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
- Massachusetts / B-
- Vermont / D+
- New Jersey / B-
- Colorado / B
- Pennsylvania / C+
- Rhode Island / C
- North Carolina / C
- Kansas / C-
- New Hampshire / C+
- 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