Score high on ALEC policy, score low on education

 

According to ALEC's own website, states that score high on ALEC's education policies score low on education. Remember, ALEC is behind the Georgia charter school amendment on the November ballot. If you didn't believe Stanford Credo's study that showed adding a charter school authorizer, as that amendment would do, reduces academic learning, how about ALEC's own data?

Bill Simon write for The Political Vine today, Charter Schools and ALEC: The Facts ALEC Doesn't Want You To Know,

If you take the state performance rankings and match them up to each state's education policy rankings, you come-up with an entirely different picture of how little (if any at all) a state's degree of conservative education “policy” translates into actual education performance.

I did this ( PDF copy available here) and this is what the 2012 Top 10 states in Performance looks like, and their corresponding Policy ranks:

2012 Performance/Policy Rank

1. Massachusetts / B-
2. Vermont / D+
3. New Jersey / B-
4. Colorado / B
5. Pennsylvania / C+
6. Rhode Island / C
7. North Carolina / C
8. Kansas / C-
9. New Hampshire / C+
10. New York / C-

The numbers are ALEC's performance rankings, and the letters are ALEC's policy grades.

Wow. Look at that. Massachusetts has a B- and is at #1... Vermont has a D+ at #2 on Education Performance. The rest of the Top 10 states have mostly C-averages in conservative education policy. Yet, their kids are smarter in reading comprehension and math than 41 other education jurisdictions in the United States.

And... how about Missouri? The state that scored the highest in education policy? Look down the page of this PDF to the light blue highlight near the bottom: 47th in Performance. Near dead last in 2012.

Another interesting observation is Minnesota, which was #2 in Performance in the 2006 ALEC Report Card, but has dropped out of the Top 10 states in 2012, and sunk to 18th in Performance...but, they have a B+ in Education Policy.

He mentions that Kansas, like Vermont, declined to participate in the federal Race to the Top program, with its requirement for charter schools:

AND... where is the State of Kansas in the 2012 Performance Rankings? At #8 in Performance and C- in Policy... kicking the crap out of Georgia (#27 in Performance and “B” in Policy) and Florida (#12 in Performance and B+ in Policy), who are both working on getting more charter schools stuffed into their state's respective school system apparatus.

So ALEC's own data says ALEC's policy of pushing charter schools on states, including through the referendum on the Georgia November ballot, reduces educational performance.

Why would ALEC push such policies then? Because they're not about education. They're about profit.

So, in effect, ALEC acts as a marketing arm of all the pro-charter school companies and organizations (i.e., the Gates Foundation and Walmart's various entities who support charter school legislation)... and ALEC's job is to fool voters, legislators, policy decision makers, educators, and everyone else involved in public school education.

Remember the Walton Family Foundation granted $1.05 million last year to organizations now pushing the charter school amendment, and Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton chipped in another $250,000 this year. Followed in size of donations by three private charter school companies, the first of which (K12 Inc. of Virginia) has a class action lawsuit against it while its CEO rakes in record compensation derived from tax dollars.

Stanford's Credo says adding charter school authorizers downgrades educational performance. ALEC's own data says ALEC's policies, of which increasing charter school authorizers is one, downgrades educational performance. Out-of-state foundations and corporations are pouring money into passing a constitutional amendment that would downgrade education in Georgia for their private profit at your local tax dollar expense. Do you need any more reasons to vote No on amendment 1? If so, you can see two local educators explain in detail how that amendment is about control of local education (and tax dollars) by an unelected board in Atlanta. Then maybe you'll vote No on the charter school amendment.

-jsq