\r\nBill Simon write for The Political Vine today,\r\n\r\nCharter Schools and ALEC: The Facts ALEC Doesn’t Want You To Know,<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nIf you take the state performance rankings and match them up to each\r\nstate’s education policy rankings, you come-up with an entirely\r\ndifferent picture of how little (if any at all) a state’s degree of\r\nconservative education \u201cpolicy\u201d translates into actual\r\neducation performance.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nI did this (\r\nPDF copy available here<\/a>)\r\nand this is what the 2012 Top 10 states in Performance looks like,\r\nand their corresponding Policy ranks:\r\n<\/p> \r\nThe numbers are ALEC’s performance rankings,\r\nand the letters are ALEC’s policy grades.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\nWow. Look at that. Massachusetts has a B- and is at #1…\r\nVermont has\r\na D+ at #2 on Education Performance. The rest of the Top 10 states\r\nhave mostly C-averages in conservative education policy. Yet, their\r\nkids are smarter in reading comprehension and math than 41 other\r\neducation jurisdictions in the United States.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nAnd… how about Missouri? The state that scored the highest in\r\neducation policy? Look down the page of this PDF to the light blue\r\nhighlight near the bottom: 47th in Performance. Near dead last in\r\n2012.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nAnother interesting observation is Minnesota, which was #2 in\r\nPerformance in the 2006 ALEC Report Card, but has dropped out of the\r\nTop 10 states in 2012, and sunk to 18th in Performance…but, they\r\nhave a B+ in Education Policy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\nHe mentions that Kansas,\r\nlike Vermont, declined to participate in the federal Race to the Top program,\r\nwith its\r\n\r\nrequirement for charter schools<\/a>:\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\nAND…\r\n<\/strong>\r\nwhere is the State of Kansas in the 2012 Performance Rankings?\r\n\r\nAt #8 in Performance and C- in Policy…\r\n\r\nkicking the crap\r\n<\/em>\r\n<\/strong>\r\nout of\r\nGeorgia (#27 in Performance and \u201cB\u201d in Policy) and\r\nFlorida (#12 in Performance and B+ in Policy), who are both working\r\non getting\r\n\r\nmore\r\n<\/strong>\r\ncharter schools stuffed into their state’s\r\nrespective school system apparatus.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\nSo ALEC’s own data says ALEC’s policy of pushing charter schools on states,\r\nincluding through the referendum on the Georgia November ballot,\r\nreduces<\/em> educational performance.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nWhy would ALEC push such policies then?\r\nBecause they’re not about education.\r\nThey’re about profit.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nSo, in effect,\r\n\r\nALEC acts as a marketing arm of all the pro-charter school companies and organizations\r\n<\/strong>\r\n(i.e., the Gates Foundation and Walmart’s various entities who\r\nsupport charter school legislation)… and ALEC’s job is to fool\r\nvoters, legislators, policy decision makers, educators, and everyone\r\nelse involved in public school education.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nStanford’s Credo says<\/a>\r\nadding charter school authorizers downgrades educational performance.\r\nALEC’s own data says ALEC’s policies,\r\n\r\n \r\n-jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[140,14,15,49,70,8,21,22],"tags":[8744,1390,1371,8704,8705,8721,8728,8701,1576,8702,12,7,8711,8712,218,1486,60,6,1388],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alec","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-ethics","category-georgia","category-planning","category-politics","tag-alec","tag-alice-walton","tag-charter-schools","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-elections","tag-ethics","tag-georgia","tag-k12","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-profit","tag-referendum","tag-tax","tag-valdosta","tag-walton-family-foundation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-6H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5170,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions\/5170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\r\n
2012 Performance\/Policy Rank<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
![\"ALEC's](\"\/blog\/images\/6a0120a58214e4970b017c328bb648970b-pi.jpg\")
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![\"Alice](\"\/blog\/images\/6a0120a58214e4970b017c328bb64d970b-pi.jpg\")
<\/a>\r\nRemember\r\n\r\nthe Walton Family Foundation granted $1.05 million last year<\/a>\r\nto organizations now pushing the charter school amendment,\r\nand \r\nWal-Mart heir Alice Walton chipped in another $250,000 this year.<\/a>\r\nFollowed in size of donations by three private charter school companies,\r\nthe first of which (K12 Inc. of Virginia) has\r\n\r\na class action lawsuit against it<\/a>\r\nwhile\r\n\r\nits CEO rakes in record compensation<\/a>\r\nderived from tax dollars.\r\n<\/p>\r\n![\"VoteSmartGeorgia.com\"](\"\/blog\/images\/6a0120a58214e4970b017c326fb38d970b-pi.png\")
<\/a>\r\n\r\nof which increasing charter school authorizers is one<\/a>,\r\ndowngrades educational performance.\r\nOut-of-state foundations and corporations\r\n\r\nare pouring money<\/a>\r\ninto passing a constitutional amendment that would downgrade education\r\nin Georgia for their private profit at your local tax dollar expense.\r\nDo you need any more reasons to\r\n\r\nvote No on amendment 1?<\/a>\r\nIf so, you can\r\n\r\nsee two local educators explain in detail<\/a>\r\nhow that amendment is about control of local education (and tax dollars)\r\nby an unelected board in Atlanta.\r\nThen maybe you’ll vote No on the charter school amendment.\r\n<\/p>\r\n