What Happened To Guymon After Economic Development Deals With Seaboard Farms and WalMart?

After Julianne has told Michael and Jenni about how the grift of economic development works, Michael tells Jenni and Julia about what happened to the town he grew up in - Guymon, Oklahoma - after the town created economic development deals with WalMart and Seaboard Farms. Small towns can't remain small towns when multinational corporations come in. Multinational corporations care about their bottom line - not about the health of the community. How would any town be bettered by shutting mom and pop enterprises out of competition with a multinational corporations? Town kids could grow up and work at businesses run by members of the community. Town money then stays in the town, promoting the town's values and not a large employer's.

See the full video on our YouTube and Rumble channels.

What is Crypto Currency And Why Is That Important In The "New" Economy?

Check out the whole video here on Rumble, or on YouTube!

So You Think School Choice Will Solve Education Issues In Oklahoma? James Lindsay Wants You To Think Again...

www.alec.org/issue/education

"School choice is going to be very popular – it’s gonna poll very well – it has an enormous…everybody’s 'spidey' sense should be tingling because of  how much money’s behind the school choice lobby.  Like who writes your checks?  Why on earth is so much money being dumped into this school choice lobby?"  James Lindsay via Unwokeable.

Led By Idiots? Yes. Sadly.

This morning I read a very short article from The Federalist publisher Ben Domenech. It's called, "Consider the Possibility That We Are Led by Idiots". This is a very short read and very skeptical, but I can corroborate every word he's written just from the knowledge I've accumulated at the very low level at which I've worked trying to influence government.
Here is a bit of the opening paragraph:

I have seen cabinet secretaries who type with two fingers. I have listened as senior staffers with authority over constructing legislation in a particular scientific field engage in debate on whether or not the moon landing was a hoax. I have seen a man charged with revolutionizing incredibly complex government information technology systems who did not know how to use a thumb drive.

Mo Money

Last week, one of the bloggers I follow, okeducationtruths, released a blog about vouchers and, more specifically, Jason Nelson's bill on vouchers.  I added my two cents because, even though we don't always agree, the writer is a great listener and quite accommodating of opinions, and I LOVE that!  

I'm not going to get into the voucher thing here (if you're interested, you can find my comments at the link above) but I am going to paste my answer here to okeducationtruths last post.  It's a post I've wanted to do here on our blog for quite a long time, so it just seemed the right time to make this happen. 

I've had very definite opinions on money in public education for quite a long time and I would like people to hear them.  If you don't agree, that's fine, tell me why not.  I truly do LOVE hearing peoples thoughts.  In fact, the first line of response to okeducationtruths is:

First, I actually love that we don't always agree.  As I've told Nicole a number of times, if we always agreed the world would be a very dull place AND we'd have learned nothing to expand our horizons!

I think your points are excellent and well taken here - especially the point about not being able to add up tax dollars like chits.  True, however, there is an actual proportionality of tax dollars required by each tax payer that goes toward public education (your property tax bill has that fully delineated).  This is the amount of money I was referencing in this case.

Your comment, "I do have a problem with the mentality that everything can be done better when left to private markets", is also interesting to me.

I can come into agreement on that as well for the most part.  In fact, I think the most nefarious thing about this whole latest 'reform' package is the fact that it IS private companies/philanthropists (without any educational expertise on any level in a whole lot of instances - the Chamber of Commerce?  Come the heck on!) making these pronouncements instead of ideas unfolding in a more 'democratic' style.  "He with the gold makes the rules" as it were.  That is NOT American if you ask me.

Here's where I think I get the most frustrated.  I was not for state question 744.  I am not for pouring more money into schools.  The idea that we should somehow be equating money with educational 'rigor' (ack, I can't believe I said that word in a sentence!) or outcomes of any kind is a red herring.  (PS I totally appreciated hearing the definitions provided for both Red Herring and Straw Man!)

