OlsonOnline

Schools and taxes

According to the 36th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll on public attitudes toward public schools, the biggest problem facing public education today is, by far, inadequate funding.  In other words, schools just don't have enough money to do the job:

3. Lack of financial support is now firmly established in the public's mind as the major problem facing the public schools. Issues related to discipline and drugs dominated the poll as the major concern until 2000, when lack of financial support rose to the top. In 2001, it was tied for first place; in each subsequent year it has stood alone at the top. Twenty-one percent in this year's poll mention finance as the number-one problem. (See Table 4.) No other problem exceeds 10%.

The public, by the way, also overwhelming rejects No Child Left Behind as a means for fixing the schools, especially the testing provisions:

6. The public disagrees with the major strategies NCLB uses to determine whether a school is or is not in need of improvement. Unless these strategies are modified, there is little reason to change last year's conclusion that greater familiarity with NCLB is unlikely to bring approval.

• Sixty-seven percent say the performance of a school's students on a single test is not sufficient for judging whether the school is in need of improvement. (See Table 8.)
• Eighty-three percent say testing in English and math only will not yield a fair picture of a school. (See Table 9.)
• Seventy-three percent say it is not possible to judge a student's proficiency in English and math on the basis of a single test. (See Table 10.)
• Eighty-one percent are concerned that basing decisions about schools on students' performance in English and math only will mean less emphasis on art, music, history, and other subjects. (See Table 11.)
• If a school is found to be in need of improvement, 80% would favor keeping students in that school and making additional efforts to help them, while 16% would favor permitting students to transfer to a school not in need of improvement. (See Table 12.)
• If a school is found to be in need of improvement, 55% would prefer to have students tutored by teachers in that school as compared to 40% who would prefer tutoring to be provided by an outside agency. (See Table 13.)

Yet we still hear political leaders and opinion makers whine and moan about the impossibility of raising taxes to support schools, even knowing that per student spending is less now than it was 15 years ago.

Here's Promise King, the Portland Tribune columnist, as a case in point.  In today's column he says,

"With taxpayers’ increased skepticism and budget blues looming, these ideas could prove worthwhile. There are other ideas. Let’s talk about them. But don’t talk to me about a tax hike."

What are the other ideas?  Better contracting, public private partnerships, fewer administrators and consultants, which are all well and good.  But the savings they provide, by King's own reckoning, add up to only a tiny fraction of the $43 million provided to the Portland district by the temporary Multnomah county income tax.

You get what you pay for.  In Oregon we're apparently satisified with overcrowded classrooms and shortened school years.  By we, I don't mean the people, only those who make decisions supposedly on behalf of the people.

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What is it with the Tribune, anyway? Phil Stanford, the marquee columnist for the paper, has been sniping at Portland City Council member Erik Sten for his Clean Money proposal which would publicly fund city elections.  Stanford calls it a "crock" and a "scam" designed to ensure the reelection of incumbants, all on the public's dime.  No matter how you look at it, you have to conclude that Stanford is simply anti-tax. 

City Auditor Gary Blackmer sets Stanford (and King) straight with this op-ed piece in today's edition:

"Far from being an incumbent protection system, public funding programs — according to an analysis by University of Wisconsin political scientists — have increased the pool of candidates and the likelihood that an incumbent will have a competitive race.
  "My conclusion is that clean campaign reform will create voter-owned elections in Portland and will benefit candidates, constituents and public policy decision making."

The annual silliness of achievement test report cards

Instead of ranting about the uselessness of Oregon's annual report card of so-called school performance, let me just state the case, as rationally as possible, that exceptional test scores, which the report cards use almost exclusively to rate schools, correlate perfectly with favorable demographics, meaning wealth and ethnicity.  In other words, the richer and whiter the school, the better the test scores. Here's what happened in Portland Schools:

• Elementary Schools-- Thirteen of sixty-one had exceptional scores on tests of reading, writing, and math.  All thirteen are located in relatively wealthy (and white) neighborhoods.
• Middle Schools-- Only one of nineteen garnered an exceptional test score rating, West Sylvan, on the white and wealthy West side.  Seven others got strong ratings.  All are either located in wealthy areas, or they are magnet schools.
• High schools-- One of twelve got an exceptional test score rating, Lincoln, which draws the bulk of its students from West Sylvan. (Surprise, surprise!)   Four of the twelve got low or unsatisfactory ratings.  You don't need me to tell you where they are.

