Gubernatorial Candidate Moffett claims Perry Central Officials "monkey with the numbers"

But Moffett's Solution is Unrelated to the Problem

Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Moffett's claim that school choice would eliminate problems related to adults monkeying with student test scores makes no sense at all. Whenever student testing is used for high-stakes decision-making people will be motivated to look good. That motivation will exist in every kind of public school. ...and from time to time, folks will forget the rules.

But Moffett says he has confirmation that trouble is brewing at Perry Central High School.

This from Moffett Campaign Manager David Adams by email:

Another embarrassing scandal will soon attract national attention to Kentucky schools after one eastern Kentucky high school had all of its 2009 ACT test scores thrown out, Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Moffett said.

ACT testing officials informed Moffett [last] Friday that an investigation of test administration irregularities at Perry Central High School in Hazard will be completed within a month. ACT says wrongdoing by students has been ruled out.

"My understanding is you had some parents who moved outside the district, enrolled their kids in other public schools and found out the kids really couldn't read well at all but they had ACT scores in the high 20's if not the 30's," Moffett said. "Obviously it's impossible to get an ACT score that high if you can't in fact read."

Moffett said scandals of this magnitude would be eliminated if Kentucky offered parents and students greater freedom in choosing which school to attend because people would be more diligent in staying informed about school quality.

"Things like this wouldn't happen if we had more public school choice," Moffett said. "People who would be shopping for schools would understand if certain school districts monkey with the numbers."

"For decades we've been undereducating kids and telling the public that all things are okay. We're undereducating about three-quarters of our kids. They simply can't compete in today's global market with that level of education. We've been doing that for generations and we need to stop now."

Moffett is campaigning for governor on a platform which includes major education reform implementing market solutions as opposed to the traditional practice of just throwing money at school officials who are shielded from accountability by their political power.

"Our current district monopolies absolutely strangle parents and take away their ability to get a clear picture of how well their children are being educated," Moffett said.

Charter Schools for Freedom and Liberty

Lurking in the back of the Capital Annex hearing room yesterday was David Adams, Campaign Manager for a Tea Party gubernatorial candidate who tea partiers don't even know - Phil Moffett. Moffett, like Adams, was associated with the Bluegrass Institute and apparently favors giving public dollars to private groups under the guise of school choice. It was Moffett who funded Rep Brad Montell's legislative field trip to an Indianapolis charter shcool in April.

Adams sat in for about a half an hour during the Joint Interim Committee on Education.

Adams, Waters, Moffett and their co-conspirators at the Bluegrass Institute love freedom and liberty. They want to be free to take liberties with public dollars. They prefer vouchers. But they'll settle for charter schools, for now.

You may recall Adams was recently the Campaign Manager for the Rand Paul campaign - which I believe it is safe to say is THE most prominent senatorial race in the nation. Adams deserves credit for Paul's very successful primary campaign. But much of the attention on Paul is also owed to the rise of the Tea Party movement and Paul's father Ron, who was once a presidential candidate.

Paul has also helped himself garner press by sharing several thoughts out loud that he had to immediately retract, or at least try to explain away. Much of the campaign so far has involved Paul making statements and his opponent Attorney General Jack Conway saying "no take backs." Last time I looked, Paul was up by 8 in some poll.

Immediately following one such gaff - when Adams allowed Paul to do the Rachel Maddow Show - Adams was "promoted" to Campaign Chairman, where he was clearly no longer in charge.

Adams was since demoted, one supposes, to Campaign Manager for Moffett. In any case, it was good to see him on the education beat yesterday. He always makes for good copy.

Other reflections on yesterday's meeting:

It was delightful to see KASA's Wayne Young, as always. And he was extra gracious when he introduced me to Robert Lewis. He didn't call me an agitator, or claim that all college professors do is invite practitioners to teach their classes, or anything.

I wonder how big the number is. How many comittee meetings/hearings/seminars/etc... has Cindy Heine sat through in the past twenty years? Three meetings a week? Five? More? I'm tthinkin' thousands. ...and that's a lot of briefings.

I introduced myself to CHNI's Ronnie Ellis, and sat next to him and Greg Stotlmyer in the press section. I told Ellis I appreciated his work on Comment on Kentucky and am a regular reader of his work. Later, I overheard a brief exchange between him and Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute. Apparently Waters was trying to tell Ellis what to write when Ellis responded, "I'm not going to debate with you guys."

But you've got to give it to the BIPPS boys. Despite being called ideologs by one legislator, they keep on plugging away. What a great country.