I am constantly attacked for what I'm about to say, but I think it speaks to my conviction (or stupidity!) that I keep on message: we put men on the moon when computers took up rooms and rooms, most advanced mathematical computations were done on slide rules and the federal government had yet to really sink their hooks into the educational system.  There are home schooling families out there that use little more than books and flashcards to give their kids a well-rounded, classical education, that has been shown to produce better overall results than public education. 

I studied lots of ins and outs of spending as I researched my arguments against 744 and here is what I found (in general terms).  It takes a HUGE amount of money at the state level to administer federal grants for which we get - after administration costs - pennies on the dollar, yet our state goes running to FedEd constantly for all kinds of programming.  Much of this programming has never been tested or tried - or has been proven NOT to provide much, if any benefit (Head Start, for example) yet we do it because we get 'free' money.

Oklahoma legislators are very fond of riding public education with a heavy hand.  A very large number of education laws are passed because someone in a district needs/wants that very thing they ask of the entire state.  Most laws won't/don't translate well to another district, but suddenly, all districts must fall under the edict.  We have mandated public schools into near complete commonality and the poor house, as most state education laws end up in the unfunded category.

That said, there can be no way that the largest (well second now behind health care I understand) budgeted item in the state needs MORE money to succeed.  (Yes, as a teacher, I DID buy a number of my own things and as a science teacher I was often begging for supplies, just for the record.)  What we do need, however, is an enormous AUDIT of programming, unfunded mandates and job descriptions at the state education level.  We MUST return money to classrooms from the administrative level so science teachers can buy microscopes (instead of watching online videos about Paramecium, the novel idea would be that kids actually get to see them for themselves!) and any other amount and/or kind of tool necessary to teach kids.  There is money in the system, it just needs to be reapportioned and why shouldn't we demand that this happen?  Why must we use federal money when it comes with strings and gives us only pittance for our beseeching?  Why must districts go to the state for money when their 'customers' are right in their own backyards?  Our cities are run in this fashion.  If schools were administered at the district level instead of the state level, it would certainly be a lot easier to reapportion unnecessary funds and redirect money into classrooms...but then do the powers that be really want that? 

Educational Equity doesn't always come wrapped up in a perfect little box labeled "money".  We need to get out of this rut, expand our horizons and realize that few things in life are ever really 'equal' and that equal education is really a subjective term - for parents and even communities.  The only reason we love the word 'equality' in education is because it happens to be the only thing we can use to make that label mean the same thing to everyone - the objective quantity of dollars and cents.  Sadly, true equality in education is only going to come when schools/districts can do for their 'customers' what is actually best for them and NOT best for the state.

Education Armageddon?

I had been planning to write another personal post, and here it is.  I have noted that people simply LOVE to hear personal stories and as a person who loves to share to the point of oversharing, I will provide!

Originally, my post was going to detail only my latest in yet another public school run-in, followed by a blog post on what I believe is wrong in public schools today.  I have decided to merge these two activities here for the most part, however (although I will include a later post on what is wrong with public schools to include some diagrams upon which I have been working).

Let me begin with the personal story...As many of you know, I have had a crazy time of first grade with my son Samuel.  Last week, Sam brought home paper after paper on the rainforest.  I didn't pay much attention to any of them frankly.  To me, a child in first grade who can't do his addition or subtraction math facts to mastery but is studying the rainforest seemed too stupid a situation to even confront.  Then, it started happening...."Mom, did you know the rainforests are being destroyed all over the world?"  "Mom, did you know there won't be any sloths by the time I grow up?"  Hmmmmm....

Teachers who attempt to teach biology (especially Rainforest Ecology) to the child of a woman with a Master's degree in Biology who actually went all the way to Costa Rica for a Rainforest Ecology class and who saw rainforest first hand (and there is a whole lot of it in Costa Rica), should probably walk softly.  But oh no...