Test score performance declines rather precipitously from grade school to high school.  It doesn't take a deep thinker to figure out why.  In grade schools, students are taught, directly, to read, to write, and to compute.  In high schools, students take English classes, in which they study literature, not reading.  Much of what they're given to read ("classic literature") is incomprehensible and unappealing to the majority of students. 

Math is only required for three years.  At the high school level, math is, simply put,  difficult.  Most of the parents who shake their heads at the school report cards are clueless when it comes to helping their kids with math homework.

The bottom line is this: student performance on standardized tests has little to do with the schools they attend, or the teachers that teach them.  So again I ask, why do we persist in the folly of labeling schools as either good or bad?

Repeat after me: Test scores are about the students, NOT the schools!

Fascism, American style

If you define fascism, as I do, as the perfect merger of government and business, especially big business, then a cursory perusal of recent news should convince you that fascism is on the march in this country.  Here's the evidence.

First, the New York Times reports today that the Food and Drug Administration is becoming more and more dependent on pharmaceutical company money to fund its investigations into the safety and efficacy of new drugs coming onto the market:

"Dozens of former and current F.D.A. officials, outside scientists and advocates for patients say the agency's efforts to monitor the ill effects of drugs that are on the market are a shadow of what they should be because the White House and Congress forced a marriage between the agency and industry years ago for the rich dowry that industry offered."

The "marriage" in question is the 1992 agreement between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA to provide funding for a more rapid review of new drugs.  The agreement, however, didn't include money for looking into side effects of the drugs after they reached the market:

"Dr. Strom of the University of Pennsylvania said the F.D.A.'s almost complete focus on approving new drugs at the expense of ensuring the safety of medicines that patients are already taking is wrong.

" 'They're getting all these drugs on the market a whole lot sooner and not looking at what happens once they get there,' he said."

The popular drug, Vioxx, is an example of what can happen when watchdog agencies are funded by the industries they're supposed to regulate.  Vioxx, as many of you now know, has the unfortunate side effect of killing the people who take it by causing heart attacks.

Today's Times article follows its investigation into the connection between big drug companies and academic researchers, which I wrote about in my December 1 post.  That article focused on the industry suppression of negative research results in studies on antidepressants, which apparently tend to create suicidal tendencies in children.

A story on public radio this morning also caught my attention.  It was a story about the winners of a recent high school science contest sponsored not by the government, but by private industry-- Siemens- Westinghouse.  It's wonderful to hear about young people recognized for their academic accomplishments.  But it's jarring to realize such recognition comes from business, not the taxpayers who fund the schools which produce these budding geniuses.

But that's nothing new.  Business is all too willing to step into the void created by the underfunding or our public schools.  The examples of business partnerships with schools are too numerous to recount.  Just think Channel One, which provided free TVs and news to high schools in exchange for a captive audience of impressionable adolescents, who were then barraged by commercials. (Click here for more on Channel One.)  Or the Coca Cola Company which has paid schools for the privilege of placing its vending machines in school hallways and lunchrooms.

The Bush Administration, which wants to privatize everything, bears primary responsibilty for this creeping fascism.  Bill Moyers, in a 2003 speech on the growth of the Progressive Movement in America, reveals Karl Rove- the consumate Bush insider- as a self-admitted fascist, if you buy into my definition:

"This is what's hard to believe – hardly a century had passed since 1776 before the still-young revolution was being strangled in the hard grip of a merciless ruling class. The large corporations that were called into being by modern industrialism after 1865 – the end of the Civil War – had combined into trusts capable of making minions of both politics and government. What Henry George called 'an immense wedge' was being forced through American society by "the maldistribution of wealth, status, and opportunity.'

"We should pause here to consider that this is Karl Rove's cherished period of American history; it was, as I read him, the seminal influence on the man who is said to be George W.'s brain. From his own public comments and my reading of the record, it is apparent that Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion – to serve corporate and imperial power."

Moyers is easily the best journalist on television--public television, of course-- but he's retiring this year; some say he's been forced out by the conservative board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I don't find that too hard to believe.