In his comments to the panel, Rev Stephenson said he would be calling on a higher authority for his remarks. So it was particularly gratifying that he chose to quote extensively from Kentucky School News and Commentary's Penney Sanders. In her article, "Unfinished Business," Penney writes,

A cursory analysis of the 2008 -2009 list of low performing school reveals that the majority of the seriously low performing schools (Tier 5) are in Jefferson County. The remaining schools on this list are scattered around the state with no region dominating...

After 20 years, if the full promise of the Kentucky’s school reform is to be met, these failing (seriously low performing) schools must, once and for all be dealt with...

Interestingly, KERA envisioned such provisions. The KERA framers believed that schools, after 3 or 4 years of poor performance, would be closed or the children given the option to go elsewhere. Sadly, we have not seen those sanctions-the ultimate hammers ever used.

The question is WHY NOT???

I'm going to have to start treating Penney with more respect...so I don't get struck by lightening.

Bluegrass Institute Shifting from Tea Parties to School Choice?

Having gathered a few central Kentucly crowds at recent "Tea Parties," it was surprising to learn today that David Adams of the Bluegrass Institute wants to change the Tea Party name (due to the press' use of an objectional homoerotic slang term involving tea bags) and shift to a new issue.

So Soon?

I've been watching the Tea Parties with a bemused mixture of interest and skepticism:

• Bemused - because of the strange juxtaposition of establishment types, more than a few of whom would have favored police clearing the streets of all protesters in bygone days, now carrying placards;
• Interest - because it is prudent for all Americans to worry about deficits now approaching 70% of GDP; and
• Skepticism - because if Tea Parties were a principled effort they should have started during the Bush administration rather than waiting for Obama.

As it is, Tea Parties smack of partisan free-marketers looking for a new angle that might validate - after the fact - an approach toward unregulated free enterprise that nearly crippled us - and clearly has cost America many years of full productivity.

Curiously, Adams suggests a new strategy and a new issue as early as May.

One wonders if Tea Party organizers sense that the sustainability of such protests is just not there and organizers don't want them to be remembered as an idea that simply fizzled. Otherwise, if it is indeed a strong growing movement - why deflate it now?

Most folks don't know what to believe about toxic assets, credit default swaps and other arcane financial instruments that should have been illegal, but weren't. But Americans did see both Presidents Bush and Obama stand up and tell us that the problem was so bad, that if we didn't stimulate the economy, the whole system could collapse.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I saw America flinch.

BIPPS selection of school choice as the new focus for grassroots activism is interesting. I wonder if BIPPS will be able to generate the same amount of passion for school choice from the smaller segment of the population directly impacted by K-12 education. On the other hand, the Obama administration has certainly given them a platform, and perhaps a level, to go after charter schools in Kentucky - and as far as I can tell nobody in the education establishment wants to talk about it.

Finally, Adams recently complained that the Courier-Journal should not stoop to homoerotic slang in describing the Tea Party protests. He's right.

Perhaps, if the Bluegrass Institute did less name-calling and had a better track record of correcting it's own errors it would stand on higher moral ground when expressing its outrage toward others.

Poor Little Think Tank

When he's not muscling the government bureaucracy for being bad for us, or extolling the virtues of a free-market idealism that made the American economy what it is today, it turns out that the Bluegrass Institute’s David Adams has a softer side.

Writing at Kentucky Progress, Adams seemed to be sad about a lone anonymous commenter on the new PrichBlog. "Anonymous" hoped that the new Prichard Committee blog would be “a welcome alternative to the Bluegrass Institute.”

Obviously hurt by this, Adams took the single comment and exprapolated a conspiracy theory claiming,

protectors of the status quo have, instead of making a case for the efficacy of their programs, made a habit of taking potshots at The Bluegrass Institute and anyone else who dares to threaten their base of power.

Poor Bluegrass institute. I had no idea it was so tough being in a think tank.

Adams apparently thought he would open a meaningful conversation with the Prichard folks. As is his wont and right, he started with a little name-calling,

The Bluegrass Institute has tried for years to engage KDE sychophants like Prichard Committee in a meaningful debate.

Sychophants?! Adams followed by describing the Prichard Committee as

“the chief protector of failed bureaucratic education policies that have held Kentucky back for decades.”

One wonders how the conversation with the Prichard Committee is working out.

Adams defends his name-calling with this:

I consider calling someone who uses my own money against me a name or two well within my rights as a taxpayer.

The problem is the Prichard Committee is not a government agency. They don't spend anybody's tax dollars. ...for or against anyone. And if the taxpayer bill of rights includes a name-calling provision, I missed it.

So I fear Adams may have hampered his own effort to engage the Prichard Committee in meaningful debate by choosing an opening gambit that was both disrespectful and off-the-mark; regrettably, an increasingly disappointing Bluegrass Institute trait.

I remain confounded by the Bluegrass Institute's apparent lack of concern over its own credibility. But as David puts it,

I'm not too concerned about my credibility with those who refuse to hear well-documented complaints about the KDE.