Of course I had to put Sam in the White Family Re-Education camp for that week and answer the constant questions arising from his overwrought, environmentalist, indoctrination with comments such as, 

"Yes, Sam, some rainforests are being cut down and the land used so people don't have to live in poverty.  We don't believe God gave the world rainforests to simply sit and look at.  If people have no other jobs, but have land, they should use it wisely and make a living for themselves and their families rather than rely on the government or churches to support them."

and,

"Yes Sam, sloths die and they do reproduce slowly, but there is LOTS of rainforest out there in the great big world God gave us (all around the equator) and many countries manage sections of their rainforests to preserve it for future generations.  Sloths will be around for you to see, it is fairly certain." 

I even helped him study words like "Kapok Tree", "toucan", "protect" and "habitat" for his spelling test, though he can't spell "huge" or "very" - words I would think should pull a bit more weight in the English language.

Thursday Sam brought home a math paper that had him adding 2, 3-digit numbers in column form.  Hmmmm...

I decided I'd had enough.  On this homework paper, I placed a lined sticky note with the following comments,

Dear Mrs. Smith,  Sam will not be doing this homework as he's spent most of the week learning how to spell Kapok Tree and still is unable to recount most of his basic math facts.  I don't feel he needs to be further confused.  Here are four pages of basic math facts that I had him pull out of some math practice books I keep at home.  You may count them for homework, or give Sam a zero - whatever you think is best.  Thank you, Jenni White."

Now, Mrs. Smith has been absent for the past several days, so I have no idea if she will count them or not, but between 2 days a week of art classes, computer class, and classroom days spent on activities such as field day and the Jog-a-Thon (- to raise money for the computer lab.  Once, as a member of PTA last year, I suggested we didn't need a computer lab in elementary school.  This was not at all a popular thought.  Suffice it to say, I am no longer a PTA member.), when exactly is Sam supposed to master ANYTHING that matters?

Which brings me to the second portion of my post.  Today, I read an article called, "Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste". It was written by a man who extolled his time in public education after World War II and what an excellent education it was.  He then went on to make comments on public education today - insisting that the thorough failure we are seeing is a result of lack of investment and inattention to the detail of those poverty-stricken students who just can not get on track.

After my experiences in public education, I felt absolutely OBLIGED to respond to this sad, utterly misinformed, geriatric individual with the following post;

This is where I get sad and cry for the Greatest Generation.  Eli, why in the WORLD, after admitting that you graduated with an excellent education following WWII, do you believe that our education system is suffering due to a LACK of anything other than, well, EDUCATION?  You of ALL people should realize the great inroads in all industry after WWII which were made on the backs of those who earned an excellent BASIC education in sometimes one room school houses - without computers and online training and special accommodations.

I regret to admit that I believe it is your generation, Eli, who have let my children down by pandering to an outmoded, selfish belief that your children MUST possess more than did you yourself.  Frankly, what our children - and our bloated, over-priced, over-spending school systems - need is the swift kick in the pants of NOT needing - of simplicity and thrift - all those things provided your generation from which my (and my children's) generation have been robbed by the very souls that benefited most from those practices.

The propensity to look toward other countries as a way to educate Americans is not only spurious - as our system was NEVER meant to educate Communists or Socialists - but also disingenuous as well when you state that our educational system is inadequate to educate children of poverty.  Poverty is defined in a completely different way today than it was in your day.  People with cell phones and big screen TV's are considered destitute enough to qualify for enough free federal government programs to grant them access to better resources than even those NOT on public assistance! 

Not only that, but your comparisons to education in other countries doesn't include that America's poverty rate (the number of children actually unable to eat with both parents working) is a bare fraction of theirs.  And you also do not mention that other countries do not provide PUBLIC education in the same manner as the US.

I take umbrage to the incongruent parallels you, and others who insist that America's PUBLIC education system only needs MORE - more money, more computers, more STUFF.