Pitts, Passadore, and pigs at the trough

My only response to the United Church of Christ ad flap is to quote the bumper sticker one of my neighbors has on his pickup:

               GOD BLESS EVERYONE (no exceptions)

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One of the fat cats I referred to in yesterday's post showed up in today's Oregonian defending tax breaks (incentives, he calls them) for corporations.  The former CEO of Wells Fargo in Oregon, George Passadore, engages in the same double talking blather we always hear when anyone suggests that corporations (Steve Duin, in this case) aren't paying their fair share of taxes:

"The best way for Oregon to add jobs, create strong businesses and provide revenue important for our public needs -- in education, health care and public safety -- is to take proactive steps to continue to grow our economy. We cannot stand by and hope for the best while competing states and nations move past us. We need to expand our base if we are to get out of the economic doldrums of recent years.

Oregon is home to great local companies, but let's not forget many are publicly traded with shareholders who look for the highest financial returns."

His last point, the one about benefits to shareholders, says it all.

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Today was the first day that long-suffering landowners could make their claims under Measure 37.  If you don't yet believe that this insane property rights measure will wreak havoc on Oregon's thirty year experiment in planned growth, here is a sample of some of the claims, or inquiries, that turned up:

"But several inquiries foreshadowed more dramatic requests looming in the weeks ahead. Among the possibilities:

Developing 400 one-acre view lots on a 1,000-foot ridge just inland from a Curry County beach.

Creating 5-acre home sites on poorly producing timberland in Josephine County.

A plan to divide rural land in north Marion County to build a casino.

A spread of 350 2-acre lots on farmland near St. Paul, also in Marion County."

Will the real Democrats please stand up?

With apologies to Slim Shady (aka Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem), I humbly suggest it's time for the real Democrats in the state legislature to "please stand up."

Our weak-kneed governor, Ted Kulongoski, obviously won't. Nor will the clown prince of the State Senate, Peter Courtney. And I'm beginning to have my doubts about his defeated opponent for Senate President, Kate Brown.  Why?  Here's how she responded to Kulongoski's proposal to raise cash for the Oregon State Police-- by allowing the Oregon Lottery to run slot machines:

" 'I'm very concerned about us moving to line games. It really puts the police in an oppositional position to the Oregon tribes,' Brown said. 'I'm hopeful the Legislature can come up with another solution' to pay for state police patrol, she said."

"Concerned" and "hopeful" isn't the sort of language one would expect from a real progressive in response to an unconscionable extension of a tax on the poor and the vulnerable.  How about something like, "I will work to defeat any proposal that furthers our dependence on gambling revenues to fund state programs.  Instead, how about closing corporate tax loopholes and raising the corporate minimum tax?"

Of course Sen. Brown didn't say that.  But Jonah Edelman did:

" 'The governor's budget continues the irresponsible and short-sighted disinvestment Oregon is making in public schools,' said Jonah Edelman, executive director of Stand for Children.  ...

"Stand for Children representatives said they would lobby lawmakers at minimum to close tax loopholes, go after tax evaders and raise the minimum corporate tax."

All this is in response to Gov. Kulonoski's proposed budget for the next biennium which again blatantly underfunds schools and cuts programs for the poor and the elderly.  Oh yeah, and panders to the Oregon Restaurant Association:

"The restaurant lobby has long wanted the lucrative games, which are currently limited to tribal casinos. Kulongoski's predecessor, two-term Gov. John Kitzhaber, strongly objected to the introduction of line games in Oregon's bars and taverns."

State support for schools, under Kulongoski's proposed budget, would be $313 per student less, in real dollars, than the state provided way back in 1990-91.

Let's talk a little history here.  Back in 1990, proponents of the disastrous property tax limitation, Measure 5, (that would be Don McIntire) promised that their initiative would "hold schools harmless."  Let me repeat that: Measure 5 would not harm, or diminish, state funding for schools.  In fact, the state would make up money lost to local districts from the limitation on property taxes.  Schools would be just fine.  Well, here's what actually happened.

In real dollars, state support for schools dropped to about $4000 per student in 1996.  And again in 2002.  Schools have suffered mightily from lack of money since the passage of Measure 5.  I know.  I was teaching in a public middle school as electives were cut and class sizes increased to intolerable levels.

So either the people behind Measure 5 were lying, or they were stupid.  Or both.

Back to Sen. Courtney.  His reaction to the budget proposal was all too predictable:

"It's a pretty solid budget to start things out. It's not egregious. It's not horrible," said Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem. "It's a heck of a job, considering what he's up against."