In fact, some of BIPPS's complaints are better documented than others. And some of BIPPS's arguments are known to be exaggerations, but remain unacknowledged by BIPPS - further undermining its cerdibility.

Adams's persistent loyalty to BIPPS's principles is unflinching no matter the documentation, or lack thereof. He serves the BIPPS leadership, apparently takes his cues from other BIPPS analysts and, promotes them and their ideas; and has, by that means, advanced personally. I don’t believe I’d be calling anyone a sycophant if I were him.

But the blogosphere would be less fun without Adams's occasionally prescient insights. Take this one for example:

No one in Kentucky is going to freeze to death living indoors this winter. We are going to have to get past the point of these feel-good appropriations should times really get
hard in America.

Oh wait. That wasn't prescient at all, was it?

But it was surely a public service when Adams offered advice to the non-rich on how to be poor while facing problems of college affordability.

And he does produce funny headlines from time to time.

By contrast, BIPPS education analyst Richard Innes reached out the left hand of welcome to Prichard by pimping one of his own blog posts, and inferring that Prichard had arrived late to the party.

Then on January 21, 2009 4:14 PM he wrote the funniest thing of all.

“Note that I linked back to the Prichard Blog, as we really do want to engage in productive conversation.”

What some think of as following copyright law, Innes offers as an olive branch.

I predict that the Prichard Committee will tire of the BIPPS good-cop/bad-cop routine fairly quickly.

Trafficking in Hyperbole

Thank God, It's Friday!

Feel Free to Reach Out and Smack Someone.

A little firestorm broke out today over at Page One. It seems that Jake Payne has had quite enough of David Adams.

David Adams may pretend that the Bluegrass Institute is an honest think tank. But it’s obviously a right-wing agenda pusher that not only hates public education and stops at nothing to complain about it 24/7. [KY Progress]

This set off a a series of thrusts and parries reminscent of the battling attorneys I had been writing about earlier today. It went something like this:

David: Nuh uh. We don't hate public schools.
Jake: Yeah Huh. You're a hater who hangs out with Frank Simon.
David: Nuh uh. I've got kids in public school.
Jake: Yeah huh. BGI kills your credibility.
David: I may be a right-winger but KDE really sucks.

Or, words to that effect.....

Both blogs stoop to name-calling, which I try not to do, but I suppose I'm sympathetic with Jake's frustration.

Despite trying not to pay too close attention, every now and again, I get my fill of the outrage-of-the-day mentality and petty name-calling that goes on regularly at the Bluegrass Institute blog now. Everybody's a liar, or a fraud - and always an educrat. (By the way, what's the opposite of that? An ignocrat?

For example, Adam's big story of the day at Kentucky Progress was "Cutting through Big Ed's crap" A Richard Innes quote in a wrapper. Adams concludes:

As the Kentucky's mainstream media crumbles, independent researchers like Innes will take on an even more important role in holding government entities like Big Education accountable.

Perhaps so. But if it's wrapped up in an on-going screed about how awful everybody else is, I'm not sure many middle-of-the-road types are going to be able to hear it. Then, BGI's voice only gets further marginalized?

In a normal year, I'd be right in there with BGI fussing to improve assessment methods and results for our kids. I think the CATS concordance idea is little more than a bandaide put on a transition period with the hope no one will notice the 5-7 point bump schools get with the new and easier test. But the dialogic atmosphere is at Kentucky Progress, and now, BGI, is so toxic I'd just rather give KDE a pass and move on the other issues.

It wasn't always that way.

When Adams started blogging for the Bluegrass Institute I expressed my concerns to Innes. My thought was that the style of discourse on Kentucky Progress was inconsistent with what I understood them to stand for. Now I think it was my assessment of what they stood for that was wrong. I was less familiar with BGI overall and didn't make much of an effort to look into it. It wasn't really a concern of mine. I've worked with folks from all kinds of political perspectives for my whole career.

Innes and I managed to work together fairly well on a couple of issues (KIRIS, Barbara Erwin)despite being misaligned politically. We never thought we had to agree on everything to agree on the things we did.

The association probably cost me some credibility with educators in Kentucky.

A close colleague once asked me a question that I can't quite get out of my head. She said, "You've spent your whole life fighting for better schools in Kentucky. How can you stand being identified with the Bluegrass Institute on anything?"

I told her, "We only agree when we agree."

I'm not sure David and Jake are going to be able to hear each other. Jake sees the big picture. David sees individual claims. So today they just "yelled" at each other.

I suspect David isn't half as interested in understanding the implications of the data Innes produces, or the conclusions drawn, as he is in staying on message. I guess it's all about the influence.