My first grader can not add 7+7, but by God he knows that rainforests are being destroyed before his eyes.  My 4th grader can not write a coherent, perfectly spelled paragraph, but she understands that American Indians were murdered by non-natives and that Global Warming is a fact.

Return schools to the oneness of parental control, schools boards and districts, teach the basics as you were taught, and not all the other GARBAGE and I would absolute bet GOOD money we'd see the results you had as a lad.

Less is more Eli.  Face it and a hearty dose of REALITY as well.

More on the absolute cognitive dissonance that is what we call today, "Educational Choice", later.

Janet Barresi Channels Scarlett O'Hara

Capitol Beat OK just released a great article, "State Education department spokesman Barresi anticipates low costs for implementing "Common Core".

Since ROPE's interim study for the House in October, ROPE, and others, have asked over and over again about the costs of implementing Common Core in Oklahoma. Thank goodness we now know what they are! They are "anticipated" to be low! As a taxpayer, I feel a great sigh of relief, since big government programs tend to cause tax increases for poor little taxpayers like me.

According to Mirriam-Webster, the definition for "anticipate" (verbatim) is; to speak or write in knowledge or expectation of later matter such as "The cost turned out to be higher than anticipated."

Is Janet Barresi channeling Scarlett O'Hara through her Communications Director? I can't help but see a parallel between his comments on the topic here and Scarlett's famous line, "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow." Is the OSDE 'anticipating' in order to avoid 'thinking'?

Though I could counter Gardenhire in Capitol Beat OK's article point by point, I will simply ask the reader to acknowledge the fact that there are absolutely no solid figures even alluded to by the Department of Education in answer to the question posed by McGuigan. None. According to Mr. Gardenhire, everything's cool - they've got it covered and we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about the cost of the Common Core to the state.

Awe inspiring. Did the OSDE let all their number crunchers go with their first round of firings? Even the Federal Government has the GAO. Why are no concrete numbers available? Other states have them.

After reading “TPS: New teacher-evaluation system cost estimates misrepresented”, in the Tulsa World this morning, Gardenhire’s pat answers to McGuigan are off-putting.

The article addresses concerns by the Tulsa Public Schools that Dr. Barresi and the OSDE misrepresented the amount of money it would take to implement Tulsa's teacher evaluation system. In fact, Jana Burk of TPS has this to say,

"We are willing to give them everything we have free of charge, and Marzano (the company the Superintendent favors) has all kinds of things that would need to be developed, which would cost something. That's the way they make money is that they give away their evaluation framework but then they sell the professional development services, video libraries, on-demand technical assistance, software and hand-held devices for principals to use."

Well, that doesn't sound good. Did Dr. Barresi inflate the cost of the TPS system in order to make the system she preferred to use seem less expensive? Who knows, but the article didn’t particularly inspire confidence in Dr. Barresi's ability to ride the Common Core horse through the gate of "anticipated low" costs (or effectively evaluate programming).

Adding to our concern is an incident that occurred after Dr. Barresi publicly called into question our research at the Common Core Interim study. Frustrated by several of Dr. Barresi's remarks following the study, Representative Kern asked the Superintendent to specifically inform her as to which of our facts were incorrect.

Several weeks later, the department provided a paper critiquing our slide presentation, not the 21 page research paper with 9 pages of citations, given to herself and members at the study.

Consequently, not only had the OSDE questioned issues answered in our paper, but they provided absolutely zero references as documentation of their 'critiques', outside those to the Common Core website or Common Core-associated organizations such as Achieve.

This lack of academic rigor in the OSDE (does this fall under the category of supreme irony?) could end up costing tax payers millions of dollars. As with Marzano, the Superintendent favors Common Core. It certainly makes one wonder if she might then underplay Common Core's costs...

Although I'd rather she didn't, Dr. Barresi and company can continue to parrot the contents of the Common Core website until the budgetary cows come home, but by then, Oklahoma's taxpayers will be gone with the wind.

