In it, I said:

Funding goes out and comes back – has for years. Why? Someone always puts the funding back in the budget believing that “for the common good” is always a sufficient reason for using taxpayer monies. Question: is it right or wrong to compel taxpayers to coercively donate to a charity via taxes to organizations that they may not otherwise wish to? Should property taxes better be used only on direct town services?

[snip]

As it was, the NGO funding was put back in by Alida Millham's motion and a majority of the roughly 300 voters present at the Deliberative Session.  She obviously believes that all citizens should be forced to donate to the charity of her choice: "The attitude should not be to let someone else do it" (Citizen). 

In other words, it is wrong not to help. Yet...

...there is another problem other than the attitude that one should not have a choice in choosing who they will help.

I bring this up because it was only through the Citizen's article that I learned that Alida was closely allied with Genesis Behaviorial Health and was advocating that the town's money be spent with her organization

Now, I hold no animus toward's Alida but I did, at the time and still do, towards the philosophy that I should have no choice in determining what charities my money WILL go to.  Fortunately this year, we ALL had the chance to decide how our tax monies would be spent via the Warrant Articles.

The voters have spoken and I hope this will be put to rest for a while. 

All that said, I do still have a beef with Mr. Rogers, whom I commented on here concerning that Anti-tax pledge Warrant 27:

It seemed that the sponsor for this article was Mr. Rogers as he was the one that moved the question (reasoning: why would someone move the question if one was not in favor of it?).  Yet, at no time did he mention that it is really the GSFTC that is pushing this!

Why do I think this is silly?  Earlier, he had stood up and advocated for spending more taxpayer money on supporting the Outside Agencies / Non-Governmental Organizations. Effectively, this is 'I want the Town to spend more, but let someone else pay for it!"

Now, why do I bring this up?

Simple - I had been given the annual report for Genesis a few weeks ago by a lady that was associated with Genesis - who shall remain nameless but at least was willing to sit down and calmly discusses the reasons I had, and I listened to her.

I really did not read the Report until last night....and whose name did I spot on the list of the Board of Directors?

John Rogers

Now, I do not believe that the State RSAs would force anyone to have to reveal their connection to any organization when they are shilling for a given organization.  I am not sure, but will probably ask, if the Town can do such a regulation.

Again, I do believe that for the sake of complete honesty and transparency, those advocating that the town spend money with their organization should inform the townfolk of that affiliation.  This year, Alida did, and I congratulate her for doing so (I don't like the fact that she did want to spend more tax money, but at least it was with more transparency by announcing her affiliation).

John Rogers flunks twice - once on coercively asking for more tax money to be spent on his charity without revealing his affiliation and then decrying that he was spending too much on property taxes with the implied affiliation with Mark Fernald's Granite State Fair Tax Coalition.  In other words advocating, once the pitch for higher spending was done, he wants someone else, via a broadbased tax, to pay for it.

Again, if he wants to come on Meet The New Press and defend his stances, he is welcome to do so - all he has to do is ask.  I tend to doubt he'll take me up on it, given that the GSFTC folks refuse to venture to venues where they would be challenged

Like here on Political Chowder where Doug and Chuck Douglas intellectually pummeled the GSFTC Exec. Dir. Henle and a hapless Selectman from Alstead. Henle was invited to be on MTNP but continues to decline to defend the idea that implementing in implementing broadbased taxes will keep our overall tax burden where it is (e.g., shifting taxes have never worked).

Posted by Skip at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All concerned residents of Gilford should attend the Selectman's meeting on April 30, 2008 in the Town Hall at 6:00 PM. The meeting is in regards to the Town owned property on

Should such a travesty be allowed, the residents of these communities should NOT be allowed to vote on the school ballot if they have no interest in supporting our children. Even though I'm sure they'll be driven to the polls to vote on every spending increase that the rest of us working stiffs will have to pay for while they enjoy their life of luxury.

Posted by Terry S. at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am slightly puzzled over the official reaction of Gilford’s NECAP test results. If I understand it correctly the conclusion is that our students are receiving a quality education, however, they’re simply disinterested in taking a silly test to prove it. This shouldn’t come as a complete surprise since our nation’s educators have been publicly waging a war against any kind of testing that measures learning progress (Do you think this might be the reason for the "culture" problem regarding testing?). Our education leaders propose the obvious solution. Prior to the testing our students participate in a “pep” rally. I must admit, I never would have thought of that.

 On another front we have the results of the Gilford Youth Risk Behavior Survey showing that our children are increasing their engagement into risky behavior. This survey has been viewed as a serious cry from our children that they need help. Okay, so why aren’t the NECAP test results seen as a serious cry that our children’s education needs help? It makes me question the "pep" rally solution because if we are to believe the Youth Risk Behavior survey results, one could conclude that our students have got the “pep” rally part down.

Posted by Terry S. at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gilford Steamer, 4/3/08,

Selectmen offer no response to Juris petition.

[snip]  

Boucher ended her presentation of the petition by asking anyone who wanted to speak about this issue during public input to be courteous and polite. There were no comments from any of the selectmen on the petition brought forth by Boucher. The Board of Selectmen continued with the meeting and then opened the meeting to public input.

Though the meeting room was crowded, no resident chose to speak to the petition. “Maybe they didn’t know what to say,” said Boucher.

“Or maybe they thought I had said all that needed to be said.”

Or they just disagreed with her? 

As I was not there, I can only surmise.  Yet, I think that in response to her presenation, the silence must have been deafening.
 

Posted by Skip at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saw this over at NRO -I've put the info into a table.  It would be interesting to see if there are more in depth studies:

Just A Coincidence?   [John Hood]

While recently poking around some reports from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), I was reminded of two key facts about national education systems and performance. First, contrary to what the school-reform debate in the U.S. might lead one to believe, America is more reliant on government monopoly to deliver public education than are most developed countries. At the high-school level, only about 9 percent of American students are enrolled in non-government schools, compared to an average of 18 percent in Europe. The differences are even starker when considering only our major OECD competitors:

The correlation may be eye-catching, but it isn't sufficient. Some apologists for the American education monopoly attribute the test-score differences to other factors, and are right to do so up to a point. Fortunately, however, there is good evidence for the proposition that, adjusting for these population and policy differences, school choice does help explain why some countries outperform others.

(By the way, Canada is left out because of unavailable data. So are the Low Countries, because of a lack of data from the Netherlands, which would have made the case even stronger given its private-school majority.)

Posted by Skip at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, as you might have seen, the spambots have found us again.  Every once in a while, we have to turn off the comment capability until they go away.   What I'll be doing in the near future is  to put in a CAPTCHA for entering comments.  In our case, it will just be a quick word that you will see when putting in a comment to one of your posts that you will have to type in.  Since the spambots cannot "see" or enter that in, it will hopefully cut down on the kinds of "adult only" spamming that has been happening lately.

I'll be making some other internal adjustments as well, so if things look a bit goofier than normal, I apologize in advance!

-Skip 

Posted by Skip at 07:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)