Senate Education Bills Scheduled for February 9, 2015

We're going to try and do a legislative update every week where we post the bills being heard in the Oklahoma House and Senate along with comments we might have on the bill. We can't delve into each and every bill - we just don't have the manpower - but we read what we can. There are also some we can assess right off the bat just by the title. In general, if the bill mandates local schools to add a program, we should ask for a NO vote. Only local parents should request a program or class. Please take the time to contact your House and Senate member to ask for a NO vote on those particular bills. If we have no comments in red, we either support the bill or don't have enough information to comment. Thank you!

Senate Education Committee 2/09/15

SB 18 -Loveless- task force to study admin ed costs

SB 29 - Brecheen- OSDE provide written notice of expiring teacher license

SB 50 - Smalley-lowers grade level to participate in AG courses to 6

SB 68 - Holt- allows more charters in lg cities with districts of 5000 or more-sponsored by the city

NO SB 136-Stanislawski- changing governance over online charters to " Statewide Virtual Charter School Board",and  "Negotiate and enter into contracts with supplemental online course providers"; (Charter schools are public schools and as such need to be under the purview of the OSDE!)

SB 171-Loveless-  "Flexibility for Rural Education Act of 2015"- strikes cap limit language from original charter bill -any district, tech center or college could sponsor a charter

SB 177-Halligan - increasing the income cap for eligibility from $50000 to $55000 for OHLAP;

SB 262-Paddack-Oklahoma Department of Labor, shall make available to school districts information regarding workplace safety training for grades seven through twelve. Such information shall include the Oklahoma Department of Labor's "Youth @ Work Talking Safety: A Safety and Health Curriculum for Young Workers".

NO SB 285 -Ford- aligning pre K standards to new standards The Constitution of Oklahoma does NOT specify that children should be educated until 8! We should not be perpetuating educational standards for children we have no business formally educating developmentally, and according to our Constitution.

SB 301-Loveless- allowing the State Board of Education to suspend or deny teacher certification upon certain findings- crimes

SB 302- Loveless-more Indian charters- located within the former reservation or treaty area boundaries of the tribe on property held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the United States Department of the Interior for the benefit of the tribe

NO SB 303 Shaw/Denney - adding "age-appropriate child sexual abuse and assault awareness training - parents may opt out and will be given written notice – (STOP mandating things to the schools! Plus, once this is in school, it will be hard for parents to stop the program)

SB414 Brinkley-listing eligible schools ( religious schools) for OHLAP

NO SB 504 Jolley-- a nonprofit university offering online, competency based degree programs to be eligible OHLAP recipients (Our tax money should not be sent out of state)

SB 505Stanislawski- created in the State Treasury a revolving fund for the Statewide Virtual Charter
School Board to be designated the "Statewide Virtual Charter School Board Revolving Fund",issued by the State Treasurer against claims filed as prescribed by law with the Director of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services for approval and payment

SB 711-Sparks - forward info on teacher dismissal to OSDE

SB 763- Bass-provide foster kids guardians info on OHLAP, and eligibility

PTA - Friend or Foe?

For years, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has placed themselves as the ultimate source for coordination between parents and teachers, ostensibly providing numerous ways in which to help engage parents in their child's education.  Most parents don't think twice about joining the PTA - after all, it's all about the kids.  Or is it?

Initially started as the National Congress of Mothers in 1897 in order to unite parents and educators in efforts that would promote the well being of children, the name was changed to the PTA in 1908.  In 1927, PTA began working with the International Bureau of Education and in 1946 they began membership on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. Though hitting a high of 12.1 million members in 1963, PTA's national membership has declined steadily since, falling to under 5 million.

Most parents join PTA to help their child's school, yet what most parents don't seem to be aware of, is PTA's association with the National Education Association.  This goes back to the 1920's when the PTA was actually headquartered in the NEA building in Chicago, Illinois.  Not merely a tenant, PTA actually had its own department within the NEA.  Though originally a professional organization run by school administrators, NEA became a union for teachers in 1960, shortly after PTA moved out and into a building of their own.

Charlene K. Haar, author of the book, "The Politics of the PTA" explains:

...in 1968, the PTA Board of Directors--not the membership--set a policy declaring that, in teacher strikes, the PTA would not oppose the teachers and the teachers’ union.  This eliminated parental support for the administration....Parents still are interested in these other issues, but local PTAs can no longer provide any support to parents who wish to challenge union positions. In fact, a few years ago at the NEA convention, NEA President Keith Geiger reminded the PTA that its locals were bound by PTA policy not to challenge the teacher union positions in collective bargaining.

PTA began collecting dues in 1901 at a rate of $.05 per person.  Today, national dues are $25.00 and per person dues to each school PTA chapter are approximately $6.00.  Schools collect a small portion of those dues.  The larger portion is sent on to state and national PTA where dues are used mainly for 'advocacy' programs - lobbying.  In addition to dues, PTA collects funds via a number of advertisers, contributors and partners.

The money that pours into the national PTA has allowed it to evolve into a political animal and arm of NEA policy rather than a parent-driven, classroom-oriented, organic, association.  Even the Oklahoma PTA website has a direct link to our NEA affiliate, the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA), indicating these two organizations are never more than a mouse click away.

This should be particularly upsetting to Christians.  Over the years, the NEA has embraced an increasingly social liberal agenda that includes such things as the NEA Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender Caucus which sponsored:

The NEA-Drag Queen Caucus (NEA-DQ) a national LGBT scholarship caucus fundraiser held in New Orleans summer 2010 for the NEA-RA...

In addition, the national PTA advocates against homeschooling and

...opposes mandatory or organized prayer or religious worship at official public school functions, whether led by a school official or student.

The National PTA also supports the Obama Administration view of education reform, including:

* Improve state longitudinal data systems and sharing of student data.
* Reject any proposal to divert public funding from public schools.

It's no surprise then to find that the National PTA (as well as the Oklahoma PTA) advocate for the Common Core State Standards to the point of advocating AGAINST those bills in the House to repeal the Standards.

Maybe the advocacy against Common Core (other than aligning with the desire of the Obama Administration to create national standards, testing and data bases) on the part of the PTA has to do with the very large grant given them by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to advocate FOR the Common Core.

In closing, it's easy to see that the national (top down) Parent Teacher Association has become like so many other iconic American starters - progressively liberal - too liberal for conservatives, and too anti-Christian world view to be palatable to Christians.

Parent Teacher Organizations are a far better choice by which to create communication and teamwork among parents and teachers.  PTO's are local associations run by parents and teachers inside individual schools (from the bottom up).  They keep the money they raise for their school and their autonomy over projects and fund raising.  Unfortunately, for Bill Gates, these are much harder to be bought off.

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.