John Dewey Would Be So Proud

I am closing out my day today and just realized. My post yesterday is absolutely the dream of John Dewey, our Marxist/Socialist "Father of Progressive (read 'modern') Education". He is taught like a God in teacher ed courses at Universities and Colleges everywhere - just as his followers had hoped.

School will provide all your needs.

That is what he wished - his Utopian fantasy. In fact, he thought parents were mostly morons and that the state could do a better job of raising little American young people than they. After all, some of them were getting divorced - as the Industrial Revolution began to re-define the stable, two parent family - some of them were neglecting their children to go to work...(if you want to really get a good feel for Dewey and his plans for public education - all of which have now come true - I urge you to get the book, John Dewey and the Decline of American Education - How the patron Saint of schools has corrupted teaching and learning by Henry T. Edmondson III)

Think on this a minute...I was told by a superintendent just recently that the reason why his district provided 'early childhood education' (tax-payer subsidized day care) was because the district 'next door' did. He would lose students as parents moved their kids to the OTHER school to take advantage of the program.

Butts + Chairs = dollars in public schools.

So...it was either provide free state-provided day care to parents, or lose his students AND his funding.

Yes folks, it's about the kids.

No. It's about class warfare, it's about building fiefdoms, it's about power, it's about MONEY. That's what public education is about in America today.

Here's what it will be soon - and a big shout out to ROPE board member Jo Joyce for this little nugget today:

Swedish Officials To Take Permanent Custody of Home Schooled Boy

Yes, according to the Home School Legal Defense Fund, little Domenic Johansson, son of Christer and Annie Johansson, has been in foster care since 2009 when he was seized from the plane on which the family was attempting to flee to his mother’s native India.

Home schooling is legal in Sweden, however, it is necessary to get materials with which to home school your child from the principal of the school of your child's prospective attendance.

However, this principal was not in favor of homeschooling and was hostile to the parent’s request.

“He was very short and not at all in favor of homeschooling,” Christer told the HSLDA. “I told him that it was my right under Swedish law to home school and that I was making contact with him to make the necessary arrangements and to get the materials. We were planning to leave Sweden in just a month or two. Mr. Eneqvist told me that he ‘didn’t care about my right’ that I didn’t have a ‘right to educate my son like that’ and that he was going to take the matter farther.”

The couple, who are devout Christians, had been planning to return to India where they were going to start a new ministry with the poor, but decided to delay the trip in order to get their son’s schooling arrangements made.

And so, as it was, the principal was a man of his word and somehow got the 'state' to remove little Domenic from his parents care. He has now been a 'ward of the state' for 24 months.

Let's see. That will never happen here in Oklahoma...REALLY? We now have the FOOD NAZI'S telling kids what they can and can not eat at school and a legislator that every year submits bills to try and kill the home schooling option in Oklahoma.

Even reasonable legislators like Representative Janine Noland expresses 'concern' over the idea of home schooling because she is acquainted with a family made up of crack-addicted parents who 'home school' their kids because they are often too stoned to get them there.

If you have reasonable legislators with this perspective, what about those like the one that tries to outlaw home schooling every year?

I guess, in the end, not only do we get the government we deserve, we also get the life we deserve - we're either free to pursue our lives under the Constitution given us by our Forefathers - which requires WORK to keep in place - or we can live our life in the chains of governmental tyranny because it just takes too much time out of our little Dancing With The Stars, Blackberry-texting, salon-going, lunching-out day to make the effort to secure our liberties for ourselves and our posterity.

Smart Start Oklahoma Conference Review, Commentary and Research

First Annual Smart Start Oklahoma Conference

“Champions for Change” or

How Much More Than The Already-Allotted One Billion Dollars Per Year Can “Champions” Justify Spending On Unproven Early Childhood Programming In Oklahoma?

(sorry, due to the copious pages of data from the Oklahoma Policy Institute that had to be scanned in, this document can only be viewed through our Scribd account.)