What Kulongoski is "up against" is a governing platform devoid of conviction or principle.  And a bunch of Democrats who apparently lack the vision and backbone to fight for progressive issues like the tax reform necessary to provide revenue adequate to the needs of the state-- meaning the people of the state!

So, will the real Democrats please stand up and argue that we need more revenue, not less.   And that the only way we're going to get it is to raise taxes, not on the poor, but on those who can afford, easily, to pay them -- like the corporations and the fat cats who work for them.

A further right wing assault on the environment

The property rights and free market ideologues responsible for Measure 37 (see my recent posts) are also ideologically opposed to environmental laws and regulations, most notably the Endangered Species Act, as I pointed out in my November 19 post, "The evils of Measure 37."

Apparently they have good company in the Bush Administration.  Bush and company seem intent on rolling back environmental protections and promoting the rights and the well-being of property owners and corporate free-enterprisers.  At least that's the impression I get from reading the news. 

First, there's the news about reducing protected salmon habitat, not just a little, but by a whopping 80%:

"In a new, narrower interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration yesterday said for the first time that it wants to safeguard as 'critical' only those waterways currently occupied by salmon and steelhead — not areas that might be considered part of a fish's historic range. ....

"Officials acknowledged that Mark Rutzick, a lawyer who had sued the government over salmon protections for years on behalf of the timber industry, helped design the habitat plan. Last spring, Rutzick was appointed a special counsel to the fisheries service for salmon recovery."

Of course, that's not really news.  The Bush Administration has routinely allowed industry insiders to write environmental policy.  Or, as some would say, they've hired the fox to guard the chicken coop.

The Oregonian, in its coverage, describes the proposed move this way:

"Federal officials said they are more carefully balancing the needs of threatened and endangered species against human demands for water, energy, timber and real estate along the Northwest's cold-flowing rivers."

Real estate?  That sounds more like balancing private greed against a public resource.  In other words, it sounds a lot like Measure 37.

In other news, federal agencies have decided that dams don't pose any real danger to fish.  Now that is news, at least to me.  When I taught environmental science, I had my students do a fish mortality exercise on the effects of dams on salmon smolt migration down the Columbia River.  We used an accepted figure of 15% mortality for each dam the fish had to get through on their voyage to the sea.  And that's just the trip downstream.  They had to repeat the trip upstream in order to spawn and reproduce.  Dams, we concluded, were by far the greatest hazard anadromous fish (salmon and steelhead) face in a life cycle defined by hazards.

Olney Pratt of the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission says it best:

"Neither the tribes nor the people of the Northwest can afford to pretend federal dams do not jeopardize the salmon."

One can safely conclude that the Indians, with treaty rights to the salmon, are pissed. 

And then there's news of a continuing assault on science. The Republican Congress has reduced funding for the National Science Foundation.  But that again has been the modus operandi of the Bush Republicans since 2001, where politics and policy have always trumped scientific empiricism.

Lastly, the New York Times reports on the nexus of academic institutions and big pharmaceutical industry money, which funds the research on the drugs the pharmaceutical companies concoct and hope to sell.  If the research trials conducted by supposedly independent scientists, in this case on antidepressants like Prozac and Zoeloft, show that they work, the pharmaceuticals make lots of money.  Which is why they bother to produce the drugs in the first place.

But according to the Times, negative results aren't always released:

"The upshot is that doctors may not get all the information they need. In the wake of revelations about unpublished test data showing the potential risks of pediatric antidepressants, some doctors have stopped prescribing them. And even doctors who continue to prescribe the drugs question why they were kept in the dark."

The potential risks?  The use of antidepressants just may drive a few kids to suicide. 

When the government won't fund research, what are the poor academic researchers to do?  Where do they go for money?  Why, in Bushworld, to the private sector of course!  It's the ultimate dream of the privatizers: science dancing cheek to cheek and working hand in hand with the people who do the real work of this country, the people who make money! 

Those who raise ethical concerns about such an arrangement are best advised to do a cost-benefit analysis:  The cost?  The lives of a few disturbed children.  The benefit?  Millions and millions for the drug companies, money (minus CEO perks) which can then be pumped back into the research and development of other miracle drugs, maybe even some without deleterious side effects. 

Whatever's left over can be dumped into the campaign coffers of the next free market Republican Presidential candidate.